[lit-ideas] Wittgenstein sends us shopping
- From: "Donal McEvoy" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "donalmcevoyuk" for DMARC)
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2017 16:26:43 +0000 (UTC)
...think of the following use of language: I send someone shopping. I give him
a slip marked 'five red apples'. He takes the slip to the shopkeeper, who
opens the drawer marked 'apples', then he looks up the word 'red' in a table
and finds a colour sample opposite it; then he says the series of cardinal
numbers—I assume that he knows them by heart—up to the word 'five' and for
each number he takes an apple of the same colour as the sample out of the
drawer.—It is in this and similar ways that one operates with words—"But how
does he know where and how he is to look up the word 'red' and what he is to
do with the word 'five'?" Well, I assume that he acts as I have described.
Explanations come to an end somewhere.—But what is the meaning of the word
'five'? No such thing was in question here, only how the word 'five' is used.>
Lawrence may well have finished reading Wittgenstein or not yet begun, but I
think anyone reading Wittgenstein could do with some help.
Above is a passage that in many ways is typical of W's style of presentation in
PI. It is liable to throw a casual reader. It does not consist of an explicit
argument or conclusion. It invites the reader to think for themselves. It also
invites misinterpretation.
I mention all this because both W's TLP and PI are works that anyone with a
serious interest in philosophy should read. At one level, they use language
that is simple and non-technical and which gives an appearance of
straightforwardness. But when we try to convert the books into an expressible
set of propositions (e.g. to put its pov in other terms) it becomes clear these
works are bedevilled with problems of interpretation. The TLP begins "The world
is all that is the case" - which seems simple and straighforward at one level,
but what would it mean to deny it? What picture is given by saying "It is false
that the world is all that is the case". What else could be the case? So what
is this "world"? It is clearly not just the planet Earth. Is it the universe of
cosmology? It seems different than this too - at least different to the
universe of science.
So there is no way into a proper understanding of Wittgenstein without
accepting that his work throws up problems of interpretation - moreover, these
problems are not simply interpretation at the margins but interpretation going
to the core of what W intends to show or say by his work.
So any reader needs to be forewarned.
In posts long ago and far away I presented a case as to what constitutes the
core of W's thinking - that it centres on the "limits of language" (which W
takes to be much more imposing than most might assume), and on the limits of
what can be expressed with sense and what cannot. This is fundamental to both
the TLP and, in my present view, the PI - 'a doctrine' of what can be shown but
not said/expressed provides a point of fundmental continuity between this
earlier and later work.
My suggestion is that W provides enough evidence that this the core of his
thinking but that it is easy to lose sight of this core and once lost sight of
it is easy to read W wrongly.
Take the above passage. Without any 'core' grounding our interpretation, we
might think W is dismissing the views of the interlocutor or providing clear
answers to them. We might think W is writing as if he is giving an answer in
some ultimate sense, rather than giving an answer 'of sorts' that simply
provides a basis for further thought. For example, we might think the following
shows how the question is answered - '"But how does he know where and how he is
to look up the word 'red' and what he is to do with the word 'five'?" Well, I
assume that he acts as I have described. Explanations come to an end
somewhere.'
On my view this would be a serious mistake, and this becomes clear the more we
understand W's pov.
(In my view,) W thinks the question is a good one, and it brings out something
crucial - that the so-called explanation presupposes or assumes a whole lot
that is not explained. W is actually showing the untenability of the kind of
the explanation being offered - that it's an unsustainable myth that can only
be sustained by a fiction that we can presuppose or assume many other things as
if they do not need explanation. On the other hand, and as W continually brings
out, language has its specific sense without us having anything like a full or
proper explanation for how it has that sense - we know the sense without fully
knowing how the sense is arrived at.
This is part of a wider view. We know the sense by participating in language
games but the rules of those games are not expressed but are shown by the games
we play. Fundamentally, the rules of language are inexpressible and can only be
shown - and in this way it is right that explanation comes to an end somewhere:
it actually comes to an end right at the point at which language has sense in
the first place. At that point, language simply has the sense it has, and has
this sense aside further philosophical explanation. If this were not the case,
language could hardly get started. So, in this respect, the later philosophy
makes much of the following insight: language does not have sense because it is
philosophically explained how it has sense. In W's view it is the philosopher's
project of providing a theory or explanation for the sense of language that
needs to be replaced with continual careful attention to language as it is used
and has actual sense - for there is no getting beyond this (given the "limits
of language").
Yet it has to be admitted that none of this may be obvious from the surface of
the text.
DL
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