[Wittrs] Re: Does pain have a referent?
- From: "swmaerske" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:46:16 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Cayuse" <z.z7@...> wrote:
>
> blroadies wrote:
> > "Cayuse" wrote:
> >> Pain can't be a referent.
> >
> > Why? Because the only reference allowed in your philosophy are
> > material objects? Or is it because the your feeling of pain is
> > private and only you know it? Only you can talk about it. It as if
> > you had a private screening.
> >
> > Let's say you related to me your walk in the woods. You description of
> > the path, the trees, "real phenomena", as you put it, has a referent
> > because I see the path, the trees. Then again, do I know I see the
> > path and tree you see?
> >
> > Once you cut me off from your "inner life", that without refer, you
> > exclude me from knowing any of your references.
>
> I take LW's point to be that, in the case of sensations, language
> is operating on a different principle to that of "object and designation"
> -- i.e. pain isn't a "thing" to which language "refers":
>
> PI 293. [...] That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression
> of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out
> of consideration as irrelevant.
PI 296: "Yes but there is something there all the same accompanying my cry of
pain. And it is on account of that I utter it And this something is what is
important -- and frightful." -- Only whom are we informing of this? And on what
occasion?
[Note his reference to occasions, to the context, which clearly tells us that
language has a place here, too. Think of describing our toothache to the
dentist. Here it is doctor, in this tooth, feels like it's on fire, etc., etc.
He is telling us here that private sensations are not referrable in the way
publicly observed phenomena are, not that we can say nothing about them at all!]
>
> 298. The very fact that we should so much like to say: "/This/ is the
> important thing" -- while we point privately to the sensation -- is enough
> to shew how much we are inclined to say something which gives no
> information.
>
Do you imagine he would have agreed that my description of my sensation in my
chest gave no information to my doctor????
> 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 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.
> The paradox disappears only if we make a radical break with the idea
> that language always functions in one way, always serves the same purpose:
> to convey thoughts -- which may be about houses, pains, good and evil, or
> anything else you please.
>
But it also DOES serve to convey such thoughts as well as information about our
experiences and Wittgenstein nowhere denies it. That language is multivarious
in its functions does not mean that only some functions are allowable. It does
mean, though, that we have to pay close attention to how we use words and their
contexts and make sure we're using them in a context appropriate way. What
makes sense to say to one's doctor would not make sense if one is doing
philosophy, trying to lay out a picture of the world as including a special
class of things that exist in some parallel way as physical things, simply
because we use referring words for them, too! THAT is the point of his insights
here.
PI 305: "But surely you cannot deny that, for example, in remembering, an inner
process takes place." -- What gives the impression that we want to deny
anything? when one says "Still, an inner process does take place here," -- one
wants to go on: "After all, you see it." And it is this inner process that one
means by the word "remembering". -- The impression that we wanted to deny
something arises from our setting our faces against the picture of the 'inner
process'. What we deny is that the picture of the inner process gives us the
correct idea of the use of the word "to remember". We say that this picture
with its ramifications stands in the way of our seeing the use of the word as
it is.
PI 307: "Are you not really a behaviourist in disguise? Aren't you at bottom
really saying that everything except human behaviour is a fiction?" -- If I do
speak of a fiction, then it is of a grammatical fiction.
PI 308: How does the philosophical problem about mental processes and states
and about behaviourism arise? -- The first step is the one that altogether
escapes notice. We talk of processes and states and leave their nature
undecided. Sometime perhaps we shall know more about them -- we think. But that
is just what commits us to a particular way of looking at the matter. For we
have a definite concept of what it means to learn to know a process better.
(The decisive move in he conjuring trick has been made, and it was the very one
that we thought quite innocent.) -- And now the analogy which was to make us
understand our thoughts falls to pieces. So we have to deny the yet
uncomprehended process in the yet unexplored medium. And now it looks as if we
had denied mental processes. And naturally we don't want to deny them.
> 311. "What difference could be greater?" -- In the case of pain I believe
> that I can give myself a private exhibition of the difference. But I can
> give anyone an exhibition of the difference between a broken and an unbroken
> tooth. -- But for the private exhibition you don't have to give yourself
> actual pain; it is enough to /imagine/ it [...] This /private/ exhibition is
> an illusion.
>
>
Let me ask you this Cayuse: What do you think paragraph 311 is telling us? What
point do you think Wittgenstein is making here? Is he saying we cannot speak of
our pains, cannot refer to them, that all we can ever do is cry "ouch"? Or
isn't he, rather, making a point about how we imagine the referents of mind and
saying that just because we use terms which refer doesn't mean the referents
have the same characteristics as referents in other milieus, other contexts?
> >> The fact that we /can/ imagine this entirety of the "contents of
> >> consciousness", this "what it is like to be me", leads us into
> >> metaphysical speculation
> >
> > Why metaphysical?
>
> As soon as we imagine other people to be similarly associated
> with a "what it is like to be me", we ask how the physical person
> and the "what it is like" are related, and we posit such metaphysical
> hypotheses as materialism, idealism, and dualism.
>
>
Some do. I don't and am not arguing for anything like that. If you're arguing
this point against anything I've said, you have misunderstood me. If you're
not, why do you keep bringing it up in contradistinction to things I've said
here?
SWM
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