- Wittgenstein, “Lecture on Ethics”
And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.
- John 21, xxv
I can only describe my feeling by the metaphor, that, if a man could write a book on Ethics which really was a book on Ethics, this book would, with an explosion, destroy all the other books in the world. Our words used as we use them in science, are vessels capable only of containing and conveying meaning and sense, natural meaning and sense. Ethics, if it is anything, is supernatural and our words will only express facts; as a teacup will only hold a teacup full of water if I were to pour out a gallon over it.
- Wittgenstein, “Lecture on Ethics” And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen. - John 21, xxv
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Understanding language and understanding music - The unity of a sentence, and the unity of a salad9/9/2013 There is a connection between understanding language and understanding music. It is not hard to convince people on an intuitive level that there is such a connection, but what this connection is exactly is hard to see. This is because the two things often are very different. The criteria for understanding a musical phrase, for instance, are different from the criteria for understanding a sentence in language. But not only that, the criteria are of different kinds: they involve “understanding” in different senses. Demonstrating an understanding a musical phrase is not typically a matter of translating it, for example—at least not in the way it is with sentences in language. Understanding a musical phrase is, as so many have said before, something that comes out, for example, in how one plays it. And yet there is a connection. And the connection shows, for instance, in the fact that we can talk of “translation” as a way to demonstrate understanding, even in the case of musical phrases: One might, for instance, demonstrate their understanding of a musical phrase by “translating” it from a minor to a major key. So there is room, in discussing musical understanding for using terms that are borrowed from the understanding of language. And this is one way in which the connection between understanding music and understanding language shows itself: Musical understanding sometimes “dresses up” like understanding of language. And—and this will be what I’ll focus on below—something similar can happen in the opposite direction: the understanding of language, in some cases, can take on the grammar of understanding music.
One more thing before I begin: One motivation I have here is to separate the kind of uses of language Wittgenstein called ‘secondary uses’ from other uses; that is, I want to make the difference deep enough. In doing this, I am resisting the idea that secondary uses are just another kind of application in a line of applications that we can make of linguistic expressions. But I’m not going to say much about secondary senses, since my aim is to put alongside one another and thus characterize different uses of language, and not to debate what Wittgenstein had in mind when he talked about secondary senses. (1) Let me begin with understanding language and work toward the understanding of music. There is not one notion of understanding a sentence. And one way to begin to see the connection between understanding language and understanding music is by starting from a particular, rather special, notion of understanding language. This is not yet the case in which it takes on the grammar of understanding music, but I hope to show below that it is closely related. One notion of understanding a sentence, then, is that in which when I give you the sentence out of any relevant context, you say: “Yes, I know what to do with it; I know how it can be useful.” It is like understanding a word or an expression out of context: understanding what the word or expression can be used for, when you hear it out of context. If I say, for instance, “a painful stare” you might say “I know what this expression can describe” and then go on to apply it in a particular case. Here, understanding what the expression means is tied to being largely in agreement when and how to apply it. Notice that the expression when I thus give it to you, or the word or sentence , is not in use, in a certain sense of ‘use.’ That is, when we thus utter a sentence, word, or expression, we are as it were referring to a kind of use that we are not yet making of it. Remembering this distinction is crucial to everything I’ll say here. To mention and contemplate a word or expression out of context in the way I described is not yet to apply it in a particular case. And in this sense, we can talk of use out of context, apart from application. As I can ask out of context: “Do you know what ‘bank’ means?” and you would be inclined to say you do. What is important here is that we separate the two kinds of uses of a term—the use that the word has out of context, and the use that it has in context, e.g. when we tell someone we will meet them by the bank. I need a term for the first kind of use, so let me call it ‘non-application use.’ This is a technical term, but the need for it is not technical—the distinction between application uses and non-application uses speaks, I believe, to a natural distinction. Let me emphasize one thing about non-application uses. Non-application uses have a connection to application uses. In the case of the examples I gave above, despite not involving actual application, the notion of understanding relevant to non-application uses is such that to understand the meaning of an expression out of context is to be able to apply the expression correctly: to use it in context. That is, the notion of understanding here is strongly tied to correct application of the expression word or sentence. (2) So we have a notion of the meaning of a word or a sentence or an expression, which involves understanding it outside of a context for its application. And closely related to that, but at the same time concerning a different sort of cases, is another notion of understanding language, which involves playing with meanings in a way that is similar to the way we play with sounds—as if meanings were notes in the imagination, and the words were the keyboard upon which one could play. One could accordingly ask: what does the notion of Wednesday make you feel? And being able to describe that feeling demonstrates knowledge of the meaning of the word. ‘Meaning’ here connotes a kind of experience, and understanding the meaning involves having this experience. It is as if meanings were flavors, and we could combine them in a sentence as we combine tastes in a salad to create a certain experience. Sounds combine in a similar way too into a musical theme (although this is not all there is to music!). And we may thus use the feel that words give like we use notes or chords. This is the sort of case I mentioned at the beginning, in which the understanding of language takes on the grammar of understanding music. And I take it that this is the kind of thing that Wittgenstein called “secondary meaning.” Note how deeply different meaning is from secondary meaning: The kind of unity that a proposition has—often captured in the fact that a proposition represents a unified action, speech-act—is completely different from the kind of unity that the culinary experience of a salad has. The latter is more akin then the former to the kind of unity that words in a sentence like Wittgenstein’s “Wednesday is fat” has. And since good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes, see also Monty Python’s Woody and Tinny Words. I owe the link to Miles Rind. This second kind of understanding of a linguistic expression I just described is arguably very different from understanding the expression in a context of application, where the experience and psychological associations that surround the expression are typically irrelevant. For if I say that I will meet you on Wednesday, there is a level on which your understanding of this does not depend on the feelings and associations that the word gives you—if it moves you, intimidates you, bores you, or upsets you for instance. You understand the words if you know when to wait for me. But this second kind of use I described, call it the ‘meaning-experience use’ of an expression, is one of the ways in which we use words, and in this sense it is one of the things that words can be said to “mean.” Presumably, words can have such meanings because, or to the extent that, words give us similar associations, and can have similar psychological effects on us. In any case, using words like this is using them to create a certain type of psychological effect. It is somewhat like using “boo!” to intimidate. Now, I just said that when using language in the second kind of way I described we mean to create a psychological effect, and that it is thus similar to shouting "boo!" to intimidate. However, and this is very important, it is unlike it too, and therefore unlike the use of notes in music. Here, concepts are invoked, and the kind of psychological experience that such uses elicit is connected to those concepts and the meaning of the relevant words—to the meaning that they have in actual contexts of application. Knowledge of language—ability to apply the words in particular contexts—is essential to this effect, and not as an external condition. Rather, the effect created by words when so used can only be described in terms of the knowledge of the relevant applications of language. The psychological keyboard one is playing on here is a keyboard of words and meanings. Thus, for example, if someone uses a kind of metaphor to describe another’s facial expression, saying that their face is “open,” one may thereby be utilizing the fact that the range of applications that the word ‘open’ has in actual contexts of application brings with it a certain type of experience in those who have mastered this range of applications. One then describes the facial expression with this experience--let the experience rub off on the expression and thereby characterize it. (3) In (1) and (2) above I mentioned two notions of understanding of a linguistic expression. The similarity between the two is that in both cases there is involved a kind of mentioning of a word, contemplating it, out of context. And in both cases, the kinds of understandings involved connote another, third, kind of understanding of the expression—a third kind of meaning that the expression has: a meaning it has in ordinary contexts of application. So, regarding the first kind of understanding I mentioned, when asking, out of context, if one is familiar with the word ‘bank’ or knows what “a painful stare” would look like, the implication is that those expressions can be applied for particular purposes in actual contexts—explaining what a certain building is, or describing a certain facial expression. This, even though they are not already applied in this way in the question; for the question is not about the building or the facial expression, but about the words. Similarly, when in the second kind of cases I mentioned, we bring an isolated word up, say ‘Rhubarb’ and ask what the word makes one feel, or when we associate a word like ‘open,’ with a facial expression, the intention is to elicit the association that are connected with the word when used in contexts like "I decided to try to grow some rhubarb this year," or “You may come in, the door is open”—i.e. the word with its familiar meaning in actual contexts of applications. In both cases, then, the kind of meaning that the expression has depends, albeit in different ways, on its having that third, more ordinary, kind of meaning. And in this sense, this third kind of meaning can be said to be more basic. The difference between the two notions I mentioned in (1) and (2) is in how the understanding in each case is related to, dependent on, that third kind of meaning that the expression has in actual contexts of applications. In the first kind of cases I discussed, the meaning of the word, when examined outside of context, is something that anticipates application in actual contexts; it guides it, informs it. The point of asking about the meaning of a word, say ‘bank,’ in such cases is to prepare the way for an actual application of the word, for example. It is targeted at application; it is preparatory. In opposition to this, in the second kind of cases I discussed, the use is not targeted at application, and is not preparatory. When I say the word ‘open’ in such a way as to only elicit in you the feeling that the meaning of the word gives and get you to associate this with some facial expression, this connotes the meaning that the word has in actual contexts of application, but it is not meant to inform or guide it. The use of the word here “piggybacks” on the fact that the word has a certain use in actual contexts of application; but the point is not to guide the mind to such application. Meaning here is not connected to use. Ordinary language may get weirder than we philosophers would like to admit sometimes. We may tolerate oddity in poetry, we may even accept eccentricity in philosophy sometimes, but for the most part, we don’t think this is something that should concern the ordinary person. The ordinary person, we think, is not weird; they are linguistically pure and innocent. They don’t have logically obscure or suspicious intentions. They should not be involved in or implicated by our—we philosophers and poets—qualms about meaningfulness and our difficulties of expression. The ordinary person should be protected from all that. We should save the phenomenon of the ordinary person. The problem is that the ordinary person really doesn’t need our protection, and the fact is that we would not be able to protect them if they did.
The dynamics I’ve described can be seen in discussions about uses of expressions in secondary senses. The phenomena of such uses are taken from ordinary language—from the linguistic life of the ordinary person (where else would they be taken from?). And when we philosophers account for them, we do our best to tame them—to present, describe, and account for, those uses as part of ordinary life. That, however, means for us that we should find a way to make these phenomena appear as un-weird as possible, as mundane as we could. Reasonableness, or at least un-weirdness is a condition on a proper account. In fact, I think, we philosophers thereby risk mischaracterizing the very phenomena we seek to account for. And I want to correct that a bit here and expose a weird side of ordinary language. I will claim that secondary uses—also the uses made ordinarily in ordinary life—are nonsense. Ordinary language thus employs—quite ordinarily —a kind of use of nonsense. That’s how weird ordinary language could get. One way to see that secondary uses of language are nonsensical is by putting them alongside a closely related use of language. In the Brown Book (p. 158 ff.) Wittgenstein talks about the word “particular.” He makes a distinction between transitive and intransitive, or reflexive, uses of a term, and these uses are also taken from ordinary language (where else?). Wittgenstein writes: [T]he use of the word “particular” is apt to produce a kind of delusion and roughly speaking this delusion is produced by the double usage of this word. On the one hand, we may say, it is used preliminary to a specification, description, comparison; on the other hand, as what one might describe as an emphasis. The first usage I shall call the transitive one, the second the intransitive one. Thus, on the one hand I say “This face gives me a particular impression which I can’t describe.” The latter sentence may mean something like: “This face gives me a strong impression.” These examples would perhaps be more striking if we substituted the word “peculiar” for “particular,” for the same comments apply to “peculiar.” If I say “This soap has a peculiar smell: it is the kind we used as children,” the word “peculiar” may be used merely as an introduction to the comparison which follows it, as though I said “I'll tell you what this soap smells like:....” If, on the other hand, I say “This soap has a peculiar smell!” or “It has a most peculiar smell,” “peculiar” here stands for some such expression as “out of the ordinary,” “uncommon,” “striking.” (BB 158) Now, Wittgenstein also talks in the same context of “straightening out” an expression that is used in a seemingly intransitive way, and this effectively means translating it into a transitive form. Sometimes this can be done, as in the case in the quotation above where “This soap has a peculiar smell” is explained by: “it is the kind we used as children.” This specifies what is meant by ‘peculiar’; and thereby, what in the first instance may have appeared to be an intransitive use is revealed by the translation to really be transitive. Such translating, however, cannot always be performed. When words like “particular” or “peculiar” or “striking” or “notable” are used to emphasize in the way Wittgenstein describes, they are not translatable—or, more accurately, they cannot be straightened out into a transitive form. And this has to do with the fact that the emphasis here is of a particular, special, form: In such cases Wittgenstein says, we let the picture sink into our mind and make a mould there. (BB 163) Wittgenstein mentions several very ordinary cases in which we use intransitive forms of speech to emphasize, such as "take it or leave it!" and "that's that!" And we (the ordinary person included) do something similar too when we sometimes wonder at something that is perfectly ordinary—as someone may count the toes of a newborn baby and say “She has five!” or reflect on their life and say “What has happened to that young person I once was.” All those cases involve a similar kind of linguistic intention. They involve a kind of focused mental attention on something, as if by that special act of attention, we are extracting the thing out of its ordinary place in the world, and contemplating it independently. Connecting this with the issue of secondary and absolute uses of expressions, I would like to suggest that some uses of terms in secondary and absolute senses resemble intransitive uses. We can begin to see the connection in this: Wittgenstein insists, with regard to secondary and absolute senses, that they are not similes or metaphors, meaning by that that they cannot be explained literally, or translated into non-figurative expressions. And even if we think that some metaphors are like that too, the important thing here is the distinction Wittgenstein makes between figurative uses of language that can and those that can’t be so translated. Anyway, the situation here seems to resemble the case of those intransitive uses that cannot be “straightened out,” and translated into transitive form: In both cases we have a kind of untranslatability as a grammatical, essential, feature of a use of language. How is nonsense related to all this? Wittgenstein says about intransitive uses: We appear to ourselves to be on the verge of describing [… specifying the peculiarity, for instance], whereas we aren’t really opposing it to any other way. We are emphasizing, not comparing, but we express ourselves as though this emphasis was really a comparison of the object with itself; there seems to be a reflexive comparison. (BB 159) The form of emphasis Wittgenstein describes is expressed by a kind of comparison—a comparison of a thing with itself. By means of such comparison we draw, and try to arrest, attention to the thing. Now, a reflexive comparison, a comparison of something with itself, is not really a comparison. It may look like a comparison—like a straightened out way of saying something, but it is not really straightened out. “We are, as it were, under an optical delusion which by some sort of reflection makes us think that there are two objects where there is only one” (BB160). Wittgenstein jokes about such comparisons elsewhere when he says: Imagine someone saying: “But I know how tall I am!” and laying his hand on top of his head to prove it. (PI §279) This using one’s own height as a measuring rod with which to measure one’s own height is patently nonsense. But Wittgenstein mentions an almost identical kind of case in the BB discussion, and there it is not a joke: “He has a particular way of sitting.” But the answer to the question “What way?” would be “Well, this way.” (160) Here, the words are employed. This is not patently nonsense. We do sometimes use the language of comparison in this way. But now the question is this: how is it that in one sort of case the words seem obviously nonsense, a joke at best, and in the other case the very same form of words seems to make sense? Indeed, we may not be too alarmed by that, because this happens in other cases: if the cashier at the store tells me ‘Have a nice day!’ and I in response say: “You know I have two feet,” in most circumstances that would probably not make much sense; it would just be weird. But if I know she is trying to locate a person who has recently lost their leg, the same words coming from me may make sense after all. It may thus seem that we don't really have a problem: it may seem that we can simply say that the self-comparison makes sense in one case, and doesn't in another. But I think this is wrong. We still have a problem. And the reason we do is that the situation is different in the self-comparison cases. It is not, I believe, that a change of context makes the comparison of the thing with itself meaningful sometimes, for self-comparison is not a comparison and the emphasis-context does not change that. I am not sure what, if anything, would. And furthermore, there really is no way to take the logical peculiarity out of the case; it would in fact be wrong to try. This is what I take it means to say that such cases are characterized grammatically by a kind of untranslatability: This untranlatability here really indicates a much larger problem about clarifying the meanings of such uses of language. We are, in a sense, barred from clarifying them. We are stuck with the logical peculiarity here. This may seem like a problem, something we need to save ourselves from, not to mention the ordinary language speaker. But I believe this is really not too bad. Although something weird is happening, nothing problematic does. For in fact we need the logical peculiarity; we are using it; it is part of our intention. And so the question remains: how is it possible for a nonsensical form of words to sometimes makes sense after all? how is it possible for us to intend to speak nonsense? What I believe happens in such cases is this: when a self-comparison is made with the intention to measure something—as in the PI case, the intention is frustrated by the failure to make any real comparison, and the words “This is how tall I am” while laying a hand on top of one’s head is nonsense. It fails to function in any intended way. However, when the purpose of the self-comparison is that kind of emphasis Wittgenstein describes, the situation is different. That particular form of emphasis Wittgenstein talks about—that making of a mold for something in our mind, that taking something out of its ordinary place in the world alongside other things and making a special place for it, looking at it as if it were unique--requires a nonsensical form of expression: The nonsense, in other words, is part of the method of emphasis here, it goes to define the emphasis. The emphasis we have here, in other words, is a special kind of emphasis; it is emphasis-by-nonsense. And to see how the nonsense here allows for emphasis, consider again what we try, intend, to do when we emphasize in this way: By emphasizing something in this way, we intend to be contemplating it in a special way, we intend to make its specialness apparent to ourselves. And since this is our intention, nothing routine or ordinary and no familiar language game will do. If we are to achieve this kind of emphasis, we have, as it were, to take the thing out of the language game completely, and contemplate it independently—in light of itself and nothing else. In this way, the nonsense becomes part of the emphasizing, part of our intention whether we recognize it or not. Connecting this again to secondary and absolute uses, the point of making secondary and absolute uses of expressions is similar to that of emphasizing by comparing a thing with itself. In using expressions in secondary or absolute senses we purposefully use expressions in a way that disengages them from their ordinary grammar, we intentionally take them out of the language game. Saying of a weekday, for example, that it is fat (if one is so inclined to talk) purposefully treats it as if it were a biological entity. Saying of a portrait on the wall that it is looking at us purposefully treats this inanimate object as if it had a mind. Saying of a road that it is absolutely the right one treats it as having a value that cannot be measured. And the purpose of that is, as in the emphasis by self-comparison cases, to take something out of its ordinary place in the world alongside other things and to make a special place for it. And as in the self-comparison cases, the nonsense in such cases is part of the method of doing that, part of the intention. Taking this weirdness out of those forms of words, trying to save the ordinary person from nonsense here, would miss the point of this use of language, would mischaracterize the intetion. For an instant, before my whole structure of knowledge collapses in panic, I am alive inside that contradiction, dead and alive at the same time. (Elizabeth Costello, 77)
I suggest that we sometimes use what we know is a nonsensical proposition in order to draw attention to its nonsensicality. Such uses tend to have a performative element. Using language in this way is like saying: “Look at what is happening to me, how my words collapse on themselves, when I’m trying to say this.” For our intention to be successful in such cases, the nonsensicality of the proposition we use is essential. This is connected to a claim that is made in several recent blog posts by Lars Hertzberg and Duncan Richter. They claim that we understand propositions that on the face of them we shouldn’t. Some of the relevant propositions are: “[Wednesday] did come, and exactly when it might be reasonably looked for,” “Is this really happening now?” "I can't believe she really agreed to marry me!" "Being human is terribly disappointing." “I wonder at the existence of the world,” and there are other relevant propositions. There is something strange about the propositions under consideration. Even more importantly, the contexts in which they are uttered make them strange. So, to give another example, there is something strange about counting and recounting the toes of a newborn, and exclaiming “she has five!” I’m not saying that it is not something that happens ordinarily. It surely does—at least for some of the cases more than others. But it seems that the semantic intention here is of a special sort. As is obvious in this last example, those propositions can have non-strange, matter-of-course, uses. But the focus of the discussion is on their strange applications. The problem that both Hertzberg and Richter face, I think, is how to (1) allow that we understand those propositions, and at the same time (2) recognize the full depth of their strangeness. Apparently, the strangeness of those propositions is logical. It is connected to a suspicion about their meaningfulness. But, on the other hand, if they are not meaningful, how is it possible that we understand them? If they have no meaning, there is no meaning to understand. My suggestion, I think, solves the problem. It shows that there is a way (actually, a family of ways) of using nonsense, so to speak: a way in which propositions may draw attention to their own nonsensicality. It shows, that is, how nonsensicality can be part of the point of an utterance. The point may be to help people to see the nonsensicality in their own propositions; or it may be to show how a situation escapes our ability to make sense of it. (I say a bit more about this here.) My suggestion has also this advantage: it shows what understanding a proposition may come to, and how deeply different this is in different cases. Objection to my suggestion: Apparently, there is this problem with my suggestion: People who come up with such propositions in the relevant contexts are not all aware of any such intention to demonstrate how their words collapse on themselves. Sometimes, perhaps, the objector may allow, people do indeed have such sophisticated intentions. Arguably, Wittgenstein in the Tractatus had such intentions—at least if we accept a resolute reading of the book. But not every parent who revels at their newborn’s toes is so philosophically sophisticated; and not every person who wonders “Who is this old face in the mirror?” has so complicated intentions. It doesn’t look as if they are trying to say something nonsensical. It really doesn’t look so. But, to answer the objection, are we always so clear about our own intentions? Elizabeth Anscombe in her introduction to the Tractatus tells this story: He [Wittgenstein] once greeted me with the question: ‘Why do people say that it was natural to think that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth turned on its axis?’ I replied: ‘I suppose, because it looked as if the sun went round the earth.’ ‘Well,’ he asked, ‘what would it have looked like if it had looked as if the earth turned on its axis?’ This question brought it out that I had hitherto given no relevant meaning to ‘it looks as if’ in ‘it looks as if the sun goes round the earth’. (p. 151) The example brings out at least this: we don’t always speak with full possession of our own intentions. And this suggests that there is room for a wide notion of intention, one that allows for intentions we are not aware of (not subconscious intentions, though). Now, I’m not saying that everyone who has ever used a proposition in one of the strange ways I mentioned had such intentions. To see what a particular proposition means, we need to examine the very particular circumstances of the utterance. But the possibility exists: the possibility of using words with the intention to show how the words collapse on themselves—sometimes even if we don’t realize that this is our intention. I should add that complete ignorance of one’s intentions here seems to me unlikely. That is, when people use the kind of language I am discussing, they typically recognize, even if vaguely, that there is something strange about it. It would not come to them as a complete surprise if we pointed that out. They may like the fact that what they say is logically a bit off, or dislike it. It may seem to them to appropriately reflect their intentions, or they may resent the fact that they can’t do better. But whatever the case might be, in the cases under discussion people are stuck with the strangeness, and, I’m suggesting, to the extent that people are so stuck, the reason for that is that it is an essential part of their intention. Ethics as an Aspect of Philosophy - In what sense is there an ethical point to the Tractatus8/17/2013 I want to resist the thought that ethics enters the Tractatus essentially as a consequence of philosophical clarification—as the kind of orientation toward the world and language, which is achieved through, or is the elaboration of, the discarding of metaphysical claims as nonsensical. I want to avoid claims like:
Achieving such acceptance [manifested by saying only what can be said] in any and every aspect of one’s life is precisely the way in which ‘the ethical problem’ is solved—or rather it is the way in which the appearance of such a problem is entirely dissolved, leaving behind the only genuine problems there are. (From Stephen Mulhall’s “Words, Waxing and Waning: Ethics in/and/of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.” To be fair to Mulhall, he also mentions that ethics might be able to enter through a kind of ‘figurative register of language.’ He doesn’t say much about this, though, or about the philosophical tensions with the other way he elaborates in which ethics enters our life.) On such a reading, what it is for something to have an ethical point is essentially explained in the same terms that describe the intellectual achievement involved in the dissolution of metaphysics. (This also often goes with not taking as too important that there is a distinction between the 6.4s and the 6.5s—taking the two sets of remarks as a single unit.) The discarding of metaphysics in the Tractatus is impressive. I always go back to this post of Kelly Joley to remind myself; to get a fix. Anyway, it is so impressive, that once we experience it, we might want to model all philosophical achievements on it—to understand even moral success just as a variation on it. Ethics thus piggybacks on the dissolution of metaphysics. It is thought of as an elaboration of the same theme. I want to resist this. In opposition, I want to suggest, there is ethics in the Tractatus apart from the dissolution of metaphysics. I do not want to deny that something ethical can be seen in the particular orientation achieved when metaphysics dissolves; that is, philosophical clarification has an ethical aspect. Which means we can look at philosophy this way. (Wittgenstein is hardly the first to have thought that there is something ethical in philosophizing.) But other things have similar, ethical, aspects. And so, the ethical aspect of the dissolution of metaphysics does not yet capture the whole of ethics. Furthermore, we don’t have to look at the dissolution of metaphysics this way; it is not the only aspect it has. In any case, ethics should first be understood separately from the dissolution of metaphysics if we are to see how it can be an aspect of it. Seeing the ethical achievement through the dissolution of metaphysics imposes the structure of the latter on the former. Or better, it gives ethics the face of something else. It biases us in a certain way regarding the reality of ethics—regarding what it is for a proposition to have ethical life. It is also less than helpful in clarifying what is ethical in the philosophical achievement—what point there is in saying it is also an ethical achievement, that it lives ethically. It lumps the two things together--the ethical life of propositions and the freedom that comes with the dissolution of metaphysics --and ends up blurring them both. Alternatively, to understand how philosophical clarification has an ethical aspect I suggest that we first understand ethics apart from the dissolution of metaphysics. Or rather, through an investigation of logic and meaning, we can understand the grammar, or lack thereof, of moral discourse. In particular, I suggest, we need an understanding of how moral propositions clarify, and what type of clarity they seek. And this will give us a sense of the reality of moral discourse—its point, its life. We will then be able to bring this to bear on philosophy itself: see clearly how philosophy can have this point, this life; i.e. see the moral aspect of philosophy, and see that it is an aspect. In resisting the line of thought above, I am also resisting a kind of tendency among commentators—especially commentators about ethics in the Tractatus—to lump together issues that come up towards the end of the Tractatus: solipsism, the dissolution of metaphysics, skepticism, the riddle of life in space and time, the supposed ethical point of the book, and so on. This tendency turns all connections between issues into identities, and everything is discussed through everything else. We get a single scrambled discussion, where we should have had many separate ones. – In truth, everything is thus obscured. One thing that creates that tendency is the (not entirely false) idea that the Tractatus is committed to a kind of unity of intellectual problems, and to a kind of unity of method. It deals with everything all at once: metaphysics is dissolved, the problem of life disappears, happiness is secured, the ladder is thrown, and the world is finally seen aright. I do not want to deny that there are deep, internal, connections between the issues. But I do want to insist that there is a question how they are connected. Lumping the issues together—which seems to happen often—simply viewing them through one another, and especially using the overcoming of metaphysics as a template for what happens in ethics, is not yet making the connections clear. I’m reading some Tractatus secondary literature, and often find myself disappointed. I find readings that have the Tractatus’ propositions as conclusions far more useful than those that use them as premises. That is: I don’t find it useful when an interpreter writes: “since there is only logical necessity (Tractatus 6.37), this and that follows.” I do find it useful when an interpreter manages to write: “this and that, hence there is only logical necessity.”
In general, one good notion of interpretation is this: A good interpretation is one that gives us a reason to—makes us, makes us want to—say what the philosopher says; one that pulls, delivers, the philosophy out of us. The first kind of interpretation attempts to make a philosopher coherent with him- or herself, but leaves the philosopher’s thought closed up in its own private philosophical world. It typically gives us a merely ‘syntactical,’ mechanical, idea about the philosopher’s views, but no sense of reality, and no reason to care. The second kind of interpretation makes what the philosopher says responsible for something independently of the philosopher’s views, something being responsible for we can find independently valuable, something that we can come to want to find a way of being responsible for, something that can live for us. Would this notion of interpretation also work for literary works? Importantly, this is also true regarding our conception of philosophy. It is not so useful to say: “Wittgenstein thought that it is impossible to debate theses in philosophy (Investigations §128), therefore this and that.” It is far more useful if one manages to say: “this and that, and this shows that it is impossible to debate theses in philosophy.” That is, what philosophy delivers out of us is always also an experienced appreciation what philosophizing is. Using an expression meaningfully (how else?) implies having a logical place for the expression in one’s life—it is having a life with the expression.
When using an expression in a secondary or absolute sense, part of the intention, the point, is to give an image of the life with the expression that we need to have (sometimes for a particular purpose, sometimes more generally). BUT, and this is crucial, it is also part of the intention in such cases that we don’t have such a life with the expression. In this sense, using an expression in a secondary or an absolute sense is nonsense. Using language that is essentially figurative does not reveal a way of making sense of a situation any more than it reveals the way—the particular way—in which the situation escapes our ability to make sense of it. In other words:, when using an expression in a secondary or absolute sense, meaning is detached from use. In such cases we have only an image of language, and using an expression in a secondary or absolute sense is thus not playing a language game. There is no such thing as 'the language-game of secondary or absolute use.' That's the WHOLE POINT of such uses. In a sense, anything can be an object of art, because, or so I wish to argue, what makes something an object of art is a matter of how it is used. But I’m using here a very broad notion of use to include what I intend. So let me briefly explain what I mean by “use.”
Instead of talking of ‘using something as an object of art’ I can also say ‘thinking about something as an object of art.’ The two things would come to the same thing. Both indicate that the object is brought into our lives in a particular way, or occupies such a logical place in it—an art-object place. Something being an art object, in other words, is a matter of grammar, a matter of logical function. And there is no limit on what can thus function. This is then what I mean by ‘use.’ So that’s my first claim. All it amounts to is what we may call ‘the grammaticalization of art’: the taking of the grammar of art to indicate, elucidate, for us what art is—its essence. The second claim I want to make is more substantial and controversial. I want to characterize a particular logical place that art takes in life: a particular grammar that the art object has, a particular use that is a use of something as an art-object. The place in life of an art-object in which I’m interested is a reflective one. Take what you now see as an example. Stop reading for a moment and just look at what you see. – It is a strange command: “look at what you see.” But we can obey it. (It takes practice. Painters are better at it.) It would involve a kind of aspect-seeing. And you can do it at any moment: take yourself out of your routine with things, observe them sub specie aeterni, suspend them from their worldly existence. I would also like to note that some such distancing involves perceptual experience, and some involves a sort of experience that is more intellectual than perceptual. Anyway, since this command takes us to a place beyond our routine normative life with things, since it allows us to see things from “sideways on,” in doing so it also forces on us a type of reflection on them. Related thought, in which it is also implicit what I take Wittgenstein to mean by saying that ethics and aesthetics are one (Tractatus 6.421), and by saying that there can be no moral propositions (Tractatus 6.42): We don’t live life as if observed (e.g. as characters in God’s novel). The idea of living life like that is related to the idea of seeing only aspects—never letting anything become a routine, never really living with things, never letting them be in our world. (See William Day’s “Aspect-Seeing and the Nature of Experience,” unpublished.) The difference is that in thinking of ourselves as observed, we are not the agents of seeing, but the patients. We are seen; and by the seeing we are suspended from life. Some philosophy I want to describe like this: It seems to engage in a method of philosophizing by seeing, or trying to discover, aspects; seeing things differently, perhaps reminiscent of some art-talk, reflections about art. The most exquisite and wonderful and confusing and fertile philosophical connections can thus be made. Unexpected dimensions are exposed, ducks are amazingly revealed to be just the other side of rabbits, the mundane turns into the spectacular, and the philosopher’s world becomes more colorful.
One of my difficulties with such philosophy is that it always takes me a lot of time to realize, to formulate to myself, that this is what might be going on—especially when I’m doing it. But this is a small matter. Another difficulty I find is that such philosophy isn't always ready to recognize that this is what it is doing. But the bigger matters emerge when such philosophy is tempted to try to see two aspects at the same time, when the claim is made that ducks just ARE rabbits. It is at such philosophical moments that I cannot understand what is going on any more. This happens to me in connection with the discussions of ethics in the Tractatus’ and the “Lecture on Ethics.” Moral language, I want to say, has both the aspect of sense and the aspect of nonsense. It has the aspect of sense insofar as it has the tendency—the function—to change our perspective: to reveal something anew, re-introduce it into our world: “This prisoner here, she’s someone’s daughter, you know.” One is thus made to come into a new life with the object. On the other hand, I want to say, moral use of language is not that of changing a perspective—not really. Because what moral language reveals is a “perspective” form outside life and world. “You cannot treat her as if she had no value!” – But what value? value to whom? relative to what? – Paraphrasing Wittgenstein, ‘not only that no reply that I can think of would do to answer these questions, but I would reject every significant reply that anybody could possibly suggest, ab initio, on the ground of its significance.’ With no possible reply we have a life, which means we don’t have a life with the original injunction that these replies are supposed to substantiate. Moral language thus makes us contemplate things as if from a world apart. It makes us see things—our own language—from “sideways on.” I.e. there is here no perspective, no contemplation, no seeing. It thus has the aspect of nonsense. There are other cases in which something that is meaningful also has a meaningless aspect: you can look at humans as bags of mostly water, or at a Rembrandt painting as a mere assortment of colors, a bundle of perceptions. But the case of moral language is different. In this case, the nonsense aspect is essential. You have to see it together with the sense-aspect. You have to see both aspects at the same time. When, in philosophy, there is a difficult issue, whose difficulty is not due to the depth of the issue, or not merely, but also to the fact that there is actually an entangled huddled knot of issues, which are hard to separate and untie, and especially when those issues pertain to the mystical, and the religious, and the ethical—when this happens in philosophy, there is a temptation (if not a tendency) to imagine that the mystical is a property of the entanglement itself. Some might thus want to keep the knot, for fear that untying it would destroy the depth and that something of importance will be lost. This is depth through muddle, mysticism through confusion. – A bad idea.
Something of this sort happens often when people approach the cluster of ideas Wittgenstein had in the Tractatus with regard to ethics, and the limits of sense, and solipsism, and the mystical, and the end of philosophy. And what I want to do is not so much to separate, but to note a couple of threads in this cluster, which I think should be separated. In the Notebooks, Wittgenstein makes a distinction between the thinking and willing subjects: 5.8.16: “The thinking subject is surely mere illusion. But the willing subject exists.” He uses the term ‘thinking subject’ in Tractatus 5.631. And the discussion he has in the 5.6s is separated from the discussion he has in 6.37-4 about the will, and again from the discussion in 6.423, and 6.43. – I think this indicates that he maintained some distinction between the thinking and the willing subjects in the Tractatus—that he was treating them as separate, or separable, issues. Commentators anyway don’t usually make much use of the distinction. They lump the two subjects—willing and thinking—together into one subject: they often call it ‘the metaphysical subject’ (a term that Wittgenstein uses in 5.633, 5.641, but not in the 6s), and they distinguish this metaphysical subject from the psychological, empirical, subject. Russell did this in the introduction, and Hacker follows in Insight and Illusion; but even Michael Kremer does this in ‘To What Extent is Solipsism a Truth?’ I suspect that this lumping together of the two issues—(a) the considerations regarding the limits of meaning or the philosophical confusions regarding those limits, connected to the thinking subject, and (b) the problems regarding the meaningfulness of moral propositions, connected to the willing subject—I suspect that lumping them together is, among other things, a residue of a conception of the limits of meaning as borders; a conception that Wittgenstein battled. That is, the two issues are lumped together, I suspect, because in the background there is a single picture that guides and confers a formal unity on the discussion: most commonly, a picture of a domain of meaning with borders that we cannot cross. Another, perhaps stronger, reason for this lumping may be the strong intuition regarding the unity of the self: we don’t have two of them, but only one, and it is hard to believe Wittgenstein thought different. But, in response, the whole question here is what it means to have a single self; what is the unity of the self. I suggest that investigating these two selves is, among other things, investigating the unity of the self: the sort of unity it has. By lumping the two issues together, we are running the risk of assuming, rather than looking at, what unity the self has. – Anyway, what we need is to look: look at the two cases. So, why is the distinction between the thinking and willing subject of interest? – Suggestion: Putting the empirical subject aside, the distinction between the willing and the thinking subject echo the Kantian distinction between theoretical and practical forms of judgment. That is, it is a distinction between kinds of mind—mindedness, making things intelligible, making them thinkable, owning the world in thought and language. But for Wittgenstein the distinction between kinds of mind is really VERY deep. Wittgenstein does not understand the distinction between theoretical and practical in the way Kant does. First, I think it is fair to say that for Wittgenstein to think is to act (thinking is a verb); and in this sense thinking is very much part of the practical. So far, then, we don’t have the distinction that Wittgenstein is interested in—not yet. The distinction begins to emerge when we see that for Wittgenstein acting (thinking included) has nothing to do with the willing subject. The willing subject for Wittgenstein is not the one who acts. She is rather the one who changes the limits of the word—makes the world happy/unhappy. We encounter the willing subject, for instance, when a certain course of action, apparently available, suddenly strikes us as impossible—as if it has been withdrawn from logical space. In other cases, a certain course of action may appear as encompassing the whole available space, and people say: ‘I can’t act differently.’ Simone Weil, I think, talks of the willing subject when she says: “Men can never escape from obedience to God. A creature cannot but obey. The only choice given to men, as intelligent and free creatures, is to desire obedience or not to desire it” (The Love of God and Affliction, 129). If the thinking subject is the limit, the willing subject is the one who determines where those limits are. (Or perhaps, the willing subject is the thinking subject turned on itself?) Still—and this is the most confusing bit—the description of the activity of the willing subject hopelessly, nonsensically, but also necessarily, piggybacks on meaningful language. It makes use of language whose grammar is one of describing things that happen in the world, of actions, as if such language can capture what the willing subject does—as if the willing subject does something, acts. Another related thought: In the Tractatus Wittgenstein seems to be more ambivalent about the existence of the thinking subject then about the existence of the willing subject. About the thinking subject he says in 5.631: “The thinking, presenting subject; there is no such thing.” But in 5.641: “There is therefore really a sense in which the philosophy we can talk of a non-psychological I.” As I understand this, the thinking subject is not one more thing with which to make contact. As such it does not exist. Rather, the thinking subject is the maker of contact. It exists in thinking, not in being thought of: it is the limit, it is transcendental. It is subject, not object. It thus disappears every time we try to think or say something about it, as a thumb disappears when we try to catch it. Or again, the thinking subject does not stand in an external, but in an internal relation to things: Thinking of things is not a matter of capturing them from the outside, but of animating them as if from their midst. To go back to the willing subject, the point is that this set of issues mentioned in the last paragraph does not present itself again when Wittgenstein comes to the discussion about the willing subject in the 6.4s. By the time he gets to discussing that, he has moved on to other issues. In other words, for Wittgenstein the non-existence of the willing subject as a thing in the world is different from the non-existence of the thinking subject as a thing in the world. Of both subjects we cannot speak: both do not require that we speak of them to reveal themselves; both are subjects not objects. But unlike the thinking subject, the (need to talk of the) willing subject does not disappear as a result of the philosophical argument. (And this is connected to a distinction between different kinds of effects that nonsense may have on us, which Cora Diamond makes in ‘Ethics Imagination and the Method of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.’) As a corollary, the overcoming of the thinking self and the overcoming of the willing self are two different achievements—even if not entirely separate: the one, I suspect, is a necessary metaphor for the other. I read a forthcoming paper today by David Stern: “Wittgenstein’s lectures on ethics, Cambridge 1933” (Wittgenstein Studien, 4(1), 191-206). He makes there an extensive use of the notion of family resemblance. I want to distinguish between two ways in which this notion can be understood. I think that for the most part Stern has the first notion. I, on the other hand, am more inclined towards the second.
It is possible to take the notion of “family resemblance” and make into something that competes with the notion of “definition.” That would give us the first understanding of the notion. Accordingly, concepts (all concepts or some concept) don’t have this structure, but that structure: they can’t be exactly captured with a single definition, but only with a cluster of definitions. We may now imagine the definitions as rings covering areas, and put them one on top of the other, and this may make our concepts look blurry around the edges, where there is less overlap between the rings. But the point about blurriness is separate. This is however not the best way to understand what Wittgenstein means by “family resemblance.” It is actually quite bad, for it misses the whole point of his introducing this concept. The purpose of introducing this concept is not to help us improve our ability to define. It is rather to make us look: To give us a tool for looking (to draw contours, rather than barriers. For more on this distinction see here). The purpose of a definition is to replace our natural understanding (e.g. because it is not scientific, not exact): Think of the scientific understanding of “red,” or the legal definition of “marriage,” or the medical definition of “alive.” Think how those definitions give us things that are different from what we get with our natural use of those terms. A definition sacrifices some of the reasons for having a concept for the sake of uniformity. (Which is not to say this is necessarily a bad thing. For some purposes (scientific, legal, medical), uniformity is indeed useful.) Now, a cluster of definitions does something very similar. In fact, it can be thought of as an improvement on what a single definition can do. True, it makes things look more complicated. It gives up on the singularity, and pays the price of simplicity. But it gains in exactness. A cluster of definitions can capture much more than a single definition can. As opposed to giving a definition, we may rather want clarification or characterization. And this will give us the second way of understanding what family resemblance is. Let me put family resemblance aside for a moment, and explain what I mean by “clarification.” Suppose someone clarified the notion of ‘marriage’ thus: “It is not marriage if you don’t let it change you.” This can allow us to see a face of marriage. It is not a definition; it involves no notion of boundaries--not even blurred boundaries! The Fregean comparison of a concept to an area, which Wittgenstein mentions in PI §71 just does not apply. It rather allows us to get a proper feel for, or to get us to think about, what we need that concept ‘marriage’ for in the first place, and how our world would be poorer without it. It allows us to consider what conceptual life a part of reality in which we live demands. It allows us to get attuned to a web of interest and sensitivities, and to a network of particularities and detail which permeates the encounter between mind and world. My point is that the same kind of clarifying effect can be had when we look at different ways of using a concept: when we look at the family resemblance of the different uses. It is a fact about us that looking at something together with something else, alongside an object of comparison, often helps us to see it better. And I take it that the idea of ‘comparison’ is internal to the notion of family resemblance: We learn—come to see—what a concept means by comparing what it means in different cases, putting the different cases alongside each other. It is useful to note that when comparing things in this way, we do not have to put them one on top of the other (as opposed to alongside one another): like the different definitions of a concept mentioned above. That is, to see a family resemblance is not typically to produce a Galton-style picture, which morphs the different cases, and brings out what all have in common. Imagine comparing different shades of red in this way. There would be nothing in common to all the shades. Although I don’t want to deny that a family resemblance may be made visible in this way in some cases, it can also be misleading to portray it in this way. For although a resemblance is something that we see, resemblance is not a visible object. It is a (grammatically) different kind of object of sight. A note about aspect-perception: Wittgenstein sets the stage for a discussion about aspect-seeing, in section xi of the second part of the PI, with a discussion about seeing similarity. He says there that it involves a special kind of object of sight. If I’m right about family resemblance, executing the philosophical method or methods of looking for family resemblances, which Wittgenstein recommends in the first part of PI, involve the ability to see aspects. The ability to see aspects is not the ability to engage in a practical routine. (I discuss the distinction here.) Nevertheless, seeing an aspect can make a practical routine visible. We have a duty to tell the truth—the whole truth! But it is part of that duty to make the ones to whom we tell the truth capable of hearing the truth—the whole truth.
We have a tendency to think that our duties are smaller, simpler, and easier than they really are. It is an instance of a more general tendency we have to evade morality. I buy a gun because I’m free to defend myself, and I’m scarred—scarred, because I heard my neighbor has a gun. But now that I have one, you are scarred, because you control neither me nor my neighbor, and who knows, one of us might be crazy, or have a crazy relative—you are free to imagine the worst. So you go and get a gun—compelled by your nightmares, controlled by your freedom. And now we are all scarred together—bound together. We are bound by freedom and fear. Terrified of each other.
Following Rachel Cohen's recent article in The Believer:
We imagine pieces of art to be encapsulated, canned, value. Value preserved in bronze; value conserved on canvas. Value, we imagine, is at last tangible. We try to materially consume it by buying it—making it ours. Apparently, people are willing to pay, and so works of art indeed have such commodity value. But it is not the only value they have. (There can even be an argument that says that it is logically impossible for works of art to only have this kind of value.) And in any case, as opposed to their commodity value, the artistic value of works of art is not something materially consumable. Here is a family of suggestions: The artistic value of a work of art is typically like the value of a word. It can be educational—for we are educated by words. To attempt to consume a work of art is, thus, one way in which we may refuse education. And art, like words, can also be meaning-conferring: Works of art can make sense of things for us, and teach us how to make sense of things. Attempting to consume art is thus also a way of failing to ask the question of meaningfulness—to see, to share, the problem. And artistic value can also be like the value of conversation—of someone saying something to you, inviting you to say something back. – Or at least trying; for so many works of art come from wounds that are otherwise inexpressible, and so many works of art have within themselves a wonder: “Have I said something?” To attempt to consume a work of art is therefore also one way in which we may fail to listen, or even refuse to meet another mind. Often, when there is a distinction between two alternatives, and when people are uncomfortable by there being just two alternatives, and find it inexplicable that there are only two, the natural inclination people have is to try to find a third. (Think, for example, about debates about the law of excluded middle in logic, or about attempts to find a middle way between therapeutic and theoretical--resolute and orthodox--readings of the Tractatus.)
I believe that sometimes the real problem in such cases is obscured when people try to find a middle way. The real problem, what people may really be unclear about, is the main categories--the two initial categories--they were unsatisfied with. This is what they need to clarify. Instead, their focus is on some imaginary shady middle category that they really cannot see very well at all. It is I think the best policy, in many such cases, to turn our attention back to the primary categories--to begin again. When we do this we can find, and do often find, what we really need, and what we are really interested in. For one thing, we may discover that the categories we began with--each of them--might not be all that homogenous. (We may find, for instance, that in different cases being true or being false means different things, or that there are deeply different kinds of theory and deeply different kinds of therapy.) The unclarity--the real problem--is often about the variety I just mentioned, and it would be useful if the discussion was focused on this rather than on the imaginary third category. When we focus on that shady middle alternative, we lose track of what we are unclear about in the first place. In Beyond Moral Judgment Alice Crary describes her view in this way:
The view of ethics laid out in this book […] takes for granted the logic of the wider conception of rationality and in consequence it differs from impartiality criticisms in suggesting that there is something confused about the very idea of a vantage point outside individuals’ affective lives from which to determine that moral responsibility calls for bringing these lives within morality “from the beginning.” At the same time, the view also differs from impartiality criticisms, not only in making the widely rational suggestion that (without regard to its form) rational moral thought is essentially informed by and expressive of individuals’ sensibilities, but also in thereby suggesting that demands for regulating the play of sensibility in accordance with prior moral judgments represent an unqualified and entirely general threat to the development of moral understanding. (My italics) There is here what I’ve called a pot paradox: an argument that is so strong that it threatens its own coherency. To see that, I’ve italicized two claims Crary makes: one logical, and one moral. The morally problematic demands Crary talks of—to curb our sensibilities according to some prior independent moral understanding—are expressive of what she calls “moralism.” These demands, she thinks, stem from and are nourished by a logically confused and ultimately incoherent idea of a vantage point from which such moral understanding is even possible: moral understanding in abstraction from our sensibilities. But, one may ask, how can a demand be a bad one if it is incoherent, or logically rests on an incoherent claim? If it is incoherent, it seems, then it is not even really a demand in the first place—bad or good; it does not have enough sense in it to allow it to rise up to the level of a demand. And that’s a pot paradox. Wrestling with nonsense in general, and dealing with pot paradoxes in particular requires a special kind of intellectual effort—a special kind of use of the imagination, a special kind of patience. To wrestle with nonsense—e.g. to find something that someone has said nonsensical—is not to wrestle with something we already know is nonsense. It is to wrestle with our inability to make sense of what has been said, which also worries about the possibility, but does not make an unwavering claim, that the speaker herself only thinks she has spoken meaningfully. It is to be willing to try again and again. Crary doesn’t say enough that I can see to say how, she thinks, this paradox is to be dealt with. There are three possibilities I can think of, and I will take them one at a time. The discussion below is meant as a partial demonstration of what it could take to deal with a pot paradox—to wrestle with nonsense. a) First, then, with regard to the pot paradox in Crary’s book, we may think that enough sense can be made of the idea of that ‘abstract vantage point’ from which moral understanding is supposedly possible—not only that we can “grasp enough of its spirit,” but that there is a coherent idea there somewhere. This is one possibility for resolving the pot paradox in Crary’s book. It would involve significantly weakening, if not giving up completely on, the logical claim Crary makes. Perhaps, we may think, there is some minimum subset of sensitivities that can ground a dwindled, and depleted, but yet coherent kind of moral understanding—perhaps something along the lines of Bernard Williams’ notion of Kantian morality. My sense is that Crary’s discussion shares the spirit of this kind of solution. The kind of moral failures she concentrates on, and is interested in, are typically failures of responsiveness to particular dimensions of life which are failures of the imagination: failures to take a hint, to be emotionally moved, to find something funny, to see through another’s eyes, to be drawn to a certain style of description, to a word, and so on. Crary does not focus her attention on what the kind of philosophy she criticizes takes to be the core set of issues of moral thinking: rational moral judgments—‘murder is wrong,’ ‘slavery is wrong,’ and so on. She thus gives the impression that this part of the moralism she attacks remains immune to her criticism. And if it is indeed so immune, then although the views Crary is criticizing may not be comprehensive, they also do not threaten to be nonsensical, and their criticism is therefore not in danger of being pray to a pot paradox. Having said this, however, it is not clear to me how strong Crary wants her logical claim to be. I am not, that is, sure if, or to what extent, Crary is interested in pursuing the stronger claim that a moralist who would be thoroughly true to her creed, the moralist who would truly think in abstraction from her sensibilities, would not even be able to make anything that we could recognize as a moral judgment—not even about murder and slavery. On a strong reading of Crary’s logical claim, a moralist like this says things that appear not to make much sense. Criticizing her for this, however, would mean that our battle with nonsense is not yet over. b) There is another possibility for dealing with the pot paradox Crary is facing. For me this is a more interesting possibility, but discussion of it may go beyond Crary’s interests. Crary, as we’ve seen, makes a connection between a kind of logical incoherence and a kind of deficiency in moral understanding, and I have argued that this connection is unstable. Now, the instability here depends on the idea that the logical and moral points are separate: that even though they are internally connected, they are still not the very same claim. This, however, may not be necessary. And this suggests another way of dealing with Crary’s pot paradox: It is possible that the very logical philosophical confusion Crary describes, the very idea of a moral life in abstraction from our sensitivities, may itself be expressive of a kind of moral attitude. According to this idea, the moral failing involved—assuming for the moment there is one—is not something in addition to the philosophical one. Rather, the philosophical confusion here would itself be an expression of a refusal to accept our finitude. In Stanley Cavell’s terms, it implicates us in treating our limits as limitations. Now, making this sort of criticism—saying that someone is treating their limits as limitations—is not yet a way of making sense of the problematic view we are criticizing. It is still being in the grip of a pot paradox. For to treat your limits as limitations would be to treat an idea that does not make any obvious sense as if it stood for something in particular that you cannot do—go back in time, feel another’s pain, count to infinity, and so on. It is to confuse two senses of “impossible”—the nonsensical with the too difficult. It is, that is, to be deeply confused; but it is not to do anything in particular. And this means that the resolute critic yet again finds herself criticizing someone for doing nothing in particular—she finds herself yet again in the grip of a pot paradox. We can say that the person who is presumably treating limits as limitations is being criticized not so much for what she does, but for failing to do something. This is possible, but it is of little use. For one thing, that person would likely find this criticism baffling. She would feel she is thereby being robbed of her first person authority: that someone is trying to argue with her, not by saying she is mistaken about the truth of what she believes, but about whether she believes something in the first place. And she would probably feel she can do with this criticism just about as much as she can with someone who denies that she finds something funny when she says she does, or is in pain. The resolute critic seems to be at the end of her rope here. To the extent that her criticism makes any sense, the one she is criticizing will not be able to accept her criticism, or even understand it. c) Finally, there is a third way of dealing with the pot paradox in Crary’s book—a way to make sense of the view she criticizes, or a view that shares some features with the view she attacks. The view I have in mind also involves a refusal, or inability, to accept our limits, and the wish to treat them as limitations. Crary connects such refusal to a kind of moralism, and for the most part she treats it as a kind of moral failing. Mostly, if I understand, she has in mind the kind of moral attitude that would leave one cold to certain details in the texture of human life—to nuances of character, relationships, or situations. But there is another kind of moral failing that is connected with such a refusal. I have in mind the kind of attitude that Wittgenstein in the Tractatus calls “unhappiness.” Such an attitude comes out, for instance, in a kind of resentment directed towards the very conditions of human life: towards such facts as that we get old, that we are fallible, that we depend on others, that we cannot become someone else, that we have a body, and so on. Indeed the two failings may be connected. Moralism of the kind Crary talks of may be a kind of unhappiness: it can be understood as a wish that life were simpler, and a refusal to accept the defining role of the particularities of human life for human moral thinking. But nevertheless, such moralism—such idea of moral understanding in abstraction from our sensibilities and the details of human life—does not necessarily indicate unhappiness. The refusal to accept our finitude, the treating of our limits as limitations, in one of its inflections, may rather be expressive of a deep religious-like type of moral attitude. Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics gives an expression to such an attitude. This is how the Lecture ends: My whole tendency and I believe the tendency of all men who ever tried to write or talk Ethics or Religion was to run against the boundaries of language. This running against the walls of our cage is perfectly, absolutely hopeless. Ethics so far as it springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable, can be no science. What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. But it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it. Arguably, there is room for a view of ethics that does not run in the ordinary channels of life, but is an attitude to life as a whole—as if from the outside. And it is not, I think, a surprise that such a view could strike us as deeply moralistic. The moralism, as it were, is its whole point. In the previous post I argued that there is danger in logical criticism—specifically in claiming that some argument someone has made is really nonsensical. For if successful, such criticism may leave itself nothing to criticize, and thus undermine itself. I suggested that we call that paradoxical situation “pot paradoxes.” I also noted that it is not uncommon for orthodox readers of Wittgenstein, with their typically substantial conceptions of nonsense, to attempt such problematic criticisms, and not uncommon for resolute readers to point out the difficulty of such criticisms: to point out that the orthodox thinker has entangled herself in a pot paradox.
But notice: pointing out the difficulty here has the form of saying that the orthodox thinker has lapsed into nonsensicality. That is, it has the form of saying that the orthodox reader has made no coherent claim. If that is the case, however, then what claim is the resolute reader supposed to be criticizing exactly? – It very much seems that merely by trying to point out that the orthodox reader has entangled herself in a pot paradox, the resolute thinker has entangled herself in a pot paradox of her own. There is a kind of bogginess that characterizes pot paradoxes. Resolute thinkers have no magic shield to protect themselves against pot paradoxes. They come up against them too from time to time—and not only in the context of mounting criticisms against substantial readings of Wittgenstein. The battle with nonsense in general—against the kind of bogginess that characterizes discussions of nonsense—is the bread and butter of the resolute thinker; and pot paradoxes in particular are not the sole property of the substantial thinker. The problem is common property. Still, the resolute thinker is different. What distinguishes the resolute thinker is first her ability to own the paradox: to recognize that a line of thought has been derailed into incoherence and is now locked, or soaked, in a battle with nonsense—like a man wrestling with an angel. Second, the resolute thinker is distinguished by her willingness to recognize the problems we face when dealing with this paradox—when wrestling with nonsense—their shape, their dimensions, their bogginess. And third, the resolute thinker is distinguished by her willingness to wrestle. Of course, the willingness of any particular resolute thinker—their patience—may run out. In a future post I plan to discuss this issue of patience in connection with Alice Crary's Wittgensteinian ethics. In any case, in general her willingness to keep wrestling with nonsense is a measure of the resoluteness of a thinker. Let me say something about the willingness I just spoke of to wrestle with nonsense: the willingness to appreciate the reasons and consequences of a line of thought being derailed into nonsensicality. Since such wrestling is itself exposed to entanglement in pot paradoxes—this was the moral above about the fate of the resolute criticism of substantial claims about nonsense—such wrestling typically requires and thus involves a particular use of the imagination: pretending that a particular bit of nonsense makes sense, stepping into frame of mind from which it seems as if nonsensical claims could mean something. Typically, therefore, resolute dealing with nonsense involves refusal to dismiss a nonsensical expression: “I wish you could feel my pain,” “I wish I could turn back time,” and an insistence on finding a way to capture what is yet humanly important in those all-too-natural forms of expression: For the person coming up with those expressions, confused as she may be, may still be experiencing something real. It may even be part of her complaint that she cannot find a straight and secure way to express herself—her words keep imploding, and she is helpless also to make others acknowledge her distress. She is not merely distressed; she is bogged down by her own needs. Typically, to acknowledge such distress requires readiness to implicate one’s own line of thinking, oneself, in nonsense—willingness to imaginatively step into the frame of mind from which nonsense looks like sense. Criticism can be too strong. It can be so devastating as to destroy its object completely. When this happens, and when the criticism is logical, the criticism may undermine itself, for it may not leave itself anything to criticize.
This sort of situation is reminiscent of a moment in a short story, written in Yiddish by Sholem Aleichem in 1901: “The Pot.” The story is a monologue of a woman, Yenta the Henwife, who comes to ask for the Rabbi’s advice. Among many other things, she complains about her reckless and inconsiderate neighbor, Gnessy, who returned a pot she once borrowed broken. Yenta complained to Gnessy, and after some exchange on the matter, tells Yenta, Gnessy gave her the following response: “Now then, in the first place, I give you back the whole pot; in the second place, when you give me that pot it were busted already; and in the third place, I never took your pot ‘cos I got my own pot, so leave me and there’s a end!” It can be comical for an argument to undermine itself—to lapse into nonsensicality with a straight face. And something of that sort happens too when in a philosophical discussion views are criticized for logical incoherence. The critic may fail to notice that the view she is attacking has thereby been criticized beyond existence, as it were—which has thereby undermined the very criticism she set out to launch in the first place. The criticism now seems to have nothing to be about. I move that we call this kind of paradoxical argumentation “The Pot Paradox.” Pot paradoxes can be found all over in discussions between substantial and resolute readers of Wittgenstein—early and late. So, for instance, it is not uncommon for substantial readers to pronounce some idea nonsensical—saying that it fails to make sense, for it is in violation of the rules of logical syntax, or of the rules of the relevant language game. So, for instance, Peter Hacker claims: “‘formal statements’ . . . neither say nor show anything. They do violate the rules of logical syntax, for they wrongly employ formal concepts . . . the ‘formal’ statements that use them are nonsense.” (Insight and Illusion, 25-6). Crispin Wrights similarly claims: “We cannot give sense to the idea that our communal speech habits pursue objective tracks which we laid it down as our intention to follow” (Wittgenstein on the Foundations of Mathematics, 390). It is not uncommon for resolute readers to point out in response that such criticisms collapse on themselves. Thus, for instance, Cora Diamond criticizes Wright’s suggestion that the Wittgensteinian philosopher may still maintain “a sufficient grasp of the spirit” of the confused idea she attacks—grasp which allows for criticism. Allegedly, Wright here fails to see the full force of his own criticism: how the criticism is so forceful that it undermines itself. The dilemma here, the pot, has a general shape: either the criticism is successful, in which case there was nothing to criticize in the first place, or the criticism is simply unsuccessful. From the point of view of the critic, both options are bad. Words make the reality in which we live thinkable. Not necessarily, perhaps, for the first time, but words certainly do have their own particular way of allowing us to think, and the world to make sense. Apart from all the other things they do, applying words makes it possible for us to be intellectually at home in the world, to make contact with it with our minds, to make it ours. I would like to make a distinction between two ways in which this happens.
In general, linguistic expressions—words, sentences, idioms, proverbs, and so on—are tied to norms of application. They are tied to practices, to normative configurations, and to what is sometimes called ‘conceptual-’ or ‘logical-schemes.’ These are logical structures which are structures of thought—structures of meaning. And when we apply linguistic expressions, engage them to those logical structures and let those structures breathe normative, meaningful, practical life into those expressions, reality thereby makes itself thinkable. Now, In addition to this—and this is what I would like to focus on—linguistic expressions also have all sorts of psychological associations tied to them. The use of a word, for example, may be tied to particular experiences. It may provoke emotions, it may produce color, it may inspire. In short, words have a taste. Saying of a politician, for instance, that she is “sensitive” about her public image may be a kind of understatement. It is a literal and not a figurative employment of an expression, but it illustrates a well-known fact: that choice of words matters—not only because of the logical function of the words, but also because of how they feel. The right choice of words may sometimes even make the difference between a convincing and an unconvincing argument. We choose words not only for their logical characteristics. Now, Frege has issued a commandment: “always to separate sharply the psychological from the logical, the subjective from the objective.” And since that happened, the experiential side of using language has not been taken very seriously by most of those who regard themselves as his students. (The separate, and more confusing, distinction between semantics and pragmatics, has also contributed to that.) Nevertheless, I wish to argue, these experiences, may too have a role in making reality thinkable. To see that, I would like to highlight a particular kind of taste words can have—a particular kind of experiences associated with language: We sometimes, this is what I wish to highlight, can experience the mind making contact with the world, or attempting to make contact. The meaning of something in the world—a situation, a person, an object—and hence the meaningfulness of a certain word or linguistic expression (its ability to actually make sense of that situation or person or object), may come to us experientially. We may encounter the meaningfulness of things in the world as well as that of words, as if it were a thing, a body, something to hold, to feel. (Such experiences may be forced on us, but we can sometimes bring them about.) Wittgenstein talked in this context of ‘meaning experiences.’ And along similar lines, Virginia Wolf, in ‘On Being Ill,’ writes: …words give out their scent and distil their flavor, and then if at last we grasp the meaning, it is all the richer for having come to us sensually first, by way of the palate and the nostrils, like some queer odour. We may call this the experience of thinking par excellence, the experience of capturing the world in thought. It is the experience of thinkability—the sense that the world could or should become intellectually ours. To be sure, we don’t all have the same associations and experiences when we think; we don’t always—perhaps not even often—have any experience when we use language meaningfully (how else?). Nevertheless, the experiences of capturing reality in mind exist. There is a host of them. Such is the experience of knowing how to go on, the experience of things falling into place. Coming a bit short of that, we sometimes only have the experience that it should be possible for things to fall into place, even though they haven’t yet. Such experiences can be, and some of them are, “A-ha!” experiences. But more generally, they are experiences of being at home in the world. To have them is to experience the world allowing us to contemplate it. And we sometimes also have the opposite sort of experience: experiences of the world rejecting us, refusing to make itself available to us—to make itself thinkable. Reality can be difficult in this way. These are experiences of failure to make sense, failure to come into smooth intellectual contact with the world. We may feel as if the world is shouldering us out. It is typically an experience of being deeply foreign. What I called ‘the experience of thinking’ is at the same time the experience of the object about which we are thinking and of the mode of thought about the object. It is a reflexive mode of thinking, in which we are aware of the contact our mind makes with the world as it is making that contact—as it is making, or is attempting to make, sense of things. It is, we might say, a mode of thinking that is aware of itself—aware of its own concern to have things make sense; aware too of the possibility of its own failure. And our susceptibility to such experiences is indispensible to us. It allows us to problematize, reflect on, and examine our modes of thought. And by doing that, it also allows us to examine ourselves: to examine whether we are alive to the world, and whether we allow the world to be properly alive to us. How should we make the distinction between the literal and the figurative? – I don’t have much to contribute by way of a general theory; there are anyway different ways of using this distinction. I do, however, want to suggest one way of using the distinction. I believe there is a distinction we need to make anyway, and it seems to me that the terms ‘figurative’ and ‘literal’ fit the distinction well.
The distinction I suggest is between ways language allows us to grab hold of reality with our mind—make reality thinkable. Specifically, there is a distinction to make between capturing reality in a language that does not bring the very mode of capturing reality into question, and capturing reality in a language that does. The former would be the literal, and the latter would be the figurative way of using language. The use of literal language typically does not indicate in itself that there is any problem capturing reality. The cogwheels of our mind run smoothly; they are unproblematically turned by the cogwheels of reality. So much so, that we don’t typically stop to wonder at how this is made possible—how remarkable it is that things around us allow us to think about them. And then again, who has times for such wonders anyway. In any case, the literal expression does not draw attention to itself. It does its work and is not given a second thought; it is dispensed with. It is like a flashlight that allows us to make reality visible, thinkable, but in itself is of no interest. The logical structure of reality is unproblematically captured by literal language, pictured by it. Language thus makes reality thinkable; we can see into reality through language. The use of figurative language, on the other hand, maintains some distance from reality. The figurative expression is a dark glass. It draws attention to itself. You can see that it is a picture. You can see the effort it makes to make reality thinkable. The figurative expression is an attempt to capture the logical structure of reality, which cannot be quite sure of its own success. It cannot be sure that it could close the gap between mind and world, language and reality. Its distance from reality gives the figurative expression a deeper feel. Through it, we don’t only see reality, but also ourselves seeing reality—attempting to picture it, become intimate with it, make it thinkable. We sometimes want to open up such a gap between mind and world. Sometimes, it is something we are interested in: rethink our modes of thought. The use of figurative language allows us to express that. But this distance between mind and world, in the atypical occasions when we encounter it, is not necessarily voluntary—not necessarily something we did. The use of figurative language may be due to the logical structure of reality being uncertain or unclear. Reality, it may be felt, is there to be captured. We see it; we want to say something about it. But still, we cannot see it clearly; language does not run smoothly. The distance between it and us may thus be forced on us. It may be the case, that is, that the linguistic categories we have somehow fall short of making reality properly thinkable. We may resolve this, in some cases at least, by resorting to literal language—by capturing reality with the categories we do have. But the use of figurative language may indicate that there is something unsatisfactory about that—that literal language may only make things look smooth, but will ultimately conceal something. Something more needs to be captured; something more needs to be made thinkable. Let me emphasize that the categories ‘literal’ and ‘figurative’ as I am using them here are categories of use. That is, I suggest that we do something different—the intention is different—when we use language literally and when we use it figuratively. It is part of the semantic intention of both literal and figurative uses of expressions to make reality thinkable. I take it that this is in general part of what it is to be a semantic intention in the first place—to make reality thinkable. However, the intention in the case of figurative use of expressions is more complex than in the literal case. The figurative expression does not only try to make reality thinkable, it also involves a kind of commentary on the way it makes reality thinkable: The use of a figurative expression involves the intention to contemplate the way in which reality is made thinkable. This further dimension of our mind’s relation to reality, made visible by figurative expressions, is at least part of what gives the sense that they capture something deep. Philosophers have argued that we use figurative modes of thought and talk often, even regularly. Lakoff and Johnson even argued that the very structure of thought is metaphorical, and the implication is that we cannot avoid metaphors even if we try (and see also Blumenberg and Derrida). Nevertheless, statistics and metaphysics-of-thought notwithstanding, figurative thinking is not matter of course. There is a sense in which figurative thinking is by its very nature not ordinary; and to miss this is to miss something essential about figurative thinking
The importance of the phenomena of figurative thinking, I suggest, should not be looked for in its pervasiveness, but in the fact that it may have a kind of transcendental role. Figurative thinking, this is my suggestion, has the power to make us reflect about the modes of contact our minds make with reality. It has a role in allowing us to make the reality we live it a home for our minds—to make reality thinkable. This is what Wittgenstein once called “our real need.” Going by indirections is part of the mystery of figurative expressions. It is both what gives them an air of dissonance, and what allows them to have an inspiring effect on us: The figurative expression has the power to create a kind of gap between mind and world, to make the mind become unhinged as it were—at least for a little while—and thus allows us to contemplate and explore—perhaps playfully perhaps urgently—the forms and modes of contact our minds make with reality: the ways in which reality becomes thinkable. I take it that this is one thing that may make capable speakers opt for figurative and metaphorical expressions: This is one of the things we do with language—that speakers may want to do, and do intentionally: explore the connection between mind and world, and the categories that make it possible. If, and to the extent that, the categories with which we capture reality may be problematized—if for instance, these categories may fail to support our ability to communicate ourselves, to convey our experiences—then it may become a task for us to think about the ways in which we make sense of reality, and to make contact with it with our mind. Someone who sees that, experiences that, may want to communicate that to others—perhaps share it with them, perhaps remind them of their vulnerability. To the extent that we may have such linguistic intentions, we need linguistic tools that can be used for prodding: for setting people off their linguistic balance, or for luring them out of balance, or for showing them that they are out of balance. Figurative language has the power to do that. I argued that ‘Juliet is the sun’ can have a literal use. However, I do not wish to deny that it could have a figurative use as well. The problem is that even when it is put to a figurative use, there is a still a kind of unclarity about it: for it may be put to different kinds of figurative uses. The expression ‘Juliet is the sun,’ like any other expression, does not tell us how to use it. We decide that; and beside literal uses, there are also both secondary and non-secondary figurative uses of this expression. I’ll go over the details of this grammatical difference between these two kinds of uses in later posts. Here, I’m more concerned with the example—‘Juliet is the sun’; I wish to separate two uses of it, which are both figurative.
If we say that Juliet is the sun, it may be our intention to express an astounded recognition of how warm a personality she has. The expression can have such a use. In such a case, we want to describe her character as a person. “A warm personality” is itself a kind of metaphor, no doubt. But it is easy to see how it might be “straightened out”—how its content may be captured non-figuratively. For example: Juliet is friendly, smiles regularly, has a sense of humor, doesn’t get vindictive, doesn’t keep to herself, and so on. Not that the “straightened out” expression captures the content of the metaphor in full. There is a difference between the metaphorical and the literal, “straightened out,” expression—and the difference is logical: it is a difference in how language works in the two cases, and in the speakers intentions. Capable speakers don’t just happen to opt for metaphorical expressions; when they use them, they prefer them over the literal ones for a reason. I will say more about this difference in a later post. Nevertheless, my main point—the point that I’m interested in here—is that in many cases there is a literal expression that can be used as a substitute, imperfect as it might be, for the metaphorical one. As opposed to this, there is an altogether different way of using ‘Juliet is the sun’: a way that cannot be “straightened out”—a use of this expression, essential to which is that there is no way to convey our intention non-figuratively. This would be a secondary use, and it is not just logically different from the sort of figurative use mentioned above, it has a different feel: If, for instance we are trying, perhaps as Romeo did, to describe the experience of, say, looking at Juliet or thinking about her, and we are trying to capture the way in which the mind is both attracted and recoiled—as if her very existence is beyond mortal appreciation—the picture of looking at the sun is internal to our experience, and so to our intention. The image is ineliminable, and the expression can therefore not be “straightened out.” The ineliminability of the image in secondary uses of expressions is not a function of the fecundity of metaphors. Indeed, we may be trying to convey more than one thing by means of the expression ‘Juliet is the sun.’ But even then it might still be non-secondary. We might in addition, for instance, be saying something about how unique she is, or about how hard she is to ignore, or about how good she is in explaining things (shedding light on them), or alternatively about how aloof and remote, or nagging and persistent she is. ‘Juliet is the sun’ might, that is, be a multi-metaphor. But the important thing is that insofar as the intention or intentions we are attempting to convey by means of this expression can be captured directly, and non-figuratively, insofar as it can be “straightened out,” we are not using the expression in a secondary sense. The two kinds of uses of the expression ‘Juliet is the sun’ really feel very different. They have different sorts of points, even though, no doubt they are both figurative. And there is a general moral here that applies just as well to other figurative expressions: It is confused to attempt simply to grab hold of a figurative expression and attempt to analyze it—as so often happens in the literature about metaphors. It misses this crucial point: that the expression can be put to different uses, even different figurative uses, and that each would require its own separate analysis. And once more, at the risk of being repetitive: expressions don’t determine their own meanings. This is our task. And especially when it comes to metaphors and secondary uses of terms—presumably, in those cases where it is hard to take hold of, and secure, our intentions—we have to make sure that we are clear about use. I’ll get to Juliet and the sun towards the end of this post. Let me first give some background. In a previous post, I suggested that there is a distinction between secondary uses of terms and literal uses of them, and argued that for every use of an expression in a secondary sense there might be a literal way to use the expression; there is no way to block that, or to make sure the possibility is blocked, in advance. Even saying that Wednesday is fat may have a literal use—for instance, to say that my dietician says I can eat fatty things on Wednesdays.
I argued that this is one of the sources of the difficulty of the discussion about secondary senses: the unclarity about how a certain expression is supposed to be used is one of the things that make it difficult to give examples. I suggested that when giving examples, we also need to clarify—to ourselves first and foremost—the use of the expressions we examine or give as examples; it is not enough to just give the expressions. I would like to connect this to the discussion about metaphors. Giving examples in a discussion about metaphors is also difficult, and for similar reasons: When we give examples of metaphorical expressions, it is not always sufficiently clear how these expressions are meant to be used. If I am right, then everything depends on that—everything depends on clarity about use. As in the case of secondary uses of terms, it may be the case that an expression that was meant to be metaphorical is not really metaphorical at all: for it might have a literal use. That might be the case, even if it is hard to think of a literal use for the expression. Take ‘Juliet is the sun.’ More than any other example, perhaps, there is consensus that this is a metaphor. Nevertheless, even this expression can have a literal use—for instance, when naming celestial objects in an attempt to memorize them. So Mars is Harold, and Neptune is Jack, the Moon is Suzy, and Juliet is the sun. In any case, my claim is, again, that there really is no substitute for clarifying the use of the expression we examine or wish to use as examples. Yesterday, I wrote about a kind of resistance that people, philosophers in particular, have to identifying—recognizing—that a term has been used in an absolute or a secondary sense. I argued that one thing that makes this possible is the fact that in general expressions—words, sentences—can be used in more than one way. Even ‘Wednesday is fat,’ I argued, which is often taken to be a use of ‘fat’ in a secondary sense, can also have a literal use; it can be used to express the idea that I am allowed to eat fatty things on Wednesdays: “Monday is carbon day, Tuesday is protein, and Wednesday is fat.” This, I suggested, allows for unclarity about use—about what people are doing when they use such expressions, their semantic intentions.
The most interesting sort, however, of resistance to the idea that one is using an expression in an absolute or secondary sense is related not only to unclarity, but to indecision—irresoluteness—about the use of the expression. Such things happen in different places in philosophy: in particular, in discussions about self-legislation, self-deception, it generally happens in discussions about the soul, in discussions about moral necessity, about realism in literature, and sometimes in discussions about God. To better see the sources of this irresoluteness, take the idea that we can see things in the imagination, which I take to involve a secondary use of ‘see.’ On the one hand, we insist on the idea of seeing here. “We need this term here.” What can be more literal? On the other hand, there are familiar problems with this idea, for it doesn’t carry all the logical-grammatical implications that talk of objects of sight normally carries. For instance, when I see a zebra with my mind’s eye, I am not thereby also committed to the idea that I could see clearly how many stripes it has. Asking me to count them would not even make any sense. And this indicates that seeing a zebra and seeing a zebra with one’s mind’s eye are two grammatically different things. That is, it indicates that talk of seeing in the imagination is not quite literal after all. Now, instead of talking about imaginary objects of sight, we can simply talk of thinking about something—a zebra. We can talk—literally—of reflecting about zebras in general, or of contemplating a particular zebra; this would solve the grammatical problem I mentioned, and allow for all the literalness we want. It will, however, be very unsatisfying. For there is a significant difference for us between merely contemplating a zebra and actually imagining it—bringing the image to mind. We really need the idea of seeing here: Nothing else could capture the experience in this case of the image in our mind. In general, then, in the kind of cases I have in mind, there is a perfect literal, non-figurative, way of using an expression; there might even be more than one. However, none of these uses is satisfying. None of them captures what we want. The alternative is to admit that one wants to use an expression in an absolute or secondary sense. Recognizing this, however, would mean that one has to accept that it is internal to what they say that perfectly capable speakers may take what they say to be nonsense. And if a philosopher is using an expression in such a way, it means that they would have to accept that their argument might not be capable of binding everyone—might not even be understood. In the kind of cases I have in mind the philosopher is facing a dilemma: To make her argument binding, she would have to use an expression literally, but that would make the argument unsatisfying. To make her argument satisfying, the philosopher would have to use the expression in an absolute or secondary sense; but that would mean that the argument is not binding. The philosopher wavers. It should not come as a surprise, then, that recognizing absolute and secondary uses of terms can be difficult. The temptation is great to insist that one has made a perfectly legitimate literal use of an expression, even when one has not; this would allow for one’s argument to be both satisfying and binding. The temptation is great to say things like: “for a creature who must constitute her own identity, it is equally true that acting is quite literally interacting with yourself”—Christine Korsgaard. (What makes saying things like this possible is that the figurativeness of secondary and absolute uses is different from the figurativeness of other metaphorical expressions. It thus makes it possible to truthfully deny that one is using an expression in any simple metaphorical way. But the difference between kinds of figurative expressions is a subject for another post.) Naturally, succumbing to such a temptation would also involve failure to recognize absolute or secondary uses of language. For any proper discussion of the phenomena of absolute and secondary senses, we would need examples to work with. Here are two apparently clear examples of use of words in a secondary sense: ‘Wednesday fat,’ ‘E is yellow.’ Here are two examples of uses of words in an absolute sense: ‘I’m absolutely safe in the hands of God,’ ‘I wonder at the existence of the world.’
Now, it is not easy to give examples for absolute and secondary uses, and it is not always easy to detect that a particular use is in fact secondary or absolute. I can go as far as saying that it is never safe to give examples in this discussion, or to declare that a certain use was absolute or secondary. On top of that, people often resist the suggestion that a certain term was used in an absolute or a secondary sense—even, and sometimes especially, when they are the speakers. The resistance people—philosophers especially—have in these matters, when it exists, is greater than usual. There are several issues about the examples here. One problem is connected to what is essential to absolute and secondary uses. I take it that it is internal to such uses that perfectly capable speakers may take those uses for nonsense. (I’ll try to explain that some other time.) And to that extent, it is hard to detect them as it is hard to detect that one’s language has been derailed into nonsensicality. People—especially philosophers—who neither want nor intend to be implicated in nonsense tend to dislike the discovery that they are. There is also a shallower, and much more annoying, source for the difficulty of giving examples of absolute and secondary uses: Scholars tend to accept as valid only examples Wittgenstein himself gave—for both secondary and absolute senses. (This is why I could relatively easily get away with the examples I gave so far.) It should be noted, however, that Wittgenstein himself gave examples for secondary uses of words that I take to be less than obvious, like ‘calculating in the head,’ and ‘playing at trains.’ If anyone but Wittgenstein would have tried to use these as examples, I suspect they would have faced a lot more suspicion and resistance. Now, I don’t wish to only complain about this. To an extent, this is as it should be. For the unclarity here is of the very essence of the phenomena under investigation. It is a natural part of what happens when we flirt with nonsense. This means, incidentally, that even with Wittgenstein’s examples, we should not let him get away with them easily. We should probe them, and verify that they are indeed examples for secondary or absolute senses. At the same time, however, it also means that absolute and secondary uses of language may be more common than we expect. Here are some more controversial, and perhaps less expected, examples of terms that may be used in secondary or absolute senses: the idea that we can legislate to ourselves, or deceive ourselves, or control ourselves, or know ourselves; the idea that pain is an internal private object; the idea that we can look into someone’s eyes; the idea that we can see in the imagination; the idea that full and just restitution would require turning time backwards; and the idea that God is omniscient (think of how this idea is typically treated in discussions about the problem of evil). Now, I said that those terms may be used in secondary or absolute senses, not that they have to be. And this is connected to another problem with giving examples in this context. The fact that a term is used in a secondary or an absolute sense is not written on its sleeve. Both secondary- and absolute-sense are categories of use. And typically, the same expression may be used in different ways—both literal and figurative. Even with the most well-known example of secondary sense, ‘Wednesday is fat’—it is not necessarily the case that any use of the expression is secondary. If I’m on a special diet, for instance, in which I can eat fatty things on Wednesdays, then this gives us a perfectly good literal way of understanding the expression: a perfectly good literal way for straightening out the expression. The abundance of possible uses may lead to misunderstandings about how a particular expression was used in a particular case. For an expression to function as an example, that is, what needs to be settled is the way it is used in that particular case—not the words it contains. And since other possibilities of use always exist, perfectly good cases of usage of expressions in secondary or absolute sense may be missed: They may be rejected as such examples by someone whose mind is fixed on another kind of use of the expression. |
See my
Academia.edu page Previous Notes Excluded Middle Moral Clarification The Will in the Tractatus Morality and Creation Moral Skepticism Understanding language and understanding music - The unity of a sentence, and the unity of a salad In what way secondary and absolute uses are nonsense (2) Another way of using nonsense Ethics as an Aspect of Philosophy - In what sense is there an ethical point to the Tractatus Interpretation as finding a way to say what the writer does - the Tractatus for example In what way secondary and absolute uses are nonsense Art is a matter of use - two claims, and a thought about the relation to ethics Both Aspects at the Same Time - in connection with Wittgenstein's early views on ethics Thinking and Willing Subjects in the Tractatus Two notions of "Family Resemblance" and a relation to Aspect-Perception The experience of thinking The Figurative and the Literal: two kinds of picturing: making reality thinkable What’s the Point of Figurative Language? ‘Juliet is the sun’ again – What kind of metaphor is it? Secondary and Absolute Uses of Terms – the Problem of Irresoluteness Secondary and Absolute Uses of Terms – the Problem of Examples Wrestling with Nonsense—A Protest: Absolute Senses, Secondary Senses, Gulfs between People, Difficulties of Reality, and Philosophy. What’s so bad about pain? Between Romantics and Anatomy: Religion and Pornography in Hanoch Levin The transcendence of ethics – two views Pain as form of behavior and pain as private object Archives
November 2019
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Blogroll Kelly Jolley - Quantum Est In Rebus Inane Duncan Richter - Language Goes on Holiday Matt Pianalto - Problems of Life Ben Pierce - Expensive Coffee Lars Hertzberg - Language is things we do Breaking the Silence - Israeli Soldiers Talk about the Occupied Territories Hans Sluga Blog Mists on the Riverss - Ed Mooney Tags
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