Wittgenstein, Private Notebooks 1914-1916

Private Notebooks 1914-1916 by Ludwig Wittgenstein review – sex and logic

Translated into English for the first time, these diaries provide a glimpse into the innermost thoughts of a great philosopher

Anil Gomes, The Guardian, Wednesday, 18 May 2022

https://www.theguardian.com/profile/anil-gomes

Ludwig Wittgenstein joined the army the day after his native Austria-Hungary declared war on Russia in August 1914. He had been serving for almost three months when he received word that his brother Paul, a concert pianist, had lost his right arm in battle. “Again and again,” he wrote in his notebook, “I have to think of poor Paul, who has so suddenly been deprived of his vocation! How terrible! What philosophical outlook would it take to overcome such a thing? Can it even happen except through suicide!”

Wittgenstein was an unusual philosopher. He became obsessed with the foundations of logic while an engineering student and presented himself to Bertrand Russell in Cambridge, ready to solve all its problems. His intent was to provide an account of logic that was free from paradox and his solution came in the form of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, sent to Russell from the Italian prisoner-of-war camp in which Wittgenstein was held at the end of the first world war.

The Tractatus is written as a series of numbered propositions, closer in form to modernist poetry than philosophical treatise. Its central ideas can be traced back to the notebooks Wittgenstein kept during the early years of the conflict. The right-hand side of each spread was used to set out his evolving thoughts on logic and language. The left-hand side was saved for his personal notes, written in a simple code in which the letters of the alphabet were reversed (Z = A, and so on).

It is these private remarks that are published in English here for the first time, edited and translated by Marjorie Perloff. They range from complaints about the other soldiers – “a bunch of swine! No enthusiasm for anything, unbelievable crudity, stupidity & malice!” – to the number of times he masturbates (“Yesterday, for the first time in 3 weeks”). He recounts his depression – “like a stone it presses on my chest. Every duty turns into an unbearable burden” – and his living conditions. These are accompanied by constant updates on how his work is going. And by “work”, he always means philosophy. “Remember how great the blessing of work is!” he writes. This work is the focus; the war, a backdrop.

Wittgenstein’s solution to the problems of logic was largely in place by 1916. And had his contribution to philosophy ended there, the Tractatus might be unknown beyond that particular sub-field. But the book ends with a series of puzzling remarks on ethics, value and the meaning of life – remarks that Wittgenstein thought central to his project but which both confused and frustrated his first readers. It is here that the Notebooks tantalise. For in the material on the left-hand pages Wittgenstein first begins to reflect on the inner self, on God’s presence in the world, on what is required for life to make sense. It can sometimes seem irrelevant to the discussion of logic taking place on the right-hand side. “Have thought a great deal about all sorts of things,” he writes, “but curiously enough cannot establish their connection to my mathematical train of thought.”

He has the obsessive focus of a philosophical genius – one who thinks constantly about his work, even under enemy fire

And then in 1916, facing death on the frontline, the connection is forged. Paradox in logic arises when you try to say those things that can only be shown. But that applies equally to God, the self and meaning. As he writes on a left-hand page, “What cannot be said, cannot be said”. The purview of ethics, like the purview of logic, lies outside the realm of what can be stated in language. And thus we get to the seventh and final statement of the Tractatus: whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

For those who know the Tractatus, there is some interest in seeing how concerns that start life among the personal remarks slowly drift over to the facing page. For those who do not care about these details, there is interest in seeing first-hand the obsessive focus of a philosophical genius – one who thinks constantly about his work, even under enemy fire. When he writes of “laying siege”, it is to philosophical problems; when he wants to “spill [his] blood before this fortress”, it is in the context of logic.

Even the masturbation is hard to separate from the philosophy: it happens when work is going well. For Wittgenstein, it seems, masturbation and philosophy are both expressions of living in the face of death.

Perloff sees allusion to sexual affairs in some of Wittgenstein’s taciturn remarks. He records evening visits to the baths in Kraków and notes, somewhat matter-of-factly at the start of a new year, that “my moral standing is now much lower than it was at Easter”. More affecting is his unambiguous love and desire for his Cambridge friend David Pinsent. “A letter from David!! I kissed it. Answered right away.” Pinsent didn’t survive the war. He was a test pilot in Farnborough and died in an accident in May 1918. The Tractatus – one of the most significant works in 20th-century philosophy – is dedicated to his memory.

 Private Notebooks 1914-1916 is published by WW Norton (£18.99). To support the Guardian and the Observer buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

The bridge that does not exist

If I affirm an object, it exists.

if i affirm myself, i exist.

what i am doing here is: affirming an object as real, as being; affirming a subject as real, as being. 

if i can make the further judgment that the object is not the subject, i have objectivity. 

of course, i could specify further: in what way is the object not the subject? there is the objectivity of "2 + 2 = 4", of mathematical entities; there is the objectivity of a thought, or a dream; there is the objectivity of a snake that enters a goa house... of a new planet that someone claims to have discovered... 

Descartes assumed that he knew the self in an apodictic way. he assumed also that he did not know any object in an apodictic way. hence his problem, the problem which we call the bridge.

he did not bother to engage in a detailed study of what was happening when he was knowing. 

not that there is no difference between affirming the self and affirming an object that is not the self. there is a difference. but - and here is where each one has to get clear for himself - it is possible to know objects, and we do it a thousand times. 

here you could in an idle moment read my notes on Heidegger (hermeneutics). Here you could reflect on Wittgenstein's unique handling of the problem. 

one of Descartes' problems was his mathematical training: he expected, wrongly, mathematical certitude for everything. Even Rorty says that: Descartes was like the undisciplined child who does not know when to stop asking questions. (And Rorty, surprisingly, quotes Gilson quoting Descartes!) (I have this in my Rorty article.) 

do we have mathematical certitude w.r.t. the reality of the self? not exactly. but to deny the self is to engage in a performative contradiction. (you can deny the self. the conradicition is not logical. it is performative: beween saying and performance, or reality, if you wish.) 

do we have mathematical certitude w.r.t. objects like a cat and a mat and a tree and a dog and ohther subjects? no. do we need such certitude? no. do we have the self kind of certitude in these cases? no. but we do come to the point where to ask furhter questions would be plain foolish (even Rorty!). "the spade hits rock" Wittgenstein says. Absence of further relevant questions, L says. physical certitude, perhaps the Thomists would say... 

If you need some references:

Hermeneutics and Method, p. 26 para 2.

Verbum cwl 2, p. 98 last para.

Insight, cwl 3, p. 401 last para. the pseudo-problem of transcendence. 

Wittgenstein - and Lonergan

This is another old draft blog entry for what it is worth. (I still intending having the paper mentioned published in Divyadaan: Journal of Philosophy and Religion):

Yesterday I digitalized an old paper of mine on Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument. his is a paper prepared in November 1980 during the second year of the Master’s degree course in Philosophy at Jnana Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pune, under the guidance of Dr Lisbert D’Souza, SJ. I publish it here without significant changes - quite conscious of the fact that Wittgenstein scholarship has probably made large strides in the intervening space of 29 years – because I find it still provides a rather nuanced interpretation of Wittgenstein, and in the hope that it might be a small step towards dialectic and dialogue between Wittgenstein and Lonergan. Scholars will know that Lonergan dedicates a section of his chapter on Dialectic in his Method in Theology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990, 253-257) to Wittgenstein (section 7: The Dialectic of Methods: Part One), insisting rather strongly on mental acts and on the essentially private character of language in its origins. Lonergan, however, was no Wittgenstein scholar; he was reacting, as is evident also from the text itself, to questions posed him by Edward MacKinnon during one of his institutes on method in theology (see Transcendental Philosophy and the Study of Religion, Boston, 1968); so, despite the strong language he uses, the relationship between Wittgenstein and Lonergan still remains, to my mind, an open question.

Linguistic spheres not monadic

Habermas writes that hermeneutics shows that linguistic spheres are never monadically shut but are, rather, permeable from without as well as from within. From without, because a language is open, and can in principle express everything that can be said and understood. its horizon therefore is in continuous expansion. From within, because linguistic agents can distance themselves from their own expressions in order to interpret them, reflect on them, etc. All this, Habermas learned from Gadamer: that language can transcend itself and thereby exhibits potential for rationality.

This in contrast to Wittgenstein. In Wittgenstein's thesis that linguistically constituted life forms were closed, as if each agent were monadically trapped in its language world, Habermas discerned traces of positivism.

(Jean Grondin, Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1994, 130)

The Private Language Argument: Behaviourist? Verificationist?

THE PRIVATE LANGUAGE ARGUMENT
Behaviourist? Verificationist?

Ivo Coelho, SDB

This paper is a study (completed in November 1980) of Chapters 4 and 6 of O. R. Jones’ The Private Language Argument. Chapter 4 is “Behaviourism and the Private Language Argument,” containing two articles, one by C.W.K. Mundle and the other by L.C. Holborow. Chapter 6 is entitled “The Verification Principle and the Private Language Argument,” and the articles here are by Judith Jarvis Thomson and Anthony Kenny. In this paper I will deal with each of these two sets of articles separately without making any attempt to relate them.

1. Behaviourism and the Private Language Argument

Mundle accuses Wittgenstein of being a ‘Linguistic Behaviourist’—not a crude behaviourist who denies the existence of all ‘inner experiences,’ but rather one who holds that even if there happen to be such things as inner experiences, we cannot speak of them. Mundle’s case may be stated as follows:

(a) Wittgenstein denies both an incommunicable (i.e. private) language about inner experiences, and a communicable language about inner experiences.

(b) Wittgenstein stresses the primacy of public language, and the fact that were it not for natural expressions of sensations, we could not learn the public words for them. Let us admit both, says Mundle. Having admitted this, why can’t I proceed to invent a language for inner experiences which at least I can understand?

(c) Wittgenstein offers the Diary Argument to show that we can’t even talk to ourselves about our inner experiences. The crux of the argument is this: there is no criterion of correctness—hence it makes no sense to speak of remembering correctly. The argument is thus based on a scepticism w.r.t. memory. But, as Ayer has shown, this leads to total scepticism. So we cannot doubt memory; we must accept the fact that at some state or other we do rely solely on memory. Hence there is no difficulty in recognizing a particular sensation again.

(d) Rhees, however, says that the identity—the sameness—comes from language. Language is required in order to recognize some¬thing as the same. This, according to Mundle, makes no sense: surely we first recognize the similarity and then apply the same name? The problem about recognizing sensations does not exist.

(e) Hence the Diary Argument does not hold. We can name our inner experiences, and also recognize them when they recur, without difficulty. So we can have a private language about our inner experiences.

(f) The question now is: can we also have a public language about them? Here Mundle feels we must agree with Wittgenstein that without natural expressions of sensations, we would not be able to teach others the use of words for sensations. The beetle situation is an apt analogy here. Each one of us knows what ‘pain’ is only from our own model. However, Wittgenstein went too far in saying that the box might even be empty. I may not be able to say whether the pain I feel is similar to yours; but surely I can have little doubt about the fact that you do have pain sometimes. There is evidence available—in your behaviour, your description of your pain, etc.

Further if we must choose between some version of the Verification principle, and denying meaning to the principle that similar conditions give rise to similar sensations, we must reject the former.

So we can have a communicable language about our inner exper¬ience after all.
Mundle ends by saying that anyone who would hold that Wittgen¬stein did not deny language about inner experiences, must first show how the Diary Argument and the Beetle Argument fit in.

Hol¬borow’s article is a response to Mundle’s challenge. He says:

(a) It is wrong to say that Wittgenstein denied all talk about inner experiences.

(b) The Diary and the Beetle Arguments can be shown to fit in with this interpretation, by distinguishing, between inner experiences with natural expressions, and inner experiences without natural expressions. Wittgenstein denied the possibility of a language only about the latter, and this is the point of the two arguments in question.

(c) However, it is possible that Mundle would challenge even this restricted thesis. The Diary Argument, he would say, is based on a scepticism w.r.t. memory, and this implies a total scepticism. Here Holborow points out that the argument is not based on a scepticism w.r.t. memory. The real point is this: that mere ‘concentration of attention’ on ‘something inner’ accomplishes nothing. No criterion is fixed at all: and so there is nothing to remember. The question of memory does not arise.

However, PI # 265 might give the appearance that Wittgenstein does attack the reliability of memory (“Justification consists in appealing to something independent”). But what is required here is not actual checking in every case, but rather the possibility of a check. Unless a checking is possible, it makes no sense to speak of my use of a word as correct or wrong.

So the Diary Argument stands: a language about radically private experiences (those which have no natural expressions) is impossible.

(d) But now a new question arises: there cannot be a radically private language. But can there not be a partially private language? This would be a language in which the general character of the sensation is given in the normal way, but the specific type can be distinguished but not publicly conveyed. (There are no existing words for it, nor does it have natural expressions.) So here we would have an identification that would be uncheckable in principle.

Here Wittgenstein would say: if an identification is uncheckable in principle, there is no justification for talk of correctness or mistake. Now when there is no such justifi¬cation, then the statement in question must be either an expression like ‘I am in pain,’ or it must be senseless. Your partially private language claims to identify, to describe; so it is impossible.

(e) At this point we must question Wittgenstein’s assertion that no doubt is possible at all in the case of ‘I am in pain.’ It is possible to find counter-instances. (Holborow cites a few.) Besides, it seems possible to find in Wittgenstein another category for reports of sensations, descriptions of sensations which are ‘results of observation.’ (PI II:187-189)

(f) On this interpretation, the distinction we claim to make would be a ‘result of observation’, a description of the sensation. But if it is a description we still have to find a justification.

Why is it that Wittgenstein requires a justification of the claim to recognize sensations? Because, as Rhees says, it is only through language that we can specify, or isolate the aspect of a thing which interests us. It makes no sense to say ‘that.’ We must specify what we mean, and this specification comes from language. In other words: the claim to have recognized something makes no sense unless that something has in some way been specified. Is this condition fulfilled by our partially private language? “I think that it is in the case of strikingly distinctive internal sensations, and that the fact that the distinctive quality of such sensations cannot be communicated does not rule out our claim to discriminate them.”

Holborow concludes that Wittgenstein is no behaviourist. He denies the possibility of a radically private language, not of all talk about inner experiences. However, Wittgenstein’s arguments are in need of qualification insofar as there can be a dependent private language.

I think Mundle has been answered fairly well by Holborow. I agree with Holborow that Wittgenstein is no behaviourist, and that the Diary Argument and the Beetle Argument are not opposed to this interpretation. But I wonder whether it is necessary to defend these arguments by saying that Wittgenstein made a distinction between inner experiences with natural expressions, and those without. I do not know whether Wittgenstein has explicitly said anywhere that there are inner experiences of the latter type. What he seems to have said is rather: if you think that inner experiences are named by looking into ourselves and uttering a sound, you are mistaken. If there were no natural manifestations of pain, for example, we would never be able to teach a child the use of ‘pain’. If our inner experiences had no natural expressions at all, we would have no words for them in our language.
The purpose of the Diary Argument is not so much to deny language about inner experiences, as to point out both the dependence of the language game of inner experiences on that of external objects, and its divergence.

The Beetle Argument must not be taken as a description of our actual situation w.r.t. our sensations, as Mundle has done. In fact (as Holborow has also pointed out), Wittgenstein’s purpose is just the opposite: what he wants to say is that if you consider sensa¬tions on the model of beetles in a box, then you are committed to the position that they do not enter language at all. The object then drops out as irrelevant, and the box might even be empty. And when Wittgenstein declares that sensation is neither a something nor a nothing (PI # 304), he is not denying the existence of sensations. What he is rejecting is the grammar on which it is based, which easily misleads us into thinking of sensations as objects of some kind, admittedly ‘inner,’ but objects all the same (PI ## 304-308).

What about Holborow s ‘partially private language’? His claim is that it is possible to make a finer distinction (as to the type of the sensation) than can be publicly described. There are no natural expressions to help us make this distinction, and nothing in the existing language either. This implies therefore that no justification of the claim is possible—and hence that it makes no sense to speak here of a correct or mistaken identification, or even of an identification in the first place.

Holborow, we have seen, tries to answer by seeking the reason behind Wittgenstein’s demand for justification. The call for the possibility of a justification, he says, is a call for the speci¬fication of the terms being used. So in his opinion, this condi¬tion is fulfilled at least in the case of strikingly distinctive sensations, even if this distinctive quality cannot be communi¬cated. He ends on this note. I do not think we can consider his claim substantiated. In order to make a case, one has to do more than merely make claims. It appears to me that he is aware of the implications of his claim from the moment he introduces the problem; that he tries to work his way to a solution by trying to find place for a new category of ‘fallible sensations reports’ which are ‘results of observation.’ But this procedure gets him nowhere, for with the claim that his ‘partially private language’ is a description, the requirement for the possibility of a justifi¬cation merely re-enters. The last effort is to reduce the need for justification to that of ‘specification.’ As far as I can see, ‘specification’ would involve language; and Holborow has excluded this when he says that the distinction he claims to make cannot BE PUBLICLY DESCRIBED. In the face of all this, it is difficult to make sense of his claim that all the same such a specification can be made at least in the case of strikingly dis¬tinctive sensations.

Perhaps Holborow’s ‘partially private language’ might have been saved if he had contented himself with saying merely that no public expression corresponds to the distinctive character he claims to discriminate, without saying also that the distinction is not publicly describable. Here then perhaps there would be the possibility of making finer distinctions by relating to words which already exist In public language—words for other inner experiences, for example. So here we would have a description of sensations, together with the necessary ‘possibility of a check’ and the ‘spe¬cification’ that is implied. I don’t think Wittgenstein has ruled out such a dependent language. We must take heed of his warning, however, that describing sensations is not like describing other things. We must not fall into the temptation to think of sensations as some kind of inner things which we describe by looking into ourselves.

2. The Verification Principle and the Private Language Argument

Mrs Thomson’s article is a vigorous attack on the attempt to find a thesis called the ‘Private Language Argument’ in Wittgenstein. She takes Malcolm’s presentation of the argument as representative of this misguided effort, and states her case against it:

(a) The thesis must not be credited to Wittgenstein. Further, it is neither important nor original.

(b) It is difficult to see what could make it logically impos¬sible for a language to be understood by anyone but its speaker.

(c) It is not at all clear what it means to follow a linguistic rule, or to violate it unwittingly.

(d) The whole argument is nothing but a restatement of the discredited principle of verificationism.

How (if at all) does Kenny answer Thomson? He says very tersely in a footnote: “Mrs Thomson is doubtful whether the Investigations contain an argument against private language. I agree with her that it does not contain the argument which she states.” He does not, therefore, attempt to respond to her directly. Instead, he goes back to Wittgenstein himseIf in a refreshing re-examination of the whole question:

(a) What, according to Wittgenstein, is a private language? A language whose words “refer to what can only be known to the person speaking: to his immediate private sensations.” (PI # 243) (Wittgenstein has just asked whether there could be a language to express inner experiences. ‘Obviously,’ the answer comes: ‘don’t we use our ordinary language for this purpose?’ But, says, Wittgenstein, that is not what he means. He wants to know whether there can be a language referring to what can be known only to the speaker. The question here is not so much about the possibility of a private language, as about the nature of ‘inner experiences.’ Supposing they are such that they are accessible only to the sub¬ject, could there be a language about them?)

(b) Why is this question about private language important? Because of its implications for epistemology and philosophy of mind. Several philosophical theories imply the possibility of a private language (e.g. Cartesianism, empiricism, scepticism). If a private language is impossible, these theories are wrong.

(c) The notion of a private language rests on two mistakes: (1) about the nature of ‘experience’: that it is private (inaccessible to others); and (2) about the nature of language: that words can acquire meaning by bare ostensive definition.

(d) Experiences are not ‘private’ in any radical sense. Others often know when I am in pain. I can of course deceive them; but this very deception is possible only on the basis of the existence of natural expressions of inner experiences.

(e) Bare ostensive definition is insufficient. It presupposes a great deal of stage-setting in language (PI # 257); and so the language in question is no longer private.

(f) However, some would hold that naming an inner experience is still possible, without necessarily having to fall back on public language. To these, the Diary Argument is directed. Now many are of the opinion that this argument is based upon a scepticism about memory. This is a misunderstanding. Wittgenstein is not asking, ‘how will I remember whether something is S or not?’ but rather: ‘how will I know what I mean by S?’ What is in question is the very extension of the term S. Suppose, when I had first used the term, I had fixed a table in my imagination. Now I want to use S. I refer to the table. And now suppose I want to justify my use of S. What do I refer to? The same table, the same memory! I use one memory to justify itself! This, says Kenny, is exactly analogous to buying two copies of the same newspaper.

(I would like to add a further point. Immediately after the above, Wittgenstein says: “So the look of a clock may serve to determine the time in more than one way.” (PI # 266) I think Wittgenstein is calling to our notice a point he made earlier: that there are ways and ways of interpreting a rule or a table. So a mere picture by itself is of no help. What we need is an established usage, a spontaneous rule-following. Now is this requirement ful-filled in the case of the table in our imagination?)

(g) The Private Language Argument rests not so much on verifi¬cationism as on the picture-theory of the 1910’s. A proposition is essentially bi-polar. (There is no such thing as an essentially true—an analytic—proposition.) Further, propositions must be articulated. Now ‘This is S’ satisfies neither of these conditions: it is not articulate (“a definition of the sign cannot be formulated¬“—PI # 258); nor is there is any possibility of its being false. It is related to the sensation “like a yardstick which grows or shrinks to the length of the object to be measured.” A measure must be independent of what it measures. There is no way of giving S an independence short of taking it into a public language.

To summarize: Kenny is of the opinion that there is something that could be called the Private Language Argument in Wittgenstein, though it is not in the form in which Thomson states it. He re¬jects her statement of the problem, and with it the charge of verificationism too. However, he could have been more explicit: what exactly is it that is wrong with Thomson’s statement of the problem?

We will bypass the question whether it is Malcolm who must be blamed for the statement of the argument, or whether it is Thomson who has misunderstood Malcolm. This much is clear: the entire argument as found in Thomson’s article is centred around the notion of ‘rule-following’; and it is obvious that a clarifi¬cation regarding Wittgenstein’s own notion of ‘rules’ is called for.

Thomson thinks of a rule as something explicitly formulated—¬a command or an order that can be followed or violated. “Immediately the difficulties rush in” —naturally. For what could be the rule for ‘table’ or for ‘chair’? Who formulates them? What would count as a violation of ‘You may do this’? And suppose we settle for ‘Call this, and other similar things, ‘table’—what is the meaning of ‘call’? Does this rule oblige us to shout out ‘table’ whenever and wherever we see one? The rules that Wittgenstein has in mind, however, are not commands or orders, nor are they explicitly formulated. They are rather “part of the framework on which the working of our language is based.” (PI # 240) They form part of the agreement that exists among human beings—and “that is not agreement in opinions but in form of life.” (PI # 241) How, then, do these rules influence us? By way of training: I have been trained to react to this sign in a particular way, and now I do so react to it.” (PI # 198)

Hence following a rule is something done spontaneously; and if this is so, it is also possible to violate a rule unwittingly. lf we take ‘rule’ as meaning ‘order’ or ‘command,’ it may make little sense to speak of an unwitting violation. But we take ‘rule’ in the sense of a usage, a custom, a tradition. What sense does it make to speak of a conscious mistake here? (A pianist deliberately pressing the wrong keys.)

Thomson will immediately respond: if you hold that ‘unwitting violation’ is part of the concept ‘rule,’ you are committed to the third step: that unwitting violation is not possible unless there is the logical possibility that another could find out. And that amounts to verificationism. In other words, Thomson is saying: if you insist on the public character of rules, you are a verificationist.

The question ‘why must rules be public?’ can be countered by another: ‘how would you fix a private rule?’ And now the whole of the Private Language Argument can be brought to bear. We need not go into details again. It will be sufficient to point out that the question of the ‘possibility of finding out whether or not a thing is a K’ does not arise at all. Mere ostensive definition, mere concentration of attention, coupled with the uttering of a sound, does not achieve anything: the extension of ‘K’ has not been fixed at all. The question of finding out whether or not a thing is a K already presupposes that we have fixed what type of thing, or what aspect of a thing is to be called a K; and the occurrence of that prior step apart from any connection with public language, is what Wittgenstein is denying.

2.1 A remark on ‘the possibility of finding out’

A sound is a word in language only if there is ‘the possibility of finding out.’ Put this way, this remark could be misleading. But there is some truth in it.

On what is the possibility of communication based? On the sounds I utter? The gestures I make? The symbols I use? Or is it based on something shared? A form of life, a framework that is taken for granted—an agreement which is not agreement in opinions? Another way of expressing this: there must be spontaneous rule-following. “To obey a rule, to make a report, to give an order, to play a game of chess, are customs (uses, institutions)” (PI # 199). So if this common form of life is absent—if you do not share it with me—there can be no communication. I think this is how we must understand the phrase, “the possibility of finding out.” (This is not to rule out the possibility of inventing new usages, new customs. But even this very possibility, and the possibility of communicating these, would be radically rooted in a common form of life....)

This is a far cry from verificationism. In a society where ‘god’ is a community experience, the sound ‘god’ surely makes sense, has meaning. Communication is possible. Would a verificationist be satisfied with such a procedure? The verificationist has a particular type of verification in mind: he has exalted one particular framework, that of empirical science, to the status of absolute arbiter of sense. All language must conform or be damned. For him, the phrase, ‘the possibility of finding out’ has a particular connotation. Has Wittgenstein restricted himself in this way in the Investigations? On the contrary.

* * *

The Private Language Argument

Yesterday I digitalized an old paper of mine on Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument. The paper was completed 11 November 1980, which means some 29 years ago. I was in the second year of the MPh course at Jnana Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pune, at the time, and was working under the guidance of Lisbert D’Souza, SJ, who was fresh from his doctorate (at Oxford, I think) on Wittgenstein. The MPh course was a different kind of affair in JDV in those days: you had to write 12 papers, of which the last was the dissertation. We were free to choose our own topics, and find our own professors, and then it was sort of individual work with the professor, culminating in a paper. So here I was, working with the young Wittgenstein professor, and it was an extremely enriching and rewarding affair. (I learnt only much later that this is the way the tutorial system functions in Oxford and perhaps also in Cambridge. At that time we thought JDV was shirking its responsibilities!) Lisbert put me through the Tractatus and the Investigations, with weekly reading assignments. The primary sources were interspersed with judiciously chosen secondary sources. I still have a large file of my jottings and personal comments. My 'course' culminated in the paper on Private Language.

At Danny Monsour's urging, I am thinking of publishing this paper much as it is. True, Wittgenstein scholarship has in all probability made great strides on the topic in the intervening years. But, reading the paper these days, I find it still speaks to me, and that it still provides a rather nuanced interpretation of Wittgenstein. I think my conlusion was that Wittgenstein was neither a behaviourist nor a verificationist. I also hope that this will be a small step towards dialectic and dialogue between Wittgenstein and Lonergan.

Lonergan scholars know that Lonergan dedicates a section of his chapter on Dialectic in his Method in Theology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990, 253-257) to Wittgenstein (section 7: The Dialectic of Methods: Part One), insisting rather strongly on mental acts and on the essentially private character of language in its origins. Lonergan, however, was no Wittgenstein scholar; he was reacting, as is evident also from the text itself, to questions posed him by Edward MacKinnon during one of his institutes on method in theology (see Transcendental Philosophy and the Study of Religion, Boston, 1968); so, despite the strong language he uses, the relationship between Wittgenstein and Lonergan still remains, to my mind, an open question.

I know I should be reading Lonergan closely, and then Wittgenstein again... But offhand, my impression is that Wittgenstein is absolutely right that private language is not possible, and Lonergan is prima facie wrong in rejecting that claim. But then, Lonergan is interpreting Wittgenstein via MacKinnon here; and besides, there is no guarantee that authors are their own best interpreters. Wonderful matter for a substantial paper here...

Wittgenstein and Lonergan on correcting our certainties

"Further experiments cannot give the lie to our earlier ones, at most they may change our whole way of looking at things." (Wittgenstein, On Certainty ??)

Like the shift from the geocentric to the heliocentric way of looking at things. After someone accepts that the earth goes round the sun, rather than vice versa, nothing changes in the way things appear. The sun still appears to rise in the east. And we still go on speaking of sunrise and sunset.

Lonergan says: From the point of view of description, the sun rises in the East. From the point of view of explanation, the sun does not rise; it is the earth that goes round the sun. Each point of view is correct in itself. But if we were to say: from every point of view, the sun rises in the East, then we would be mistaken.

But of course we don't usually go around talking like this. And yet we understand what Lonergan is trying to say.

Wittgenstein and Lonergan on knowing

Wittgenstein, like many others, bumps into the limits of 'knowing' and comes up with a refreshing insight into the fact that all our knowing presupposes a context of 'certainties'.

Lonergan largely agrees, I would think, with this. But this may have to be nuanced, by reading, for example, Insight on implicit definitions. Questions come to an end somewhere; there is no infinite series of propositions grounding other propositions, unless we are children playing games and wanting to drive the other child mad. What is the solution? One solution - apart from what W has been saying - is what L calls the fact that a set of terms and relations tumble out together when we have an insight. But of course this kind of having an insight would itself presuppose other 'certainties' in W's sense. No problem about that.

Pertinent would be also L's analysis of reflective understanding in chapter 10 of Insight - the way we are able to make use of non-propositional elements in our process of knowing. So, despite the fact that L explains the process of judging in terms of a syllogism of the form: If A then B; but A; therefore B, he is at pains to point out that this is not exactly how the mind functions. It functions in a pre-propositional way...

Would Wittgensteinian stomachs turn at this talk of 'mental acts'? Perhaps. But again: what is important is to look at our experience, rather than go by dogmas - even Wittgensteinian ones. W would regard the proposition 'This is a tree' as a certainty, because it is the way we have been taught to use the word tree. L would certainly admit that a linguistic insight is involved - an intelligent use of the English language. However, if we are not merely uttering a sentence or citing a proposition, if we are identifying something as a tree rather than a cow, L would say there is more than just the linguistic insight involved. There is involved an identification of a particular set of data as a tree. Such an insight involves grasp of a unity, identity, whole in data, and it is an act of intelligence, though one that quickly becomes 'habitual'...

Wittgenstein on certainty and Lonergan on beliefs

I am correcting Sathish Thiyagarajan's MPh paper, "Wittgenstein on Certainty: A Reading of On Certainty."

Naturally I keep asking myself: what would Lonergan have to say about this?

I think W is entirely right when he points out that there are propositions which have the form of empirical propositions but actually function in a different way. It makes no sense, for example, to doubt these propositions. They are what we take for granted in our activity of knowing and doubting. They are, he says, the framework of our language game, they are the rules of the game. These be calls certainties. He does not hesitate to say that many of these certainties are beliefs, taken over from our form of life, our culture, in the course of our upbringing. Since our upbringing includes also learning one or more languages, language skills are also part of what he regards as certainties - propositions which it makes no sense to doubt. It makes no sense to doubt, for example, that this is a tree, he says.

I am asking myself: in place of W's distinction between knowledge and certainty, could we use L's distinction between (immanently or personally generated) knowledge and belief (what we have taken over from others, our culture, etc.)? Perhaps the overlap is not perfect, unless under 'beliefs' we include also the learning of a language.

But much of what L has to say about beliefs would, I think, be perfectly acceptable to W: the symbiosis of knowledge and belief, for example: it is almost impossible to separate out the two in any given instance. The fact that judgment is always contextual, and that even the making of a single judgment presupposes a host of other judgments, so that there is a frightful circularity to all our knowing. How, L asks, do we get out of this circularity? All logical circles are broken ultimately by action, and L points out that when we do not have, we can always borrow. So we proceed by borrowing - where borrowing would include taking from those who know better (the 'masters', the 'wise people'), from our culture, and so on. And of course we do not always 'borrow' in this explicit fashion. All our knowing takes place within the context of our being part of a culture, a language group, a game, etc. The 'way up' can function only within the context of the 'way down', and it is the way down that is prior. "Im Anfang war die Tat," W says somewhere: "In the beginning was the Deed." Lisbert D'Souza liked to quote that to me.

Questions do come to an end. The spade touches rock bottom. L would say: not that we cannot question further; further questions are always possible; but does it make sense to continue questioning? So the inbuilt way we function is: when there is the absence of further relevant questions, we 'assume' that we have reached an 'invulnerable' insight. When relevant questions come to an end, we have, as it were, reached a stasis, of the type we are more familiar in the realm of the moral conscience. We then sometimes go on to another topic. Is this an automatic criterion of truth? By no means. But: that is how we function. How then can we be sure of our insights and judgments? No short cut, no recipe, for producing good judgments. Only factors to be kept in mind: allow further questions a chance to arise; set questions correctly; try to move to mastery of the situation; be aware of and balance your temperament....

The echoes between W and L become less surprising when we bring Newman into the picture. But the relationship between N and W remains to be better clarified. Sathish has found at least three studies, but I would have to see them myself.

In the meantime, it might be a very good idea for Sathish to now do a little study of N's Grammar of Assent, and why not, eventually also a study of L on knowing and believing. Not an easy job though!

Wittgenstein and Lonergan

The variety and profusion of language games: cf. the varieties and profusion of common sense. there are as many type of common sense as there are places and times; and common sense is the ordinary context within which we live and work. And of course it is not static.

Wittgenstein's 'certainties' which form the 'framework': cf. beliefs. Common sense is largely inherited. We add to it our own personal judgments - but even here there is a complex symbiosis between what we discover for ourselves and what is inherited...

Wittgenstein, Newman and Lonergan again

I have just been browsing through the Kienzler article. My impressions: Kienzler's interpretation of Newman might leave much to be desired... He calls Newman an empiricist, a rationalist, and so on. If Lonergan's reading of Newman is right, he is no such thing!

But this is a large question of interpretation - a fine example of one's basic philosophical commitments radically interfering with one's understanding of an author... and a great case for the practice of the Functional Specialty dialectic... put all interpretations in line, find out the radically conflicting points, and reduce them to their roots in basic philosophical positions.

Despite that, Kienzler has done a great job.

Some good work in store for a Lonergan/Wittgenstein enthusiast?

Newman and Wittgenstein (and Lonergan)

It does not seem to be very well known that, in the very first paragraph of his On Certainty, Wittgenstein mentions Newman: Dazu eine komische Bemerkung H. Newmans – On this a curious remark by H. Newman.

P.J. FitzPatrick has a small comment on this remark with the same title: “Dazu eine komische Bemerkung H. Newmans.” Wittgenstein and His Impact on Contemporary Thought: Proceedings of the Second International Wittgenstein Symposium, 29 August - 4 September 1977, Kirchberg / Wechsel, Austria, 2nd ed., Elizabeth Leinfellner and others, eds. (Holder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1989) 42-45.

The remark is curious. If, as FitzPatrick says, Wittgenstein’s position on certainty is similar to that of Newman, there arises the antecedent probability that it is also similar to that of Lonergan, who is supposed to have read the Grammar of Assent five or six times during his early philosophical studies, and who claimed to have transposed Newman from the commonsense to a more ‘systematic’ mode of writing and style of thought….

Curious indeed. Komisch, in fact. Matter for a little dissertation.

H. Danny Monsour of the Lonergan Research Institute, Toronto, passed on to me the following reference: Wolfgang Kienzler, "Wittgenstein and John Henry Newman on Certainty," Grazer Philosophische Studien 71 (2006) 117-38. The abstract reads:

Wittgenstein read and admired the work of John Henry Newman. Evidence suggests that from 1946 until 1951 Newman's Grammar of Assent was probably the single most important external stimulus for Wittgenstein's thought. In important respects Wittgenstein's reactions to G. E. Moore follow hints already given by Newman.

More and more komisch.

Being-in-a-world

When Heidegger insists that we are being-in-the-world, it means that there is no presuppositionless starting point. When Descartes wrote his Meditations, he was already writing.

[O]ne of the presuppositions that escaped Descartes' notice when he set out to put everything in doubt, when he tried to clear the slate of his consciousness and start out from scratch, was that the entire work of doubt relied upon language. By using a word that he had borrowed from his Jesuit teachers, 'meditations,' he was trying to suggest a kind of inner soliloquy of the soul with itself, a solitary, world-less, naked and - here's the punchline - pre-linguistic contact of the soul with itself. But of course, everything he said, and I mean everything he said, every last word of it, was deeply embedded in the words he used that he had inherited from the Jesuits, and from the scholastic philosphers before them, and from his mother and father, and from the books he had read in school, and so on. [...] As Ludwig Wittgenstein [...] said, there is no such thing as a private language. Wherever Descartes starts his Meditations, it will be in the middle of a public language. (Caputo, Philosophy and Theology 46.)