[C] [Wittrs] _Philosophical_Remarks_ and phenomenology (tying together threads)
- From: J DeMouy <jpdemouy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2009 14:00:57 -0800 (PST)
Sean,
Connecting this thread to the book I've previously mentioned,
_Austrian_Philosophy:_The_Legacy_of_Fran_ Brentano_ by Barry Smith.
You've mentioned in a couple of time this thread, "...Philosophical Remarks,
reflecting his thoughts during the period of 1929-1930...is, paradoxically,
most Kantian while it is also seemingly-most verificationist."
I want to suggest that PR may be better understood as "Brentanian" rather than
"Kantian" in its conception of necessity and the a priori. The references to
"phenomenology" are a clue. Also, verificationist ideas are much less
"paradoxical" in a Brentanian (or more specifically, Husserlian) context than
they would be in a Kantian one. And broadly Brentanian views of the a priori
were widely discussed in Austrian philosophical circles, including the Vienna
Circle, as well as among Austrian psychologists Wittgenstein is known to have
read and discussed.
From pp. 19 & 20 of Smith,
" As has been often noted, the very project of phenomenology – the project of
providing a painstakingly adequate description of what is given in experience
precisely as it is given – can be regarded simply as a more comprehensive and
more radical version of phenomenalism in the traditional sense, so that Hermann
Lübbe, for example, finds no difficulty in asserting that ‘Ernst Mach and other
critical empiricists, regardless of their “positivism”, belong in the tradition
of
phenomenology.’ (1960, p. 91 of translation) The two strands of Austrian
positive philosophy were at one stage so closely intertwined that Husserl could
be considered as a potential successor to Mach in the chair in Vienna.33 Guido
Küng has defended the view that there are quite specific parallels between
Husserlian phenomenology and the project of ‘explication’ that is defended by
Carnap in his Aufbau.34 A view of this sort was advanced already in 1932 by
Ernst Polak, a student of Schlick and man about town in Vienna – Polak was
inter alia the husband of Kafka’s Milena – in a clearly Wittgenstein-inspired
dissertation entitled Critique of Phenomenology by Means of Logic. The sense
of phenomenology, according to Polak, ‘is logic (grammar in the most general
sense), clarification of what we mean when we speak; its results are
tautologies;
its findings not statements, but explications’ (1932, p. 157).
" As is seen from Wittgenstein’s own repeated employment of the terminology
of ‘phenomenology’, particularly around 1929, it is primarily in regard to the
problem of the synthetic a priori, of an ‘intermediary between logic and
physics’, that Husserl’s thinking is crucial to the development of Austrian
positivism. Husserl’s account of the synthetic a priori is indeed no less
important to the Vienna circle than that of Kant,35 for where Kant – in
conformity with his special reading of what it is to be ‘synthetic’ – sees the
realm of the synthetic a priori as residing in the relatively restricted and
cognitively inaccessible sphere of transcendental consciousness, Husserl claims
that there is a directly accessible a priori dimension across the entire range
of
experience – so that vastly more propositions turn out to be synthetic and a
priori on Husserl’s view than on that of Kant – including such homely examples
as ‘nothing can be both red and green all over’ to which Wittgenstein and the
Vienna positivists devoted a great deal of their attention.36 From the
standpoint
of the positivists, synthetic a priori propositions do not and cannot exist:
all true
propositions are either tautologies of logic or contingent truths relating to
empirical matters of fact. For Husserl, in contrast, there are entire
disciplines of
synthetic a priori truths, including the discipline of phenomenology, and it is
fascinating to observe the extent to which the positivists are driven to
unsupported claims as to the ‘logical’ character of Husserl’s theses (or to ad
hoc
adjustments of the sense of ‘logical’) in the face of the quite evidently
extralogical or ‘material’ character of many of his examples."
Clearly, this is a rather partisan characterization of matters, but it is also
informative. The scope of "grammar" in Wittgenstein's later work, the variety
of "grammatical rules" is in no small part a response to this problematic.
Understanding these ideas can help us to see why Wittgenstein might have
briefly looked to phenomenology as the missing piece that would address the
problems (like the color-exclusion problem) in the _Tractatus_
(_Remarks_on_Logical_Form_ also could be considered "phenomenological.") as
well as how he would then be led to the view of "grammar" in the later work.
And he is still grappling with phenomenology in _Remarks_on_Colour_, grappling
with the idea of some discipline between logic and physics that tells us
necessary truths about color.
An intereseting and highly accessible approach to relationships between
Phenomenology and Ordinary Language Philosophy (focusing not on Wittgenstein,
but Ryle) is the work of ALThomasson at Miami.
http://sites.google.com/site/amiethomasson/
A good introduction to the similarities is her “Conceptual Analysis in
Phenomenology and Ordinary Language Philosophy”
http://consciousness.anu.edu.au/thomasson/Analyzing%20Meanings--long%20version.doc
also, “Phenomenology and the Development of Analytic Philosophy”,
http://consciousness.anu.edu.au/thomasson/Phenomenology%20and%20Analytic%20Philosophy.doc
As I indicated, these are not about Wittgenstein. But the connections between
Husserl and Ryle do illustrate similar issues.
JPDeMouy
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