[C] [Wittrs] Re: The Cult of Common Usage
- From: "SWM" <swmirsky@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2011 00:21:32 -0000
I think it's an interesting article but that, finally, Russell really got it
right only at the outset, when he said that some might think he has
misrepresented the ordinary language approach (which, he adds, is likely to be
a reply of a proponent of any doctrine to its critic). In this case I do think
he has missed the point of Wittgenstein's approach to language (though I will
not suggest that this applies to all ordinary language proponents as I think
many are guilty of time wasting word play).
The point of guiding us back to ordinary usages is not to say that the ordinary
usage (or usages) is (or are) the only ones that make any sense, i.e., that
there is no room for specialized usages, technical jargons, more tightly drawn
"language games" in which uses aren't quite so ordinary, etc. It's not to say
the sciences and philosophy may not have their own special jargons or that
there aren't or can't be various gradations of usage in any given natural
language (the colloquialisms of the flower seller vs. the speech of her
professor in Pygmalion). It's to say, rather, that meanings are often
misconstrued when words are used out of their appropriate contexts (when
"language goes on holiday") and that philosophy is especially prone to this
error because the range of meanings of philosophically applied words (e.g.,
existence, perceived, knowledge, certain, etc.) allow too much slipping and
sliding among them when adequate care isn't taken to avoid that.
For instance, as Wittgenstein shows in On Certainty, being certain is not one
thing (one condition, state, belief status, etc.) dependent on one type of
underpinning only. Sometimes certainty is a function of empirical fact;
sometimes of believing in the world that empirical facts, in the aggregate,
represent for us (as received through direct experience plus information
conveyed by others); and, sometimes, in our adopting a certain stance which
makes it possible to play the game of recognizing empirical facts. We use a
word like "certain" and its cognates in a variety of ways and exploring our
ordinary usages shows us this.
Even more, it shows us how we can lapse into mistakes when not paying adequate
attention to this phenomenon. When philosophers worry over the supposed lack of
certainty we are said to have about what is real, say, and argue about what
would be needed to achieve that certainty and, sometimes, because what we need
is unachievable, that certainty may be unachievable, too (hence radical
skepticism), they are, as it were, looking for one kind of certainty (one use
of that word) in places where another kind (use) is what's needed.
The longstanding philosophical concern that we can never be sure we know
anything at all (or that we can never know anything at all) seems to stem from
the idea that to be sure of what we know we must have some kind of reasons for
claiming it that are logically unimpeachable.
But from the Wittgensteinian perspective this is the mistake because logical
unimpeachability is something we look for and achieve within particular games
we play, e.g., when constructing logical arguments within a well defined sphere
(say proofs in geometry). It doesn't apply to every context in which we may
want to speak of being certain.
The concept of being certain, in fact, precedes the development of things like
geometry or formal logic where conclusions are seen to be entirely dependent on
a stepped series of preceding premises. On this Wittgensteinian view of
language a word like "certain" reflects usages that are much broader and
functional than the way the term is used in smaller contexts like logic or
geometry. Before there was geometry or formal logic there was the world of our
everyday experience and the word "certain" arose and found its first
applications there.
There is nothing inherent in this concept of being certain that requires the
world in which we live to be amenable to the games of formal logic. Logic and
similar practices arise within the larger context of being in the world of
everyday experience and a term like "certain" is carried over from the larger
sphere to the more narrow ones, not the other way around. It's like trying to
put the cart before the horse, to make the world at large answer to the rules
of one of its narrower games. Philosophers in the past have been enamoured of
the notion of certainty implied by logic and its related forms and have taken
it for the paradigm of knowledge, itself, that to know anything we must know it
with certainty, a certainty that is exemplified by what it means to be certain
in the game of logic.
Seduced by the power of the logic game (and it is powerful), we too often
forget that "certain" has other meanings and that those others came first. We
think we must make the world and its usages fit the narrower game. The point of
Wittgenstein's insight about the role of ordinary language is to remind us to
be careful about making this kind of mistake.
The call to look to ordinary language is not a call to spend all our time
chewing over various uses for their own sake (as Russell seems to imply), nor
is it a call to resort to the dictionary, nor is it an assertion that only the
commonest of denominators in ordinary language should prevail. Rather it's to
point out that language, itself, is often what leads us into the belief in
seemingly unsolvable problems and paradoxes -- all too often the driving force
of philosophical debate.
Pointing out that language has led us into such confusions, that we have simply
got our expectations wrong (e.g., we don't need to have some indubitable
logical certainty to believe in an external world, say, because "certain" means
something quite different in that context) is thus philosophically liberating
in a way that endlessly arguing and re-arguing the case for absolute certainty
or radical skepticism cannot be because such arguments cannot be definitively
resolved. They are always subject to further questions, further doubts, based
on new arguments, etc. Wittgenstein's approach shows how we solve the problem
by, as he put it, dissolving it, i.e., taking it out of the realm of endless
argument.
So Russell is right to have pointed out the problems he flagged, but wrong to
suppose that in doing so he had undermined the case for paying philosophical
attention to the question of ordinary language use. He missed the point.
SWM
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "College Dropout John O'Connor" <wittrsamr@...>
wrote:
>
> http://www.sfu.ca/~jeffpell/Phil467/RussellOrdLang53.pdf
>
> I think this is the whole article. I found it in the collected writings of
> Russell, which was but a small selection and still a tome of words.
> Nevermind the man, this is his critique. I thought some might be interested.
> I am readily available to criticisms- that seems to be much of what LW has
> to offer. Russells may stick with you, they may not. I share this hoping
> you might share too.
> --
> He had a wonderful life.
> ==========================================
>
> Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/
>
=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/
Other related posts:
- » [C] [Wittrs] Re: The Cult of Common Usage - SWM
