søndag 6. oktober 2013

Grayling on Wittgenstein.

I finally read A.C. Grayling's book on Wittgenstein. Having heard rumors about it, my expectations were not too high. Grayling's presentation of Wittgenstein's thinking is never truly deep. But as far as a very short introduction goes, his explanations of the private language argument, rule-following and so on are detailed enough. However, there is an undercurrent of hostility skepticism running through the book, which surfaces when Grayling, on the concluding pages, launches a series of objections to "Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy and his method of doing it" (p. 132). I could make this a short blog post by simply professing my agreement with this rather sour review on Amazon, but I will elaborate a little on it.

Wittgenstein's philosophy is not beyond criticism, of course, but Grayling's critiques seem to grow out of a misunderstanding of that philosophy.
[P]hilosophy is in Wittgenstein's view a therapy; the point is to dissolve error, not to build explanatory systems. The style is accordingly tailored to the intention. It is vatic, oracular; it consists in short remarks intended to remedy, remind, disabuse. This gives the later writings a patchwork appearance. Often the connection between remarks are unclear. There is a superabundance of metaphor and parable; there are hints, rhetorical questions, pregnant hyphenations; there is a great deal of repetition....Wittgenstein's style is expressly designed to promote his therapeutic objective against the 'error' of theorizing (p. 132).
As a description of Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy and his method of doing it, this isn't too off. But readers are, according to Grayling, best advised to ignore these aspects of Wittgenstein's thinking. His programmatic remarks about philosophy, his "own official avowals about therapy and the avoidance of theory" (p. 133) are deceptive. Wittgenstein denies that his writings contain systematically expressible theories, "[but] indeed they do" (p. viii). A careful examination of his scattered remarks will uncover a philosophical theory of meaning and language with "an identifiable structure and content, even if neither, in their turn are as transparently stated and as fully spelled out as they might be" (p. 133). This conclusion, however, is possible only by doing substantial violence to Wittgenstein's texts. But this is a consequence Grayling is ready to accept, as he finds no merit in Wittgenstein's writings as such: they fail in a major philosophical duty: "namely, to be clear" (p. 133). Wittgenstein's organization of his thoughts is obscuring rather than illuminating their philosophical content. Not only are his writings summarizable "but in positive need of summary" (p. viii).

There is one way of taking this as a charitable interpretation of Wittgenstein. When someone rambles, one should do one's best to make out what he is rambling about. From a different perspective, however, this is entirely misplaced charity. Taking Wittgenstein seriously as a philosopher, requires taking his writings and the conception of philosophy they express seriously too. Language sometimes confuses us. Often we react by searching for order in the complexity. But this is confused too. Order is not what we need (nor is it to be found). The solution is getting an overview. Hence, Wittgenstein's writings are designed to ease the grip this and other deep-rooted philosophical ideas have on our thinking about language and the world, not by replacing these ideas with new ones, but rather by making their status as metaphysical ideas perspicuous to us. If we think there must be something common to everything called "games", or else they would not all have the same name, Wittgenstein's suggestion is: Don't think, but look! (PI, 66) When philosophers use a word -- "knowledge", "being", "object", "I", "proposition", "name" -- and try to grasp the essence of the thing, he encourages us instead to ask if the word ever actually used in this way (PI, 116). When our thinking ties itself up in philosophical knots, what we need is not another theory, for theorizing is often what gets us into trouble in the first place, what we need are methods for untying these knots.

Hans Sluga (whose latest Wittgenstein book I also read this summer) agrees with many of Grayling's descriptions of Wittgenstein's writings. But he makes something entirely different of them:
Wittgenstein covers an exceptionally wide range of philosophcal and quasi-philosophical matters and ... he manages to speak about them with an unusual freshness, in a precise and stylish language, often with the help of surprising images and metaphors. This has suggested to ... a group of readers that what is of greatest interest in Wittgenstein's work is the manner in which he engages with philosophical questions. On this view, Wittgenstein teaches us above all some valuable methodological lessons (p. 16).
At one point, Grayling calls this "a neat apology for obscurity". Further down the same page, however, he suggests:
Perhaps the value of Wittgenstein's work lies as much in its poetry, and therefore its suggestiveness, as in its substance. There is no doubt that in this respect Wittgenstein's work has stimulated insights and fresh perspectives, especially in philosophical psychology, which have helped to advance thought about these matters (p. 133).
At first blush there seems to be a tension here. If Wittgenstein has helped advancing thought, he has done so by helping us see our thinking afresh. Descartes' cogito argument, for instance, troubled Western philosophers for centuries. How could we possibly break out of the prison of our own minds? The so called private language argument doesn't solve this problem, but if it convinces us that the question is confused, the argument might dissolve the problem for us. By curing us from confused thinking, a successful Wittgensteinian "therapy session", one might argue, results in the exact opposite of obscurity. But Grayling doesn't think so. On his view, philosophy (unlike therapy) is not simply combatting wrong perspectives on things, but also constructing explanatory thought-systems. And it is of course true that Wittgenstein's writings seem obscure when read as attempts to rise to these demands. However, as I have argued, I believe Grayling is wrong in assuming that Wittgenstein (contrary to everything he writes) is trying to answer to these demands.

Here I am not arguing that all philosophy should be conducted in the manner of Wittgenstein (in a sense that would be impossible: if we were never tempted to theorize, "therapeutic" philosophizing would be superfluous too). What I can offer, though, is an example of how such philosophizing might work. Grayling writes that...
... it is a mistake to suppose that reminding ourselves of the main uses of words like 'good' and 'true' is enough, by itself, to settle any questions we might have about the meaning of those terms. Indeed, it is notoriously the case that question about goodness and truth, which are paradigmatically large philosophical questions, cannot be resolved simply by noting the ways 'good' and 'true' are as a matter of fact used in common parlance -- that is, in the languagegames in which they typically occur. It would seem to be an implication of Wittgenstein's views that if we 'remind' ourselves of these uses, philosophical puzzlement about goodness and truth will vanish. This is far from being so (p. 115).
When someone asks what "good" means, a Wittgensteinian would answer with a question: "What particular use of the word 'good' are you thinking about?" The meaning of "good" depends on whether you are thinking of a good taste, a good night's sleep, a good footballer, a good deed, or a good person. Forcing you to reflect harder on what you meant, this challenge might convince you that your initial question was confused. On the other hand, this needn't work, because you might, as Grayling suggests, just as well rephrase you question: "Not 'good' used in a particular way, but goodness as such." This, of course, is the kind of philosophical puzzlement Wittgenstein's "therapeutic method" is designed to combat. The fact that such reminders don't always work certainly is no proof that Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy and his manner of doing it is wrong. It only proves that his therapy doesn't always work. And there is no problem with that. Because Wittgenstein never said, as Grayling has him saying, that reminders about ordinary language use by themselves could make philosophical puzzlements go away. In addition one needs the will to receive these reminders in the right spirit. Philosophy, on Wittgenstein's account, is a fight against one's own temptation to view things in a certain way. It is not a given how that fight will end.

18 kommentarer:

  1. Good post. Grayling's not alone, of course, in (a) being sceptical about Wittgenstein's rejection of theory and (b) doubting whether Wittgenstein plays by his own rules in this area. Yet the rejection of theory is absolutely central to his approach and stems directly from his insight that meaning is use - which (pace Grayling) is itself not a theory, but comes from the observation that explaining meaning involves explaining the use of words and phrases. If you accept that meaning is use then you cannot put forward theories. All you can do is describe the use.

    I also agree with you about the problem often being a case of the will rather than the intellect (and that does seem to be the case with Grayling - from what I know of his world-view he is highly unlikely to be sympathetic towards Wittgenstein's fundamental aims). That's one reason why the Investigations is written the way it is; It tries to force readers to work things out for themselves rather than simply telling them "This is what you should think". In that way they take ownership of the answers Wittgenstein guides them towards and are less likely to reject them out of hand. Of course, as you point out, there is still no guarantee of success.

    SvarSlett
  2. Thanks. No, Grayling is by no means alone in this. His is only one version of a rather prevalent interpretation of Wittgenstein among analytic philosophers. Shoehorning Wittgenstein's philosophical remarks into some (imagined) theoretical framework, however, can only be done by largely ignoring the written context in which these remarks are made, a context including numerous critiques of this very understanding of philosophy. Perhaps some just find it incredible that Wittgenstein (or any other right minded person) would seriously question fundamental assumptions in (analytic) philosophy?

    SvarSlett
    Svar
    1. Especially when their paycheck kinda depends on those fundamental assumptions!

      Slett
  3. To upend psychiatry and state that we don't think "simply," as in only, in our brains is heretical. Wittgenstein posits a common sense conception of being, both for philosophers and the rest of humanity that acts logically, yet has no sense of what is logic and why it is worth pursuing. Strangely, Wittgenstein was friends with Bakhtin's son; Grayling's arguments are not dialogical, but perhaps the language game he is keen to excludes truth as dialogue; the Truth not unlike the immortality of the soul

    SvarSlett
  4. Why would Oxford Press publish Grayling's introduction if it did not actually introduce one to Wittgenstein's philosophy? Were they mistaken or fooled? Grayling discounts his considerably compressed but somewhat accurate account of Wittgenstein's published work up to the point of his writing, just as Ludwig did with Bertrand. Grayling is a Russellian, and he can foment doubt just as Wittgenstein had done with wanton supplicants, yet Grayling has written a great introduction to thought which perhaps cannot be introduced, but experienced, and even then, as Wittgenstein wrote of Freud, there is danger

    http://wab.uib.no/transform/wab.php?modus=opsjoner

    SvarSlett
  5. To use a metaphor, a linguistic act which Grayling frowns upon supposedly in said text, Grayling is piggybacking on Wittgenstein. As for an introduction to non-philosophers, or perhaps more appropriately, those persons uninterested in philosophy, Grayling's book is an appropriate introduction to thought counter to philosophical pretension, but not for example, a concept which he introduces qua Wittgenstein that mind is a dialogue and located on a Cartesian grid. When he states that the cat is on the mat is a refutation of the basic assumptions of said work, after he states there are no examples of facts, objects, etc., there is a desire for meaning to be deep. But how do picture meaning, or is meaning senseless? Grayling obscures the idea that what is meaningful is consensual. Perhaps that is a product of capitalism, but worth is having a patent on a jingle, rather different from having Brahms perform in one's living room with Schoenberg in audience

    SvarSlett
  6. When I read Wittgenstein, now, not when I was perusing his thought in my twenties, thirty years ago, I sense the musicality; in our youth, we desire meaning and truth, but not what drives our desire for such abstracts. One can read The Wasteland and On Certainty, side by side, in ones hallucination, yet Wittgenstein's Nachlass online allows one to, not unlike Zettel, or pieces of thought, arrange.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ykQFrL0X74

    SvarSlett
  7. Grayling is not stupid, and yet he exemplifies the misunderstanding, or feigns stupidity, with the contradiction of Wittgenstein qua Grayling, that the world is outside, absolutely external, which is "real." This is rather British,or Lacanian etc. I am not British, I couldn't care less for Crusoe because I havn't read DeFoe, and how does Crusoe define private language? He was not born deaf or blind, he had a family, yet Grayling's argument is that a human being not in a Wittgensteinian pool of language, can, or does have a language...Why would one alone, not Crusoe, for he was shipwrecked then alone but not a Kasper Hauser abandoned before language is acquired. To reiterate Wittgenstein's metaphor, Reading Grayling is both opening and closing the doors; one must look at Wittgenstein's and Engelmann's house, how doors open and precede a room not yet seen

    SvarSlett
  8. http://www.sciencespo.fr/artsetsocietes/en/archives/1080

    SvarSlett
  9. Grayling does not attack the idea that an expression on one's face is a transference of meaning, but that gestures and non-linguistic expressions are not a ground for consensual meaning in the sense Wittgenstein states. One thinks of the words weird, or queer, not present or absent, according to Grayling, if I am to comprehend his critique, hate can be subtle and misleading

    SvarSlett
  10. Wittgenstein argues against this view; he says
    that understanding language is not a process but an ability. One illustration he
    gives of this thesis concerns the matter of knowing how to play chess . If
    knowing how to play chess were a process that is, something going on in
    one's head then it would be appropriate to ask: When do you know how to
    play chess? All the time? Or just while you are making the move? (Phil. Gram.
    §50). But these questions are manifestly odd; their unnatural character shows
    that it is a mistake to think of understanding and knowing as events in the mind.
    Wittgenstein says that we should think of them instead as capacities, as
    something we have a practical ability to do. In any case, he says, the notion of
    mental processes is itself confused and liable to create misunderstandings a
    claim which Wittgenstein regarded as very important and which therefore plays,
    as we shall see, a dominating role in the philosophical psychology of the later
    works.

    SvarSlett
  11. It will not be inobvious that I will mimic Wittgenstein; when we read Lacanian tracts, we read a diluted echo of Lacan, even with Zizek. In some sense, Heidegger is in the same class as Wittgenstein, yet the former was a student of Husserl and LW, a student of music. Does one become the philosopher for the Nazi party because he is not inebriated by music? How are LW's remarks about private language distant from his coded part of his journals and the umbrella of suicide not only in his family, Boltzmann, Weininger etc. Grayling will die and be forgotten, for he represents a corner of philosophy which is long past; one does not have to love Derrida to comprehend his literature, but you cannot hate the thinker and be "objective" of his werk. Grayling ends with a nod to poetry, yet was not Platon a failed poet, having never been able to be included in the Athenian dramaturgy? When we read Lw's "mitten period," do we not encounter Freud, which the young Ramsey probably blasted him with; LW had a sister analyzed by Freud and helped in in his escape from Nazi Austria. Grayling misquotes Von Wright, which is ignorant and sloppy, when he posits the idea that von Wright's remarks about becoming aware of the importance of LW's writngs (he was an executor, that when the Finnish man states that there is a multiplicity that he can comprehend, Grayling posits, That the multiplicity of interpretations equals a limpid philosophy, as if the relationship between a master and his slave didn't describe philosophy, Descartes in an oven

    SvarSlett
  12. What is laughable? That someone scribbles in your blog and then thanks you for the relief? As if having a piss and obeying rules while ignoring them was real? LW, as Grayling states, may have an importance, or rather comprehension in the future; LW crossed a great line, yet most philosophers present cannot look at the works of, e.g., Husserl, Merleau ponty, perhaps some situationists, the idea that jazz isn't music qua Adorno

    Is love in the heart, the brain? It appears as a stupid puzzle. I love you when our bodies meet and pleasure envelops our nothinness as one. Perhaps I am a bad poet, the thing looked at and read, the phenomenology of , where the fuck am I and what is this mess, or,

    SvarSlett
  13. I took a greater look at your blog and I see that you are a father; how may a childless thinker know divinity? Can I explain how I feel when I see myself, as an infant, in my own hands? We approach God by what is seen, not what is said. You'll see that love does not reside within the breast, but it is dynamic as all thought could be, etc. Being a father is more important than philosophy, unless you are yourself a philosopher

    SvarSlett
  14. Can we obliterate being, in the sense that being is at one with the world, reality? Subjectivity evaporates, a mist is as such. God made Adam, but did he make Jesus? If x, then A, but if not x and a.... Sooner than later, and everything else in the world yields another thing. and we then have spring sprung, plant life and how you are ,missing. And then there is sudden emotion

    SvarSlett
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