Hugh’s original remarks (HK) are in roman,
my responses (LH) in bold and Hugh’s rejoinders (HK2) in italic. Later on I’ll post
a blog reflecting on our disagreements.
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(HK) I think the difference comes down to
this. You say “The puzzles grow from a deep-rooted tendency to misunderstand
the uses of words like ‘mean’, ‘understand’, etc., etc., from a preconception
which prevents our getting a clear overview of the use”. So you distinguish
here between the tendency to misunderstand the uses of words and having a clear view of their use.
But you seem not to acknowledge the consequences of this distinction. For it’s
not clear to me from other things that you say that you accept that there can
be any such thing as “a clear overview of their use” in its own right, only a
coming to see that there is confusion if we want to use certain expressions in
certain ways.
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(LH)
My inclination is to say: in using some general expressions like “a clear view”
I have in mind a contrast: understanding what having a clear view amounts to
depends on some familiarity with the ways in which we are liable to go wrong.
(Cp: “can you see that building over there quite clearly?” – well, my response
to that would depend on your purpose in asking.) Hence I’d be suspicious about
talking about “a clear view in its own
right”.
(HK2) Again
you seem to be assuming that the only
context in which “confusion” arises in philosophy is when we are drawn into “going
wrong” in the use of expressions when reflecting philosophically. So, using
your analogy, my lack of clarity whilst looking at two yonder buildings may be
expressed in my judging that the one building is in front of the other when in
fact it is the other way about—I have gone wrong. Another situation might be
where I am looking at a distant building and somebody asks “what is it like,
what kind of roof and windows does it have?”, and I reply “I cannot tell you it
is surrounded by fog”. When the fog lifts, I can tell tell him. Here nothing
has “gone wrong”, there has been no error. I call this getting a clear view “in
its own right” to distinguish it from the case where there is actual error. Somebody asks what is time? We use the term and
other temporal expressions all the time without trouble. When we try to reflect
on it we are all at sea. “All at sea”, “a fog surrounds its use” (I think
Wittgenstein says that somewhere), we feel disorientated, all of a sudden we
don’t know our way about. We may feel this effect without “going wrong” in any
particular way—which is not to say that we may not also “go wrong”. In practice
in philosophy these are no doubt run together, but I think the distinction is
real—which is my point throughout. I am not sure that you have said anything to
show that it is not real.
(LH) I
don’t recognize myself in the phrase “confusion if we want to use certain expressions in certain ways”. I don’t
know how much store you’re laying by this formulation, but to my mind,
philosophical confusion doesn’t – primarily – arise in how people use
expressions, but in the account they’re inclined to give of their use. (Of
course, philosophers might try going on actually using expressions in
accordance with the way they’ve argued they’re actually used, or the way they
should - according to them - be used if we are to be attentive their real
meanings. But that is not the sort of case I have in mind.)
(HK2) It
is already understood that we are talking of the reflective situation—there has
never been any question that we are talking of error in our practical
employment of language. So my use of this phrase is to refer to the temptation
to use expressions in certain ways that arise when we reflect philosophically. It
seems perfectly legitimate to say that when we reflect in philosophy we “find
we want to use certain expressions in certain [i.e. confused] ways”. I am not
sure why you should think I intended this to refer to something arising within
daily use (you say something similar in your essay on Hacker—whereas I have
always taken it for granted that he is only ever talking about our reflections
on our concepts, unless he expressly states otherwise.)
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(HK) Hence, we do not end up with a clear
view of their use—there is no reflective understanding of their use—only a
return to our use of them without the temptation to misunderstand them. I think
this is the espoused view that you share in common with the New
Wittgensteinians—although I do not think that this is adhered to in practice
since you all have a view of language which informs this attitude and indulge
in clarifications not related to any particular confusions.
¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨
(LH) “Particular confusions” is of course a
fairly loose notion. I should make clear that I don’t think philosophical
confusions are superficial or easy to disentangle. Nor does the urgency
normally lie in the need to disentangle other
people’s confusions (as you suggest in one place). On the contrary, the
challenge of doing philosophy comes from the fact that the confusions are
deeply entrenched within ourselves, and that we constantly keep sliding back
into them. Besides, I am not suggesting that the confusions in question are
limited in scope – I don’t mean to be dogmatically rejecting any form of
generality.
(HK2) I
agree that philosophy is primarily a matter of working on oneself rather than
on others. But in fact you do talk of the work of philosophers as responding to
“interlocutors”, i.e. other people, and as if this were the essential task of
the philosopher—which conforms with the idea of philosophy as therapy and the
philosopher as the therapist, e.g.:
(from your essay on Hacker) “Similarly, the type of clarification needed to
resolve a philosophical puzzle will depend on the nature of our interlocutor’s
bewilderment. Thus, we may have to discover what false analogies lead her
thinking astray…Where there are no confusions, there is nothing to be
clarified, hence no task for the philosopher to carry out.” This seems a pretty
clear statement of the “therapeutic” view of philosophy, as the philosopher as
the one who dishes out therapy to the lost souls—which is why I took it up in
my paper. I do not doubt that you may express your point differently elsewhere.
(LH)
On the one hand, a confusion often involves a whole range of connected words
(say, “speak”, “say”, “mean”, “understand”). On the other hand, some sources of
confusion may concern a whole range of words, as when we assume that to each
noun there must correspond an object or a state, to each verb an event or
process, etc. At the same time, such generic patterns of confusion tend to take
on their specific forms in the case of specific words (the ways we’re inclined
to misconstrue the use of the word “think” is not simply a reflection of its
being a verb, but of the specific demands we place on the word, e.g. we assume
the process or activity in question would have to be of a nature to explain why
thinking puts us in a better position to solve various problems, etc, this then
branches out to the idea that good thinking can be brought under a pattern
which can be conveyed through courses in formal logic or critical thinking,
etc: another extension of this confusion is when we are mystified by the
question whether animals actually think, which is in turn connected with the
idea that thinking is in essence a hidden process, etc.).
(HK2) I
certainly agree that surface grammatical forms are significantly responsible
for prompting confusion (though it is difficult to explain why, unless the way
we use expressions is already obscure in reflection for other reasons). When
you try to indicate here how the confusions then take more specific forms, you speak
of “the specific demands we place on the word”, but I am not quite clear about
how you are using this phrase. You say the problems with “think” are not
“simply a reflection of its being a verb”; but it looks as if you are still
saying that philosophical confusions do originate there but then grow out in
other ways. I know Wittgenstein started by blaming philosophical confusions on
the influence of surface grammar, but I think the sources of confusion are more
diverse than that. For example, what is the source of the idea that thinking is
in essence a hidden process? I think this has a lot to do with our tendency to
misinterpret subjective states (the “experience of meaning” for example or “I
know how green looks to me”, etc)—the way we react to our experiences with
words rather than the way we react to words.
In
characterising the confusion here, I would be inclined to express this by
saying that we end up with a confused idea/notion/concept of “hidden process”;
you might prefer to call this a confused use of the expression “inner
process”. My preference however remains with the former if only because it
keeps more present the connection with our lives as a whole, with our thinking—with
how we treat animals, with whether we live our lives in a belief in the
after-life, with our values, and so on.
Yes, the problems become manifest when we “reflect philosophically”, but
I don’t think one can drive a simple wedge between such reflection and living
our lives—which is what I think tends to happen if one gets stuck on expressing
philosophical confusion in terms of getting into a muddle over the operation of
various signs (or even groups of them) when we reflect on their use. Philosophical
reflection is not in any case something that only goes on within the community
of philosophers (i.e. the academics), but pops up in peoples’ lives all over
the place. “To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life” so that
(reflective) confusions “within the language” are (if they are not merely
trivial ones) confusions within our lives and so can only be set properly in
context using the range of concepts that characterise life as a whole: thought,
concept, belief, and so on. (And, by the way, with reference to your remark
above, I think you do have to keep these cases in mind when reflecting on the
nature of philosophy generally.)
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(HK) It seems that you won’t allow that
there might be an intellectual curiosity about our uses of our expressions—a
curiosity that might be satisfied by reflection on the many typical contexts in
which we use them—that is not prompted by finding oneself tempted to confuse
the expression in some particular way.
Rather it is prompted by the fact that when we do try to reflect on them, their
use simply isn’t clear—whether we are tempted to misconstrue them in some
particular way or not. But I don’t see that you have provided any grounds for
such a limitation.
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(LH)The
way in which I perceive philosophical problems is not a matter to be proved,
not a theory with applications; rather it is an outlook, a reflection on how I
understand what philosophers are up to (those from whom I feel I’m learning how
to do philosophy) and what I myself am trying to do. The worth of this activity
– or its lack of worth – is to be shown in the doing and only there. If there’s
something I miss out on, I should wish to see how that comes out in individual
cases.
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(HK) And I don’t think the limitation you
want to impose here is to be found in Wittgenstein, since for much of the time
he is not dealing with muddles with particular expressions but describing our
language-games. In Zettel 412
Wittgenstein remarks “Am I doing child psychology?—I am making a connexion
between the concept of teaching and the concept of meaning”—which I think is
the same as wanting to obtain a “synoptic view” of their connection(s). He is
not saying that he is dealing only with particular ways of muddling “teaching”
and “meaning”.
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(LH) Again,
the way I see it the point of these exercises lies in the (mostly implicit)
contrast with confused ways of thinking about language learning (e.g.
Augustine).
(HK2) Taking
these two points together, I take it that you are saying that the only interest
you have in such observations is in bringing out that if someone is inclined to
reflect on language learning as, e.g., Augustine does, he is confused. Your
intellectual curiosity is satisfied by coming to see the confusion in what he
was saying. So you do not see coming to a “synoptic view of our concepts” as
being of any intrinsic interest, you wouldn’t see the point of it. As I said
earlier, I do not see anything wrong with limiting one’s interest in philosophy
if one chooses. What does concern me is the implication that if one does have
an interest in the “synoptic view” or of “seeing the world aright” to use
Wittgenstein’s earlier phrase, one is in some confusion (or perhaps that you
are just bewildered by the very idea of it). This is suggested in the first of
these responses where the implication is that the alternative to the point as
you see it is the confused idea of proving something, or arriving a theory with
applications. Whereas seeking the synoptic view is none of these things—it is
for example the kind of thing you do in the passage I quoted below, and finding
that of interest apart from any particular confusion.
If I
may take analogy. We come to know our way about a forest (language) by
practice. Wherever we want to go, we just go there as a matter of course
without reflection. If we are asked to reflect on how we get about or how the
forest is laid out (philosophical reflection) we get confused. One type of
confusion is where we are tempted irresistibly to give a confused account: we
say we turn left here when we turn right, we say this bit is close to that bit,
when they are far apart, etc. But there is also another type of confusion or
bewilderment. We are asked about the layout of the forest and we reply: I
couldn’t tell you, I wouldn’t know where to start, I learnt my way about just
by going, by following others, I’ve never had to explain or have an overview of
it. Here there is no error, just the fog that descends when we try to reflect.
But
you don’t seem to want to recognise the second type; for if you did, you would
have to recognise that the interest in these observations may not only be by
contrast with the temptations to “go wrong” but by contrast with what one might
call the state of reflective ignorance of our life with language.
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(HK) But at this point we can also begin to
see that just construing what which we want to get a clearer view of as “the
uses of particular expressions” is too limited a way of looking at it. You can
if you like say that what Wittgenstein is saying here is the same as wanting to
get clear of the use of the expressions “teaching” and “meaning”, but for the
reasons, I give in my paper, and which I find throughout Rhees, I think this is
misleading since it makes it look as if the issues at stake are merely
linguistic or semantic (i.e. are not connected with how we think). More
especially it tends to blur the distinction expressed most succinctly by Rhees
where he distinguishes the expressions that cause problems in philosophy from
the likes of “sitting down” by saying that the meaning of expressions like “language” “lie
in the language-game in which we use them, etc.” This shifts the attention from
the particular expressions to describing the language-games (yes, in all their
variety). This is at the same time to get an overview of the place of language
in our lives, our form of life and our ways of thinking—which is why I believe
it is more informative to call this trying to get a better understanding of
“what language is”, or of the concept
language, than just trying to sort out some problems with the use of certain
expressions. This reflection is difficult not just because we have seep-seated
tendency to confuse certain words, but something deeper still, and on which
that tendency is rooted, namely an intrinsic difficulty of reflecting on what
“lies in the language-game” (and which itself explains why we are so easily
misled about particular expressions—which is otherwise rather difficult to
explain).
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(LH) Maybe this tendency comes close to what I
was describing above (generic patterns of confusion)?
(HK2) I think it comes close to it but that there
is still a critical difference. I don’t think it is just about patterns of
confusion. I think Rhees’s point is that we don’t learn the use of “language”
in a way comparable with “sitting down”. As a result we have ways of getting
confused or unclear about “language” that are not parallel with “sitting down”.
And getting clear about how we use it involves different kinds of approaches,
and to such an extent that I begins to become unhelpful to call this just a
matter of getting clear about the use of the expression “language”—getting
clear about the “rule” we are following in using it as one might speak in this
way about “sitting down”. It’s about getting a clear view of the different
language-games, how they belong together, how they belong to our lives (how
they are what they are in the ways they belong to our lives).
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(HK) In
responding to Rhees’s notion of “understanding what language is” you refer
immediately and exclusively to Wittgenstein’s response to questions like “what
the mind is…”. Wittgenstein’s criticisms of “traditional metaphysics” were
indeed directed against such questions insofar as the attempted answers took
the form of invoking a supervening set of concepts devised by the metaphysician
to “explain” the mind, thinking, etc. That there might be such a set of
concepts is an illusion. Wittgenstein’s opposition to explanation is, I believe, to be understood in these terms. He
replaced this with the “internal” elucidation of our concepts, that is by
tracing the connections of sense between the concepts embedded in our
language/form of life. His remark about psychology, which I refer to above, is
an explicit expression of this. There is no reason why this should not also be
called an investigation into the natures of these things or of what things are,
just as long as it is clear in context
that this is what the philosopher is doing—which I believe it is in
Wittgenstein, Rhees, and, dare I say it, myself. I can’t see any grounds have
been provided for finding this extension of the notion of investigating “what
kind of thing anything is”, or the natures of things, “bewildering”.
By the
way I don’t think Rhees was accusing Wittgenstein of not taking seriously
enough the question of what language is in favour of concern merely for the
confusions of particular expressions. Indeed he is saying that the question of
what language is is precisely Wittgenstein’s project. His criticisms of
Wittgenstein are mainly that he focussed on some aspects of what language is to
the expense of others.
I also
don’t recognise at all in Rhees your idea that he thinks there is some “one confusion bound up with the question
what language is”. You link this with the question of a supposed “bewilderment
shared by us all and inevitable”. And you go on to say that you don’t’ know
what to make of it. He is not of course
(& neither am I) talking of a bewilderment that plagues our practice of
speaking but in reflection. And it
seems to me that in fact you are expressing the same (or analogous) point when
you speak of a “deep-rooted tendency to misunderstand the use of words…”—which
I take it you too assume is virtually universal—“shared by us all and
inevitable”. The difference is that I think Rhees has a richer understanding of
this bewilderment, as I have tried to explain above.
This
brings us back to you own practice. I find it difficult to find much in your
writings that I would want to call a concern just with confusions over the uses
of particular expressions. The vast majority of your writings are to do
generally with “what language is”. In your response to my paper you remark:
‘I write “learning to speak means learning to
express oneself by means of words” (p.122). Well, to be sure this is a
general observation, but these words hardly express some deep insight into what
it means to be a speaker.
On their
own, of course they do not. But I quoted them because I think (and still think)
they signal the general direction of your thinking. Indeed you capture your
overall intent straightaway with your use of the phrase “insight into what means to be a speaker”. I take it that this is what you think
we need to understand or get clear about in philosophy. But now I want
to ask What is the difference between asking “what it means to be a speaker”
and asking “what language is”?—none as far as I can see. Here is an example of
an observation that does express “some deep insight into what it means to be a
speaker”:
The notion of a primitive expression, then
involves a peculiar kind of mutuality or interdependence: regarding something
as a primitive expression of pain (in the primary case) is itself a primitive
reaction to the expression. In fact, the interdependence goes further: for
someone to see another person’s reaction as a reaction to the pain expressed by
the third party–or by the observer himself—is in turn, in the primary case, a
primitive response to that response, or rather, to the situation consisting of
the sufferer’s expression of pain, on the one hand, and the reaction of the
person witnessing the expression on the other hand.
Thus I may react with pity in seeing a child
witnessing another person’s pain. Where the pain is my own, on the other hand,
someone’s compassionate look may give me a sense of relief. And so on. It
should be clear that in many cases seeing a form of behaviour as a response to
another’s pain is not to be understood as embodying a hypothesis to the effect
that the discovery that someone else is in pain tends to be accompanied by
behaviour of such and such a description.
In applying a hypothesis we are relying on a correlation between
phenomena, each one of which can be identified independently of the others. But
the elements involved in a situation where someone is responding to another’s
pain will often not be identifiable independently of that situation. Thus, what
enables me to see someone’s behaviour as a response to pain may only be the
fact that I recognise the expression of pain. Or vice versa: someone else’s
response may make me realize that a person is indeed in pain. Or again, it may
only be the appropriateness of someone’s response to another’s behaviour that brings
it out that it is indeed the other’s pain that he is responding to. In such
cases, then, it is not as if I brought the pieces together and concluded that
the situation is one revolving around someone’s pain. Rather, I see the
situation under the aspect of pain, and this way of seeing it, as it were,
brings the pieces together in this particular way.
And
later:
The nature of the interdependence between
primitive expressions of pain…. (my emphasis)
[These quotations
are from Hertzberg, 'Primitive Reactions - Logic or Anthropology?' in Peter A.
French, Theodore E. Uehling, Jr och Howard K. Wettstein (eds.), The Wittgenstein Legacy. Midwest Studies
in Philosophy, Vol. 17. ]
Is the
only interest in such observations to clear up some tendency to misuse some
expression in some situation? If so, which? Would it not be better/make more
sense/be more natural to say that they express insights into what language is
or even into the nature of language
or indeed “what it means to be a speaker”? Furthermore, can one not take an
interest in these observations in their own right? What account would you now
give of the nature of what is written here?
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(LH) Again, I don’t see a problem with my own or
anybody else’s use of these expressions, provided the use is understood to be contrastive
in the sense I suggested above. I hope this won’t be seen as hedging.
What I reacted to was the idea that we might
understand what it means to ask about the nature of language when the idea of a
connection with confusion is explicitly rejected.
(HK2) What I am rejecting is the
idea that the only kind of “confusion” at stake is “….the tendency
to misunderstand the use of words like “mean”, “understand”, etc, etc; from a preconception
which prevents our getting a clear overview of the use.” The lack of the clear
view does not arise only from preconceptions but from the lack of an overview
and the intrinsic difficulties of obtaining the overview. I find your
observations above interesting and illuminating because they draw to my
attention aspects of the use of language, and hence aspects of our lives, which
I had not thought of before or had not noticed before. I find it interesting
and illuminating because I want to see more clearly what our life is like—your
observations here contribute towards that. Your outlook, on the other hand,
appears to be that you are not motivated in that way, your only interest in the
observations is to provide therapy against the tendency to form
“preconceptions”. Or so it seems to me.
But again your point here depends on
blurring the distinction between kinds of confusion or bewilderment, that is
between the confusion expressed in the temptation to use expressions or to say
things that are confused, and the difficulty of obtaining a “synoptic view of
our concepts”.
¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨
(HK) It
does seem to me that your own practice in philosophy leaves high and dry your
assertion that philosophy is only about identifying and correcting other
peoples’ tendencies to muddle up their own uses of expression like “meaning”
and “language”. It seems to me to be a mistake to get over-preoccupied with the
use of expressions like “concept” “what such and such is…”. It is almost as if
you have yourself come to treat “concept” as a “meaning kernel”—as if the use
of this substantive must mean that
the user thinks that there is some one thing corresponding to it or as if “what
is such and such …” had to be
understood as a search for essences. And the odd thing about this is that the
way you react to these words is diametrically opposed to what you (correctly)
recommend elsewhere, i.e. that we should be more sensitive to how people use
them in context (i.e. Rhees’s, Wittgenstein’s, mine). Any word can of course be misinterpreted; what is important is how
it should be interpreted in context by the user.
¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨
(LH) You’re certainly right. In fact I do
sometimes use the word “concept” myself. The danger is when it is made to bear
too heavy a burden.
¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨
(HK) And when you say “Language is things
we do”, I also wonder if you are not treating “do” as a meaning kernel which
you are using for and giving a pre-eminent place to explaining “language”.
Perhaps one could say that in saying that you are “making a connexion between
the concept of language and the concept of doing”. But so far that leaves it
entirely open as to the sense of “do” that is at stake. Language is of course
making noises or marks on paper. But it is only by making other connections
between “language” and other concepts, e.g. “sense”, “thinking”, “abstraction”
and so on, that you also qualify the relevant sense of “doing”—that it is not
just making noises, etc. So “doing” is not of
itself the key to understanding what language is. And of course I also note
that in your own use of the expression “Language is…” you are yourself opening
an account of “what language is”.
¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨
(LH) Of
course “doing” by itself is not a key to understanding what language is; I mean
it to be understood in a contrastive sense, reminding us that, when we find
ourselves bewildered by the use of some expression (“meaning”, “understanding”,
“knowledge”, “thought” etc), and are tempted to propose some highly complex and
abstract account of what the expressions mean, those expressions are actually used
in ordinary human conversation, and there they are not problematic at all. (Cp
PI § 117.)
¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨
(HK) You
say elsewhere (a remark which I take it you must now find “bewildering”):
In
particular, helping us to understand the nature of our language, its varying
roles in the life of human beings, is essential for the philosopher’s concerns,
since philosophical problems (as we have said) arise from our failure to
understand the workings of language……How can a natural-historic contribute to
an understanding of the nature of language? ["Language, Philosophy and Natural History", The Limits of Experience, p. 88.]
¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨
(LH) Well, I wrote that pretty long ago
(originally in 1975), but I still think I can stand by most of what I said back
then, given that “workings”, again, is understood in the contrastive sense I
have been talking about.
(HK2) Again it’s a matter of what it is contrasted
with—not just the confusion of “going wrong”. There is of course a difference
between the intelligibility of an account and the point of it. Your account is
intelligible as an account of aspects of the way that language is a part of our
lives—quite
apart from any “contrast with confused ways of thinking about language
learning” (at least I think I understand it without any such contrast in mind).
You may not see any point in it except within the kind of contrast that
interests you, but I find it interesting in itself because I am interested just
in “what it means to be a speaker” full stop. And I wouldn’t see a lot of point
doing philosophy if I didn’t find that interesting—as well as working out how
we can “go wrong”..
¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨
(HK) You
now talk as if understanding the nature or workings of language is not itself
philosophy, but just some prerequisite to sorting out someone else’s problems
with the use of some expressions—that
is philosophy. But this is just back to front. That we can get into muddles
with certain expressions when we reflect on them signals the need for
philosophy, that is for understanding the nature of language, etc.. But we may
also arrive at that need—the need for philosophy proper—through a desire to
understand “the life of human beings”, our lives. Getting it back to front “can
lead to philistinism and generally has”.
