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PHIL203 Lent 2008 Weeks 1-6

Week 1. Wittgenstein's style and method.

1. The oddness (and greatness) of Philosophical Investigations For the first six weeks of this term we are going to be focusing on one of the most important and significant works in 20th Century Philosophy (only Heidegger's Being and Time comes anywhere near to it in terms of its influence on philosophy): Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. So far so good. But the Philosophical Investigations is not a conventional philosophical book. It is a book of two parts. In the first part there is a long series of 693 numbered sections or "remarks", some a few lines long, some a bit longer. The second part involves longer discussions of a range of topics. Paragraphs in the first (and longest) part are numbered in Arabic numerals (e.g., 231; 139), in the second part they are numbered in Roman numerals (e.g. part II ix, or II, x). Wittgenstein never completed the book as we now know it. He had completed Part 1 by 1946, but took it back from the publishers. After his death in 1951 PI as we know it was translated and edited from his manuscripts and notebooks by Elizabeth Anscombe, with Part II added. What are we meant to do with such a book? It is clear that Wittgenstein wanted his material to be arranged in this kind of way (he may not have been happy with the precise results, but he was very much of the view that his philosophy needed 0to be presented in this way). But why? Of course, there are all sorts of different ways of writing philosophy. Different philosophers at different points in history, have written in different styles: some are very formal and technical, others write like historians, others in much more chatty way. Nietzsche and Schopenhauer wrote "aphorisms" (short remarks and sayings, a bit like Wittgenstein's) whilst other philosophers have written in a much more mathematical way (indeed, the only book that Wittgenstein published in his lifetime was arranged in numbered sections like a mathematical treatise). But Wittgenstein's style is not just an accidental or superfluous aspect of his writing. Wittgenstein thought that his way of doing philosophy required this kind of presentation. The aim in this lecture is to get clearer about why this is so, and, in doing so, to get clearer about what Wittgenstein thought about philosophy, especially about where philosophy goes wrong, and how things might be improved. Is this just because he wanted to write in a particular style? Or is Wittgenstein's style of writing tightly bound up with his conception of what philosophy ought to be? 2. What is Philosophical Investigations about? The preface to Philosophical Investigations provides us with Wittgenstein's own thoughts about what Philosophical Investigations is about. He notes that these remarks "concern many subjects: the concepts of meaning, or understanding, of a proposition, of logic, the foundations of mathematics, states of consciousness, and other things" For our purposes what is important is that he notes that: "The philosophical remarks in this book are, as it were, a number of sketches of landscapes" and that they "travel over a wide field of thought criss-cross[ing] in every direction" and that "the same or almost the same points were always being approached afresh from different directions". This gets across the idea that he is going to be coming at one and the same point in different ways. But we still might wonder, why does Wittgenstein not present his work in a more normal way? 3. What is (standard) philosophy and how does it work? In order to make sense of Wittgenstein's methods we'll have to reflect a bit on what philosophy is and how it goes about its business. Philosophy is an epistemic activity. Philosophers are in the business of seeking and communicating knowledge (or, to put it another way, they are interested in getting at the truth). This makes philosophy have something in common with the sciences. Indeed, many of the "natural" sciences were once part of philosophy. Now, there is much dispute (within philosophy) about what exactly constitutes philosophy, or what constitutes a science (some hold that there is no clear fact of the matter about what distinguishes the two). For our purposes all that matters is that there are

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people (many of whom call themselves philosophers) who ask questions and seek knowledge of things that, in some sense of other, go beyond what we can answer via the sciences. So, science can tell us something about e.g., why ice floats on water, and about the formation of mountains. But philosophers focus on questions like: What is time? How can we be sure that we know anything at all? Are pains real? What is reality? How can we perceive and think about a world that is independent of our minds? What is truth? What is the good and the right? What is meaning? What is space? What is science? What are numbers? What are thoughts and how do they get to be about things? When philosophers address these questions they reason (perhaps on their own, but typically with other people by communicating, debating, arguing, discussing). They give arguments and accounts and theories which are meant to explain and justify why we should think of truth, or time, or reality, or pains, in a certain way, rather than others. 4. The "theorizing attitude" Central to this kind of standard philosophical reasoning is what Marie McGinn calls the "theorizing" or "theoretical" attitude. Philosophers see their task as giving explanations and offering theories of puzzling phenomena. Philosophy is akin to the sciences in this respect, but different from the sciences in that its subject matter is not something that can be addressed so readily by empirical means (e.g., by observation and experiment (though, if you have been doing philosophy of science, you will know that observation and experiment involve reasoning and theorising as well!)). The theorizing attitude is central to philosophy. But it is precisely this kind of attitude that Wittgenstein thinks is problematic. But this raises some puzzles itself: (i) What's wrong with philosophical theorizing? (ii) What does Wittgenstein offer by way of an alternative? (iii) Isn't Wittgenstein's alternative a kind of theorizing too? (iv) If it is theorizing, and it is philosophy, then isn't it wrong too? Most puzzling! 5. What's wrong with philosophy? Misunderstanding the logic of language. Let's try to unravel some of these puzzles by asking why Wittgenstein thinks that philosophy goes wrong. At the heart of Wittgenstein's critique of philosophy is the thought that philosophers have made a mistake about the nature of language. Wittgenstein is not claiming that philosophers' theories of language are wrong. The error is much more problematic. Philosophers have suffered from a 'misunderstanding of the logic of language' (PI 93). Wittgenstein tries to outline the problem using visual metaphors. It is that that their "picture" of language is wrong, and that this picture of language holds us captive:

A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably. (PI 115)

He adds: 'One is unable to notice something because it is always before one's eyes' (PI 129). 'It is like a pair of glasses on our nose through which we see whatever we look at. It never occurs to us to take them off' (PI 103)

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The idea here, then, is that there is a deeply entrenched way of thinking about language which, in turn, shapes the way that we do philosophy: it gives rise to philosophical problems, and determines what these problems are, and what we think their resolution might look like. But this just moves us onto our other questions: what is wrong with this kind of theorizing? Why does it matter that a picture of language holds us captive? 6. What is the "picture" that holds us captive? We will be looking at this "picture" in more detail over the next five weeks, but for now it is worth noting some of the broad features of the "picture" that Wittgenstein is critical of. Think about a word like "dog". It seems natural to assume that the word must mean something. It is not like the word "fabbytix" or "colbore" which don't mean anything. So what is the meaning of "dog"? Well, it would seem that the word has to "stand for" or "represent" something: i.e., dogs. What about the word "unicorn"? Unicorn is not like "fabbytix" or "colbore". It means something. Do unicorns have trunks? No. Do they have a single horn? Are they like horses? In a sense, yes. Or, consider the sentence: "There are no unicorns on Earth". This is a meaningful, and almost certainly true sentence. But how can such a sentence be meaningful if "unicorn" has no meaning? One thought is that words stand for things, but they can stand for nonexistent, or abstract things too. But what might these abstract things be like? These simple lines of thought point to the heart of a debate about meaning (and truth) that have occupied philosophers of language, thought and logic especially since the late Nineteenth Century (in the work of J.S Mill (in his System of Logic), in Frege, Meinong), in the early Twentieth century (Russell, the Early Wittgenstein) and up to the present day (in the work of Strawson, Davidson, Dummett, Wright, Putnam, Fodor, Horwich and many others). We cannot go into the details of this debate here. It is worth noting, if we are to make sense of Wittgenstein, that it is his own early views (developed in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus).1 In the Tractatus Wittgenstein thought that he could give a rigorous and precise characterization of how words relate to reality. He thought this involved words "depicting" objects in some unexplained way, such that the logical structure of words and sentences somehow "mirrored" the logical structure of reality. But Wittgenstein comes to believe that this way of thinking about language is wrong in two fundamental ways. (1) Words and utterances don't get to mean things by "depicting" or "mirroring" or "representing" or "corresponding" to objects and facts (the whole idea of depicting or representing is wrong) (2) Words and utterances get to mean things in all sorts of different ways in different contexts (the assumption that meaningfulness is a simple, univocal, feature is mistaken). 7. How the picture of language shapes "standard" philosophy As noted already, we shall be looking at these claims in more detail over the next few weeks. At this point it is worth noting that Wittgenstein's worry is not just that philosophers (including himself) have been prone to make mistakes about the nature of language. The problems are much deeper in that the way we (unconsciously) think about language shapes the way that we do philosophy. For example, in PI 89, Wittgenstein relates Augustine's comment - "What therefore is time? If you don't ask me, I know - if you ask me, I don't know." The question "what is time?" seems to be a philosophical one. It seems, in terms of its form at least, to be akin to questions like "what is the specific gravity of hydrogen?". But this rests on the assumption that all questions do the same job, and the further assumption that if you can ask a question of the form "What is x?" then you can go about answering the question in the same way. In other words, the picture of language that we unconsciously adopt helps underpin the "theorizing attitude" that we mentioned above. We think that because we can raise a question of the

1 The Tractatus is written in a way that is akin to weblinks on a webpage. I.e., there are six main headings (plus a seventh, which warns us not to try to speak of those things that (according to the Tractatus) we cannot speak of), and each of these has various subsections, which, in turn "link" to further subsections. There is a hyptext version of the book at http://www.kfs.org/~jonathan/witt/tlph.html and a pretty wild "graphical tabs" version of it at http://philosurfical.open.ac.uk/tractatus/tabs.html

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form: "what is truth?" "what is time?" "what is reality?" that we can engage in some kind of quasi-scientific investigation to find out the facts that are, at the moment, hidden from us. Or, consider another area of philosophy that Wittgenstein discusses at length: the philosophy of mind and psychology. Consider the statement "I have a pain". If we assume that words refer to things, and that all language works in the same way, then this suggests that when we say "I have a pain" we are reporting something, stating a fact about our possession of some kind of object. "I have a pain" "Do you really? I have a whippet". Because we think that words refer to things, we end up thinking that pains are things, and that our pain-talk is just like talk about dogs, atoms and mountains. A similar point can be made for utterances like "I think it is raining". Here we seem to be reporting the existence of something – a thought. And the "it is raining" seems to be the "content" of the thought. Thoughts, like pains, might seem to be "Inner" entities: for surely only I can know what I really think, surely others can only observe my behaviour, and not access my thoughts and pains in the way that I can. Wittgenstein argues—and we shall discuss this more in lecture 5–that our assumptions about language (the picture that has us in its grip) shape the very way that we think about mind, and, as such, shape the way that we do philosophy of mind and psychology (where we might ask "What are pains really?" or "What are thoughts made of? Are they made of mind-stuff, or physical matter?" – such questions arise because our language, and our assumptions about how language work, direct our thought and inquiry. 8. If the picture has us in its grip, how can Wittgenstein shake it off? If we are in the grip of a picture, and it shapes the way that we think about language and the world and the way that we do philosophy, what can a philosopher do by way of response if he or she thinks that the picture is misleading and wrong? For surely any philosophical response will have to use language? Here it is important to stress that Wittgenstein does not think that all uses of language are wrong! Language is just fine. We use it all the time to do a wide variety of jobs (and we'll look at these in more detail next week). We ask questions, make promises, express ourselves, tell jokes, use metaphors, and so on. We know how to speak and to understand one another. Philosophers, in a sense, depart from our everyday use of terms and, in doing so, are misled by the "surface grammar" of language (as we saw in our examples above where "I have a pain" is viewed as being akin to "I have a dog"). So, it is clear that Wittgenstein can say things about philosophy, and say that philosophy involves a misunderstanding or misuse of language, without running into self-contradiction. What he must do is offer an alternative to the traditional way of doing philosophy, and this brings us to the core of Wittgenstein's conception of how philosophy ought to be done. 9. Philosophy as a "grammatical investigation" Wittgenstein's alternative to traditional philosophy is "grammatical investigation" (see PI 90).

Our investigation is therefore a grammatical one. Such an investigation sheds light on our problem by clearing misunderstandings away. Misunderstandings concerning the use of words, caused, among other things, by certain analogies between the forms of expression in different regions of language.

Note that when Wittgenstein talks of "grammar" he does not just mean syntax or the kind of thing you lean in English Language classes. "Grammar" is much broader term for the form and use of language. A grammatical investigation must inquire into the way that we use and misuse words and sentences, into the way that we can be misled into assuming similarities when there are none. We do this by focusing, for example, on the way that we teach words to children, or upon simplified languages (made up in thought experiments) or upon the subtle differences in usage that corresponds to different social and practical contexts. Wittgenstein's grammatical investigation has two aspects to it: (1) A "destructive" or "negative" aspect. (2) A "constructive" or "positive" aspect. The investigations are meant to show up the errors in philosophers' use of language. Wittgenstein is aware that this might seem to be unworthy:

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118. Where does our investigation get its importance from, since it seems only to destroy everything interesting, that is, all that is great and important? (As it were all the buildings, leaving behind only bits of stone and rubble.)

But Wittgenstein goes on to note that 'What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand' (PI 118). 2 But in what sense is the project constructive? Here it is of vital importance to note that Wittgenstein is not offering a standard philosophical counter-argument, or a standard philosophical theoretical response to a philosophical problem. For example, suppose one philosopher argues that pains are identical to brain states, another philosopher comes along and says "That can't be right, what about a, b, c etc" and gives a list of considerations that count against that claim. But Wittgenstein is not engaging with other philosophers in this way. It is not that he is offering an alternative theory of meaning, or time, or space or mind. Rather, it is that he is saying that certain things that people do—i.e., standard philosophical theorising—only seems to have a point (it is a "House of cards"). When we "take of our glasses" and see properly, we will realise this. So, the constructive project is emphatically not one where Wittgenstein offers a different theory of mind, or theory of meaning. So, in this sense, Wittgenstein is rejecting philosophy, at least as many many people conceive it. 10. Philosophy as guidance, overview, and clarity, as "seeing connexions" But this does not mean that Wittgenstein is just spending his time sniping at other philosophers. What he thinks we need to do, as philosophers is to provide a clearer picture, map, overview, or survey of how we speak, how we use language, with a sensitivity to the varieties of use and the purposes of use. 'A main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view of the use of our words' (PI 122). What we need is a "perspicuous representation" (i.e., a clear overview) of the use of our words (see PI 122 for Wittgenstein's claims about how important this is for his philosophy). So, for Wittgenstein:

123. A philosophical problem has the form "I don't know my way about".

I.e., a standard philosophical problem. What he offers by way of alternative is not a different theory, or better theory, rather, we have to stop being misled by language, and we should rest, instead, with a clear understanding of how our language works (in all its variety). So, in this sense, Wittgenstein denies that philosophy is in the business of explaining things. He doesn't explain the mind, rather, he points out how we use mental terms in such a way as to stop us making mistakes. Philosophy should simply remind us of things that, in some sense, we knew all along (i.e., how to use our words).

127 The work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose.

But these "reminders" of what we knew all along do not explain things.

126 Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything. 124. Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can the end only describe it. [. . . .] [Philosophy] leaves everything as it is.

Recall the example of Augustine and the question "what is time?". He claimed that he knew what it was provided he didn't try to answer the question. This captures Wittgenstein's view of philosophy quite well: we all know what time is and pains are, and what the difference between true and false is (in

2 You may want to compare Wittgenstein's comments here with your PHIL100 notes on Locke and Descartes (e.g., Descartes presents himself as knocking down the edifices that stood before him, and Locke as "clearing the ground").

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real, practical contexts). We run into error when language misleads us into thinking that there is a quasi-scientific question about what time is, or what truth is, or about what pains really are. 11. Philosophy as therapy The positive aspect of Wittgenstein's grammatical investigations is not to be viewed in terms of, constructing a better philosophical theory of mind, or meaning, or truth or time or whatever. So what are the benefits of his grammatical investigation? Wittgenstein draws an analogy between philosophy (as he conceives it) and therapy (e.g. PI 133) or the treatment of an illness (PI 254): 'The philosopher's treatment of a question it like the treatment of an illness' (PI 255). Elsewhere he talks of the aim of philosophy as being that of showing the fly the way out of the fly bottle (i.e., release it from its trap that it is frantically buzzing around in). We can expand on this kind of analogy. Suppose a person is suffering from an obsessive compulsive disorder. They are compelled to check that switches are off, many, many times. No matter how they switch them of, or in what order, or how many times, they never are satisfied and never really achieve peace. They are under the delusion if only they could find out the right method, then they could really get all the switches off in a way that was satisfying. How should a therapist respond? (A) The therapist should join in and help the patient get what she wants, perhaps by trying to find the hidden, as yet unknown, way of getting all the switches off that is just right. (B) The therapist should try to release the patient from his or her compulsion and give her peace of mind. Wittgenstein goes for (B). The "standard" philosopher is compelled to pursue questions that are unanswerable. Not because they are really tough, or difficult but because they are misguided. For example: suppose a philosopher asks the (obviously) daft questions like "How much does Tuesday weigh?" or "How big is justice?". If anyone was stupid enough to ask these questions and was getting vexed ("I've been trying for weeks, but I just can't find out!!!") The decent thing to do is not to help them answer their questions, it is to show them that the questions are misguided.

133 The real discovery is the one that makes me capable of stopping doing philosophy when I want to.— The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question.

The difference between the obviously daft questions and standard philosophical questions is that the latter don't seem to be daft. What Wittgenstein wants to do is to show us how many standard philosophical questions are as daft as "How much does Tuesday weigh?". 12. Style and method This brings us back to our questions about Wittgenstein's style and about how it relates to his philosophy. From our discussion so far it should be clear that Wittgenstein is a fairly radical philosopher. Indeed, he thinks that philosophy itself needs to be changed from within. It needs to be done in an entirely different way. This is, at least in part, why Wittgenstein writes in a series of remarks. Wittgenstein doesn't want to appear to be doing standard philosophy. He wants us to stop in our tracks and to think differently and to act differently. Now we can extract arguments from Wittgenstein in a more "standard" way (and this is what a lot of the secondary literature does – it lays out what Wittgenstein argued in a much more conventional way). But Wittgenstein's view of philosophy as therapy requires something more radical. We have to "take off our glasses" we need to be reminded of how we use language (so there is lots of dialogue, lots of concrete examples).3 By writing in this odd way we are forced to sit up and pay attention to what Wittgenstein is doing, and we are forced into doing something very different from what we do when we read "standard" philosophy. We need to do some work here to get to grips with what Wittgenstein is saying, and this is part of the process of "therapy". He wants us to realign our thinking in a way that avoids error and misunderstanding.

3 Wittgenstein's view of philosophy is sometimes called "quietism". Philosophy (of the kind Wittgenstein advocates) 'leaves everything as it is' (PI 124).

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Wittgenstein's philosophical therapy requires us to do a bit of "criss crossing" across a broad philosophical terrain. That is what we will be doing over the next five weeks (one of the striking things about Wittgenstein's work is the way that his discussions of seemingly unrelated topics link in with one another (indeed, the "perspicuous representation" (or clear overview) that is the aim of his grammatical investigations "produces just that understanding which consists in "seeing connexions" (PI 122). So, there is a sense in which you don't really get to grips with Wittgenstein until you've engaged with a number of different topics with him. Next week we'll go right back to the opening sections of Philosophical Investigations to see how Wittgenstein explores and engages with issues to do with meaning.

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Week 2. Wittgenstein on language: the critique of Augustine 1. Introduction Last week we looked at Wittgenstein's critique of (standard) philosophy. At the heart of Wittgenstein's criticism was the thought that philosophers are misled and misguided by deeply entrenched assumptions about the nature of language. There are certain "pictures" of language which make it seem that we should be able to answer questions like "what is time?" or "what is reality?" Philosophers are compelled to answer these questions (without success). But rather than taking this to be evidence that the questions are, in effect, not really sensible questions at all, the (standard) philosopher takes this as evidence that what he or she is doing must be really difficult (if only we had more cleverness, more research funding, then, surely, we could answer the questions that have evaded answer for thousands of years). This week we go back to the beginning of PI (Philosophical Investigations) to focus on Wittgenstein's critique of this "picture" of language. The themes that we pick up on this week will be developed and referred to over the next four weeks too. Wittgenstein's philosophy, as we noted last week, is one that "criss-crosses" the landscape. 2. Augustine's early memories PI opens with a remarkable passage from Augustine's Confessions (book 1) (401 AD)

When they (my elders) named some object, and accordingly moved towards something, I saw this and I grasped that that the thing was called by the sound they uttered when they meant to point it out. Their intention was shown by their bodily movements, as it were the natural language of all peoples; the expression of the face, the play of the eyes, the movement of other parts of the body, and the tone of the voice which expresses our state of mind in seeking, having, rejecting, or avoiding something. Thus, as I heard words repeatedly used in their proper places in various sentences, I gradually learnt to understand what objects they signified; and after I had trained my mouth to form these signs, I used them to express my own desires.

This passage in the Confessions comes just after a section (which Wittgenstein does not quote) where Augustine "remembers" the frustrations he felt as a baby when he had desires and needs but couldn't say what it was that he wanted. He then goes on to give an account of how it is that he learned to speak and understand language. The picture is a simple and tempting one. Augustine watches and listens, and picks up from others, what words stand for. Words signify objects, and what the child has to do is to recognise which words stand for which objects, she can then use them to produce speech of her own. Now, we might worry and object to the idea that Augustine remembers all this (bit odd), but this is not Wittgenstein's main concern. Wittgenstein argues that: (a) This "picture" of how we learn language, is plausible and tempting, but is it is also deeply mistaken. (b) Within this short remark from Augustine there are other philosophical blunders and errors connected with the view of language (e.g., that it makes sense to think of thoughts as existing prior to one's learning a language, and that these thoughts and desires are "inner" and need to be put into words in order to be communicated to others). The rest of PI can be seen as exploring the various lines of thought that are packed into, or that can be drawn out of, this quotation from Augustine. 3. "Five red apples" But how can Wittgenstein show that this picture is mistaken? Recall last week that Wittgenstein does not want to write "standard" philosophy. He could have, of course, but chose not to. He could have given us a standard philosophical argument of the form "Augustine is wrong because . . . ." But Wittgenstein's method is to try to show us what is wrong, and, in doing so, realign the way that we want to do philosophy. So, what Wittgenstein does is get us to take a step back and to reflect upon language and how it works. He begins with an example of a very simple piece of linguistic practice where someone is

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sent shopping. A person is given a slip with "five red apples" written on it. He takes it to a shop where the shopkeeper acts as follows: (i) he opens the drawer marked apples (ii) he looks up "red" against a book of colour samples (iii) he then says "one, two, three, four, five" and takes out a red apple each time. Now, Wittgenstein is not saying that, contrary to Augustine, this is how we learn languages. The example is meant to illustrate something about how language works. But in Wittgenstein's simple example of we see that the shopkeeper acts differently with regard to these different terms. He can pick out and pick up apples. But he cannot pick out a "red" or a "five". He uses a (visible) sample of colour to check what the colour term means, but he can't do this with the number term. With the number term he has to be able to count, and so on. (1) Different words function in different ways. But Augustine seems to suppose that all words act like the names of objects. (a) "apple" names the object apple (b) "five" names the object (number) five (c) "red" names the object redness If we think of language and meaning in the wrong way we might be tempted to think of "five" as naming some kind of abstract object and our everyday use of "five" must involve some kind of special "grasping" or "referring" relation to this puzzling object. The simple example shows that one can understand the use of terms like "five" without having to make appeal to abstract objects or special "signifying" relations. This points towards a more general claim that Wittgenstein makes: (2) What language means is a matter of how it is used (in real, practical, social contexts) The other point that Wittgenstein picks up on in this example is that it is the use of language that gives it its significance. Augustine's picture of language puts its stress on learning what an object signifies, once one has learned this, one knows the language and can use the term to signify objects oneself. But this is a very thin conception of what communicative practice involves. Wittgenstein tries to illustrate what he means here by introducing the idea of a "language game" 4. Language games. The "five red apples" example refers to a one-off event (someone going to the shops). In PI 2, and PI 8, Wittgenstein introduces the idea of a "language game". Wittgenstein means different things by a language game at different points in PI.

[T]he term ‘language-game’ is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life [PI 23]

In the earliest sections (e.g. PI 2 and 8) the language games are imaginary, and primitive. Wittgenstein is not saying that these language games exist, or that they are the roots of how our languages developed. The language games are meant to illustrate something about how communication plays a practical and social role. The language games are something that could be learned, or taught, something where participants can get things right, or get things wrong, relative to the "rules" of the game. Later on (e.g., PI 23) he uses the term to talk of the different kinds of "game" that we play with our language (i.e., the different kinds of activities and purposes). Let's focus on the "primitive" language games first. In PI 2 we have simple situation:

• Builder A • Builder B • Blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. • The words "block" "pillar" "slab" "beam" • A is the builder, B is the fetcher.

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• A calls "block", B fetches a block, and so on. Here we have a case where language does function to pick out objects, indeed, builder A wants builder B to pick out (and fetch!) objects of certain kinds. So this seems to be the kind of case that Augustine might have in mind. But even here we can see that we don't need to make appeal to any special way in which the words "block" or "slab" have an extra feature —their meaning— over and above the role that they play in the practical projects and activities of these builders. In PI 8 Wittgenstein goes on to "expand" upon this simple language. We now add

• two demonstrative terms "there" (used for pointing out places) and "this" (used for pointing out things)

• number terms (in the example "a" "b" "c" "d" etc) • colour samples

By enriching the language the builders can now do more things, and be more discriminating in the things that they do. E.g. Builder A says "d_slab_there" whilst showing a red sample. If B understands, then he goes and gets four red slabs and takes them to the spot that A indicated. Wittgenstein then goes on to discuss what would be involved in a child learning this simple language (in that practical context). The key point is that she would have to learn how to do different kinds of things and emphatically not merely learn what words stand for. For example, in Augustine's story, the child learns words by "ostensive definition" i.e., the parents point at things indicating that the word in question means that kind of thing. But what about terms like "this" and "there"? These words involve a kind of pointing (often explicit). How on earth could one point at the referent of the term "this" (and similarly for other words like "here" and "now" and "over there")? If I point at the sky and say "Look at this!" is "this" the name of the sky? No. Terms like "this" and "here" and "there" can be used in a meaningful way, but this is not because they are names for things. But if they are meaningful, surely this means that there is something (meaning, signification) that all words (used in meaningful speech) share? 5. Words and tools In PI 11-15 Wittgenstein offers us a helpful analogy. Think of tools in a tool box. Different tools are used for different jobs. We don't really understand much about a tool unless we understand what jobs it can be used for (this one is for cutting, that one for making holes, that one for clamping things together, and so on). Imagine how absurd it would be to say something like "All tools have the special feature of "object modification"" that is, they all modify objects in some way or other. This is like the philosopher who says "Every word signifies something". The first problem here is that this tells us very little of importance (just as the person who says "tools all modify things" doesn't really understand what tools are for, in any real sense (you wouldn't want them fixing your roof!). The difference is, of course, that philosophers are not motivated to try to give the definition, analysis, or essence of what it is to be a tool, but they have tried (and still do try) to give an analysis of meaning. 6. Family resemblance But surely there must be something—meaning, or "signification"—that all language has in common? Similarly, surely there must be something that all tools have in common: otherwise how could we refer to them all as tools! Don't all language games have something in common? Surely they are games to do with meaningful speech? But Wittgenstein calls this idea into question too (you can now see why his writing has to criss-cross around covering lots of different topics: if we really are in the grip of a complex picture of language and the world, then we will draw upon one bit of the picture in supporting others, and so on). In sections 65-67 he challenges us to come up with an answer to the question: what is common to all games? What do the Olympic games have in common with solitaire? What does football have in common with bar billiards or patience? There is simply nothing that all and only games have (it's no good to say something like "games pass the time" because so do many non-games). Games are similar to other games, which are, in turn similar to other games (e.g., A is similar to B, B to C, C to D, but without A being similar to D (this is called the "nontransitivity" of a relation, as you'll know if you're doing logic). As Wittgenstein puts it, when we think about how games resemble each other:

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we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail. (PI 66)

Wittgenstein calls this kind of resemblance a "family resemblance" by analogy with the way that person A can resemble their mother, their mother their aunt, their aunt their gran, but A doesn't resemble their gran. Ditto for games, language games, and for the significance and "meaningfulness" of our speech. 7. Objection: these language games can't tell us anything because they are so unlike our language But there is another objection that we might raise at this point. These language games still can't tell us much—indeed, they might actually be misleading us—because, unlike our own language, they are simple and radically incomplete. But, as Wittgenstein notes at PI 18, we should then ask in what sense our language is complete? After all, the language of the Sixteenth Century now has the language of modern science added to it (or think about the massive additions to our language since the advent of mass media like radio, TV and the internet). Wittgenstein uses the analogy of ancient city that has been changed, added to, expanded (note how the example keeps with the analogy of adding scientific language). In PI 18 Wittgenstein is focusing upon the idea that the languages in these language games are, in some sense, truncated or shrunken versions of our own. Wittgenstein then goes on to raise a second, related, issue. At first sight, these simple languages (especially the first simple "slab" one) don't seem to involve sentences, but ours do and this is important. Why? Because for complex languages like ours it may seem that Augustine's picture has to be, in some sense, on the right track. For example, I can state and understand the following: (i) Bring me a dog. (ii) No dog has ever been to Mars. (iii) Harry Potter was chased by a big black dog. (iv) Dogs make nice pets. (v) For every dog that bites is a dog that doesn't. (vi) Do you sell dogs? Surely for languages that involve sentences Augustine's picture has to be right, because don't we have to know the meanings of individual words, words that we can then use and re-use in countless different sentences?4 On Augustine's picture of language, the meaning of a sentence seems to be composed out of the meanings of individual words. If we are to speak sentences like we do, surely we have to learn the words first? And isn't this what children do, learning words like "mum" and "dad" and "dog" and "ball" and so on, before they can string them together into sentences? So: it seems that the language games miss out on important aspects of our language. 8. "Elliptical" statements and the problem of "meaning" But Wittgenstein wants us to pause for a moment. He points out that this idea of a "sentence" and of the parts of sentence are not as clear as we might think. Does "slab!" in the language game mean the same as "bring me a slab!" "will you get a slab for me please?" and so on. How do we know that "Get me a slab!" has four meaningful components? After all, in lots of contexts (e.g., on a building site) we say things that are elliptical ("ellipsis" is a term linguists use for when we don't make explicit certain things which are implicitly understood). For example: Tom (passing Jane a mug of tea): "Sugar?" Jane "I'm on a diet" Or: Jane (performing surgery) "Scalpel" Tom (hands Jane the scalpel).

4 Those of you who want to see a modern version of Augustine's theory should check out Jerry Fodor's work (a good place to start is the first chapter of Psychosemantics (MIT Press, 1987))

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Here Tom and Jane's utterances seem to be elliptical. What he really means, we might think, is something like: "Do you want sugar?" But in what sense does the person really mean this? Perhaps they really mean "Would you like sugar?" or "Fancy a wee bit o' sugar do ye?" or "What about some of this white death?" What Jane really means is "Pass me the scalpel" or "give me the scalpel" or "Scalpel! Here! Now!". But hang on! Which of these does the person really mean? All of them? Just one? What makes it just that one? Surely Tom and Jane know what they mean? Doesn't this mean, then, that meanings are something that are known by individuals, even if they don't explicitly express them? And isn't this just the kind of picture that Augustine sketches in his remarks? Once again we are being directed towards the picture of language that lies behind Augustine's remarks. When we start thinking about language and meaning (rather than doing things like offering people some sugar) we seem to think that there is some further, hidden, fact of the matter about the person means (and, we might then think that this is the very kind of fact that we need to "penetrate" or "explain"). At this point (PI 20) Wittgenstein introduces a theme that recurs throughout PI. We might think that the meaning of a sentence, or the fact that it involves four "units" of meaning, is, somehow something that happens "in our minds". But this is fundamentally mistaken and a great deal of PI is devoted to showing that this is just a wrong picture of meaningfulness. We will have much more to say about this theme next week and the week after. 9. The multiplicity of language games What Wittgenstein is saying in these early sections of PI is that we should not think of meanings as things "before the mind" (or in the head), nor should we think of there being some special and mysterious feature—meaning, significance—that words or sentences have. Wittgenstein uses the devices of the "language game" to show us how people can engage in meaningful and significant communication with one another without us having to make appeal to anything mysterious at all. This leads into another aspect of his critique of Augustine. The Augustinian picture of language makes it seem as if all words get to have their meaning in the same way. We have already seen that this is implausible: the words in the simple language game are used in different ways. Wittgenstein goes on to stress that, in our everyday life, there are lots of different language games that we play.

• Giving orders, and obeying them— • Describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurements— • Constructing an object from a description (a drawing) — • Reporting an event— • Speculating about an event— • Forming and testing a hypothesis— • Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams— • Making up a story; and reading it— • Play-acting— • Singing catches— • Guessing riddles— • Making a joke; telling it— • Solving a problem in practical arithmetic— • Translating from one language into another— • Asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying.

All of us are capable of "playing" these various games. We are familiar with how they should go, and what counts as good practice or deviations from the rules or standards of the "game" in question. 9. Meaning as use? Is Wittgenstein offering us a theory of meaning? A theory of how language gets to be meaningful? We have to be careful here. There is no clear consensus on this, and it is not helped by the fact that Wittgenstein says things like:

43. For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which we employ the word "meaning" it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language. And the meaning of a name is sometimes explained by pointing to its bearer.

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Here Wittgenstein seems to be getting close to claiming that what meaning really is, is a matter of how we use a term. Some philosophers (e.g., Michael Dummett and Paul Horwich) have taken Wittgenstein's arguments in PI and used them to develop a philosophical theory of meaning (i.e., something that is meant to give an account of how our words get to mean what they do, in context). But it is not at all clear that Wittgenstein saw himself as giving a philosophical theory of meaning. I.e., he is not saying "Augustine was wrong about what meaning is, what meaning really is, is a matter of how we use words". Others (like Peter Hacker) argue that Wittgenstein is trying to undermine our need or desire to give a theory of meaning at all. Wittgenstein is a "quietist" about meaning and other philosophical notions.5 10. Philosophy as a language game Whether or not we take Wittgenstein to be offering a substantive theory of meaning, it is clear that he has a wide range of challenging criticisms of the Augustinian picture of meaning. He uses the device of a "language game" to force us to reflect upon how noises, marks, and gestures have a significance for us, the kind of significance that we would normally call meaning. Wittgenstein's aim is to show us how meaningfulness is an essentially practical and social affair. This brings us back to the topic of last week: the nature of philosophy. Philosophers use language in a particular way, according to certain rules, with certain goals, constraints and so on. But, Wittgenstein argues, their use of language, and the "games" they play with language, are, to a large extent, misguided and divorced from reality. The philosopher takes scientific theorising as her model, and she tries to emulate scientific methods and practices in her work when she asks questions like "what is time?" "what is reality?" or even "what is meaning?".

For philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday [PI 38]

What Wittgenstein means here is that philosophers depart from the kinds of language games that we are familiar with (our day to day language use) and they kind of wander off into unfamiliar territory: words are put to new uses, new standards, new rules are set in place and, like the holiday maker, the philosopher's language stops doing any real work (for a while). 11. Next week: rule-following and meaning scepticism The idea that language is akin to a game raises a serious challenge: games have rules which players need to follow. But what is it to follow a rule? Doesn't following a rule require knowledge and understanding of the rule? But how can one have understanding and knowledge of a rule if meaning is constituted by following rules? Do we end up denying meaning altogether? We shall see . . . . .

5 E.g., see Paul Horwich Reflections on Meaning (OUP 2005) (though this requires a good background in philosophy of language and philosophical logic).

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Week 3 Rule Following and Meaning Scepticism 1. Introduction Last week we looked at Wittgenstein's criticisms of the "Augustinian" picture of language. Wittgenstein wasn't just picking on Augustine (e.g., arguing that this 1500 year old fragment of a theory was mistaken or incomplete): that would not make PI very interesting or important. Wittgenstein was using the remarks from Augustine as a prompt to raise a wide range of interconnected issues and problems many of which stem from a particular "picture" of how mind, language and world are connected. On the Augustinian picture language is an intrinsically meaningless medium of communication which allows people to express the meanings that they have in their minds to others (who, if communication is successful, will in turn, form ideas or "meanings" of their own). Meaning is bound up with our thoughts and ideas – with things "before the mind". Why did we think this? The Augustinian picture gives us an answer to questions like:

• How do meaningless marks or sounds get to be meaningful? • How can we can disambiguate ambiguous words or utterances? • Why is it that although we can think without saying anything, we cannot really speak to one

another without thinking (so thought seems more fundamental than communication)? • How can we learn a language?

The answer was: meaningfulness is in the mind. Each of us knows what we think, what our thoughts are about, what we mean when we speak, because each of us is directly acquainted with special meaningful mental entities. With this picture of meaning and mind comes further natural assumptions: that mental states are "inner states" that are in some sense "private". That mental states stand in a special "meaning" relation to objects and properties, and words derive their meanings from mental states. Wittgenstein argues that, not only is this picture wrong (but tempting and plausible), it underpins a load of philosophical errors and delusions. The aim of his philosophy is, you will recall from week 1, to stop us making these errors. We saw last week how his positive programme (not a philosophical theory, of course!) involved identifying the various ways that we use language. We can make sense of successful communication without having to make appeal to ideas or meanings in the head and we can do this by thinking of language as involving various kinds of "language game". Wittgenstein was doing two kinds of thing with his discussion of "language games":

1) Showing us how varied and heterogeneous our communicative practices are. 2) Showing us how we can make sense of successful ("meaningful") communication without

having to make appeal to meanings in the mind (or other bizarre kinds of entity). And, with 1) and 2) in place we can then see why the Augustinian picture, though tempting and "natural", is one we can reject (and by rejecting it, we undercut the temptation to raise certain kinds of philosophical questions (or non-questions)). This week we'll see how he carries on doing this kind of thing in the sections 138-242 of PI. 2. Language games and normativity Let's go back to language games. Language games are not just random behaviour. But nor is, say the rotation of a planet round the sun. But language games are not like the motion of the planets. The analogy with games lays stress on the fact that in communicating we can be right or wrong. If I say "This dog is hot" pointing at a polar bear (and meaning to say "This bear is white" then I am, quite simply, in error. Communication is—to use a popular philosophical term—normative. You ought to use the term "dog" to refer to dogs (unless you are being clearly metaphorical, or ironic, or using slang, and so on). Or, recall the simple language games that involve numbers. If you can use number words and arithmetical words you ought to hold that 5 is larger than 4, and that 4 plus 5 is 9. Teaching children a language (or teaching someone a second language) is a matter of showing them how they ought to behave. A failure to behave as you ought can lead to sanction and blame. The motion of the planets is not normative. Massive bodies are attracted towards other massive bodies in

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certain ways, and that's why the planets move as they do. Suppose Mars starts to move in a different way. It might be surprising, mysterious, even. But we couldn't say that Mars was wrong to be moving in that way ("Oi, Mars! What do you think you are doing!! You are supposed to be moving in an ellipse – get back on track now!"). If Mars started to move in this odd way this would not be anything that would justify blaming the planet, or holding that it is wrong. In contrast, suppose Tom says "That's a nice beagle you have got" pointing at your pug. "It's not a beagle, it's a pug". You try to correct him but he responds "I have done nothing wrong, why would you hold me responsible for the words that come out my mouth". Communication is normative in a way that mere patterns or regularities in behaviour are not. 3. Normativity and rules At this point you may be wondering why the section of McGinn, and why most of the readings on the further reading list, all talk about rule following (or the "rule following debate"). The reason is that issues about meaning and understanding language can be framed in terms of how it is that people get to follow the rules of the language games that they play and, central to the idea of a rule is the normativity that we mentioned above. Planets do not follow rules when they orbit a star. Apples do not follow the "gravity" rule when they fall off a tree. On the other hand, chess players do follow rules and players can make wrong moves ("That's not allowed!" or "That doesn't constitute checkmate, don't you know the rules??"). Recall the simple language games we looked at last week – e.g., the one which had "slab" and "block" etc plus number words and colour samples. There were rules in the game for how each term was used (and they are used differently). So, when Wittgenstein is talking about rules he is not, for example, talking about, say, the rules of etiquette or politeness in speech, or ethical rules about truth-telling and deception. Rather, the rules in question are the rules of the language games which, in a sense, constitute or make possible meaningful communication. What makes my use of the term "red" meaningful. What makes my use of the term "5" meaningful? The same point can be raised (and is raised in many of the passages this week) for arithmetical functions like addition. When I say "2 plus 2 equals 4" what makes the use of "plus" or the symbol "+" meaningful. As with my use of "dog" the use of "plus" (in a statement) can be right or wrong ("2 plus 2 equals 5" is wrong). The rules in question are not just the rules about how to use a word, or use a symbol on its own, they are about how to use a symbol in various practical contexts: e.g., in asking questions, giving orders, raising hypotheses, telling jokes and so on (so, "dog" gets to be used in a slightly different way in "That dog there has got my slippers" from "Suppose dogs were the size of elephants, what then?" and "I wish there were no dogs". In each case of course the person is talking about dogs, but in a different way. So, the key point is that, for Wittgenstein, meaningfulness is bound up with certain kinds of practice which are rule-governed and normative. But now matters start to get a bit more puzzling. What is it to follow a rule? 4. Following a rule versus being in "accord" with a rule. Here there is an important contrast that we should be aware of. Consider the following example. A mouse pushes a chess piece across the board in the "right" way: e.g., moving a bishop diagonally. A chess player does the same thing as a move in a game. An actor who cannot play chess is copying the chess player as part of her rehearsals for a play (she wants to look convincing). In the first case there is no sense in which the mouse is right or wrong. Its move just "accords" with the rules of chess, it fits them, if you like, but the mouse isn't following or obeying a rule. The actor can get things right or wrong in the sense that her portrayal of a chess player can be convincing or unconvincing (and how she moves is an important part of this) but her move in the play is not a move in a chess game. She doesn't understand chess, she doesn't know why this move is being made, or what it would be to make a wrong move. So what makes the (real) chess player's move a case of following or obeying the rules of chess? This is not just a problem about chess, it is a problem (for Wittgenstein at least) because communication is rule-governed in a similar way. We can run this kind of example for communication too (e.g., compare an animal which happens to say "Fire" an English speaking person who says "Fire!" to alert others to a fire, and, say, a Russian actor who is learning lines by rote for a play (who says "Fire" without knowing what it means and without understanding what she is saying). In the chess example we wouldn't say that the chess player knows what the chess moves mean, but in language games, when we use words as we ought, we use them in a meaningful way (but we would say that the chess player understands what they are doing). So, on Wittgenstein's picture of how

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we use language, there is a very close tie between following rules and knowing what one means when one is speaking. The person who merely copies another's speech doesn't grasp or follow the rules for speaking that language and, because of this, doesn't know what the words mean. So, the rule-following issues that are discussed in these sections of PI aren't just about rules in the abstract, they are about what it is for us to speak meaningfully with one another and to know that we are doing so. Rule following is tightly bound up with knowledge of meaning and understanding a language. 5. The Augustinian picture of meaning (again): understanding as a kind of experience But these considerations seem to push us back towards the Augustinian picture, because, on the Augustinian picture that we explored last week there would seem to be a sensible place to find the answer to our questions about rule following. Surely the difference between acting in accord with a rule, obeying a rule, and merely copying a rule is to be found in the mind. The mouse that pushes the chess piece doesn't have the right kind of mind – it doesn't know what it is doing, or that this is a legal move in chess. The actor who copies the chess player has the right kind of mind but she lacks the specific knowledge that the chess player has: she doesn't understand what she is doing, she doesn't know the meaning of significance of this move. Look at the following:

• "quando (minhas pessoas idosas) nomearam algum objeto, e se moveram conformemente para algo, eu vi que isto e mim agarrou que isso a coisa estêve chamado pelo som que expressaram quando significaram o apontar para fora."

• "когда они (мои старейшини) назвали некоторый предмет, и соответственно приблизили к что-то, я увидел это и меня схватил что то вещь было вызвано звуком, котор они проронили когда они намеревались указать он вне."

• "それらが(私の年長者)的を示し、何かの方にそれに応じて動いたときに、私はそれ

がそれをいつ指摘することを意味したか言った音によって事呼れたことこれ及び私

つかんだことを見た。 • "When they (my elders) named some object, and accordingly moved towards something, I saw

this and I grasped that that the thing was called by the sound they uttered when they meant to point it out."

Unless you speak Portugese, Russian and Japanese as well as English, some of these are going to be unintelligible (even though, in a broad sense, they all say the same thing).6 When we hear, read or speak English (as English speakers) we seem to have an experience that is different from that we have when we encounter the sounds or shapes of a language that we do not understand. Viewed this way, understanding is a kind of experience we have. When we understand something we know what it means, but knowing is surely a mental state too. When we look at the statement in English, we simply have a meaningful experience, so surely we can just tell that meaning is not use. Wittgenstein's alternative way of thinking about (or reminding us about) meaning was to place in public practices: in the things that we do with our sounds, marks, letters etc. But now a deep challenge arises for Wittgenstein's view. If meaning is bound up with use, how on earth do we know what we mean? As Wittgenstein puts it in PI 139

When someone says the word "cube" to me, for example, I know what it means. But can the whole use of the word come before my mind, when I understand it in this way?

If meaning really is tied to use, surely I would have to know things like: (i) How I used the word in the past

6 Actually, these probably don't say the same thing at all – they were done with an online translator (Babel Fish) and if you translate back and forth a few times (e.g., Japanese to greek to English etc) you end up with stuff like " "Those (my superior person) presented aim, when in roughly that is moved consequence of this, the I this meant the make exajtj'as which this when it points out this that thing of thing that was called and examined this this touches in the sound that was called." And you thought Wittgenstein made no sense!!

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(ii) How I will use it in the future. But this is crazy. I can't remember how I've used it in the past (I assume I used it as I know I am using it now) and I can't tell right now every occasion that I am going to use the word, or hear the word, or read the word. Well, maybe I don't need to know all this stuff, maybe I just know what I mean? But that wouldn't square with the idea that meaning is primarily to do with use. Worse still, when we understand something that is said to us, the understanding that we have seems to be something that is (a) a kind of experience (or an aspect of experience) (b) the kind of thing that can and does happen "in a flash" For example, consider cases where you come to understand something, especially when you "get" what something means. One of Wittgenstein's examples is (in PI 151) 1, 5, 11, 19, 29 . . . . . At first sight this may seem to be as meaningless as the symbols above, but suddenly you realise "Now I can go on!". In a flash you realise that you could, if you wanted, carry on the series FOREVER!!! But how can something that happens in a flash shape our future use (forever)? The Augustinian picture gives us an answer: "Understanding and knowledge of meaning flash are special kinds of mental state". 6. Taking stock: what are the challenges that Wittgenstein faces? The challenges that Wittgenstein faces are: (i) Our own experience of meaningful speech and communication suggests that there is a distinctive kind of experience that we have when we understand things, that is absent when we do not. (ii) We can understand things "in a flash" but if meaning is use, then this seems absurd: how can one grasp all one's past and future uses in a flash? (iii) Or, more generally, if meaning is use, then knowledge of meaning (knowing what you mean) would seem to require knowledge of use, but we often know what we mean, and what others mean, without knowing much about their use. The Augustinian picture has an answer to all of this: meanings are in the mind, knowledge of meanings (and understanding) can happen in a flash, in the same way that knowledge of one's pains can happen in a flash. 7. Wittgenstein's strategy: waging battle on many fronts Wittgenstein's response to these challenges is, in effect, to wage battle on many different fronts. The Augustinian picture is not a single claim or hypothesis: it is a large interconnected network of assumptions. In order to meet the challenges above Wittgenstein has to do things like: (a) Get us to focus on exactly what this "experience" of understanding consists in and to reflect upon how this kind of experience relates to meaning. (b) Show why understanding is not a mental state, but a kind of practical ability. (c) Show how understanding is the kind of practical activity that is bound up with following rules. (d) Point out difficulties for the idea that any mental entity could constitute our following or obeying a rule. If these work then we will have to conclude not only that understanding is not a mental state but that it couldn't be. All of (a)-(d) are interconnected, and Wittgenstein pursues all of these in the sections we are looking at this week. The battle criss-crosses and overlaps so that some sections do a job in advancing more than one of the aims (a)-(d) above. But it is clear that Wittgenstein's aim overall in these sections is, as it is with PI overall, to undermine the Augustinian picture and to remind us of the subtle and complex framework of understanding that, in a sense, we were familiar with (that we knew) all along.

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Now, in this lecture (and even in the seminar) we cannot go through all of the many things that Wittgenstein says and does here. What we can do is focus on some examples to show how Wittgenstein goes about trying to achieve his aims (a)-(d). We will then end by pointing out a very different (and influential) interpretation of what Wittgenstein is up to in these sections. 8. Is understanding a mental state? We saw above when we considered the difference between reading, say, Russian, and English is that our experience is different. When we understand there is a distinctive kind of modification of our consciousness. But is this right? Can our understanding (and knowledge of rules) be constituted by a mental state? (1) Wittgenstein draws upon our everyday "grammar" (i.e., how we use the concept) of understanding. (e.g., see the "grammatical investigation" footnote below section 151). Where it does make sense to say that one's pain came and went, and got less intense, it doesn't really make sense for someone to say that their understanding came and went, got less intense. Similarly, it makes sense for a doctor to ask "So when are you in pain, in the morning?" But no sense to ask "When do you know how to play chess? All the time? Just when you are making a move? (2) Wittgenstein asks us to think about what this mental state of understanding would be. Consider the example above where, in a flash, you suddenly understand the series of numbers 1, 5, 11, 19, 29 . . . . . What does your understanding consist in. You could have the words, say, "add 4, then 6, then 8 and so on forever" pass before your mind, but that wouldn't be understanding (e.g., suppose you were Russian and didn't know English). (see sections 151-154) 9. Why mental states can't constitute rule following Finally, and most importantly, it seems hard to see how something before the mind could constitute obeying a rule. Which rule is it that one is obeying? Suppose I have the rule "add 1" before my mind. How does having that before my mind (whatever that would be) compel me to go on in the same way? And, in advance of acting, how can I tell upfront how I will, in fact go on? E.g., at PI 185 Wittgenstein considers a person who has mastered the use of "add 1". He has only been tested up to 1000. When he goes past 1000 he carries on 1000, 1004, 1008, 1012. We say "But that's wrong", the person replies that he thought that was how he was supposed to go on, that that is what "add 1" means. He says that he was going in the same way as he was before. Here we might say that he had a different rule "before his mind" (e.g., add 1 up to 1000, add 4 thereafter but from his point of view it doesn't appear any different to what you or I have before our minds when we have "add 1" before the mind. The problem here is a deep one. When we learn the use of a concept (like "plus" or "dog" or "red") we do so on the basis of a finite set of examples. Our use of the concept is only over a finite number of occasions. In this example the person has used "add 1" up to 1000. But their use up to that point is in accord with an indefinitely large number of rules. E.g.,

1) Add 1 up to 1000 add 4 thereafter 2) Add 1 up to 1000 add 6 thereafter (you can see that we already have an infinite number of

rules that the behaviour is in accord with. 3) Add 1 up to 1000 then keep on multiplying by 4. 4) Add 1 up to 1000 then subtract thereafter.

Now, Wittgenstein is not saying that when we add 1 we don't know what we're doing, rather, the problem is that of making sense of what it is that makes the difference between following a rule and merely acting in accord with a rule. Wittgenstein's main target here is the idea that it is something in the mind that could do the job of distinguishing between following a rule and acting in accord with it. We might think that we could get round the problem by introducing the idea of an interpretation. What makes the person really follow the rule "add 1" is that they interpret the rule in the way that we do (as meaning add 1 up to 1000 and thereafter too). But how is an interpretation meant to do the job? What gives the meaning or the content to the interpretation (e.g., what makes the interpretation mean one thing, rather than another)? Unless we have some account of what this is, then, in principle, any course of action can be

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made out to accord with any rule. E.g., take the rule "plus 1". I could take the rule "substract fifteen" but interpret it in such a way as to mean "plus ". Worse still (for the Augustinian picture) it is completely unclear how having an interpretation of a rule before the mind could compel us to go on in any particular way. (e.g., see PI 198; and PI 188 and sections 232-234). Why should I obey the rule before my mind? But if it cannot compel me, in what sense can it explain why I go on in the way that I do – surely we would have to make appeal to another interpretation (e.g., "I will obey whatever rules appear in my mind") but this just moves the problem back a step (why obey this new rule?!!). 10. Wittgenstein and meaning scepticism Some have interpreted these remarks as implying that Wittgenstein was a sceptic about meaning. The most notable (and influential) source of this line of thought is Saul Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (there is a PDF of the original version of this on the PHIL203 website – it was originally published as a chapter in a book Perspectives on the Philosophy of Wittgenstein ed. Irving Block (***) then published as a separate volume on its own). Kripke argues that Wittgenstein's remarks are propounding a kind of scepticism about meaning, that is, that there are no facts of the matter as to what we mean. He then argues that Wittgenstein offers a "sceptical solution" to the problem of meaning scepticism. A sceptical solution is one that doesn't deny what the sceptic says, but offers us a way of lessening or ridding ourselves of the negative implications of the sceptical conclusion. Central to Kripke's version of Wittgenstein (sometimes called "Kripkenstein") is the first sentence of section 201.

This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule, because every course of action can be made out to accord with the rule.

That is, Kripke takes the examples considered above to be indicative of Wittgenstein's view that really there are no facts about what we mean. But surely this is absurd? Surely if someone uses "red" to refer to blue, or "beagle" to refer to pugs, they are just wrong! Kripke agrees. He thinks that Wittgenstein's claims about meaning as use, and about meaningful communication as a public practice, provide us with a "solution" to the sceptical worry. What makes this or that practice correct is the judgements and actions of other people. If I use "red" to refer to blue, other people will correct me. If I use "plus 1" in a deviant way past 1000, other folks will correct me. Following a rule is a matter of being in step with a community (Kripke's take on this is sometimes called the "community view" of meaning). Kripke's book is detailed and involves a great deal of discussions of the pros and cons of his interpretation of Wittgenstein.7 We cannot go into the details of Kripke's discussion here, but if you are interested in this topic it is worth persevering with Kripke (armed with your copy of PI to see whether you think he really is getting Wittgenstein right).8 11. Was Wittgenstein a meaning sceptic? However, the idea that Wittgenstein was a sceptic about meaning seems odd. Indeed, in the same section (201) which Kripke takes to be expressive of Wittgenstein's scepticism Wittgenstein goes on to say of the so-called "paradox"

It can be seen that there is a misunderstanding here from the mere fact that in the course of our argument we give one interpretation after another; as if each one contented us at least for a moment, until we thought of yet another standing behind it. What this shows is that there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which is exhibited in what we call "obeying the rule" and "going against it" in actual cases.

7 Indeed, there is a website devoted to the book and to the secondary literature dealing with it: http://krypton.mnsu.edu/~witt/index.html#contentsAnchor 8 A good place to start for a serious criticism of Kripke's views is Baker and Hacker's paper 'On Misunderstanding Wittgenstein: Kripke's private language argument' in Synthese 1984 (the essay forms the first chapter of a longer, book length, critique of Kripke Scepticism, Rules and Language (Blackwell, 1984)

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What Wittgenstein is saying here is that we can generate examples that make it appear that any course of action can accord with any rule because we can generate "one interpretation after another" to fit (whatever) action to (whatever) rule. But this is a misunderstanding and it shows that there must be some way of grasping a rule which is not based upon an interpretation. Now, this fits precisely and sensibly with the discussion about understanding and knowledge of meaning that has occupied Wittgenstein in the sections leading up to this. An item in the mind (an interpretation) cannot be the thing that constitutes our following a rule, our knowing what we mean, or our understanding. Kripke takes the seemingly sceptical remarks out of context. What Wittgenstein is really saying is that if we try to explain our following a rule (or our understanding) in terms of additional entities, over and above our practices we will run into paradoxes. An analogy may help. Suppose philosophers held that the value of money had to derive from some special abstract entity. When you give someone £5.00 what makes this worth £5.00 – well, it’s the fact that the money stands in some special correspondence relation to an abstract thing "five-poundness". Along comes Wittgenstein who says there is nothing (of that kind) that is necessary, or sufficient, for money having the value that it does, what matters is what we, and others, are willing to do with it and on the basis of giving and receiving it. But this is not a scepticism about money. It is a denial that we need to make appeal to anything else. In the case of obeying and following a rule, Wittgenstein is arguing in the same way. Philosophers, in the grip of the Augustinian picture, think that we ought to explain our rule following, meaningful, activities by making appeal to mental states and processes: states of understanding, or of interpreting a rule, or knowing a meaning. The sections of PI from 138-243 (especially from 138-201) call into question the idea that understanding and rule following can be explained by mental entities. Wittgenstein is engaged in—as he is throughout PI—a grammatical investigation: a reflection on how we use terms like "understand" and "means" and "obeys a rule". This means that he is attending to practices that we are familiar with, practices where we can already make sense of the difference between merely acting in accord with a rule (e.g., by chance, or by copying someone else) from following a rule in such a way that we are willing to be corrected, to revise our practices if they are incorrect.

This merely shows what goes to make up what we call "obeying a rule" in everyday life. (PI 235)

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Phil 203 Lecture 4

The Private Language Argument 1. Introduction Last week we looked at a deep challenge that faced Wittgenstein. In weeks 1 and 2 we saw how he was trying to overturn the (broad) Augustinian picture of language (and meaning and mind). First, because it is wrong, second, because it underpins a wide range of philosophical errors. He tries to do this by showing how meaningful speech (and thought) is bound up with our practices (rather than with meanings in the mind): meaningful communication is a kind of "language game". Language games show how heterogeneous communication is (different words are used in different ways; and there are different kinds of language game); and are meant to show how we can make sense of meaning without falling back into the grip of the Augustinian picture. But a game is not simply a regular pattern, for games are normative: concepts like right, wrong, ought, permissible, impermissible, and so on apply within the context of the game. One way of capturing this is to say that games are rule governed activities. But what is it to follow a rule? This is not just the same thing as acting in accord with a rule (recall the mouse and the chess piece). The "obvious" answer is that really following a rule requires us to have something in the mind—understanding; knowledge; an idea etc.—something that is about, or represents, the rules in an appropriate way. So, the big problem for Wittgenstein was: how to make sense of rule following without letting the Augustinian picture back in. He does this by, first of all, showing that simply having something "in the mind" cannot really explain what it is to follow a rule. The second part of his argument is that we don't really need to make appeal to anything over and above what we already understand by "following a rule" (recall the example of "If you ask me, I don't know, if you don't ask me, I know" – well, this applies to rule following too: we are already familiar with what it is for people to be following the rules of chess, or meaningful speech (at least in the "ordinary" cases)). (We also saw that many interpreters argue that what Wittgenstein is offering is really a "community view" of meaning and many of the remarks that Wittgenstein makes suggest that he has something like this in mind (even if he falls short of offering anything like a philosophical theory of meaning)). This week we explore how Wittgenstein continues to put pressure on the Augustinian picture via the (so-called) "Private Language Argument" (PLA). 2. A problem of interpretation One problem—and this is a problem we have already encountered in weeks 1-3—is that Wittgenstein's remarks are very much open to interpretation. This is true of sections 243-275. Over the years there have been different interpretations of what Wittgenstein is up to in these sections: is he trying to show that meaning is public? Is he trying to show that the concepts of pain and other sensations are really behavioural concepts (i.e., a way of talking about pain behaviour)? Is his worry really about the reliability of memory? Kripke argues that these sections are merely an elaboration on the "real" private language argument which can be found way back at PI 201 [check]. On Kripke's view, the private All of these? We cannot cover all the secondary literature that has emerged over the years, so our aim in this lecture is to get clear about the main lines of thought that are interwoven into the PLA. We shall see how Wittgenstein is continuing with his critique of the Augustinian picture of meaning and language and using this (as we will see next week) to call into question large sections of philosophy. 3. What the private language argument is not It will help if we get clear, right at the start, about some things that the PLA isn't! A quick reading of Wittgenstein, or even of the secondary literature, might make it seem that Wittgenstein is somehow objecting to the idea that we could keep a private diary, where we write about our feelings or sensations. E.g., Bob writes down "Tuesday: pain in leg was worse today; Wednesday: had weird tingling sensation in foot, must tell doctor" and so on. Wittgenstein is emphatically not arguing that this kind of practice is problematic. Or, perhaps you might think that the problem is with silent acts of private thinking. E.g., rather than writing down in the diary, Bob might have thought to himself: "This tingling is getting

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worse, worse than it was yesterday". Nobody hears him, nobody need know what he is thinking. But, once again, this is not the kind of privacy that Wittgenstein is bothered about. So what kind of privacy is he bothered about? And why? 4. Grasping meanings within the mind The important point to remember is, as we have stressed over the past three weeks, that Wittgenstein has his targets in the Augustinian picture of language and meaning, and in the way that this leads to philosophical error. Now, on the Augustinian picture words get to be meaningful by being associated with certain entities: typically entities in the mind. Why entities in the mind? Well, as we have seen, we standardly assume, and feel in our own case, that people know what their words mean. Recall the example: "I want rock". We expect the speaker to be able to tell us what her words mean in this context. Nobody else is in the position to tell exactly what I mean in the way that I am. Other people have to listen to what I say, attend to the context in which I say it, but I don't. But this is true of knowledge of mind more generally: I don't have to attend to my behaviour or speech to work out what I think, or want or feel, I just know, in a direct first-person way, what it is that I think, want, or feel. So knowledge of meaning seems to be the same as knowledge of mind, which, in turn, seems to be knowledge of something "inner", or private. If words get their meaning by being associated with mental entities in some direct way, then this might go some way towards explaining how it is that I know what I mean.9 But it is no good if the association between words and mental entities is not known to us. But on the Augustinian picture we might conclude that when we know what we mean, we know which words "stand for" or are "associated with" which ideas. I know that "dog" is the word I use for dogs (but if I was speaking French it would be le chien, and so on). We see this in the quote from Augustine at the beginning of PI. Augustine is already "acquainted" with his own wishes, ideas, thoughts and the like, he just doesn't have the "public" signs that he needs to express his idea and thoughts to others. What he needs to do is to learn which sounds (i.e., things that he experiences in his mind) are associated with which other things he already has in his mind (his ideas of dog, cat, mum, dad, red, grass, etc). In Augustine's sketch of language learning there is a period where the words (e.g., "dog" and "cat") are connected with somebody's ideas (his parents, say) but not yet connected in the right way with his own ideas. So, in order to engage in meaningful speech, on the Augustinian picture, the speaker herself has to be able to forge or establish the right kind of connection between words and ideas. In sum: on the Augustinian picture of language, meaningfulness involves a connection (of some kind) between words and mental entities ("ideas"), but this connection must be forged within the mind. 5. Why the Augustinian picture cannot work: PI 258

9 E.g., see Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding II.ii.2 Words, in their immediate signification, are the sensible signs of his ideas who uses them. The use men have of these marks beingeither to record their own thoughts, for the assistance of their own memory or, as it were, to bring out their ideas, and lay them before the view of others: words, in their primary or immediate signification, stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them, how imperfectly soever or carelessly those ideas are collected from the things which they are supposed to represent. When a man speaks to another, it is that he may be understood: and the end of speech is, that those sounds, as marks, may make known his ideas to the hearer. That then which words are the marks of are the ideas of the speaker: nor can any one apply them as marks, immediately, to anything else but the ideas that he himself hath: for this would be to make them signs of his own conceptions, and yet apply them to other ideas; which would be to make them signs and not signs of his ideas at the same time, and so in effect to have no signification at all. Words being voluntary signs, they cannot be voluntary signs imposed by him on things he knows not. That would be to make them signs of nothing, sounds without signification. A man cannot make his words the signs either of qualities in things, or of conceptions in the mind of another, whereof he has none in his own. Till he has some ideas of his own, he cannot suppose them to correspond with the conceptions of another man; nor can he use any signs for them of another man; nor can he use any signs for them: for thus they would be the signs of he knows not what, which is in truth to be the signs of nothing. But when he represents to himself other men's ideas by some of his own, if he consent to give them the same names that other men do, it is still to his own ideas; to ideas that he has, and not to ideas that he has not.

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Wittgenstein shows that this aspect of the Augustinian picture cannot work by getting us to consider something which should be possible if the Augustinian picture is correct. If that picture is right then a person should be able to name or refer to sensations (feelings, pains, sensations of colour, sound, taste and so on) in her own mind. If meaningfulness is something that is forged within the mind this should be, in principle, possible. Wittgenstein sets up the problem in a broad way:

PI 244 How do words refer to sensations?—There doesn't seem to be any problem here; don't we talk about sensations every day, and give them names? But how is the connection between the name and the thing set up?

Wittgenstein then goes on, in the following few sections to note that we can and do teach children sensation words, so it must be possible. But by the end of section 256 he distinguishes our ordinary familiar practices from the kind of thing that should be possible if the Augustinian picture were correct. Suppose someone didn't have the standard way of expressing herself (e.g., showing that she was in pain), suppose she has a sensation for which there is no obvious and familiar natural expression. Could she then "associate" a name with that sensation, and use that to describe her sensation? If the Augustinian picture is correct she should be able to use the word (or sign or term) privately as her name for an object within the mind. In 258 he asks us to imagine things from the point of view of a person who wants to keep a diary about the occurrence of one of these odd sensations (one that doesn't have a natural expression or name).

Let us imagine the following case. I want to keep a diary about the recurrence of a certain sensation. To this end I associate it with the sign "S" and write this sign in a calendar for every day on which I have the sensation. —I will remark first of all that a definition of the sign cannot be formulated. [i.e., that the person cannot give, or draw upon, a definition of what "S" means in terms of, say, other familiar concepts like "oh, its kind of like toothache but in the toes"]

How is this naming to be done? One might think one could simply attend to the sensation and sort of "point" to it in one's mind, as it were ("This, I shall call "S""). We might think that this establishes the right kind of connection between the term "S" and the sensation. I "impress on myself" the connection. Wittgenstein goes on:

But "I impress it on myself" can only mean: this process brings it about that I remember the connection right in the future. But in the present case I have no criterion of correctness. One would like to say: whatever is going to seem right to me is right. And that only means that here we can't talk about right.

This is the core of the "private language argument" but what does it all mean? What does it establish, and how does it establish it? 6. Is Wittgenstein just worried about memory? It might seem that the worry here is one about memory — "this process brings it about that I remember the connection right in the future". Suppose I use "S" on Monday, and then again on Friday, and then on the following Monday. Wouldn't I have to remember what "S" stands for? And, if my use of "S" is private, then nobody would be able to check or correct me. But if Wittgenstein were really worried about memory then this would apply more generally, and not just in cases where we try to name sensations by attending to them in the mind. How do you know now that "fish" means what it used to mean? Well, other people will correct you if you go wrong. But what if we have all forgotten? Wittgenstein's worry is not that the person won't be able to remember what "S" stood for, or that she won't be able to remember whether this experience is the same as a previous experience: his objection is that this kind of "Inner naming" won't establish a sign or meaningful name in the first place. Why? There is a helpful section in the paragraph immediately before 258.

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When one says "He gave a name to his sensation" one forgets that a great deal of stage setting in the language is presupposed if the mere act of naming is to make sense.

If Wittgenstein was just concerned about memory he could easily have said so. Instead he alludes the to "stage setting" that needs to be in place if something that we do is to count as an act of naming and it is this that is missing in the case of the person who tries to "name" their sensation within their own mind. 7. In what sense is "S" a name? Last week we saw how Wittgenstein got us to focus on the "Logical grammar" of concepts like "Understanding" and "following a rule". In the sections this week he is doing a similar thing with concepts like "sensation" "sign" and "name". In the "diary" example we supposedly have the naming of a sensation with a sign. But, Wittgenstein argues, none of the normal standards for naming or sensation or sign are met.

261 What reason have we for calling "S" the sign for a sensation. For "sensation" is a word of our common language, not of one intelligible to me alone.

Wittgenstein goes on to note that a sound (or a mark on a page) "is an expression only as it occurs in a particular language game". Suppose I mutter "ESSSS" every now and again. What could possibly make this into a name of something? What would make it into the name of a sensation? Well, we might think that if I intend to use it, or undertake to use it as a name, then that is enough. But how can I undertake to use it within the confines of my own mind? In sections 265- 267 Wittgenstein points out that there is a difference between imagining something and actually doing it. E.g., suppose I wonder what "theremite" means, so I imagine looking up a dictionary and finding the answer. Or, suppose you want to know what will happen if you tip ink on your new carpet so you imagine doing an experiment to that effect. Doing something in the mind is not the same as doing it: and Wittgenstein argues that the same point applies for things like naming. 7. Is Wittgenstein just a behaviourist (or maybe a verificationist)? Think about how the person in the "diary" example would look like to others. Tom shows you his diary. "What are all these "S"s?" you ask. "Oh, they are when I have sensation S". "Really, what is it like, what kind of sensation is it: is it like a colour? A feeling of anxiety? A sense of smell? A sound?" "Oh, nothing like that, I cannot tell you at all what it is like, it is just sensation S". At this point we might think that Wittgenstein is arguing for a certain kind of "logical behaviourism". Logical behaviourists (like Gilbert Ryle) argued that mental concepts are, in fact, concepts of patterns of, or dispositions to exhibit behaviour. So, the concept belief does not pick out something in the mind, but, rather, is used to say something about the kinds of behaviour a person is disposed to (e.g.,believing that Paris is in France disposes you to behave in certain ways in certain contexts: if you want to go to Paris you will book a flight to France (not Spain, or Malawi etc). Is Wittgenstein saying that the concept of sensation (or of pain, etc) is really the concept of pain behaviour? Not at all. Remember, Wittgenstein is offering us an account of the grammar of our concepts of sensation and pain and so on. Think how very odd it would be (i.e., at odds with our use of the concepts) to say things like: (a) "I have a throbbing pain in my foot but I can't feel it at all" (b) "When I press my eyeball I have a sensation of blue, but it doesn't look like anything at all: it's as if I am asleep" (c) "I know that I am in pain because I can see myself exhibiting pain behaviour" At this point McGinn's reading of these sections is helpful. She argues that Wittgenstein's goal is to show that we cannot derive the meaning of a psychological term (like "pain" or "sensation") from introspection alone. This is in line with Wittgenstein's attack on the Augustinian picture of mind and language. The fact that we cannot derive the meaning of "pain" or "sensation" from introspection alone doesn't show that such concepts cannot have a first-person application to our own

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We will have more to say about this next week, but for now, let's just accept that Wittgenstein is not arguing that our everyday concepts of sensations and pains are really concepts of behaviour. 8. Is this an example of the "community view"? The standard interpretation of Wittgenstein's PLA is that what Wittgenstein is doing in these sections is showing that language is a social phenomenon. The use of a term, or a concept, is a normative affair. When we use the term dog or cat or pain we can be right or wrong in our use. But in the case of the private linguist what would constitute her being right or wrong. Recall the last sentence of PI 258

One would like to say: whatever is going to seem right to me is right. And that only means that here we can't talk about right.

One way of reading this—especially against the background discussion of rule following that we looked at last week—is that when we use a term publicly the idea is that other people provide the standard against which our usage is right or wrong. There is no standard by which the private linguist's behaviour counts as right or wrong. In order for the rules of language to apply other people would have to be able to tell whether or not the term "S" is being used correctly or incorrectly. If Bob says "I am having sensation "S" again" there is no way his usage can be corrected or approved. How could one teach a child to use a term in this way? The child might ask "But what does "S" mean?" the parent could only reply "Only you can know what it means". But this is not a special kind of private meaning, it is not meaning at all. An analogy with games might help. Suppose someone says that they have made up a private game. They wave their hands about going "Yes, good move! I've won". You ask them what the rules are of the game, and they say, "oh I cannot possibly put them into words" "But how do you know whether you have won or not" "Oh, if I feel that I have won, then I have won". Here we might think "Gosh! What an excellent game this is, you are guaranteed to win". But in what sense can you be said to win if there is no possibility of error (whatever seems to you to be winning is winning in the game – but that only means that here we can't talk about winning (or losing)). 9. What does the community view entail? If the community view is right what kinds of private language does it rule out? It does not rule out silent speech, or keeping a private diary, or even keeping a private diary of one's sensations. All of these are feasible provided that the person in question follows rules that are in principle capable of being communicated to others and assessed by them. But if our meanings depend upon community standards how can I know what I mean? Wouldn't others have to check what I am thinking in order for me to be able to think at all? Here it is important to remember that Wittgenstein is not engaged in some kind of skeptical argument. He is not saying that, contrary to appearances, none of us knows what it is that we mean by our words. For example, consider the person in the "five_red_apples" language game: if she knows how to use the symbols then she knows what she means: and this does not require knowledge of some inner meaning. We can use symbols silently, or in thought, but what makes them meaningful is that the activities in question could be put into words (even if, in fact, they never are). If the community view is right then what it does rule out is that someone could develop language and thought within the confines of their own mind. Now, the community view is a "standard" reading of Wittgenstein, though some Wittgenstein scholars (e.g., Baker and Hacker) reject it. One reason is that Wittgenstein was not in the business of offering us a theory of what meaning consists in (agreement within a community), rather he is trying to show what meaning is not (it's not something in the mind) and it requires a rich framework of abilities and skills in order for us to either speak or think in a meaningful way. The private language example is an example where an awful lot of things are missing, more than just the viewpoint of the public, as it were. Wittgenstein does say some things which suggest the community view, and other things which suggest he doesn't accept it (see Canfield 'The Community View' on the PHIL203 website).

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10. A note about epistemology It is important to keep apart some epistemological issues here, from broader conceptual ones. We might be tempted to interpret the "community" view of Wittgenstein as meaning that until others have checked what we say or think or how we use our concepts, then we don't really know what we mean. This would give the community an epistemological role in assuring knowledge of meaning. But this is not Wittgenstein's point at all. First, his points are largely negative (a) meaning is not something grasped in the mind); (b) we should not try to give the "essence" of anything (including meaning). Second, his concerns are not epistemological but, as he puts it, grammatical: he is interested in how we use the concepts meaning (and other concepts like sign, term, word, name, sensation, belief). His claims in the PLA rest upon observations that understanding and knowing meaning cannot be a matter of grasping something within the mind. It seems clear that we can and do have meaningful communication in our public practices, but Wittgenstein doesn't actually say anything to give the strict limits upon what kind of practices might be necessary and sufficient for meaning. 11. Surely Wittgenstein must be wrong? Even so, we might think that Wittgenstein's arguments can't be right. Surely I could give a name to a sensation that only I felt, and, provided that my memory is working OK? Surely I could, if I wanted to? But one of the things that Wittgenstein is doing here is, once again, asking us to go beyond our initial hunches or intuitions. It may seem that we could give a name to a private sensation, but then we have to ask: in what sense would it be a name, and in what sense would it be the name of a sensation? Of course, we can be misled here by the fact that we are already language users. For example, you may be able to imagine new sensations that you have never had: imagine feeling a high pitched sound in your hand (not hearing it, but feeling it, in the way that you feel a pin prick or pain). This seems conceivable and, if it does, surely you could give it the name "S" or whatever you fancied? But here you are thinking of a case where you can picture a situation where some of the concepts that you already have are applicable (imagine I tried to frame this example in terms of: imagine feeling X, where I cannot tell you what X is, you could give it a name, couldn't you?). The simplest way to reject Wittgenstein's argument, of course, is to argue for something like the Augustinian picture of language and meaning. I might argue thus: (i) I know what my words mean, and this is not dependent upon other people (save in the sense that they might have taught me the public expression of my thoughts). (ii) I know my own mental states directly. (iii) If can use new words to apply to things that I know, then if I have novel mental states that nobody else has, I can use words to apply to them, and I will know what those words mean (though nobody else will). The fact that this kind of argument may seem tempting shows how difficult Wittgenstein's job is. The Augustinian picture, as we keep stressing, is a whole system of beliefs and assumptions about language, meaning and mind. Wittgenstein wrote in his later notes on epistemology (published as On Certainty):

When we first begin to believe anything, what we believe is not a single proposition, it is a whole system of propositions. (Light dawns gradually over the whole.) [Section 141]

The Augustinian picture is a system of beliefs, and, in order to change it we cannot simply provide one single knock-down argument. Wittgenstein's task, as noted in week 1, is to criss-cross around over the "landscape" and provide us with a new way of looking at how language, mind and meaning fit together. It is a difficult process though. An analogy: imagine someone trying to draw you a better map. Your current map has lots of errors, but you are used to it. As they start to show you little bits of their map you say "But this is rubbish, you haven't shown how the river gets to the mountains, or where the forest meets the valley". But this doesn't mean that the new map is wrong, it is just that it takes time to draw, and for you to see the "whole picture". If the Augustinian picture really is familiar and deeply entrenched in the way that Wittgenstein suggests then it would be odd if we didn't find some of these arguments counter-intuitive and odd, at least when we consider them individually. Wittgenstein knows this and writes in this odd

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"parallel" and "criss-crossing" fashion, so that we don't make the mistake of thinking that the Augustinian picture can be overturned in one single move. Next week we lead on from the PLA to a central tenet of modern philosophy: the idea that mental states are somehow "inner" and "subjective", in contrast to objective "outer" objects and behaviour.

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Week 5 Wittgenstein's philosophical psychology: rethinking the "inner" 1. Introduction Last week we looked at Wittgenstein's "Private Language Argument". Though there is considerable dispute about what the PLA means exactly, we saw that, at its core at least, is the argument that we cannot make sense of someone's "naming" a psychological state in a purely private way. This would no more be naming something than imagining marrying someone is an act of marrying. Wittgenstein's aim in the PLA was to continue his attack on the broad Augustinian picture of meaning and mind. If the Augustinian picture were true, then such internal acts of naming should make sense. The fact that such acts of naming are (at least when we reflect on them) puzzling, counts against the Augustinian picture. But, even so, we might still think that there is something odd about the argument. Maybe we can't name inner sensations in the way that the Augustinian picture suggests, but surely we still know of such phenomena. Surely each of us knows of our own pains and sensations and other mental states, and knows of them in a distinctive direct way, and can't we just tell that these are private entities, entities within our own minds? 2. The Cartesian picture of mind Wittgenstein argues that this line of thought is deeply mistaken, but hard to shake off. Worse still, this aspect of the Augustinian picture has been central to philosophy since the C17 and still persists today. The Augustinian picture of mind and meaning supports the "Cartesian" or "Lockean" picture of the mind (i.e., the conception of mind found in Descartes and Locke – now, these are very different thinkers in many ways, but we can ignore the differences between them and, for the sake of simplicity, let's just call this the "Cartesian" picture of the mind). What is this Cartesian picture? Here are some key features of it: (i) Mental states (ideas; thoughts; sensations) are a special kind of "inner" or "subjective" entity. (ii) Each of us knows our own mental states in a distinctive first-personal way, which does not rely upon observation or inference (we just know these mental entities "directly"). (iii) We cannot know the mental states of other people in this direct way. (iv) However, mental states do have causal influence upon behaviour, speech, bodily movement, facial expression, and so on. (v) We can view such effects as evidence that other beings have mental states (perhaps by using the "argument from analogy" whereby we take other people to have the kinds of inner states that we have, insofar as they seem to behave like we do). (vi) There is a clear metaphysical distinction between mental and nonmental things: the essence of mentality is subjectivity (being known by the subject in the direct way noted above). (vii) The reason why mental states are known in this way is because of their nature (their special subjective "inner" nature explains how it is that we can know of them in this way). This picture of the mind has had tremendous significance for philosophy, not just because it is a view of the mind, but also in epistemology (the theory of knowledge). Many of the "great" philosophers (including Descartes; Locke; Berkeley; Hume; Kant) were concerned with what we, as human beings, could know. But the picture of mind outlined above gives rise to a particular way of addressing this question: the things that we know first and foremost are things within the mind. The "problem" for philosophy was to account for how we could know of the objective world (the world "out there") when all that we really have to go on, for certain, is our knowledge of our own mental states. This line of thinking generates such philosophical "isms" as: foundationalism (all our knowledge is built upon a certain kind of infallible knowledge of our own minds); idealism (the only things that exist are ideas, in the mind); representationalism (when we see things "out there" in the world, we don't really directly see it, we are only acquainted with something within the mind, from which we can infer the existence of the external world); solipsism (only me and my current experiences exist). Worse still, this "Cartesian" conception of the mind seems to be something that is "natural". It doesn't seem all that odd (indeed, philosophy courses at school or at University often use Descartes' Meditations as an introduction to philosophy – in part because we can "see" what Descartes is on about, without much technical training in philosophy).

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3. Wittgenstein's methods (again) So how does Wittgenstein argue against the Cartesian conception of the mind? Our core readings for this week contain some of Wittgenstein's criticisms of the Cartesian idea of "inner states" but by no means all of them. The aim in this lecture is to try to give you a sense of the "big picture" here. By now it should be familiar to you that Wittgenstein is arguing against a complex "picture" of the mind (with lots of different interlocking elements). He cannot really successfully argue against any part of it without arguing against all the parts of it (but how can one argue against lots of things at once!?). So, his method is to do things like: (i) Show that, with a little reflection, the Cartesian picture is puzzling/odd/incoherent, or that it has absurd consequences. (ii) Show that we can do without the Cartesian picture of the mind (i.e., that it is not necessary to make appeal to it to, say, explain behaviour or make sense of our interactions). (iii) Offer an explanation of why it is that we thought the Cartesian picture was true (i.e., how could so many clever people make such a mistake?). But how can Wittgenstein do all these things? 4. Language games and grammatical investigation We have already seen how Wittgenstein offers us an alternative to the Augustinian picture of language in meaning. Meaningful communication involves a wide variety of normative practices—language games. We use sounds, marks, etc to do things: words and concepts are tools. Wittgenstein's "use-based" picture of meaningful communication has a very different view of our development to the Augustinian picture. On the Augustinian picture children start off with meanings in the mind, and simply learn the appropriate local public "code" to allow them to put their ideas into public language (learning a language is, in effect, learning a second language). Wittgenstein asks us to reflect—time and time again—on how our concepts are learned or acquired. The use of concepts is normative (e.g., there is a right and a wrong way to use dog, cat, pain, fish, knowledge, rule, meaning etc.). One cannot teach a child whether or not what they are doing is correct unless the teacher and child occupy a shared public world (and this is central to the private language argument). But, as you will recall from week 2, different concepts are used in different ways (remember the "five_red_apples" example: five is used in a different way to red and to apples, and so on). On the Augustinian picture of meaning and language the variety of uses of our concepts (or terms of our language) is lost because it is assumed that all language works by being associated with meanings in the head (so all language, in effect, works in the same way). One of Wittgenstein's critical methods is to use what he calls a grammatical investigation. A grammatical investigation does not aim to explain our use of concepts but merely to describe them. Wittgenstein argues that by making plain how we use our concepts we will stop making certain kinds of mistakes, and stop being motivated to seek answers to nonsensical questions. 5. Surface grammar and depth grammar There are different levels of grammatical description. For example, at a superficial level "What is time?" and "What is cheese?" are, grammatically, the same. But at a deeper level they are very different because the latter is about a physical stuff that we can investigate further, whilst the former is an abstraction from a wide range of other concepts (like later than, before, five o'clock etc). One key part of Wittgenstein's method is to distinguish what he calls a "surface grammar" from "depth grammar" (e.g., see PI 664). Whilst the surface grammar of time makes it appear to be another term like cheese, in fact the concept is quite different from that of cheese. The same point applies for psychological concepts. Take the example of pain. I have a pain in my hand. I have a coin in my hand. I am in pain. I am in Spain. My pain has started again. The central heating has started again. This will get rid of that pain. This will get rid of that slug. Describe your pain, please. Describe your phone, please.

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Superficially, then, the concept of a pain seems to identify pains as akin to things like coins, countries, slugs, phones etc. The main difference is that pains are inner things, only observable by the person who has them, and not by others. But these surface similarities conceal deeper differences. The concept pain—and the same is true of other psychological concepts—is taught and used in a very distinctive way. 6. From "ouch" to "I have a pain". For example, the claims "I have a pain" or "I am in pain" express one's pain but "I have a coin" or "I am in Spain" don't express one's coin or country. Wittgenstein argues that whilst "I am in pain" looks like a statement, in fact it is more akin to an expression of one's pain in the way that "ouch" or "aaargh" are expressions of pain, but not statements or descriptions of anything at all. When we teach children the use of the concept pain they gradually learn that they can say "I have a pain" rather than just "oww" or "hurty" or "boo-boo". Here we have to be careful, because when we learn the use of the concept pain we learn to use it to apply to others: e.g., I can say "Tom has a pain" or "Tom had a pain a few weeks ago". When I say that Tom has a pain I don't express my pain, and I don't express his either. Or, consider the following: at 3pm I cry "Ouch, I am in pain, someone help me". Here, on Wittgenstein's account, I express my pain (but don't make a statement), At 4pm my pain has gone, but I can say "An hour ago I had a pain". Here I do make a statement. So the grammar of pain is complex and distinctive: we can use it in our own case to express our pains (without stating or reporting them) but we use it with regard to others.10 7. The distinctive first-person grammar of psychological concepts. Psychological concepts have another distinctive feature. We can raise questions, using psychological concepts. E.g., "Does Tom understand?" "What does Sheila want?" "Has Becky got toothache?". But how we go about answering these questions depends upon whom the question is about and who is answering the question. E.g., suppose Sue asks Tom: "Has Becky got toothache?" Tom will have to observe, or ask, or draw upon his knowledge of Becky's speech, behaviour, or facial expression, etc, to answer the question. Suppose Sue asks Becky "Have you got toothache?" Becky does not need to observe her behaviour, or check her facial expression, or anything like that: she is in a position to respond. There are lots of other forms of question whose responses exhibit this kind of first-person/third-person asymmetry. (i) Is S awake? (ii) Can S see the river from where she is standing? (iii) Does S feel hot? (iv) Does S have a pain in her foot? (v) Does S want sugar in her tea? (vi) Is S thinking about Paris again? (vii) Does S have evidence that p? (viii) Is S thinking? In each case, parties other than S will have to attend to S's behaviour, speech, orientation, bodily configuration and so on. But S herself does not have to do this: S can attend to the world, as she takes it to be, or as she recalls it, or currently perceives it, or feels things to be. This asymmetry does not apply in the case of nonpsychological concepts like coin, and mountain and dog.11

10 There is a massive debate about how and when concepts express attitudes, in part because it is central to certain views about what ethical judgement involves (e.g., expressivists in metaethics argue that when we say "That's wrong" we are really just expressing our disapproval, like going "Boo, rubbish!". But this runs into the problem (known as the "Frege-Geach problem" (Google it)): for surely I can say things like "Suppose that's wrong, what then?". This can't be the same as "Suppose boo rubbish, what then." 11 Care should be taken here! You might think that a person is in the best position to know whether "I have a coin in my pocket" is true. But this is because they are more likely to have evidence that it is

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So, Wittgenstein's argument is that the depth grammar of psychological concepts marks them off as distinctive. 8. But isn't this because each of us knows our own mental states? But at this point we might well object: "But isn't this because pains (and other mental states) are distinctive inner things. Surely this should explain the "grammar" of our concepts?" This might seem to be the most "natural" response. After all, doesn't each of us know our own mental states in a direct and obvious way? Can't we just tell that there are "inner states"? But remember that Wittgenstein's critical method is never an "atomistic" or "piecemeal" one. Wittgenstein has other things to say that call into question this "natural" line of response. 9. The private language argument and the beetle in the box First, there is the Private Language Argument viewed last week which is meant to show that we simply cannot make sense of the idea of naming "private" inner entities. At section 293 of PI Wittgenstein offers another illustration of how absurd the idea of giving a name to inner entities is.

293. If I say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word “pain” means — must I not say the same of other people too? And how can I generalize the one case so irresponsibly? Now someone tells me that he knows what pain is only from his own case! Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a “beetle”. No one can look into anyone else’s box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. — Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. — But suppose the word “beetle” had a use in these people’s language? — If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. — No, one can ‘divide through’ by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.

This sits well with the PLA. If we tried to name something that was essentially private (like inner states are meant to be) then what would the public use of psychological concepts amount to. In this language "beetle" might, at best, mean "whatever you have in the box, perhaps nothing", but this is very unlike what we mean by pain or understanding or thought (where we mean something quite specific). 10. Not a something, not a nothing? Eh? Even so, we might still be puzzled and worried about Wittgenstein's line of argument. Surely the grammar of our psychological concepts is one thing, but what psychological states are is another. By laying stress on the public aspects of our concepts, isn't Wittgenstein sort of "leaving out the mind" altogether? Isn't there a difference between pain behaviour (including the expression of pain) and the pain itself? And, can't we have pain without showing it – and doesn't this imply that pains really are private inner entities after all. Wittgenstein addresses this worry:

304. “But you will surely admit that there is a difference between pain — behavior accompanied by pain and pain — behavior without any pain?” — Admit it? What greater difference could there be? — “And yet you again and again reach the conclusion that the sensation itself is a nothing.” — Not at all. It is not a something, but not a nothing either! The conclusion was only that a nothing would serve just as well as a something about which nothing could be said. We have only rejected the grammar which tries to force itself on us here.

Now, this remark might seem to be a bit irritating, or just plain evasive. What can Wittgenstein mean "not a something, but not a nothing either". If it's not nothing then surely it's a something?!! Well, it

true in this case: this is not to do with the concept coin (e.g., compare "How many coins are there in circulation in the UK" or "Is there a coin in that box?" There is no "first-person" privilege here at all.

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depends. For example, we might say that abstract objects are not "things" or " a something" in the way that a coin is, but there are not nothing either. Remember the point that we stressed back in week 2 (when we looked at the five_red_apples example). Different words (and different concepts) are used in different ways. Imagine someone asked: "Is there something in the drawer?" You open it. There's an apple. "Yes, there's something in the drawer". Later you open the drawer and it is empty: "There's nothing in here, you say" "But look, the drawer is red, so there is something—redness—in the drawer". Here we would say that we don't normally view the colour of a container as a something in the container. This is the kind of subtle distinction that Wittgenstein is asking us to reflect upon. To view pains as things is to place them in a particular framework: to view them as if they were material objects of some kind or other and this is because, in part, of the surface grammar which makes us thing that pains are objects (because we use the same kinds of grammatical construction to talk about pains as coins and rocks). 11. But what about consciousness and self-knowledge? OK, maybe pains aren't things in the way that coins and rocks are, but surely there is still something distinctive about mental states: after all, don't we know of them in a special direct way. Surely we must make appeal to some special kind of self knowledge—our consciousness—to explain how it is that we get to know of our own thoughts or pains without relying on evidence or observation. But if there is this special kind of knowledge, wouldn't that be some kind of inner relation to our mental states, and wouldn't that show that mental states have to be some kind of inner thing after all? How could we stand in this special inner knowing relation to something "external" to us? Here, once again, Wittgenstein has a line of response. He asks us to reflect upon the "grammar" of epistemic terms like "knows" and "believes". This is developed in PartI II (xi) of PI. E.g., on p.222

I can know what someone else is thinking, not what I am thinking. It is correct to say "I know what you are thinking", and wrong to say "I know what I am thinking". (A whole cloud of philosophy condensed into a drop of grammar.)

What can this mean: is Wittgenstein a sceptic about thought and mental states? Is he saying that we don't know that we have mental states: but surely this is insane? Surely we know that we have mental states with more certainty than we know anything else (this was, after all, one of the central points of faDescartes' Meditations). Not at all! Remember last week we discussed how talk about winning a game (when there is no possibility of losing) isn't really talk about winning at all. Talk of winning implies the possibility of losing. Talk of being right implies the possibility of being wrong. Similarly, talk of knowledge implies the possibility of ignorance and error. "Tom knows where the best beaches are" "No he doesn't". Or "He never used to". But in the case of the special kind of self-knowledge that we have of our own minds (on the Cartesian picture) there is supposed to be no possibility of error. The conclusion drawn by Descartes, Locke and countless other philosophers has been that self-knowledge and consciousness must be a very special kind of knowledge indeed (just like the person with the game that he always wins might think "My, what a very special game, I cannot lose!!"). Wittgenstein's point is that if there is no possibility of being wrong, then it is simply wrong to talk of knowledge here. An analogy may help. Think about how it is OK to talk about knowing who did something. Suppose I say "Tom is eating biscuits" about someone in the distance. Here is it OK to ask "How do you know it is him". But suppose I say "I am eating biscuits". It would be absurd to ask "How do you know it is you?" Last week we stressed the importance of keeping track of the difference between epistemological claims (about knowledge) and metaphysical and conceptual claims? Well, here there is a similar contrast between epistemological and grammatical claims. Wittgenstein is asking us to reflect upon the "grammar" (in his sense) of the concept of knowledge. When we talk of someone knowing something we imply the possibility of error. If there is no possibility of going wrong, then it is incorrect to talk about knowledge. So, whilst it is OK to talk about being in pain, or to say "I want coffee" it would be odd to say "I know I want coffee" except by way of giving emphasis (i.e., if someone says "Look, I know what I want" they are not stating some new discovery: they have discovered or been made appraised of some fact about their mind, rather, they are expressing their want with a certain kind of conviction).

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12. Isn't there a gap between "inner" states and "outer" behaviour though? But now it might seem that Wittgenstein is back to the Cartesian picture. Isn't he saying that we can be wrong about other people's mental states. I can know that another is in pain, but I can also be wrong about it. Doesn't this suggest that I use other people's behaviour as evidence for the existence of something "inner"? Well, by now it should be clear that Wittgenstein has said a great deal about what's wrong with this. Just what is this inner thing that the behaviour is meant to be evidence of (e.g., compare the "beetle" example: is seeing a box evidence that there is a beetle in it? What does that mean in this context?) Many of the remarks that Wittgenstein makes in the core sections that we have been looking at this week (281-307) are meant to undermine the idea that our concept of pain is used on the basis of behavioural evidence to try to make claims about something that "lies behind" behaviour. On the Cartesian picture there is a traditional problem about "Other minds". Minds are "internal" and only observable to the subject from her own first-person point of view. Behaviour is observable by all. But how can we ever know whether anyone else really has another mind just on the basis of behaviour? A related problem (on the Cartesian view) is why should we assume that it is only people (or animals) that have minds: couldn't we ascribe pains and feelings to stones or trees? Here the classic response has been the "argument from analogy" (favoured by Mill, James, Russell, Ayer and Searle amongst others). I know that I have a mental life, and I assume that others who look and behave like me will have too (question: is this a good line of argument?!) Wittgenstein dismisses this whole line of thought as confused. If we see someone writhing in pain we don't wonder whether they have hidden feelings: we recognize their suffering. When we see a sad face we don't infer the existence of something essentially private lying behind: we recognize the sadness. Or, to put it another way, we see the person as sad. We will have more to say about this next week, but before that an analogy may help. When we look at a meaningful word we simply see it as meaningful (or hear it as meaningful if we are listening). For example compare (a) 晴天 (b) Sunny Day (c) Κάνετε εμετό (d) Vomit In (b) and (d) you don't infer the existence of something "hidden" that lies behind the words (the "meaning") you simply see the words as meaningful. In a similar way, Wittgenstein argues, our interactions with others (and their interactions with us) involves seeing each other as psychological subjects. Learning that someone thinks something, or wants something, or feels something, involves seeing them (or interacting with them) in a new way, it does not require an inference to the effect that there is something "private" hidden in the person out of view. 13. Summing up Once again, Wittgenstein is asking us to try to stop from drawing what we think are "obvious" objections and to reflect upon the grammar of the concepts that we are already familiar with. The "surface" grammar of our language leads us into error: we assume that pains and other mental states must be "things" (because we talk of them as if they were). We then notice that our talk and thought about them is not like our talk and thought about coins and rocks. We seem to be incapable of error with regard to claims like "I am now in pain". The conclusion drawn in the Cartesian picture is that there is a realm of special "inner" items in the mind, and that these are known by a special kind of "inner" knowledge (introspection or consciousness). These inner items are logically distinct from behaviour but may cause behaviour. Such behaviour is used by others as evidence to infer the existence of inner states in others (but we can never be sure that others have the same kind of inner states that we do). Wittgenstein criticizes all the interconnected elements of this picture in a variety of ways. He puts pressure on the coherence of the idea of a private inner state. He reflects upon our existing use of psychological concepts and aims to show how we can make sense of some of the distinctive features of such concepts (e.g., that we use them in a first-person way without relying on behavioural evidence) without having to make appeal to (incoherent) inner states. He is emphatically not offering us a "behaviourist" analysis of mental terms – he fully accepts that we can be in pain but not show it, that

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we can conceal our thoughts or think silently to ourselves. But none of these things require the postulation of a realm of essentially private inner items to make sense of it. Psychological concepts are teachable and learnable in a shared public world and this is made possible because there are "natural" ways of expressing ourselves or of showing our (basic) emotions. We can see the fear or surprise in another (or, better, we can see another as fearful, or surprised) and, we can then teach them the appropriate term to express what they feel and, eventually, to use the same concept (fear, surprise) to characterize and talk about other human beings.