Confessions of a Non-Wittgensteinian
I cannot tell a lie: I hated reading Wittgenstein. I found the experience frustrating. Wittgenstein’s endless questioning struck me as lazy—why not venture an answer to some of these questions, rather than merely musing on them? On the bright side, the exercise of reading Wittgenstein seems to have helped me clarify my methodological tendencies. I learned that I have a strong preference for empirical approaches to gaining knowledge. To the extent Wittgenstein’s questions are of any value, they serve to set out a research agenda on language and cognition.
Some examples will help clarify contention that the questions Wittgenstein poses can and perhaps should be studied empirically. Let us take his questions on the ability of an animal to experience hope an anticipation:
This is an excellent question for some experiments, both on animals and, I would suggest, on human children at various stages of development. What happens when the animal (to start with) experiences pleasure? Does the tail wag, the heart rate increase? Do the ears perk up, the pupils dilate? In the next step, let us imagine that every day before the dog’s master comes home, the dog can hear the master’s garage door open. Now let us see if the dog shows the same signs of pleasure—this might be interpreted as anticipation. We might go further and see if the dog shows such signs at the time of day when the master usually comes home. These of course do not directly show “hope,” and it is not difficult to accept that we cannot directly witness such experiences. Indeed, psychologists are busy studying emotions such as “hope” and trying to determine to what extent these are physiological experiences and to what extent they are constituted by verbal messages in our minds. The answers are not yet clear, but we can go a long way towards answering the questions Wittgenstein poses through empirical study.
Another example from Wittgenstein is his discussion of the meaning of a word such as “if,” or rather how one experiences the meaning (181-82). Is the meaning a feeling, an atmosphere or “corona,” the “experience one has in hearing or saying it,” or something different each time depending on context and use? Is that feeling separable from the word itself? Linguists in the sub-field of semantics study just such questions. My frustration with both Wittgenstein and the linguists is the leaving out of the social aspects of meaning. Wittgenstein hints at it; linguists (except sociolinguists and linguistic anthropologists) assiduously ignore it. One way study the meaning of meaning is to study child language acquisition—the way children try out a new word, sometimes use it incorrectly, and get corrected by their caregivers. Another is to study brain scans as a word is used, perhaps in different ways in different contexts. Yet another is to study aphasia patients—those who have lost function of certain language-related parts of the brain due to stroke. To be sure, this leaves out a certain element of experience that cannot be directly observed or communicated; perhaps this is the very part with which Wittgenstein is most concerned. Nonetheless, how do his scenarios and questions get us any closer to understanding these phenomena?
The next example concerns visual recognition: “I meet someone whom I have not seen for years; I see him clearly, but fail to know him. Suddenly I know him, I see the old face in the altered one. I believe that I should do a different portrait of him now if I could paint. Now, when I know my acquaintance in a crowd, perhaps after looking in his direction for quite a while,—is this a special sort of seeing? Is it a case of both seeing and thinking? or an amalgam of the two, as I should almost like to say?” (197). Indeed, cognitive psychologists are eagerly pursuing an understanding of these questions and visual recognition more generally. There are big payoffs to be had for understanding this process—it could then be replicated by computers, with enormous profitability in the arena of security. Some progress has evidently been made: I get into my health club by pressing my index finger against a device that recognizes my fingerprint. The ability of humans to recognize a face that has aged considerably since last view is surely much more complex, yet one that technologists are no doubt interested in replicating.
My final example involves the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon:
’The word is on the tip of my tongue." What is going on in my consciousness? That is not the point at all. Whatever did go on was not what was meant by that expression. It is of more interest what went on in my behaviour.—‘The word is on the tip of my tongue’ tells you: the word which belongs here has escaped me, but I hope to find it soon. For the rest the verbal expression does no more than certain wordless behaviour. James, in writing of this subject, is really trying to say: ‘What a remarkable experience! The word is not there yet, and yet in a certain sense is there,—or something is there, which cannot grow into anything but this word.’—But this is not experience at all. Interpreted as experience it does indeed look odd (219).
It is funny Wittgenstein should mention the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon—as an undergraduate linguistics major, I had a professor perform an experiment with the class on this experience. He asked us to recall the name of the lead actor in a particular movie. Those of us who either had no idea of the answer or who recalled the actor’s name without difficulty were disqualified. The rest of us had the name “on the tips of our tongues.” Under questioning from the professor, most of this smaller group were able to accurately recall something about the name, like the number of syllables, the first letter, or the major vowel sounds in the name. The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon clearly can be studied empirically.
What, then, is the point of approaching these kinds of subjects philosophically? Wittgenstein was probably not setting out to establish a research agenda for future linguists and cognitive psychologists. I think he was instead trying to highlight the impossibility of fully penetrating the individual experience of such things as emotions, pain, color perception, and the meanings of words. With regard to language, I think he was pointing out the maddening difficulty of truly pinning down meaning, despite our tidy dictionary definitions, and the mind-boggling mystery of our ability to more-or-less understand one another in spite of this. I grant that his questions are interesting food for thought, but I, for one, am more interested in the search for answers.
Some examples will help clarify contention that the questions Wittgenstein poses can and perhaps should be studied empirically. Let us take his questions on the ability of an animal to experience hope an anticipation:
One can imagine an animal angry, frightened, unhappy, happy, startled. But hopeful? And why not? A dog believes his master is at the door. But can he also believe his master will come the day after to-morrow?—And what can he not do here?—How do I do it?—How am I supposed to answer this? Can only those hope who can talk? (174).
This is an excellent question for some experiments, both on animals and, I would suggest, on human children at various stages of development. What happens when the animal (to start with) experiences pleasure? Does the tail wag, the heart rate increase? Do the ears perk up, the pupils dilate? In the next step, let us imagine that every day before the dog’s master comes home, the dog can hear the master’s garage door open. Now let us see if the dog shows the same signs of pleasure—this might be interpreted as anticipation. We might go further and see if the dog shows such signs at the time of day when the master usually comes home. These of course do not directly show “hope,” and it is not difficult to accept that we cannot directly witness such experiences. Indeed, psychologists are busy studying emotions such as “hope” and trying to determine to what extent these are physiological experiences and to what extent they are constituted by verbal messages in our minds. The answers are not yet clear, but we can go a long way towards answering the questions Wittgenstein poses through empirical study.
Another example from Wittgenstein is his discussion of the meaning of a word such as “if,” or rather how one experiences the meaning (181-82). Is the meaning a feeling, an atmosphere or “corona,” the “experience one has in hearing or saying it,” or something different each time depending on context and use? Is that feeling separable from the word itself? Linguists in the sub-field of semantics study just such questions. My frustration with both Wittgenstein and the linguists is the leaving out of the social aspects of meaning. Wittgenstein hints at it; linguists (except sociolinguists and linguistic anthropologists) assiduously ignore it. One way study the meaning of meaning is to study child language acquisition—the way children try out a new word, sometimes use it incorrectly, and get corrected by their caregivers. Another is to study brain scans as a word is used, perhaps in different ways in different contexts. Yet another is to study aphasia patients—those who have lost function of certain language-related parts of the brain due to stroke. To be sure, this leaves out a certain element of experience that cannot be directly observed or communicated; perhaps this is the very part with which Wittgenstein is most concerned. Nonetheless, how do his scenarios and questions get us any closer to understanding these phenomena?
The next example concerns visual recognition: “I meet someone whom I have not seen for years; I see him clearly, but fail to know him. Suddenly I know him, I see the old face in the altered one. I believe that I should do a different portrait of him now if I could paint. Now, when I know my acquaintance in a crowd, perhaps after looking in his direction for quite a while,—is this a special sort of seeing? Is it a case of both seeing and thinking? or an amalgam of the two, as I should almost like to say?” (197). Indeed, cognitive psychologists are eagerly pursuing an understanding of these questions and visual recognition more generally. There are big payoffs to be had for understanding this process—it could then be replicated by computers, with enormous profitability in the arena of security. Some progress has evidently been made: I get into my health club by pressing my index finger against a device that recognizes my fingerprint. The ability of humans to recognize a face that has aged considerably since last view is surely much more complex, yet one that technologists are no doubt interested in replicating.
My final example involves the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon:
’The word is on the tip of my tongue." What is going on in my consciousness? That is not the point at all. Whatever did go on was not what was meant by that expression. It is of more interest what went on in my behaviour.—‘The word is on the tip of my tongue’ tells you: the word which belongs here has escaped me, but I hope to find it soon. For the rest the verbal expression does no more than certain wordless behaviour. James, in writing of this subject, is really trying to say: ‘What a remarkable experience! The word is not there yet, and yet in a certain sense is there,—or something is there, which cannot grow into anything but this word.’—But this is not experience at all. Interpreted as experience it does indeed look odd (219).
It is funny Wittgenstein should mention the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon—as an undergraduate linguistics major, I had a professor perform an experiment with the class on this experience. He asked us to recall the name of the lead actor in a particular movie. Those of us who either had no idea of the answer or who recalled the actor’s name without difficulty were disqualified. The rest of us had the name “on the tips of our tongues.” Under questioning from the professor, most of this smaller group were able to accurately recall something about the name, like the number of syllables, the first letter, or the major vowel sounds in the name. The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon clearly can be studied empirically.
What, then, is the point of approaching these kinds of subjects philosophically? Wittgenstein was probably not setting out to establish a research agenda for future linguists and cognitive psychologists. I think he was instead trying to highlight the impossibility of fully penetrating the individual experience of such things as emotions, pain, color perception, and the meanings of words. With regard to language, I think he was pointing out the maddening difficulty of truly pinning down meaning, despite our tidy dictionary definitions, and the mind-boggling mystery of our ability to more-or-less understand one another in spite of this. I grant that his questions are interesting food for thought, but I, for one, am more interested in the search for answers.
posted by Suzanne at 2:54 PM
7 Comments:
"Wittgenstein was probably not setting out to establish a research agenda for future linguists and cognitive psychologists." - This was definitely my conclusion as well... Wittgenstein keeps discussing language and language games, though what he offers cannot be easily used as a method in studying language, or even social interaction ('it is really impossible to understand' is not a nice starting point in a research I guess).
I believe we can read him as asking questions about lack of structure in social life, reality, and language. Saussure and Searle practically talk about similar things - how we ascribe meanings to words, yet they do come up with structures that could be used for future analysis.
I was shocked to see Shotter's interpretation of Wittengstein. A quick look at Chapter 5 might be helpful in understanding why he is considered to be such an influential character.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sorry guys, Wrong account. Prof PTJ, is it possible to delete the preceding comment?
~Tatiana
What I find interesting is that I was left with a completely different impression of Wittgenstein's writing. I was simply left with, "You don't know s*** [anything]". Not in a demoralizing, woe is me, what is the point of my studies kind of way, but in a way that inspires me to look deeper at the assumptions I make, especially in choosing words and definitions, and how far those ideas, words, and choices take me, both in my understanding of my work, and how it may then be interpreted by others. This concept I still find myself mulling over, both academically and personally is his section where he discusses intentions and understanding:
"For it is like this, if the possible uses of a word do float before us in half-shades as we say or hear it--this simply goes for US. But we communicate with people without knowing if THEY have this experience too" (Pt 2 Sect vi Paragraph 2).
Regarding Suzanne’s comment “I grant that his questions are interesting food for thought, but I, for one, am more interested in the search for answers”, I wonder if it is possible to search for answers without searching for the right question? Wittgenstein’s work reminded me a bit of Zen Buddhist koans, which are stories that cannot be understood rationally – they are meant to challenge and shock you out of thinking your usual way. One common example is “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” I feel like if it is not so clear to understand how Wittgenstein can be applied to our search for answers, perhaps instead Philosophical Investigations can be instead used to challenge ourselves to think about how to shape our questions so that we can find the answers? And then perhaps to questions our answers?
For me, reading Wittgenstein encourages an appreciation of our place as beings within language: "philosophy is onto-logy, its basic premise...is that 'thinking and being are the same'...The Being philosophy has in mind is always the being whose house is language, the being whose horizon is opened up by language..." (Zizek, The Ticklish Subject, 1999, xviii)
Wittgenstein also encourages us--beyond recognizing the centrality of rule-following in human affairs--I think, not to seek some sort of intellectual or philosophical closure in our search for answers.
Finally, I would agree with Peter Winch, who, drawing at times on Wittgentein, argues in his little book 'The Idea of Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy,' that "any worthwhile study of society must be
philosophical in character and any worthwhile philosophy must be concerned with the nature of
human society" (3).
So, as researchers, maybe reading Wittgenstein can help us better integrate the 'big' questions into our more specific inquirys.
In thinking about Suzanne’s post: My feeling is that Wittgenstein was not putting these questions out there with an eye to finding answers. This frustrates me immensely. But perhaps that’s the point? To shatter the illusion that we can have any understanding of this crazy linguistic social thing that we’re all caught up in?
And like Namalie, I also see a parallel to koans here. There is in fact a koan which very much reminds me of the “Can a dog hope” question:
A monk once asked master Chao-chou, "Does a dog have Buddha-nature or not?"
Chao-chou said, "Mu"
Though I’m sure people have come up with a thousand ways to rationalize this and extract answers from it (I’ve heard one explanation that koans are all about breaking down the subject-object divide), I think “Mu” is as good an answer as any to Wittgenstein also.
I was reflecting on the question Ela posed regarding the implications of Wittgenstein for our work, and I think that his contribution may largely be in pulling the rug out from supposedly definitive methods of truth finding. To give a concrete example:
There is a project called the "Latinobarometro" that each year asks thousands of people in Latin America about their support for democracy, with questions like-- "Is democracy the best form of government?" Based on these survey results, scholars draw conclusions about the "health" of democracy in respective countries, etc.
As Wittgenstein notes, "For a large class of cases...in which we employ the word "meaning" it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language." (number 43). So without seeing the word in use, how on earth could survey data capture what "democracy" means to the people being asked the question? How do we know what language game we're playing? And if we don't know what "democracy" means to them, then what conclusions could we rightfully draw from their answer to the question "Is democracy the best form of government?" (to which, by the way, the correct answer is: Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all of the others).
I spent a bit of time in Ecuador talking with youth about "democracy," and indeed the meaning seemed to vary by speaker and context. One kid talked about democracy to explain what politics in Ecuador is not...Another kid referred to democracy in terms of being nice to people--especially handicapped people. I felt I could begin to grasp the range of meanings of "democracy" for these youth over the time I spent with them. But it made me chuckle to think about any conclusions that might be drawn from their responses to the Latinobarometro survey questions.
Wittegenstein is certainly a spoiler for many mainstream social science methodologies. I agree with Kate and Suzanne that he thrusts the "burden of truth" on other scholars--he gets to ask the questions, he does not have to defend truth claims against those who would question. But in some ways, I appreciate that about his writing. Social reality is so much more complex, nuanced, slippery, undefinable than what so many social scientists aim to make us believe. Language is largely the currency of social exchange, and Wittgenstein's meditations about the impossibility of defining language undercut our capacity to give definition to social reality. I find this frustrating, but also kind of refreshing...
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