[lit-ideas] Ayer on Wittgenstein I
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2012 15:08:13 +0100 (BST)
Wittgenstein is given pride of place in terms of coverage in
Ayer’s Philosophy in the Twentieth
Century, which, in the Preface, Ayer says was “originally conceived as a
sequel to Bertrand Russell’s A History of
Western Philosophy.”
Chapter V begins with The
later Wittgenstein. Ayer stops well short of recognising any such ‘key
tenet’ as that proposed in my posts. As a result, Ayer’s interpretation of The
later Wittgenstein is, as indicated
below, defective – because the ‘key tenet’ is central to any correct
interpretation of, for example, PI.
But Ayer provides some paraphrase of W’s work which cannot
help but reflect the ‘key tenet’, for example in this précis [p.142] of The
Brown Book:- “In the case of the
numerals, he learns, say, the word ‘three’ by having trios of bricks or slabs
or whatever pointed out to him; or he may be taught the difference between
‘three’ and ‘four’ by having them correlated respectively with a triad or a
quartet of bricks.” This dovetails with what my posts suggested we might do to
show the sense of the series zero to ten
to someone who did not understand it: where we must show the sense because we
cannot say the sense, according to W, and that is because the sense of
‘what is said’ is never said in ‘what is said’ [i.e. the ‘key tenet’].
But Ayer’s failure to see these examples as illustrating the
‘key tenet’ (by way of the “same or almost the
same points” as W writes in the Preface to PI) soon leads Ayer astray [p.142]
:- “It would be wrong, however,
to say that he was being shown numbers in the way he was being shown specimens
of building materials. The difference lies not the different character of the
‘objects’, but in the different roles that the two sorts of signs play in the
language game.” This conclusion, I suggest, is Ayer’s own interpolation and not
a paraphrase of W’s text. Given the ‘key tenet’, this conclusion misses the
point that in both cases what is fundamental, for W, is that the sense of
‘what-is-said’ [whether the
series ‘0, 1, 2, 3.. etc.’ or ‘Slab, brick, beam.. etc.’]
is not said in ‘what is said’ but can only be shown.
It is unwarranted for Ayer to infer either that ‘what is
shown’ in these cases is being shown in some importantly different way or that
it is W’s point that, “It would be
wrong…to say he was being shown numbers in the way he was being shown specimens
of building materials.” For W, it may just as well be right to say he is being
shown ‘numbers’ “in the way” – of showing what cannot be said – he was shown
‘slab’ and ‘brick’. Ayer’s own conclusion does not follow from the fact that
the sense of ‘what is shown’ is distinct in each case; nor does it follow from
the fact that the signs may have different roles in their respective language
games, or even in a language game. For
to show some distinct ‘sense’ (that is distinct from another ‘sense’) is not
therefore to ‘show’ in a way that is distinct qua showing– for, if so, we might
then infer that showing the sense of ‘slab’
is to show in a distinct way to showing the sense of ‘brick’; or that showing
the sense of ‘1’ is to show in a distinct way to showing the sense of ‘10’. And
this is not W’s point, and strays
far from W’s point.
There is nothing in the distinction between numerals and
physical objects that shows that ‘how their sense is shown’ cannot be in the
same (or a similar) way. – And this is made clear enough in W’s presentation:
because the sense of both numbers and objects
may be taught “ostensively” in W’s account [or by “demonstrative teaching” as W
calls it in The Brown Book]; and because their sense may be taught together –
the sense of the language here may be shown as part of a ‘language game’
concerning instructions for fetching types and amounts of
building materials, where terms for physical objects and for numerals do not so
much have “different roles” as play inter-related roles in specifying aspects of
building materials [quality and quantity].
But (even for an empiricist of Ayer’s sort) there is a fundamental
and well-known epistemic distinction between ‘numbers’ and ‘material objects’;
and what may have happened here is that Ayer has interpolated this distinction
into W’s text:- so whereas W’s point is the ‘key tenet’, Ayer instead sees W as
marking this well-known distinction “not in the different character of the
‘objects’, but in the different roles that the two sorts of signs play in the
language game.” We might say that Ayer’s interpretation here attributes a
theory or thesis of sorts to W, and a somewhat metaphysical one to boot, one
which
goes directly against W’s own account of the proper conception of philosophy.
Whatever the explanation, we must be alert whenever
examining an interpretation of W’s writings that the writer is not simply
imposing their own concerns on a text that is concerned with something else;
and alert that the writer fails to understand W’s concerns and so misses the
point of what W writes. (Of course, this applies to interpretation in terms of
the ‘key tenet’ also.)
W’s treatment of teaching the sense of a series like ‘0, 1,
2, 3…10’ (or of a formula like ‘continually add 2’) was explained in my posts
as showing the ‘key tenet’:– W’s
treatment shows that the sense of such a series (or formula) is not said in its
statement. Ayer takes W
to be making a rather less interesting point, indeed a point of almost
banality: “One of the points that Wittgenstein is trying to make is that this
man’s understanding the principle of the series doesn’t simply mean that the
formula occurs to him, since one can imagine that the formula occurred to him
without his being able to make use of it, but equally that his understanding
need not consist in his having a flash of intuition or any other special sort
of experience. And this would apply to understanding of all sorts, not only to
the case of mathematical formulae.” This is largely explication by paraphrase.
Yet
what Ayer does here reflects a basic error in interpreting PI: Ayer takes what
W says as
itself the point of what W says – whereas the point of what W says lies in what
it shows [viz. the ‘key tenet’; W: “‘What [I] say will be easy, but to know
why [I] say it will be very difficult”]. It is why W says what he says that
shows its point. This basic error may itself arise from failure to grasp the
‘key tenet’: for if we do not grasp the ‘key tenet’, we may not grasp that the
point
of what W says is in what it shows – and instead we may adopt an
interpretation according to which the point of what W says is (merely) what W
says.
What if someone continues to ‘add 2’ so that, as W writes, they “understand
our order with our explanations as we should
understand the order: “Add 2 up to 1000, 4 up to 2000, 6 up to 3000, and so on”?
W says, “Such a case would present similarities
with one in which a person naturally reacted to the gesture of pointing with
the hand by looking in the direction of the line from finger-tip to wrist, not
from wrist to finger-tip.” Given the ‘key tenet’ is illustrated here,
this last remark by W is about how this case resembles one where ‘what is
shown’ by us is not understood by another in the sense that we understand it–
i.e. (implicitly)how showing the sense, as we understand it, will only convey
that sense to another if they understand
‘what is shown’ in that sense. As
Ayer does not grasp the underlying ‘key tenet’, Ayer instead draws the
following conclusion [p.147] :- “But if these cases are analogous, then the man
who goes from 1000 to 1004 rather than 1002 can be considered eccentric but not
exactly mistaken. When it comes to the point, we say that he has misunderstood
us, but when we gave him his instructions we may not have had that particular
application of them in mind. Or if we did have that application in mind, there
were countless others that we didn’t. The moral which we are invited to draw is
that the acceptance of a rule does not put us into a strait-jacket. We are left
free to decide at any given point what the rule enjoins or forbids.”
Again in this paraphrase, Ayer first takes what W says as itself the point of
what W
says; but then Ayer goes beyond mere paraphrase and draws a “moral” from
what W says, even though this is not a “moral” stated anywhere by W. This
“moral”
(I suggest) mistakes W’s POV. W’s POV is that, whatever “the rule”, its sense
is never said in its statement (and showing this shows something even more
fundamental: that the sense of ‘whatever is said’ is never said in its
statement). W’s “moral” is not that “We are left free to decide at any given
point what the rule enjoins or forbids” (in terms of its sense) but that the
rule’s sense is not said in its statement, and therefore what a “rule enjoins or
forbids” is not said by the rule. Elsewhere
in PI, W is at pains to emphasise
that it is not as if we are “left free to decide at any given point what the
rule enjoins or forbids” (in terms of its sense) – on the contrary, W clearly
shows
that our following of a “rule” is not usually something that involves us being
in continual doubt as to its application “at any given point”*, nor is it
usually
something that continually involves resolving “at any given point” what is its
sense**. It would be more accurate to say we usually follow “the rule” (in
terms of its sense) “blindly”*** and
unconsciously. In W’s view there may be cases where it appears we are “left
free to decide at any given point what
the rule enjoins or forbids”, but these cases are not typical and cannot be
typical – because they only may be made sense of because there is a wider given
framework such that they are not typical.
How has Ayer gone so wrong as to suggest the very opposite
is W’s POV and indeed W’s “moral”? Because Ayer has not grasped the underlying
‘key tenet’, Ayer has confused W’s points with a quite different set of points:-
Ayer confuses W’s points (that show that the sense of ‘what is said’ is never
definite given merely ‘what is said’) for points that show that the sense of
‘what is said’ is never definite; Ayer confuses W’s points (that show that the
‘right and wrong’ of the sense of ‘what is said’ is not said by ‘what is said’)
for points that show that there is no
‘right and wrong’ in the sense of ‘what is said’; and Ayer confuses W’s points
(that
show the continued or ‘correct’ application of a “rule” is not said by the
“rule”) for points that show that the continued or ‘correct’
application of a “rule” is never set in advance of how it is applied.
This last confusion is made clear when Ayer writes as if W’s
view of a “rule” is as follows:- “…Wittgenstein appears to take the position
that the result of a process of calculation is never determined in advance.
Even though we may be following what seems to us to be a clear procedure we
cannot predict where it will lead us. We cannot prejudge the question what
verdict we shall characterize as correct. This is not to deny that our
employment of mathematical and other concepts is subject to rules, but our
obedience to those rules is like the unrolling of a carpet. The floor is
covered only to the extent that the carpet has actually been unrolled.”
If true, this would only raise the question of how far the ‘carpet’
has been unrolled and in what way? Take the “rule” ‘continually add 2’: W uses
an example where someone
departs from ‘our’ understanding at
each thousand point, and in a somewhat regular way. But is W’s point [whatever
that point is] limited to this kind
of regular-ish departure as an alternative to ‘our’ understanding? If ‘the
carpet is not unrolled’ to show that this departure amounts to disobedience
of the “rule”, how is it unrolled to show that some or any departures amount to
disobedience [when others do not] –
for example, what would make it disobedience [or not] to carry on ‘….96, 98,
100, 101, 102, 103…’ or ‘…96, 98, 100, 0, 2, 4, 6, 8…’ or ‘…56, 58, 60, 25, 39,
43, 76…’? Yet these are not questions that are answered
or explained by what W writes: and they seem to raise a sort of insuperable
difficulty in saying what it is that would render certain departures into
disobedience
and others not. But if we understand W’s point to be showing the ‘key tenet’ we
will see this kind of question is beside the point here, and that W’s point is
not confined to this kind of
departure but applies to any departure
from a given understanding or sense of ‘what is said’ i.e. any such departure,
W shows, is never
forbidden by ‘what is said’ simpliciter.
Contra Ayer’s view,
it is actually an implication of the ‘key tenet’ that it would be futile and
misconceived to try to say what
counts as obeying a “rule” and what counts as disobeying a “rule”, as what
counts as either is like the sense of a “rule” itself: something that can be
shown but not said. [This explains an otherwise striking omission, as
striking perhaps as the omission of an example of an ‘atomic proposition’ from
the Tractatus. While W can say any number of examples of a “rule” (W
can say, e.g., that ‘Continually add 2’ is a “rule”), W nowhere claims to have
said the sense of a “rule” or to have given an example where in saying the
“rule” he has said its sense. For, on W’s POV, it is not possible to say the
sense of a “rule” – indeed, it is fundamental to W that it is not possible to
say the sense of any kind of use of language in language.]
Donal
II to follow
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