[lit-ideas] Re: The Independent Moralist
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 1 May 2014 14:52:24 +0100 (BST)
That Stanford entry has quite a lot to say about this climatic part of PI (see
below, at end), a climatic part on which I have posted extensive commentary
some time ago, but it does not suggest the interpretation in my commentary.
This suggested interpretation takes W as seeking to show that, insofar as we
might seek to explain how language has sense through 'rule-following', (a) no
'rule' says its own sense (a version of W's general position that language
never says its own sense) (b) the sense of a 'rule' can be shown but cannot be
said (a corollary to (a) that denies there is any metalinguistic way to exhibit
a 'rule' so that the sense of the 'rule' is said in the meta-language).
Sections leading to this climax seek to show (though they do not say) that the
'rule' as to the correct sequence of natural numbers ['0,1,2,3,4'] is neither
said by stating that sequence nor can it be said 'metalinguistically':- as
becomes clear when we face someone who does not understand the sequence
'correctly' - for there is nothing 'said' or 'sayable' by which we may teach
them the correct sense of the sequence merely by what we say [they can only
understand the 'correct' sequence if they grasp the sense of what is shown, for
us, by what is said]; these sections also show, though they do no say, that a
"same or similar" point holds for following a mathematical 'rule' like 'Take n
and continue to add 2', for the sense of the 'correct' sequence is not
something said by this 'rule' nor can it be said 'metalinguistically':- as
becomes clear when we face someone who interprets the 'rule' differently [so
that after 1000, they insist that '1004' is next in
the sequence] - for there is nothing said in the stated 'rule', and nothing
otherwise 'sayable', by which we can teach them why their interpretation is
incorrect merely by what we say [again they can only understand the 'correct'
sequence - 'correct' in our terms - if they grasp the sense of what is shown,
in our terms, by what is said].
W thinks that language not saying its own sense is an ever-present fact due to
the "limits of language" but that we are typically blind to this - we are so
familiar, with the sense to be attached to much of the language we use, that it
becomes inconspicuous to us that this sense is not attached by virtue of the
language itself: indeed, we tend to treat language as if it does say its own
sense - so that faced with someone who does not understand the sense of the
sequence '0,1,2,3,4' in the order of natural numbers, we might be first tempted
to simply repeat the sequence to them as if this repetition conveys the sense
of the order we intend (which W shows, emphatically, it doesn't).
What the Stanford passage (below) crucially omits is the key conclusion W draws
at this climatic part of PI - viz. that the considerations W has canvassed show
there is a way of following a rule that is not an interpretation [201]: "What
this shews 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." Here an "interpretation" may be taken to
mean something that captures the requisite sense in language: and W here makes
clear what the foregoing in PI "shews" - that the requisite sense is never
something that can be captured in language in this way, though it may be shown
or "exhibited". This is the fundamental theme of PI from the Preface onwards:
from the beginning (which shows the naming-relation is not something said by a
name but shown by how names are used) to the sections on 'rule-following'
(which show we cannot say the sense of
language in terms of 'rule-following', though we may be able to show it in
such terms in relation to "actual cases").
It is a theme that makes understandable what is otherwise hard to understand:
for example, W writing "Teaching which is not meant to apply to anything but
the examples given is different from that which 'points beyond' them [208]." We
may distinguish teaching children to recite sounds like 'Nought, one, two etc.'
by rote, without understanding more about what these sounds mean, and teaching
them '0,1,2 etc.' so they understand the sense of this in terms of the
sequence of natural numbers - the latter teaching involves using examples to
convey a sense that "points beyond" the examples used:- a sense, W contends,
that may be shown but cannot be said.
From this POV, the Stanford entry has the drawback of not even canvassing this
suggested interpretation as a serious possibility, even though it mentions what
is a radical misinterpretation a la Kripkenstein (an interpretation that posits
W as a radical sceptic about "sense":- when W actually takes "sense" to be
shown in a quite matter-of-fact and sufficiently determinate way but does want
emphatically to deny that this "sense" is something that it is within the
"limits of language" to capture):- "These considerations lead to PI 201, often
considered the
climax of the issue: “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. The answer was: if everything can be
made out to accord with the rule, then it can also be made out to
conflict with it. And so there would be neither accord nor conflict
here.” Wittgenstein's formulation of the problem, now at the
point of being a “paradox”, has given rise to a wealth of
interpretation and debate since it is clear to all that this is the
crux of the general issue of meaning, and of understanding and using a
language. One of the influential readings of the problem of following
a rule (introduced by Fogelin 1976 and Kripke 1982) has been the
interpretation, according to which Wittgenstein is here voicing a
skeptical paradox and offering a skeptical solution. That is to say,
there are no facts that determine what counts as following a rule, no
real grounds for saying that someone is indeed following a rule, and
Wittgenstein accepts this skeptical challenge (by suggesting other
conditions that might warrant our asserting that someone is following
a rule). This reading has been challenged, in turn, by several
interpretations (such as Baker and Hacker 1984, McGinn1984, and Cavell
1990), while others have provided additional, fresh perspectives
(e.g., Diamond, “Rules: Looking in the Right Place” in
Phillips and Winch 1989, and several in Miller and Wright 2002).
In years to come this may all be corrected of course.
Donal
Available for children's parties and Bar-mitzvahs
London
On Thursday, 1 May 2014, 12:27, "dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx"
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In a message dated 5/1/2014 3:20:03 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
the ethical debate as to pushing fat men
and pulling levers (so as to minimise the numbers who die), appears largely
fatuous: and W might even see it as a result of pernicious 'scientism' in our
modern culture that researchers found people to participate seriously in their
study rather than brushing them off with their umbrellas (I assume most people
are more likely to be carrying umbrellas than pokers when accosted by
researchers).
Thanks. I was thinking more along the lines of this precisely quotation by
Witters in the Stanford, as per below.
Biletzki, Anat and Matar, Anat, "Ludwig Wittgenstein", The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/wittgenstein/>.
But again, we have these psychologists. One is working in Chicago and, I
think, thinks or wants to draw practical conclusions out of the experiments:
that members of the jury should better NOT have, say, English, as their native
language, since that turns them into 'emotional' beings when discussing things.
We should be recalled (i) that while national origin should not be explicated,
the researcher holds a BA from a 'foreign' university (by Chicago standards),
and that Chicago is a 'foreign' word originally, but foreign-language sign
posts
are no longer necessary in the area! It is different with the other
reserarchers
in Catalonia, Barcelona, where foreign-language sign posts ARE required by LAW
and Catalonians are, by law, as I think, also in Ireland, to learn something
that we may term 'foreign' (Gaelic Irish versus English, say).
Bilingualism is a problematic issue. At one point, the Italian community in
Buenos Ayres was prohibited to USE Italian (granted, they were also displaying
photographs of the Italian royal house in the classrooms) because the Argentine
government had problems with 'bilingual brains'. By that time, the Native
Population had been mainly reduced to 'reservations', and their language
survives in a few toponyms.
But back to Witters, while I agree with all that McEvoy says about
different Witterses, this is the point about 'form of life'. We may need a full
report of 'large man', and 'hombre grande' (why not 'grand homunculus'?). It
seems that 'large' and 'grande' are not REALLY synonymous in the Carnapian
sense. But 'hombre largo' may trigger different moral decisions, granted.
Proficiency in a language is a matter of degree and the choice of those taking
part in the experiments may also have been controversial, even to the point
that
McEvoy mentions regarding Witters reaction with the umbrella.
In the Stanford entry, the authors say, slightly adapted: "The grammar of
English and the grammar of Spanish are not abstract things, they are situated
within the regular activity with which language-games are interwoven." Then
there's the quote from Philosophical Investigations, section 23:
"The word ‘language-game’ is used here to emphasize the fact that the
speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life"
----- Philosophical Investigations, section 23.
KEYWORD: form of language. The use of Catalonian by Catalonians is part of
the Catalonian form of life, not the Castillian form of life. The use of
English
is Chicago is part of the Chicago English form of life. The use of Native
American in old Chicago is part of an old Native American form of life. The use
of Boaz's native language back in Jerusalem is part of a Hebrew form of life.
The use of American English in America is a part of an American form of
life. The use of British English in America is part of another form of life,
that of a Brit in America. The use of English in Ireland is part of an English
form of life. The use of Gaelic Irish in Ireland is part of an Irish form of
life.
The use of Latin by the Pope is part of a Latin form of life in the
Vatican. And so on. The authors go on:
"What enables language to function and therefore must be accepted as
“given” are precisely forms of life."
KEYWORD: Form of life.
In Wittgenstein's terms: “It is not only agreement in definitions but also
(odd as it may sound) in judgments that is required" (PI242) and this is
"agreement not in opinions, but rather in form of life" (PI 241).
And you don't AGREE in form of life unless you lead THAT life, I suppose
the implicature is. Thus, a Castilian anthropologist (using Castilian) may try
to understand the Catalonian form of life, WITHOUT SHARING it.
Used by Wittgenstein sparingly—five times in the Investigations— the
keyword "FORM OF LIFE" has given rise to interpretative quandaries and
subsequent contradictory readings.
Forms of life can be understood as changing and contingent, dependent on
culture, context, history, etc -- but notably LANGUAGE -- as when we say Irish
is a different language from English, even if they share an "Aryan" root. Or
when we say that American English ('theater') is a different language (and
entails a different form of life) from British English ('theatre').
This appeal to the keyword of FORM OF LIFE grounds a relativistic
reading of Wittgenstein -- hence my earlier reference to Sapir-Whorf, which is
emphasised by THE INDEPENDENT talking, alla the original essay, of YOUR
LANGUAGE
being THE FACTOR in "your moral" (whatever that is), or YOUR MORAL (whatever
that is) *depending* on YOUR LANGUAGE. Oddly, the original title carries the
wrong slogan:
Your moral depends on language. It should rather be: Your moral depends on
YOUR language.
Or your dialect. There's routines in New York City (inner city) that, as
Labov noted, HAVE to be conducted in the DIALECT (AAVE, I think he called it).
The 'moral' of these activities may involve a dialectal-qualified form of life.
The authors of the Witters entry in Stanford conclude by noting that, on
the other hand, it is the form of life COMMON to humankind, "shared human
behaviour” which is “the system of reference by means of which we interpret an
unknown language" (PI 206).
Note that here the INPUT is the form of life, and the output is
'interpreting an unknown' (or hitherto unknown, I would say) language. Which is
taken for granted in the experiment being reported, when the MEANINGS of
passages are GIVEN as being synonymous, when perhaps they are not. The people
used in the experiments were by definition NOT dealing with "an unknown
language" (to use Witters's phrase) but with a language they thought they know
(if in relative terms). The conclusion by the researchers seems to be that,
given that input, TWO FORMS OF LIFE are derived: one when an utterer makes a
moral decision in his own lingo; another when he makes a moral decision in a
'furrin' one -- out of which bigger conclusions are drawn: such as the
anti-Roman idea that jury members should best NOT be members of the COMMUNITY
the where crime they are discussing took place!
The authors conclude that this might be seen as a universalistic turn,
recognizing that the use of language is made possible by the human form of
life.
But it can also read less grandly as Witters's answer to the inescrutability of
reference and translation that was later going to interest loads to Quine and
Davidson ("Radical translation").
Cheers,
Speranza
REFERENCES
Albert Costa, Alice Foucart, Sayuri Hayakawa, Melina Aparici, Jose
Apesteguia, Joy Heafner, Boaz Keysar. Your Morals Depend on Language.
PLoS ONE,
2014; 9
Boaz, K. "Using a foreign language changes moral decisions." Science
Daily. ScienceDaily, 28 April 2014.
Boaz, K. cited in
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/to-push-or-not-to-push-how-your-mo
rals-depend-on-language-9303510.html
"Would you push a stranger off a bridge? How your morals depend on
language"
Other related posts:
