Niether Duck Nor Rabbit

As a follow-up to my last post and the comments: as I was reviewing my discussion with Reshef, it occurred to me that my not knowing what the "right" response is on some nights when I stare into the vast sky and can, on the one hand, be filled with thoughts of our smallness and the seeming groundlessness of things, and then, on the other hand, with thoughts about how wondrous the whole world is--perhaps this state of not knowing, of not moving decidedly into either aspect (or way of viewing the world), is itself a "position" rather than a failure to know what the "right" position is? Perhaps this is obvious to those who have considered the issue of aspect-seeing, that the real temptation is to think that the tension between seeing things one way or another must ultimately, in all cases, be resolved. That the true "resolution" is to resolve to learn to accept certain fundamental ambiguities, to accept the tension between apparently contradictory aspects. Perhaps this is why Simone Weil says, in Gravity and Grace:

The contradictions the mind comes up against—these are the only realities: they are the criterion of the real. There is no contradiction in what is imaginary. Contradiction is the test of necessity.

This might shed a different light on Wittgenstein's distinction in the Tractatus between the worlds of the happy man and the sad man, or show that there are different ways of being the happy or the sad. On the one hand, the happy man might be the one who sees the world as a wondrous miracle, and the sad man the one who sees everything as awful and pointless. But on the other hand, the happy man might be the one who has accepted the tension between the two aspects (and yet sees and feels the weight of both aspects, at different times, forcefully), and the sad man the one who cannot accept this ambiguity.

Thinking for Oneself & Not Caring What Others Think

There’s a quality that we could call “independence of thought” which seems to be often regarded as praiseworthy. We refer to this quality as “thinking for oneself,” and it seems that one who shows independence of thought must not be too beholden to what others think. We say we want students, for example, to learn to think for themselves rather than to parrot back what they have been taught (or to merely repeat what they’ve read on Wikipedia, etc.). To think for oneself might thus be connected to what writers (and musicians and composers) call “having a voice.”

To think for oneself, to have the courage to follow one’s own thoughts and to explore them, may involve not being too concerned with what other people think. The independent thinker has to follow his or her own leads, and something like intellectual integrity involves not rejecting one’s own conclusions or convictions just because others disagree. So there’s a sense in which the independent thinker should not care—too much—about the opinions of others. The tricky part here is that if the independent thinker is to remain grounded in reality, since his or her own paths of thought could lead to mere fantasy or delusion, he or she has to care—to some extent—about the opinions of others. This has the air of a paradox.

It’s clear enough that someone who doesn’t care at all what other people think is not what people have in mind by independence of thought, because someone who doesn’t care at all would seem to be a sociopath or psychopath. And from a Wittgensteinian perspective, the notion of completely independent thought would seem to be necessarily incoherent for the same reason that a truly private language is incoherent. (Feminist critiques of the Cartesian method approach similar conclusions—we learn to think in a social context, and so our patterns of thought could never be entirely free of that social origin.) So is the notion of independent thought really just an illusion, thoughtless praise of a condition that, if it could be attained, would just be a kind of insanity?

I suspect that the answer has something to do with finding one’s “voice,” and having the courage to speak for oneself, to speak one’s mind (even if one should also bear in mind that one’s mind is shaped by others). And so perhaps the language of “not caring what other people think” is misleading. We need to care about what other people think, at least some people, and at least some of the time, or else we risk losing touch with reality. But we need not to care so much that we are afraid to speak or to explore thoughts other than the ones that the people around us happen to think. So, again, independence of thought may just be another way of talking about intellectual courage. Marilyn Frye, in “In and Out of Harm’s Way: Arrogance and Love,” draws a connection between courage and imagination which is probably worth thinking about in this connection:

"There probably is really no distinction, in the end, between imagination and courage. We can’t imagine what we can’t face, and we can’t face what we can’t imagine" (in The Politics of Reality, Crossing Press, 1983, p. 81).

The intellectually courageous person, the independent thinker, must, in some sense, be willing to go to the brink. Maybe part of the difference between such a person and the insane person is that the courageous person is able to come back and cares enough about “what other people think” to attempt to communicate it to others, in ways that can be reasonably expected to create some level of understanding.

I wonder then whether a person who claims not to care what other people think could really coherently care about his or her own thoughts, and perhaps even whether—assuming this claim not to care isn’t just a lie or a self-deception—such a person could think clearly at all.

Clarity & Metaphor

I just took notice of (though I'd previously been aware of) the call for the annual essay prize at The Philosophical Quarterly. This bit of the theme description ("Philosophy and the Expressive Arts") caught my attention:

Some philosophers insist with Wittgenstein that “whatever can be said at all can be said clearly”. In that case, are artistic uses of language such as metaphor and imagery just "colour", as Frege called it - just ways of dressing up thoughts that philosophers, by contrast, should consider in their plainest possible form?

It struck me quite at once that metaphors can arguably be clearer than their non-metaphorical equivalents. Compare:

1. I got very drunk last night.
2. I got hammered last night.

For my money, (2) shows more. The "colour" adds something. It seems that this idea is something (at least the later) Wittgenstein would have readily acknowledged, though I don't have any passages at hand to support that suspicion. (This is all a quick thought.)

If I can find the time, this might be the right time to re-visit Coetzee, as well, as I think his work speaks volumes to some issues that are worth exploring under this theme, such as the limits of language (and of rationality to contain and/or make sense of things that "wound" us, as with Elizabeth Costello, and also David Lurie).

Whereof I love you, thereof be my Valentine

Here. Lots of other intellectual valentines to enjoy as well. (H/t: Leiter)

Stranger than Fiction

My thinking has been shifting lately in ways that are important, but hard to articulate, most likely in part because I'm still shifting. Let me start with some relevant quotes:

"My attitude towards him is an attitude towards a soul. I am not of the opinion that he has a soul." -Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

"A method of purification: to pray to God, not only in secret as far as men are concerned, but with the thought that God does not exist.
      "Piety with regard to the dead: to do everything for what does not exist." -Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

"But when God has become as full of significance as the treasure is for the miser, we have to tell ourselves insistently that he does not exist. We must experience the fact that we love him, even if he does not exist." -Weil, Gravity and Grace

"The only philosophy that can be responsibly practiced in the face of despair is the attempt to contemplate all things from the standpoint of redemption....beside the demand thus placed on thought, the question of the reality or unreality of redemption itself hardly matters." -Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia, Sec. 153 (Finale)

"Existentialism is not atheist in the sense that it would exhaust itself in demonstrations of the non-existence of God. It declares, rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view. Not that we believe God does exist, but we think that the real problem is not that of His existence; what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God." -Sartre, "Existentialism is a Humanism" (last paragraph)

The middle three (Weil and Adorno) have most recently been on my mind; I then recognized a connection with Wittgenstein's remark about soul, and that Sartre's last paragraph of his famous essay (which has come to be my favorite paragraph from it) is also part of the story.

My ethical sympathies--e.g. my recent interest in virtues such as humility and patience--are certainly "religious," and I have a great respect for serious religious thought, and perhaps tend toward a kind of mysticism--but nothing in any way specific or theistic (in metaphysical terms). I'm coming to find at times that terms like "soul" and "God" are exactly the right terms to invoke--that God knows if anyone does, and that, as Socrates put it, one should care foremost about the state of one's soul. But my finding them this way is about using the right language to express a point; it is not a "metaphysical" discovery but rather, as it were, an ethical one.

Weil's remarks are particularly striking since she did believe in God (I assume). But she clearly thinks that a certain kind of "believing in" is a distraction and a false consolation. I just recently decided to start reading Adorno, and lucked into the line above by flipping randomly to the last page. At any rate, I think what all these passages are driving at is the idea that there are ways of orienting ourselves with regard to, and situating our lives and thoughts within, certain religious concepts, for which the significance is not a matter of taking on the metaphysical commitments normally associated with invoking those concepts.

Perhaps that's what people mean by "fictionalism." (I read Kalderon's book on moral fictionalism, or meant to read it, back when I was working on my dissertation, but it didn't leave any mark on me. I found, at that time, Blackburn's "quasi-realism" unsatisfying.) But, as in the title of this post, my sense is that what's going on isn't captured by the notion of a fiction. But I haven't figured out what does capture it. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that these concepts capture, or appeal to, the mysteries of life, to what is hidden or ineffable (or just very hard to eff, or what can only be effed at the cost of feeling that our expressions remain tentative, incomplete, and unsatisfactory)--to the depth behind the actionable surface of moral discourse, the thought and inner struggles that go on "behind the scenes" but which are ethical in character (even if of little interest to consequentialists, for example). These things are not fictions and they are not myths. But the concepts which seem to touch on them are those which are themselves mysterious. As a result, the way I would use the terms I mentioned above will not be satisfying to skeptics (who will think that such language is dispensable) or to "believers" (who will think that I have no right to this language unless I "believe in"). The trick, then, is to get away with it, which means making clear that the use of such language need not be "metaphysical." (Does that make any sense?)

Klemke on Wittgenstein's "Lecture on Ethics"

I recently came across, and finally read, an old-ish (1975) paper by E.D. Klemke called "Wittgenstein's Lecture on Ethics." Ever read it? What a hoot! Klemke really doesn't like Wittgenstein's LE!

In short, he argues that Wittgenstein provides no support for the claim that "no statements of fact can ever be or imply statements of absolute value" or for the claim that "all significant judgments are factually descriptive; hence there can be no significant ethical propositions." More generally, Klemke points out that Wittgenstein's arguments rest on a dubious criterion of meaningfulness and on the questionable fact-value dichotomy. These latter are intelligent points.

His paper, however, is book-ended with a very strange vitriol; Wittgenstein, he says, offers no argument. He will not argue that Wittgenstein is wrong--only that he has offered no argument, and his ideas rest on perhaps "outdated" (read: positivistic, I think) assumptions.

One might think that it would be enough to stop there. But here's how he concludes:

I conclude that Wittgenstein's "Lecture on Ethics" is of no worth whatever for ethical inquiry and that the manner of philosophizing which it exhibits is despicable.

I wonder whether The Journal of Value Inquiry would let such a paragraph pass editorial review today.

In Wittgenstein's defense, Klemke argues at a couple points that perhaps the only justification for basic claims that Wittgenstein makes is that they are self-evident to him--such as that "all states of affairs are [evaluatively] neutral." But all Klemke says is that this is not self-evident to him; he offers not a single example that would count against what Wittgenstein says. Why isn't that despicable, too? Strange. (What was going on in 1975?)

In Print: Speaking for Oneself: Wittgenstein on Ethics

As some have already noted, my paper on Wittgenstein on ethics has been published by Inquiry. (An unofficial version is here; if you need help acquiring the official pdf, let me know.)

Socrates and Wittgenstein

I’ve started writing something larger about moral convictions, and am beginning by thinking about the practical aspects of having to make hard choices between conflicting goods, the kind of thing Sartre discusses in part of his “Existentialism is a Humanism.” Such choices are a basic source of anxiety. Socrates, by contrast with the anxious chooser, strikes me as someone with very little anxiety, and despite his “ignorance,” is firmly committed to several substantive moral views. Among them: 1) an unexamined life isn’t worth living, 2) it is wrong to renege on one’s moral principles merely to save one’s own life, 3) revenge (viz. wronging one who has wronged oneself) is wrong, and 4) a good person cannot be harmed by a bad person. All of these are either controversial or hard to live up to (except maybe the first one), but what is struck me the other evening is that Socrates doesn’t really argue in defense of any of these principles. He elucidates his view on (3) in Crito, but he isn’t really arguing for it. He notes, as I’ve mentioned previously, that people disagree about revenge (this isn’t quite the way he puts it). He says few people really disapprove of revenge, but that those who disagree about the issue cannot really argue about it but “can only despise one another,” because they have no common ground.

I found myself wondering what to make of Socrates’ moral positions, and what his sense of their status might be. Are they just obvious to him, and so not in need of argument? But what should we make of the comment about “common ground”? It’s typical to portray Socrates as some kind of realist—specifically one who rejects divine command theory (in the Euthyphro)—and so perhaps either some kind of moral naturalist or non-naturalist. At any rate, he searches for “essences” and though he doesn’t discover the essence of the good (or the holy) in Euthyphro, we might be left assuming that he’s committed to there being some essence. But then I found myself wondering whether a Wittgensteinian reading of Socrates could be employed to dig into some of these assumptions. All we know is that Socrates has some moral positions. He doesn’t have any theoretical framework, or any sophisticated positive arguments on which to ground them. It might be thought that he is some kind of eudaimonist—that the end of moral action is the promotion of moral health and a healthy soul. (He does say we should care more about our souls than about money or physical health.) But that’s fairly thin, and appeals to the health of the soul (in order to explain the wrongness of an action) may often seem a bit circular.

I’m also thinking about how to square Socrates’ “moral wisdom” with his “ignorance” and his remarks in the Apology that human wisdom is worth little or nothing. He could just be saying that we don’t know much, and that seems true. But if his “moral wisdom” is really important, then that seems like something. Maybe he means that knowing how to live isn’t enough—it’s no guarantee that we will act correctly. That conflicts with his internalism (that our moral beliefs motivate us to act), although perhaps he would just say that the fact that people often don’t act correctly just shows that they don’t really believe what they say they do in polite company.

Here’s where the Wittgensteinian reading comes in, tentatively. Perhaps “moral wisdom” is not propositional. So “knowing” that revenge is wrong is not like knowing that the cat is on the mat, or that grass is green, or whatnot. Moral wisdom might instead be more like knowing how to do something, and perhaps how to get on within a particular “form of life.” (Some, however, will say that procedural knowledge can be cashed out in propositional terms. I’m not sure about this.) The significance of this is that you can’t argue someone into a form of life—that is, you can’t convince someone that this is how he or she should live simply by arguing about it. You can demonstrate what it is to live that way, and you can correct someone who is trying to live that way but getting it wrong. And we might think that is what Socrates is doing in the Apology and the Crito.

I also think that fruitful comparisons could be made between Socrates’ claim that a good person can’t be harmed, and Wittgenstein’s experience of feeling “absolutely safe” in the “Lecture on Ethics.” Here, the question is what to make of these claims that can seem like so much nonsense. Wittgenstein realizes that he cannot justify this experience by appealing to the validity of his own experience, because an experience is just a fact. (And other people don’t have the experience, so what does his experience really prove? He could be delusional.) Socrates’ remark may just be a cheeky thing to say to his accusers, although his point, presumably, is that no one else can compromise his soul, his integrity. That seems plausible. But it also seems strange to say that nothing else really counts as a harm.

I’m not sure whether pursuing this will be fruitful, or if these various comparisons can be made to hang together. However, M.W. Rowe has a paper that I look forward to reading called, “Wittgenstein, Plato, and the Historical Socrates.”

Online Wittgenstein Resource

I just discovered that the website of the North American Wittgenstein Society has an incredible listing of links to online texts by Wittgenstein, as well as a good deal of secondary literature. Check it out!

Words Can't Express

A Google search of "words can't express" gives 864,000 hits containing that phrase. That's a lot of things, written in words, that words can't express!

I don't mean to be flip. (See my previous post.) But someone has some explaining to do here. Here's a shot:

"Words can't express x" --> whatever one says about x will fall short of expressing all there is to x. (So, words can perhaps partially, but not completely, express x.)

As I said before, this is why we do other things, like paint pictures, write songs, make films, and (I might add) buy people flowers, as those activities are expressive in ways that get beyond language (i.e. word-use).

At the same time, it seems like one might find these non-linguistic modes of communication equally dissatisfying, such that we are tempted to think that nothing can fully express something, as it were, "inside us." Is that thought an illusion?

(I'm thinking here, for those who know it, of Wittgenstein's remarks aimed at debunking the notion that there are "private objects" or could be a "private language"...)

Ineffability and Silence

During my period of silence here, I've been thinking about things that are hard to express--that is, the "hard to eff" as opposed to the "ineffable." I've been writing some things about this, in part, looking at remarks Wittgenstein makes about "the mystical" (in the Tractatus) and claims in the "Lecture on Ethics" that speaking about ethics involves "running against the boundaries of language."

Wittgenstein notoriously claimed in the penultimate section of the Tractatus that all of the things he said in the book are nonsense, and then in the final section that, "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence." There's a huge literature about what this is all about. However, the more I've thought about it, the more I tend to agree with Michael Kremer's claim that the final passage of the Tractatus, "strictly speaking, forbids nothing" (in "The Purpose of Tractarian Nonsense," Noûs, 35:1 (2001), p. 57.

Of course we must pass over in silence whatever we can't speak about--precisely because it is not possible for us to speak about whatever that is. That is, Wittgenstein is not saying, "There are certain things we shouldn't try to talk about." We can talk about whatever we can talk about. But he was, I think, saying something specifically to philosophers--namely, that there are certain things, or areas of discourse, which can't be "grounded" in a philosophical theory. (This includes ethics.) We can, as individuals, talk about ethics, make ethical claims, and adopt ethical positions and live our lives accordingly. But when philosophers do such things, they aren't doing anything in addition to what the ordinary person does (though they might do it with a different vocabulary, or with more precision).

At any rate, I'm rather tempted by the view that things we are often inclined to describe as ineffable are really only "hard to eff" and that the "limits of language" don't hit up against a wholly alien realm of "inexpressible" truths. Rather, the limits of language is just where other modes of expression--such as art, music, and physical gestures--take over. This would mean that even if there are things we must utterly pass over in (linguistic) silence, there are still other modes of expression by which we can reach out to others, and, as it were, break the silence. And often, our efforts to insistence about just how much "words can't express X" actually end up expressing quite a bit about X!