Wittgenstein's Concept of Showing, Part 2

It is difficult for a person to understand a word or concept in a language game in which they are not fluent. An example of this can be seen in the film The Gods Must be Crazy. The film opens by introducing a tribe of bushmen in the Kalahari Desert. The tribe is happy because they are provided for and they believe that the gods only put good useful things on the earth for them. Their world is interrupted when a pilot flying overhead throws a glass Coke bottle out the window, which falls to the earth unbroken. The bushmen, who discover the bottle, had never seen a bottle before so they try to discover its use. Some used it to cure snake skin, one man used it to make music, and others used it for a variety of other tasks. Since there was only one bottle which had proven to be useful for multiple tasks, the people, for the first time desire to own something as property and start to become jealous and fight over the bottle. One of the bushmen, Xi, begins to call the bottle the “evil thing” and decides to leave the tribe and throw the bottle off of the edge of the earth to restore peace.

This does not mean one cannot learn a new language game or come to understand a different culture. Kallenberg says, “Namely, one can also get a grasp on a form of life as an outsider by being shown, not told, the form of communal life.”[1] Kallenberg goes on to argue, "Proximity to and recognition of a group’s characteristic form of life, as might be the case for an anthropologist who lives among an aboriginal tribe for a decade or two, prove enough of an insider’s grasp of the form of life—even if from the outside—to allow an understanding to occur."[2]

This means that for fluency to take place, a person must not only learn the vocabulary of a people group, for, “fluency also requires familiarity with activities.”[3] For, activities give sense to the vocabulary used.[4] For example, if someone had come and shown the bushmen how to drink from a bottle, the bushmen would have come to understand the use of a bottle.

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[1] Kallenberg, 116.

[2] Ibid., 117.

[3] Ibid., 122.

[4] “Post-liberal theology in the vein of McClendon and Hauerwas reminds us that claims about God are claims about God. However, in order for these claims to be intelligible, they must find a home in the context of practices (for example, confession, worship, and witness) which give to all forms of Christian language their sense” (Ibid., 233–234).

Wittgenstein's Concept of Showing, Part 1

Monk notes that after Wittgenstein arrived back in Cambridge in the autumn of 1930, he had a “clear conception of the correct method in philosophy.”[1] Monk goes onto argue that "the really decisive moment came when he began to take literally the idea of the Tractatus that the philosopher has nothing to say, but only something to show, and applied the idea with complete rigour, abandoning altogether the attempt to say something with ‘pseudo-propositions’."[2]

As Monk mentions, a concept of “showing” is seen in the Tractatus. For example, Wittgenstein says things like, “What can be shown, cannot be said,” which expresses the weakness in language.[3] Wittgenstein takes this notion further in his later philosophy. Monk notes as an example, “Appreciation takes a bewildering variety of forms, which differ from culture to culture, and quite often will not consist in saying anything. Appreciation will be shown, by actions as often as by words.”[4] Wittgenstein also laments his inability to write poetry, since “poetry is able to show what cannot be said.”[5]

Wittgenstein also uses images in his writing in order to better show his meaning. For example, in “Philosophy of Psychology – A Fragment” (originally known as Part II of Philosophical Investigations), Wittgenstein borrows Jastrow’s picture of “the duck-rabbit”

to show that at times people have different interpretations or perceptions of illustrations.[6]

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[1] Monk, 298.

[2] Ibid., 302.

[3] Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D.F. Pears & B.F. McGuinness (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), § 4.1212.

[4] Monk, 405.

[5] Kallenberg, 3.

[6] Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 204–207.

Wittgenstein's View of Language, Part 2

Wittgenstein argues instead that the meaning of a word comes from its use or its practice.[1] That, for Wittgenstein, does not mean a person can use a word anyway they want. A person cannot decide to start using the word “orange” for the color green or start calling a banana an “apple.” Wittgenstein denies that a person can develop their own private language to describe their own private experiences. As Hans Sluga says

Wittgenstein went on to maintain that the words of our language have meaning only insofar as there exist public criteria for their correct use. As a consequence, he argued, there cannot be a completely private language, that is, a language which in principle can only be used to speak about one’s own inner experience.[2]

This demonstrates a shift from Wittgenstein’s understanding in the Tractatus that a proposition pictures reality. Monk argues that the shift in perspective came from Wittgenstein’s interaction with Piero Sraffa. Sraffa was an Italian economist who had to leave Italy because of a tract he published attacking the policies of Mussolini. John Maynard Keynes invited Sraffa to come to Cambridge and the university created a teaching post for him.

Upon Wittgenstein’s return to Cambridge in 1929, Keynes introduced Wittgenstein to Sraffa and the two became close friends. They met weekly to discuss Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Sraffa helped Wittgenstein develop an “anthropological approach” to philosophy, leading Wittgenstein to emphasize communal life.[3] So, while the Tractatus discusses language apart from the context in which it is used, “the Investigations repeatedly emphasizes the importance of the ‘stream of life’ which gives linguistic utterances their meaning.”[4] Wittgenstein expresses his indebtedness to Sraffa in the preface to Philosophical Investigations by saying, “I am indebted to that which a teacher of this university, Mr P. Sraffa, for many years unceasingly applied to my thoughts. It is to this stimulus that I owe the most fruitful ideas of this book.”[5]

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[1] Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books, 4; Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 30; and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, trans. Peter Winch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 85.

[2] Hans Sluga, “Ludwig Wittgenstein: Life and Work. An Introduction,” In Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein, ed. Hans Sluga and David G. Stern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 21.

[3] Monk, 260.

[4] Ibid., 261.

[5] Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 4. As Kerr points out, by emphasizing communal life and action Wittgenstein rejects the “picture of the solitary disembodied consciousness” (140).

Capitalism: A Love Story

The posts on Wittgenstein will continue again tomorrow, I just wanted to take a quick break to write a film review.

I know many do not like Michael Moore. He is a polarizing figure and people tend to either love him or hate him. My Republican or conservative friends tend to disregard Moore as a kind of "liberal wacko." So, I know many of you do not want to see this movie, but I ask you to give it a hearing.

Twenty years after the release of Roger and Me, a film in which Moore traces the collapse of Flint, MI after GM laid off 30,00 jobs in Flint despite posting record sales, Moore releases Capitalism: A Love Story.

In the film, Moore traces the history of our economy from World War 2 until the present economic crisis. While Moore is critical of the Reagan and W. administrations, Moore does not only blame the right. Moore notes that both the Clinton administration and the current Obama administrations have contributed to the problems we are facing. In particular, Moore critiques the administration for giving key positions in the treasury department to people like former Timothy Geithner (Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs from 1998-2001 in the Clinton administration and the Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration) and former Goldman Sachs executives like Lawrence Summers (Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration from 1999-2001 and current director of the White House National Economic Council) and Robert Rubin (Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration from 1995-1999), who are largely responsible for creating the mess we're in (see the video from the Daily Show I posted a couple days ago for a similar critique of the Obama administration by Jon Stewart). Moore also critiques a Democratic congress for passing the bailouts. So, Moore shows himself to be critical of people across the political spectrum.

Moore, as usual, blends historical sources (such as an FDR State of the Union Address calling for a worker's bill of rights and some videos from the fifties defending capitalism), stories of how the economic crisis has effected common people who have lost their jobs and homes, with news stories of the economic crisis and the bailouts and interviews with members of congress, and gives his commentary on the issues. Moore also discusses issues like the poor pay of airline pilots, the rise of home foreclosures, and the impact of his faith on his viewpoint (this includes interviews with two priests and a bishop in the film).

As you watch, you'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll get angry at the crimes against the American people (and people around the world) committed by greedy executives and the growing gap in the US between the rich and poor.

Most of Moore's film consists of critique of the current system. I recently saw Moore on Democracy Now and he said that after he made films critiquing GM layoffs (Roger and Me), Farhenheit 9/11 (the military-industrial complex), the health care system (Sicko), and others, Moore wanted to make a film that critiqued the root cause of all of these issues, so he made Capitalism: A Love Story. Moore does not necessarily offer any alternatives on a large scale, but he does offer some alternative ways of doing business.

Moore shows some examples of some companies in which all of the workers are part owners. So rather than having a CEO who makes hundreds of times what the average worker makes. They make decisions together and make profits together. One of the companies is a bread factory in California.

Before watching the film, I would recommend watching Roger and Me, which would help set the context of the rest of Moore's career.

While I know many of you will dismiss both Moore and my review, give the film a fair hearing.

Wittgenstein's Critique of the Metaphysical View of Language, Part 2

Wittgenstein also critiques the understanding of Plato that meaning is a mental process. In fact, while he opens Part I of Philosophical Investigations with a discussion of Augustine’s explanation of language, in the closing paragraph, Wittgenstein says, “And nothing is more wrong-headed than to call meaning something a mental activity!”[1] Reflecting on this concept, Fergus Kerr says, “That is to say: to think of meaning as some essentially occult state or act inside one’s consciousness, radically inaccessible to anyone else, is . . . to succumb to the appealing thought that the self is concealed inside the man”—a concept Kerr rejects.[2]

The meaning of a word does not stem from a realm of Forms that transcends the world. Wittgenstein for instance argued that a sentence like “Red exists” is not a “metaphysical statement about red.”[3] He also critiques philosophers who attempted to use words like “knowledge” or “being” and attempt to “grasp the essence of the thing” as if bringing “words back from their metaphysical use to their everyday use.”[4] Wittgenstein instead views language as something “internally related to the world.”[5] As Wittgenstein says in The Blue Book, “let’s not forget that a word hasn’t got a meaning given to it, as it were, by a power independent of us, so that there could be a kind of scientific investigation into what the word really means. A word has the meaning someone has given it.”[6]

O.K. Bouwsma discusses the futility of seeking an external meaning of words in his essay “The Mystery of Time.” Bouwsma begins saying,

The occasion of this essay is the remark of a student, which he made after a company of us had tried to assure him that if he know how to answer such questions as: What time is it? and when were you born? and are you going soon? and were you always lazy? etc., that he would also know what time is. He protested, however, that though he certainly did know all these things, he still did not know what time is.[7]

Bouwsma proceeds to tell the story of a man trying to discover what time is who tries to measure time by using objects like a measuring stick or a watermill. After not succeeding, the man visits a clockmaker who informs him that you cannot measure time in the ways that he has attempted. Misunderstanding the clockmaker, the man tries to understand time with a water meter. After failing, he then tried to shake and squeeze a clock to see if he could catch a few seconds falling out. Frustrated, the man decided that time is actually an illusion.[8]

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[1] Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 693.

[2] Kerr, 42.

[3] Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 58.

[4] Ibid., § 116.

[5] Kallenberg, 184.

[6] Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books: Preliminary Studies for the “Philosophical Investigations” (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), 28.

[7] O.K. Bouwsma, “The Mystery of Time,” in Philosophical Essays (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), 99.

[8] Ibid., 100–106.

Wittgenstein's View of Language, Part 1

So, I know that I have failed at keeping up with this blog, but the next week or so, I'll have some stuff to post, continuing my first two posts on Wittgenstein and the philosophy of language. The posts come from a paper I'm writing for a reading course. Much of the information will also be a part of my thesis, so I would appreciate some comments, etc., in order to help me refine my thoughts.

Language for Wittgenstein, has numerous functions, which he calls “language games.” Wittgenstein says, “The word ‘language-game’ is used here to emphasize the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life.”[1] Wittgenstein gives numerous examples of possible language games:

Giving orders, and acting on them –

Describing an object by its appearance, or by its measurements –

Constructing an object from a description (a drawing) –

Reporting an event –

Speculating about the event –

Forming and testing a hypothesis –

Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams –

Making up a story; and reading one –

Acting in a play –

Signing rounds –

Guessing riddles –

Cracking a joke; telling one –

Solving a problem in applied arithmetic –

Translating from one language into another –

Requesting, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying.[2]

Wittgenstein, as Nancey Murphy says, represents a shift “from concern to give a single theory of meaning for all language, to a concern to understand the multiple functions of language.”[3]

Because multiple functions of language exist, Wittgenstein argues, no proposition can have a single meaning. Rather, as Grenz and Franke point out, “Because the meaning of any statement is dependent on the context—that is, on the ‘language game’—in which it appears, any sentence has as many meanings as contexts in which it is used.”[4] So, for example, “Eat my flesh” means something different from the mouth of Jesus in John 6 than it does from the cow “that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable of saying so clearly and distinctly” in Douglas Adams’ The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.[5]

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[1] Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 23.

[2] Ibid., § 23.

[3] Murphy, 15. That does not mean language games have nothing to do with one another. As Kerr notes, “The notion that any language-game functions in isolation from others has no basis in Wittgenstein’s work” (31; emphasis original).

[4] Stanley J. Grenz and John R. Franke, Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context (Louisille: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 42.

[5] Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe in The Ultimate Hitchiker’s Guide: Complete and Unabridged (New York: Portland House, 1997), 225.

Barack Obama "knows when to turn the lightsaber on"

A hilarious interview on the Daily Show last night with David Plouffe.

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