In considering to what extent, if any, Wittgenstein can be described as a naturalist, we face two very difficult tasks. One is fixing the significance of ‘naturalism’; the other, far more difficult, is determining what the later Wittgenstein is telling us. Anyone engaging with this issue must be extremely hesitant. But such difficulty should not silence us, and I want to propose three claims. The first (I) is that it is true, and illuminating, to describe Wittgenstein as a naturalist. ‘Naturalism’, that is, is an appropriate label to apply to his later philosophy. Second, (II) we should look with approval on what can be seen as some of the basic negative elements in his naturalism. Third, (III) Wittgenstein’s naturalism is, in a sense, overly restrictive. What is the relation between these proposals? (I) is for present purposes the most basic claim, combining an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, together with an interpretation of what ‘naturalism’ can be taken to be, so that the latter term applies to what we can read Wittgenstein as offering us. (II) and (III) are evaluative comments, part favorable, part critical, on some details in Wittgenstein’s supposed view. These evaluations can be considered even if (I), as I understand it, is rejected.
Now, my discussion is not going to be quite as tidy as the summary I have just given might lead you to expect. I want to start, though, by making some remarks about the employment of ‘ism’s, in philosophy. ‘Naturalism’ is just one of many ‘ism’s that philosophers use. It is quite obvious that there are risks to employing these terms. For some reason or other, in philosophy such terms acquire different interpretations as their use spreads. Employing them, therefore, risks misunderstanding. It is, then, necessary to say, fairly soon, what the term ‘naturalism’ as employed here, means. However, one point of view in this debate is that any such ascription has to be wrong, since whatever exactly ‘naturalism’ means, it must stand for some philosophical theory, and, as we supposedly know, Wittgenstein is against philosophical theories. Part of what needs scrutinizing is how solid this popular line of thought is.
I want to start by clarifying talk of ‘naturalism’. There are, I want to suggest, three basic aspects that are involved in clarifying talk of ‘naturalism’. The first is to specify the domain D, about which theories in some sense are being proposed. The second is the range of features which are appealed to in the theoretical proposals and which merit being called ‘natural’. We have then something that can be called a ‘naturalistic’ account of D. But there is a third aspect. I have talked so far of theories of D, without specifying what sort of theory is being proposed. One sort of theory, and perhaps the standard one when ‘naturalism’ is talked of in the present, is what philosophers would call ‘reductive’. The idea is that facts and features of the D-sort (ethical facts, or psychological facts, are standard cases) can be reduced to, come down to, are nothing over and above, facts or features in the specified natural domain.1 Now, the term ‘reductive’, despite its popularity, is, in a way, misleading. It suggests that some theory or account ‘reduces’, which is to say, in some way diminishes or subtracts from the analysed phenomenon. But no theory can be both true to a phenomenon and somehow or other count as reducing it. ‘Reductive’ here means—displaying the type of elements which make up, or constitute, the phenomenon. (In fact, ‘constitutive’ is a better label than ‘reductive’.) Second, a successful ‘reductive’ approach here need not proceed by way of proposing equivalents in the ‘natural’ vocabulary to sentences in the language of the domain D, or by specifying in detail the natural grounds for the facts being analyzed. Rather, the theory simply needs to make it plausible that the natural range specified in a general way is what grounds or constitutes the truths of the domain. A theory of this sort I shall call ‘naturalismR’. So the question we face is whether Wittgenstein can be called a ‘naturalistR’.
There is, though, another element that is relevant to understanding this interpretative issue. To describe Wittgenstein as a naturalist is not to say that we can find in the text an explicit endorsement of that idea (though something close to that might be available in the case of meaning), but, rather, to say that the direction of his discussion, with its hints and examples, can be fitted onto or around this general idea. The debate has, therefore, to be acknowledged to be a somewhat messy one.
Although I am trying to make a case for saying Wittgenstein can be counted as a naturalistR it would, in a more comprehensive treatment, be worth exploring whether there are other possible (and non-reductive) senses in which Wittgenstein might be called a naturalist. But I cannot explore that here.
I would like though, before I develop my own interpretation, to engage briefly with one distinguished Wittgenstein interpreter, namely David Pears, who unhesitatingly applies the term ‘naturalism’ to Wittgenstein’s later philosophy.2 Pears says; “There are several kinds of philosophical naturalism and one of their leading ideas is that the right method in philosophy is not to theorize about things but to describe them as we find them in daily life. Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is evidently a naturalism inspired by this idea”.3 What Pears seems to be suggesting here is that in Wittgenstein’s thought his anti-theoretical conception of philosophy is the ground or inspiration for his naturalism. What that thought, which certainly has its point, does not do is to illuminate the sense in which it is legitimate to call Wittgenstein a naturalist. One might also add that if his naturalism flows from his anti-theoretical philosophy, it can then be asked; what does his anti-theoretical conception flow from? What Pears then proceeds to do is (in section II) to give an account of Wittgenstein’s treatment of rule following, and (very briefly) in section (III) of sensation language, with the overall critical aim of proposing that Wittgenstein’s naturalism “should not have been restricted to the therapeutic treatment of myths that we generate when we reflect on our own language and thought”. Rather, he asks, “Ought it not to have ranged more freely across the border between philosophy, conceived in that way, and science?”4
Why does Pears say this? He develops his criticism against an account of Wittgenstein’s discussion of rule-following. Pears reads this as attacking two views, which he calls ‘realism’ and ‘conventionalism’. It does not matter for our purposes here what these two views are. Against the background according to which Wittgenstein has shown they are wrong Pears says; “However, it might be doubted whether this is the point, or kind of point at which the inquiry should terminate … But a complete treatment of his illusion would surely require some account of the way in which the word ‘intention’ was introduced into language … The interlocutor’s mythical inner object may be eliminated by Wittgenstein’s treatment, but not, I think, his feeling that there is something here which he still does not understand”.5 Pears mentions intentions at this point because he likens understanding an instruction that one gives to possessing an intention. According to him, after Wittgenstein’s critical discussion, we are left finding intentions mysterious and so need something more. Pears then sketches a positive theoretical account of what an intention is, or rests on.6 The point of Pears’s discussion seems to be to oppose Wittgenstein’s attitude to philosophical theorizing.
What should we say, briefly, about the critical direction of Pears’s argument? Let us assume to begin with that Pears is right that the rule-following discussion successfully attacks two views (of rule following), those of realism and conventionalism. Now, it is obvious, although this is not quite how Pears puts it, that in the absence of any proof that there can be only two possible theories of rule-following it cannot be a consequence of what Wittgenstein has argued for that we should abandon the search for a theory of what rule-following is. And, surely, Wittgenstein does not show there can be only two theories.
This completely sound general point, however, will not convince Wittgenstein sympathizers. Thus, did Wittgenstein really think that the anti-theoretical approach to rule-following is primarily supported by refuting two theories of rule-following? Or does he think that it is supported by more general considerations about philosophy adduced elsewhere? Further, is Pears even right in supposing that the rule-following considerations amount to a refutation of two theories? His criticism depends on that reading, which is far from obviously correct.
Pears points out three other things. The first is that reflective people engaging with Wittgenstein’s discussion will remain puzzled about the nature of rule-following and still want some positive theoretical account.7 Again, this is true. However, in the context of evaluating Wittgenstein’s anti-theoretical conception it is not really clear what weight can be attached to such theoretical yearnings. They are probably very hard to extirpate, but that need not make them respectable. The second is that Wittgenstein himself does appeal in some of his discussion to the postulated existence of certain pre-reflective dispositions.8 The point of this for Pears is perhaps twofold. He could quite rightly say that appealing to such postulated dispositions is clearly an appeal to theory. He also himself thinks that it introduces a theoretical model or template which can be usefully appealed to—it is part of a good theory. Now, I think that it is hard not to agree with both the points that Pears seems to be making. Wittgenstein appears not to be consistently anti-theoretical, and he, perhaps, does not appreciate the importance in a general way of dispositions. Third, Pears himself sketches a theory of intention.9 It would take us in the wrong direction to analyze Pears’s proposal. All I shall say in relation to Pears’s project is that Wittgenstein himself regards talk of intentions as deeply puzzling and worth considerable attention. Wittgenstein’s approach, though, conforms to his own conception of what can, as it were, be achieved by philosophy.
My main comment, though, on Pears’s article is that he is more concerned to say what is dubious about what he calls Wittgenstein’s naturalism than explaining why or showing that Wittgenstein should count as a naturalist. He is, we might say, more relevant to my claim (III) than to claim (I). This means that we have to pursue the central tasks unaided by Pears.
At this point, the central objection to calling Wittgenstein a naturalistR deserves expression. It will be said that Wittgenstein can hardly count as a naturalist since he is against philosophical theories (of any character), and naturalismR is a philosophical theory.10 Now, I do not want at this stage to try to respond to this objection. Rather, I shall try initially to make the best positive case that I can (at least in this context) in favor of describing Wittgenstein as a naturalist.
What, then, is the domain for which Wittgenstein is supposed to be giving a ‘naturalistic’ account? The answer, I think, is that Wittgenstein is fundamentally a philosopher of language; his focus is on language, what underpins it, and the psychological elements that come with language. Of course, Wittgenstein does not simply propose a theory of language. What is clear about his later writings is that he turns his attention to different subject matters and what he sees as their distinctive languages. For example, he scrutinizes our talk about sensations, and our talk about knowledge and certainty, and our talk of mathematics, and so on, grappling with all of them. In consequence he counts as a philosopher of experience, of knowledge, and of mathematics, etc. However, in his later writings, he also and centrally writes about language itself and about the understanding of language, and I think it is appropriate, therefore, to describe him as, in some sense, developing an account of language (and of understanding). I am thinking here particularly of the early sections in the Investigations (§ 1–43), concerned with meaning, and the sections about understanding and rule-following (§ 138–242).11
If we assume for the moment that we should interpret Wittgenstein as aiming to locate the factors which are constitutive of the phenomena he is investigating, roughly meaning and understanding, what, in brief, is the reason for thinking that his constitutive account is naturalistic? The brief answer is that Wittgenstein appeals to elements which clearly deserve to be called ‘naturalistic’. They are manifestly elements in the natural world. Thus, Wittgenstein famously summarizes his general conclusion about meaning in section 43; “For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which we employ the word ‘meaning’ it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language”. Surely, Wittgenstein means by ‘use’ the kinds of interpersonal interactions which he brings to the fore right in section 1, to contrast with the so-called Augustinian conception. I have in mind the famous shopkeeper case, and the subsequent variations on it. Wittgenstein is claiming that totally natural occurrences of this sort should be the core of an analysis of meaning. We can add that a typical Wittgensteinian remark is; “Commanding, questioning, storytelling, chatting, are as much a part of our natural history as walking, eating, drinking, playing”.12
In connexion with so-called rule-following here is a much quoted remark. “Let me ask this: what has the expression of a rule—say a sign-post—got to do with my actions? What sort of connexion is there here?—Well, perhaps this one: I have been trained to react to this sign in a particular way, and now I do so react to it” (§198). On the face of it, here Wittgenstein is picking out a clearly natural occurrence—training and reactions—as indicating how to answer the initial question.13
Is it right though to regard Wittgenstein as engaged in what I have called reductionR, locating the phenomena which constitute or ground meaning and understanding? This is a central question, but here I cannot do more than select some evidence that relates to it. In the case of meaning the most obvious point is that Wittgenstein seems to say that meaning is use. What meaning comes down to is use. This looks like a reductiveR proposal.14
Now, there is a difference, it seems to me, between the meaning cases and the understanding (and rule following) case, which is that Wittgenstein does not provide in the latter case anything close to the general claim about meaning and use in sec. 43. So the reason to claim that his approach is reductiveR in relation to rule-following is harder to support. However, the basic question of the passage is, surely; what is understanding? And his discussion considers possible answers to that question. One possible answer that he rejects is, of course, that understanding is an experience. He says “Try not to think of understanding as a ‘mental process’ at all”.15 Again, when he considers reading his interest is in the issue what reading is.16 So, the focus is throughout a constitutive one. Further, when Wittgenstein in his discussion engages with the question why we say someone understands something what he tends to mention are that there has been training in the background and earlier uses of the terms.17 This is close to saying that the correctness of the ascription of understanding is grounded in such elements, which seem to be purely natural ones. Another feature of his discussion is to emphasize that we simply act when told to do things. He says, “How can he know how he is to continue a pattern by himself—whatever instruction you give him?— Well, how do I know?—If that means ‘Have I reasons?’ the answer is: my reasons will soon give out. And then I shall act, without reasons”.18 Now, it is unclear what is meant by this remark, but it is not unreasonable to hear in it the idea that understanding rests on and presupposes a level of operations that get carried out which are not themselves guided by understanding, but which must be there for understanding to be present. On this view, understanding involves operations which are pre-cognitive. This is, surely, close to a naturalistic conception. It is true that by the end there is no clear statement of the constituents, but that is, I am inclined to think, because Wittgenstein thinks there is with understanding, given its complexity, no easy way to specify the relevant constituents. However, the elements that he tends to mention are clearly natural ones.
So, what is indicated is that Wittgenstein locates the real basis for meaning and understanding in such obviously natural phenomena. He seems to me to be offering a naturalistic account, or theory, of language. This is a very simple argument for claim (I)—not of course for claims (II) or (III).
Although this is not a theme being talked about here, it seems to me that as well as being a naturalist we can also attach the label ‘externalism’ to Wittgenstein’s approach to meaning. He is what I would call an ‘it goes without saying externalist’. Giving examples of what grounds meaning Wittgenstein simply and unhesitatingly brings external things—such as apples, colors, bricks, etc.—into his account. Language gets it meaning in relation to the environmental items that its use and users engage with. By calling this an ‘it goes without saying’ version, I intend to contrast it with the type of externalism defended by Putnam (and perhaps Kripke) which attempts to derive externalism from certain theoretical premises. Wittgenstein, by contrast, takes it as obvious.19
The above argument is, of course, very simple and sketchy, indeed quite clearly too simple to generate conviction. But I want now to set out and engage with an argument the other way—an argument designed to show that Wittgenstein is not a naturalist. This argument starts from a way of reading him that has seemed plausible to me.20 The basic idea is that Wittgenstein is first and foremost a negative philosopher. This means that his primary aim is to establish conclusions of the form Not (P), or, perhaps, do not believe that P. Usually, he is saying something like; “Here is a conception of this phenomenon that we should reject”. It may be that the term ‘negative’ has itself a rather negative tone, and another, perhaps more positive, way of expressing the same point is to say that Wittgenstein is engaged in demythologizing. He is uprooting myths.
There are two main general reasons to interpret him this way. The first is that it is the obvious way to read him given the manifest content of his discussions. One example will have to suffice. In section 243, Wittgenstein raises the famous question about whether someone can introduce their own private terms for their sensations. In the next sections (to about §315) Wittgenstein is clearly attacking a conception of private experience according to which the answer to this question would be ‘yes’. He aims to uproot that conception by arguing (amongst other things) that actually the correct answer is ‘no’. The discussion is primarily negative, to such an extent that most readers would be hard pressed by the end of it to say what positive conception of sensations and our way of talking about them Wittgenstein favors.
The second reason for regarding Wittgenstein as a negative philosopher is that he advances a conception of (good) philosophy which seems to represent it as highly negative. Consider his remark “The philosopher’s treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness”.21 This is one of his most famous metaphors. What does it mean? The obvious suggestion is that it represents the goal of proper philosophy as eliminating something bad, an ‘illness’, health here not representing having a better theory, but rather solely being clear of the confusion, that is of the bad health. The strong suggestion is that returning to health is not improving one’s theory of the world, nor is it making a (true) addition to one’s cognitive understanding, but is rather eliminating the activity which amounts to being ill. Consider also §309; “What is your aim in philosophy?—To show the fly the way out of the fly bottle”. This compares bad philosophy to being trapped like a fly and the aim is to release the fly from the trap. The idea of a trap here is that of accepting a bad view, and the aim is to release one from that view. Here we again have the idea that good philosophy acts to free you from traps, simply releasing you. (We do, of course, in considering these remarks of Wittgenstein face one major difficulty posed by his work, that of determining the significance of his omnipresent metaphors and similes.)
In the light of this ‘negative’ reading of Wittgenstein, some philosophers who accept it are tempted to propose an argument which might be formulated as follows. 1] Wittgenstein does not mean to alter or criticize or really add to any of our ordinary thinking. 2] If Wittgenstein had proposed that naturalism about meaning and rule-following were correct he would be recommending an alteration to our thinking; therefore, 3] Wittgenstein cannot be proposing naturalismR.22
I want to set up some resistance to this argument. First, the characterization of Wittgenstein’s practice of philosophy needs some modification if it is to be true to his actual practice. Wittgenstein clearly offers general hypotheses for consideration. Thus, for example, he links meaning to use, he makes conjectures about how sensation words gain their meaning, he stresses the role of context in judgment, and so on. Another example of what is clearly positive theorizing is his idea that something about language is what makes us do bad philosophy. A related example is his evident claim that there is something inadequate about traditional philosophy. That is obviously theoretical. So Wittgenstein invites us to consider and presumably accept some manifestly theoretical proposals. Further, although he compares good philosophy to curing a condition, his therapy in fact works by persuading you of some unobvious truth, e.g. that something is a consequence of a claim, or that there are difficulties with a claim, acceptance of which contributes to one’s overall theory. There is clearly a level in Wittgenstein’s practice where unobvious and so (in one sense) theoretical claims are being proposed for our acceptance.
I am suggesting, then, that there are at least two levels in W’s actual practice of philosophy where there are propositions and claims advanced for assessment and possibly belief. He advances what are clearly general theories about certain things. Second, in trying to achieve his negative purpose he advances arguments containing (unobvious and new) claims that are also offered as true.
There is another observation I want to make at this point. It is all very well to hang the label ‘negative’ on Wittgenstein’s practice and also his conception (or philosophy) of philosophy, but we should acknowledge a contrast. The impression that we get from his philosophy of philosophy is that it does not yield any theories (or theoretical claims) at all but rather issues in the relief of not playing the philosophical theorizing game. We can certainly call that a negative conception. But in his practice what is negative are the claims that he is persuading us to accept. That is not negative in the same way; it is, rather, theorizing to negative conclusions. Theoretical claims can be negative.
Against this background of a more accurate characterization of Wittgenstein’s practice, I think we can weaken the above argument. There are, as I see it, at least three reasons for not placing too much reliance on it. The first, already brought out, is that despite his own characterization of what he is doing as non-theoretical, leaving everything as it is, merely a treatments of an illness, etc., it has to be acknowledged that in practice Wittgenstein proposes unobvious new claims (theories of greater or lesser generality) for our consideration. He is simply not totally ‘quiet’. Indeed, offering negative conclusions is not being quiet. Second, if Wittgenstein characterizes himself as leaving everything as it was, interpreting what that amounts to entirely depends on Wittgenstein’s own view of how everything was. When I declare on looking over my room that nothing has been changed that clearly depends on my sense of how it was before. So, Wittgenstein might think that what he is saying amounts to changing nothing, but it is quite possible that he has completely failed to realize how ‘things’ were. Wittgenstein’s assurance that he is changing nothing is not self-certifying. Third, when Wittgenstein says that philosophy leaves everything as it is he has to exclude philosophy itself. The practice of (bad) philosophy and the convictions generated by it are to be excised. The question then arises as to what Wittgenstein thinks the extent of old bad philosophy is, since that he certainly does not aim to leave it as it has been. Indeed, once raised this represents a very hard question for Wittgenstein, since how does he know how widespread bad philosophy (on his conception) has been? It remains quite possible for him to think that it has been widespread, and so, maybe, many relatively common or even quite usual opinions are the products of bad philosophy. The fact that the extent of so-called ‘philosophy’ has no really discernible boundaries means we have no idea what Wittgenstein thinks it is legitimate to challenge and what it is not legitimate to challenge.23
I hope that these remarks have to some extent taken the wind out of the sails of the general argument.
If I were summarizing these remarks about Wittgenstein’s approach to philosophy I would say, by way of explanation, that he espoused for reasons that I find hard to discern a deeply negative conception of philosophy, while being at the same time an outstandingly creative philosopher or thinker and this creativity made it impossible for him to be true in his actual practice to his preferred conception.
If these remarks do weaken the appeal of the general argument, there is really nothing for it but to scrutinize and try to understand Wittgenstein’s text, and to critically evaluate it. Obviously I cannot do that here, so, I am simply going, rather abruptly, to propose a few unqualified things which seem to me to fit my reading.
If you have a language within a group, it would seem that you must have linguistic elements which have meaning, but you also must have members of the group, the speakers and hearers, who employ the language with understanding. I have some inclination to say that in the earliest sections of the Investigations Wittgenstein is focusing, primarily, on what meaning is, and in the rule-following sections is focusing, primarily, on what understanding is. At least, I shall divide things up that way. This goes along with the fact that Wittgenstein, in the Investigations, shows far more interest in opposing imagistic accounts of understanding in the early parts of the rule-following section, rather than at the beginning of his discussion of meaning.
I want now to fill out a little what it means to call Wittgenstein’s treatment of meaning and understanding ‘naturalistic’. There is for both main topics a positive side and a negative side. On the positive side what has be said is two things. The first is that the elements that Wittgenstein picks out in his account merit being called ‘naturalistic’. The second positive component is that Wittgenstein is picking them out not as features that merely happen to be associated with language (meaning and understanding), but as elements that ground or constitute them. I have tried to make a case for these claims. But there is a negative aspect to Wittgenstein’s naturalism, which is that there are no traces in his account, and indeed there is evidence of opposition to, the appeal to what I think we could describe as one main non-naturalistic feature. The non-naturalistic feature that is conspicuous by its absence is what I shall call the proposition or the thought, conceived as many philosophers, including for example Frege, conceive of it. How are propositions/thoughts brought in and how are they thought of? In ‘The Thought’, Frege regards thoughts as real things which ‘belong(s) neither to [the] my inner world as an idea, nor yet to the outer world of material, perceptible things’.24 They exist in their own unchanging realm, what we might call a third realm. But, since they have a fundamental role in language they have to relate in some way to our own minds. As Frege puts it, “… It is advisable to choose a special expression and the word ‘apprehend’ offers itself for the purpose”. So on this conception, along with the realm of thoughts, there is a psychological relation to that realm, that of apprehending (some of its) denizens. Now, about this psychological relation, Frege says, “although the thought does not belong to the contents of the thinker’s consciousness yet something in his consciousness must be aimed at the thought”.
I want, in response to this, to claim three things. First, the ontology of thoughts (and propositions), and their components, plus the hypothesized psychological relation to them is quite reasonably called ‘nonnaturalistic’. There is an obvious sense in which a theory of language and of cognition which postulates such things and relations is postulating things which are not part of the natural realm. Second, Wittgenstein’s complete avoidance of them is deliberate, and should be counted as an element in his naturalism. Third, we can read parts of his discussion of understanding and rule-following as attacks by him on what such ‘nonnaturalistic’ models involve.
I want to develop this last remark. One major theme and direction of focus in Wittgenstein’s discussion of rule following is ‘what comes before the mind of the understander’. Thus in §139, as his exploration is beginning, he says, “When someone says the word ‘cube’ to me, for example, I know what it means. But can the whole use of the word come before my mind, when I understand it in this way? Well, but on the other hand isn’t the meaning of the word also determined by this use? And can’t these ways of determining meaning conflict? Can what we grasp in a flash accord with a use, fit or fail to fit it? And how can what is present to us in an instant, what comes before the mind in an instant, fit a use? What really comes before our mind when we understand a word?—Isn’t it something like a picture? Can’t it be a picture?”25
Two things stand out about this passage. The first is that Wittgenstein starts from the link between meaning and use which the earlier discussion of meaning aims to establish. So it can be said that what he is trying to do is to think out a defensible account of understanding within the framework of a ‘use’ theory of meaning. The second is that his initial, and in fact enduring, focus is on what ‘comes before the mind’ of the understander. Now, that surely means what figures in the consciousness of the understander. We can hear this discussion as impinging on Frege’s talk of the apprehending of thoughts, which is what understanding is supposed to be in that model, as registering in the consciousness of the understander. Wittgenstein is asking what actually is present in consciousness when there is understanding.
What does Wittgenstein do with the question? Famously he considers the suggestion that what comes before the mind (consciousness) is a picture—this is how we would describe an image—of the signified thing. Putting it rather generally, Wittgenstein’s response is to argue that a picture before the mind does not fix a use; and if it does not fix a use its occurrence cannot constitute understanding. As he says in §140, “What is essential to see is that the same thing may come before our minds when we hear the word and the application be different. Has it the same meaning both times? I think we shall say not”. But Wittgenstein also points out that it is no better to model understanding as the occurrence before the mind of a formula, because the same problem arises. As he says in §152, “‘B understands the principle of the series’ surely doesn’t mean simply: the formula ‘a = …’ occurs to B. For it is perfectly imaginable that the formula should occur to him and that he should nevertheless not understand”. In effect, both of these points are anti-imagistic. In one case, the point relates to images of the signified thing or feature, and in the second to images of a formula (or a bit of language). In the famous section 201 where Wittgenstein talks of the paradox, he is, as I read it, repeating this last point employing the terminology of ‘interpretation’, by which he means having a formula or a rule in mind. The general conclusion that Wittgenstein draws at this point is this, “what this shows is that there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which is exhibited in what we call ‘obeying the rule’ and ‘going against the rule’”. A part of this general conclusion is in effect that understanding is independent of the contents of consciousness, and has to do with practice, and, as we might say, our operations. So we can perhaps read him as saying that there is no way to articulate the Fregean idea that this relation of apprehending an abstract thought registers in consciousness.
If this is not implausible how might the supporter of Frege react to the problem? One way would be to retain the idea of apprehending a thought, but deny that it needs to register in or involve consciousness. But this seems to amount to postulating a relation to an abstract entity that does not integrate into an account of the cognitive lives of people who understand. We, as physically structured animals, have lives in which language plays a crucial role, and how can an apprehending of an abstract thought impinge on that? A second way to respond is to suggest that Wittgenstein has overlooked a mode of consciousness that is different from any he considers, which is the conscious grasping of a thought. Now, there is no simple response here, but something that Wittgenstein himself says would look like a reasonable first response. In §192 he says to someone, “you have no model of this superlative fact, but you are seduced into using a super-expression”. So you can say that you consciously grasp a thought, but given our approach to consciousness, what kind of thing is it, what model for it can we offer?
There is also another theme in Wittgenstein that relates to this dialectic, though I do not feel confident that I can expound it properly. What Wittgenstein stresses is that there are things that we simply do when we follow rules—operations that we perform. One famous remark is this;
‘How am I able to obey a rule?’—if this is not a question about causes, then it is about the justification for my following the rule in the way I do.
If I have exhausted the justifications I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: ‘this is simply what I do’.
(§ 217)
He also says;
When I obey a rule, I do not choose. I obey blindly.
(§ 219)
Now, there are puzzling passages, and I do not feel confident as to their significance, but a natural way to interpret them is that Wittgenstein is trying to convey that we need to recognize that in our cognitive operations, there is a level where we cannot regard those operations as guided by or responsive to understanding. They are operations we perform, but which are below the level of operations of the understanding, but which constitute them as operations of understanding. Someone who is inclined to say this will oppose the postulation of unconscious apprehendings of thoughts as the basis of understanding. Rather, at the basic level, there are operations which cannot be intellectually explicated, but which are presupposed by intellectual operations.
I have been trying to substantiate the claim that Wittgenstein appeals in his theories about language to what are legitimately called natural elements—interpersonal interactions, and levels of operation—and he avoids and denigrates the invocation of non-natural elements such as Fregean thoughts and propositions. This looks like naturalism to me.
I have been rather relaxed in my employment of the natural/non-natural distinction. In effect I have been assuming that without laying down an explicit criterion demarcating them we can agree on how to classify candidate elements which are proposed in theorizing about language into the natural and the non-natural. In particular, social interactions and non-intellectually guided operations are natural features, whereas apprehensions of abstract thoughts and propositions are not. Further, I tend to assume that we share a commitment to keeping the elements in our theories of ourselves, who are natural physical and social creatures, to natural elements. We surely regard ourselves as the products of evolutionary processes in which natural complexities emerge which generate our nature and capacities. And we cannot really include the emergence of a capacity to apprehend thoughts of the philosophically postulated variety in that way. Naturalism in relation to language and cognition is, I think, simply a basic commitment of how we must understand ourselves.
Finally, I want to argue that we should be wary of some of the elements in Wittgenstein’s version of naturalism.
What should our attitude be to Wittgenstein’s ‘use’ slogan? It is very difficult to assess his remark—the reason being, I suggest, that the term ‘use’ is very indefinite. What exactly is ‘the use of a word’? There is one use of ‘use’ which is very general and it is clear that that is not meaning— thus a hammer has a use—but it does not have a meaning. Similarly—a word might have a use—eg to open a gate—but that use is not having a meaning. Further, the idea of use is so general that the slogan can cover accounts of meaning that W is opposed to. E.g. one can describe the role of triggering images as a use for words—but Wittgenstein would not think that use is the meaning constituting use. There is another reading of talk of meaning as use that is trivial. Someone might say that meaning is determined by use, since they are reading use as ‘what you use the term to mean’. Clearly, meaning is determined by use in that sense. What that does not illuminate at all though is what using an expression to mean something actually amounts to, or, comes down to. The most obvious way to interpret Wittgenstein’s suggestion is, as I have been doing, to allow ‘use’ to stand for the features that he presents in his examples. These are predominantly the use of language is ones dealing with others in ways which influence their behaviour. ‘Use’ stands for something interpersonal and social. This is true of the example in §1, the five red apples example, and in §2 the block, pillar, slab, etc. example, and in §8, where, as it were, talk of numbers is added and so are demonstratives. It is very natural to read Wittgenstein’s ‘use’ slogan as intending by ‘use’ such aspects. This leads to us notice an aspect of Wittgenstein’s uses that stands out. They are mainly, as one might say, imperatival. The use amounts to a speaker getting a hearer to do something, such as hand him an apple or a slab etc. Now, in thinking of imperatives, interpersonal responses seem a reasonable aspect to bring in, (I do not mean correct, but at least reasonable), but it is far harder to make this seem plausible as a model of what we might call descriptive meaning. If I say, ‘Bergen is very busy today’, there is nothing the audience is expected to do in response to my remark. Nothing, that is, that is clearly related to the meaning of the remark. So, if ‘use’ means something like interpersonal responses there is no obvious application for the slogan to large central parts of language.26
One might point out something very odd about the five red apples game. The hearer is triggered by the use of ‘red’ to look at a color chart to determine the color needed, but this in effect means that he does not understand the word ‘red’. Curiously, Wittgenstein gives a model of meaning here that side-lines understanding. Another curious aspect of Wittgenstein’s game is that it is one sided. In language, the speaker role and the hearer role are present in the same individual. But in Wittgenstein’s model there is no such element. It is as if the shop keeper has internalized the provider role and the shopper the demander role. Wittgenstein’s models are also over-automatic. Understanders of language need not cooperate. There might be multiple demands on them, or they might have run out of the required things. One cannot model meaning on the presence of invariable routines, as Wittgenstein’s games involve. Another source of things not running smoothly are mistakes of various kinds. One cannot equate the shop keeper understanding the word ‘five’ with his giving five so and so’s. Maybe he mishears, maybe he miscounts, maybe he simply picks up the wrong number by mistake. Such irregularities do not disturb meaning.
In the light of these worries I think that it is reasonable to be cautious about accepting the Wittgensteinian model of meaning, naturalistic though it is.27
Now for some equally brief remarks about rule-following. It is far harder to understand this discussion, which is complex and allusive, but one move that Wittgenstein seems to make it to set himself against employing the notion of a disposition in any central way in his account. I want to query the apparent grounds he offers for this.
In §149 Wittgenstein is considering the quite natural idea that knowing the ABC should be thought of as a disposition, which explains the so-called manifestations on occasions of that knowledge. Against this idea Wittgenstein brings the point that to attribute a disposition requires fulfilment of two criteria, one being what it does, but the other being what aspect of a things construction grounds the disposition. His point is that when we talk about knowing the ABC, we completely lack the latter information. This argument invites the following response. We seem to attribute dispositions to things without having any knowledge of structure. People said that sugar is water-soluble without knowing anything about the structure of sugar (or indeed water). Indeed, part of the point of talking of dispositions is, surely, to convey the powers of things where we are ignorant of the composition of the things themselves.
I read another passage as opposed to the same suggestion. In §153 Wittgenstein is opposing an idea which he formulates as amounting to the claim that understanding is something “hidden behind those coarser and therefore more readily visible accompaniments”. Now, that way of speaking fits the disposition idea. Against this Wittgenstein raises what seems to be an epistemological problem. Wittgenstein says, “And how can the process of understanding have been hidden, when I said ‘Now I understand’ because I understood?!” In the next sentence Wittgenstein insinuates that the idea that the state of understanding is ‘hidden’ is problematic. At least two points suggest themselves here. The first is that Wittgenstein’s own puzzles about our self-knowledge of understanding count against simply saying that we know we understand simply because we understand. How we know we are in that state is quite unclear. Maybe it is like knowing we have a disposition. The second is that if there is some sense in which a disposition is per se hidden, there is no obvious reason to deny that the presence of understanding is not in the same way hidden. Whatever that notion of being hidden is it is simply not obvious that aspects of ourselves are not hidden from us. Clearly that dispositions are hidden does not mean that we cannot easily get to know about them.
My response then is to suggest that Wittgenstein does not produce any strong evidence that the standing condition of, for example, knowing the ABC is not a disposition, or something disposition like. Nor does he provide any evidence that the theory of understanding should not attribute a central role to the notion of a disposition.
It is worries along these lines that lead me to endorse (III).
I hope, then, that I have assembled some sort of defense of my three claims.28
1 I here simply employ expressions which are standardly assumed to pick out well enough what reduction is.
2 See David Pears, ‘Wittgenstein’s Naturalism’, The Monist Vol 84 No 4 (1995): 411–424. I am very grateful to Bill Child for drawing my attention to this interesting paper.
3 Ibid., 411.
4 Ibid., 412. This quotation raises a number of questions which I shall not take up. Is Pears envisaging that the direction Wittgenstein should have gone is to do philosophy as he wanted to do but also to have crossed over into science? This is doubly puzzling. Pears seems to neglect the possibility of philosophical theories. Also, it is hard to see how it is possible to combine philosophy conceived of by Wittgenstein with crossing the border to science. But also puzzling is that if the source of Wittgenstein’s naturalism is his anti-theoretical approach to philosophy, would not adopting a more theoretical approach undermine the motivation for his naturalism?
5 Ibid., 418.
6 See Ibid., 418–420.
7 See Ibid., 418.
8 See Ibid.
9 Ibid., 418–419.
10 As Thomas Raleigh pointed out to me, this line of thought infers from Wittgenstein’s anti-theoretical stance that he is not a naturalist, whereas Pears seems to explain Wittgenstein’s naturalism as arising out of his anti-theoretical stance.
11 No doubt these citations reveal that my own reading of Wittgenstein does not range over all the highways and byways of his vast corpus, but is rather focused on the central and standard parts of his writings. It is, though a generalization that seems reasonable that writers usually put what they see as most important first, and in the Investigations that is language (and perhaps the nature of philosophy).
12 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), §25.
13 One thing to note about this remark is that Wittgenstein alludes to training, which is a natural interactive process, and one that he regards as an important element amongst the grounds of understanding.
14 If it is felt that this neglects Wittgenstein’s own restriction of the use proposal to a ‘large class of cases’, the concessive response would be to say that Wittgenstein’s proposal looks reductiveR for a large class of cases.
15 Ibid., § 154.
16 The reading section is of central importance in understanding Wittgenstein’s approach to understanding.
17 See, for example, ibid., § 179.
18 Ibid., § 211.
19 Anyone sympathetic to this characterization cannot object to applying a philosophical ‘ism’ to Wittgenstein.
20 I endorsed this reading in: Paul Snowdon, ‘Private Experience and Sense Data’, in The Oxford Handbook of Wittgenstein, eds., O. Kuusela and M. McGinn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 402–428.
21 PI §255.
22 Here are, perhaps, two examples of more or less this structure of argument. In John McDowell’s, ‘Wittgenstein on Following a Rule’, in Mind, Value and Reality (London: Harvard University Press, 1998), 221–262. McDowell opposes an interpretation of the rule following passages that Wright proposed, which, according to McDowell, committed Wittgenstein to what McDowell calls ‘idealism’, by saying; “We may well hesitate to attribute such a doctrine to the philosopher who wrote: ‘If one tried to advance theses in philosophy, it would never be possible to debate them, because everyone would agree to them” (PI §128) Again, William Child says that “the deflationary interpretation of Wittgenstein’s discussion of rules is … in many ways more faithful to his philosophy than the constructivist reading” (Child, Wittgenstein, 133). In fairness to Child, it needs remarking that he himself is not entirely happy with the ‘quietist’ reading.
23 An aspect of Wittgenstein’s attitude to allowing that philosophy can be challenged but nothing else is his thinking about religion. In relation to that it seems that Wittgenstein is opposed to what we might call philosophical criticisms of religion. But why is that? Wittgenstein must think that religious faith cannot be regarded as having a philosophical origin, since if it does then it is not beyond criticism. However, even if we accept that, Wittgenstein’s slogan that philosophy leaves everything as it is, does not imply that faith is beyond criticism, unless we have to regard any criticism of faith as amounting to philosophy, which is not allowed to alter anything. And we might very well wonder why we should describe any general criticism of faith as ‘philosophy’. Why would the criticism of religion amount to philosophy, but, say, the criticism of astrology, which, I assume, Wittgenstein would not rule out in advance, not amount to that? Sorting out these issues would take us too far away from naturalism, but they illustrate just how obscure in many central ways Wittgenstein’s attitude to philosophy is.
24 Gottlob Frege, ‘The Thought’, in Philosophical Logic, ed., P. F. Strawson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 35. All other Frege quotations from the same page.
25 I have compressed this layout of this passage to save space.
26 This paper was first presented in Bergen!
27 It has to be acknowledged that these problems do not refute Wittgenstein’s approach, but it would not be enough to respond by pointing out that his examples are intended to be very simple, and hence will be over-simple. The question is whether we should allow that they indicate where the core basis of meaning is to be found, and the difficulties seem to me to indicate that they are dubious in that role.
28 I am very grateful to Kevin Cahill for the invitation to speak at the workshop, and to both him and especially Thomas Raleigh for their contribution to the experience and to the discussion. I gained a lot from the general discussions there, and in connection with my own paper I wish especially to thank Sorin Bangu, Bill Child, Harald Johannessen, Alois Pichler, and Charles Travis. I am also very grateful for comments to Brian Garrett and Arthur Schipper.
Child, W. Wittgenstein, London: Routledge, 2011.
Frege, G. ‘The Thought’ in Philosophical Logic, edited by P. F. Strawson, 17–38, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.
Kuusela, O. and McGinn, M. The Oxford Handbook of Wittgenstein, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
McDowell, J. ‘Wittgenstein on Following a Rule’ in Mind, Value and Reality, 221–262, London: Harvard University Press, 1998.
Pears, D. ‘Wittgenstein’s Naturalism’, The Monist Vol 84 No 4 (1995), 411–424.
Snowdon, P. F. ‘Private Experience and Sense Data’ in The Oxford Handbook of Wittgenstein, 402–428, edited by O. Kuusela and M. McGinn, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Wittgenstein, L. Philosophical Investigations, Oxford: Blackwell, 2001.