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What is philosophy, round 372

Brian Leiter

Here is Peter Hacker's take:

We must challenge the thought that philosophy aims to contribute to human knowledge of the world. Its task is to resolve philosophical problems. The characteristic feature of philosophical problems is their non-empirical, a priori character: no scientific experiment can settle the question of whether the mind is the brain, what the meaning of a word is, whether human beings are responsible for their deeds (have free will), whether trees falling on uninhabited desert islands make any noise, what makes necessary truths necessary. All these, and many hundreds more, are conceptual questions. They are not questions about concepts (philosophy is not a science of concepts). But they are questions that are to be answered, resolved or dissolved by careful scrutiny of the concepts involved. The only way to scrutinize concepts is to examine the use of the words that express them. Conceptual investigations are investigations into what makes sense and what does not. And, of course, questions of sense antecede questions of empirical truth – for if something makes no sense, it can be neither true nor false. It is just nonsense – not silly, but rather: it transgresses the bounds of sense. Philosophy patrols the borders between sense and nonsense; science determines what is empirically true and what is empirically false. What falsehood is for science, nonsense is for philosophy.

Let me give you a simple example or two: When psychologists and cognitive scientists say that it is your brain that thinks, then, rather than nodding your head and saying ‘How interesting! What an important discovery!’, you should pause to wonder what this means. What, you might then ask, is a thoughtful brain, and what is a thoughtless one? Can my brain concentrate on what I am doing – or does it just concentrate on what it is doing? Does my brain hold political opinions? Is it, as Gilbert and Sullivan might ask, a little Conservative or a little Liberal? Can it be opinionated? or narrow minded? – What on earth would an opinionated and narrow-minded brain be? Just ask yourself: if it is your brain that thinks, how does your brain tell you what it thinks? And can you disagree with it? And if you do, how do you tell it that it is mistaken – that what it thinks is false? And can your brain understand what you say to it? Can it speak English? – If you continue this line of questions you will come to realise that the very idea that the brain thinks makes no sense. But, of course, to show why it makes no sense requires a great deal more work. 

Discuss.

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50 responses to “What is philosophy, round 372”

  1. Jason Zarri

    Hacker says:

    "The characteristic feature of philosophical problems is their non-empirical, a priori character: no scientific experiment can settle the question of whether the mind is the brain, what the meaning of a word is, whether human beings are responsible for their deeds (have free will), whether trees falling on uninhabited desert islands make any noise, what makes necessary truths necessary."

    (1) I have a strong tendency to doubt that this is true, at least if we're charitable enough to scientists to recognize that often it is not a single experiment, all on its own, that establishes a significant claim or answers a significant question, but many experiments taken together. No single experiment would establish, I think, whether the mind is the brain, but if one were to look at neuroscience and related disciplines as a whole, that claim would at the very least acquire some plausibility. And even if science couldn't answer certain questions on its own, couldn't it be a necessary or highly relevant factor in answering those questions if scientists and philosophers worked together?

    (2) And what about linguistics? If any scientific discipline were able to help one to discover and to patrol the border between sense and nonsense, linguistics would seem to be it. For if linguistics (at least, with some help from the philosophy of language) can determine what words and sentences mean, and how their meanings are interrelated, how could it *not* be able to determine when certain combinations of words are meaningless, and thus "nonsense"?

    (3) Finally, a "tu quoque": Suppose for the sake of augment that science cannot answer "conceptual" questions. Why think that philosophy can? Even given the past century's worth of sustained conceptual analysis, can anyone point to an analysis that is both non-controversial and non-trivial? How plausible is it to think that if we just think a little bit harder that we could suddenly do what the greatest minds of the recent generation(s) of philosophers have failed to do?

    Reply
  2. Charles Pigden

    I'm tempted to rant about this but its's time for bed down here in New Zealand. Suffice to say that Hacker's claim that 'The brain thinks' is meaningless is obviously false. If he has a criterion or theory of meaningfulness that delivers this result then this is what we know: THAT CRITERION IS WRONG. For it excludes as meaningless what is in fact meaningful. For a detailed critique of the totalitarian tactics of Wittgenstein and the sub-Wittgensteinians such as Hacker, see my 'Coercive Theories of Meaning or Why Language Should Not Matter (So Much) to Philosophy' in Logique et Analyse 210 (2010), pp 151–-184. Here's a quote:

    Rid yourself for a moment of philosophical parti pris, forget all those dense tomes that you may have read (or even written) on the subject, and ask yourself what a general theory of meaning is for. What problem or what range of problems is it supposed to solve? The great puzzle seems to be this. Somehow we use symbols — sound patterns in the air, visual patterns on paper — to convey ideas and information. How do we manage to do this? (We don't do it in the manner of animals where a fixedxed signal triggers a
    fairly specific range of responses. We can understand utterances that we have never heard before and which haven't been programmed into us.) What properties must an utterance or inscription have for this to be possible — i.e. what must it be like to be meaningful? This is or ought to be what a theory of meaning is all about. If this is correct, it suggests that for any given language, the facts which a theory of meaning is supposed to explain are our intuitions about what does and does not make sense. Some strings of symbols are meaningful and others not, whilst others still are borderline. The task of a theory of meaning is to explain these data; to tell us what it is about the meaningful strings that makes them meaningful and what it is about the meaningless strings that makes them meaningless. It should also explain why we are undecided about the borderline cases. An explanation is a theory from which
    the things to be explained can be derived, perhaps with the aid of auxiliary
    hypotheses. It must `save the phenomena', that is it must entail the factual data that it sets out to explain. Otherwise it is a failure.

    Now a coercive theory of meaning cannot fulll its coercive function unless it fails this test. The whole point of a coercive theory of meaning is to contract the realm of the meaningful; to show that many of the things we considered meaningful are meaningless. (Specically the statements of our coercive theorist's opponents.) But this means that the theory does not save the phenomena. It does not explain the data that a theory of meaning ought to explain, i.e. our collective intuitions about what makes sense. Which is prima facie evidence that it is false.

    Reply
  3. Charles Pigden

    Oh well my blood is up. Here's an excerpt from ANOTHER paper ('Identifying Goodness' published early last year in the AJP) . I am arguing in an aside against Geach's thesis that 'good' is a purely attributive adjective.

    Sometimes ‘good’ functions as an attributive adjective and sometimes it functions as a predicative adjective; sometimes it functions as a predicate modifier and sometimes it functions as a predicate. This is obvious from a famous paper by Geach’s philosophical admirer, Philippa Foot. In ‘Utilitarianism and the Virtues’ [1985] she argues, in effect, as follows:

    a) ‘Consequentialism’ is the name of an enormously influential family of moral theories which use ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as if they were predicative adjectives, applying, in the first instance, to states of affairs.
    b) But these theories are defective because ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are attributive adjectives and the predicative ‘good’ is not genuinely meaningful.

    There is a tension between between these two claims, a tension that escalates to an outright contradiction if we add in the Wittgensteinian thesis (which I suspect that Foot believes) that meaning either is or explains use. For if meaning is or explains use there is really no daylight between the words ‘good’ and ‘bad’ being used AS IF they had a predicative meaning and their having a predicative meaning. As a word is used, so must it mean, and the fact that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are widely used by consequentialists as if they had a predicative meaning is precisely what Foot is complaining about.

    Hacker wants to argue that all those 'psychologists and cognitive scientists [who] say that it is your brain that thinks' are in fact talking nonsense. But if meaning is or explains use, there really is no daylight between 'it is the brain that thinks' being used as if it makes sense and it's actually making sense. As words are used so must they mean, and since such phrases have a widespread use it follow that they re meaningful.

    Reply
  4. Michael Rosen

    I think this is a wonderful little piece – beautifully written, serious and thought-provoking. I find its substance both attractive and repellent, though. What is attractive is the case it makes against naturalist attempts to dissolve all philosophical questions into empirical ones. He convinces me, at least, that an important part of philosophy will always remain, as he nicely puts it, to ask questions about questions. What puts me off is the inference that this shows that philosophy is therefore entirely insulated from science and empirical investigation. I don’t think that this follows at all and using labels like “a priori” and “conceptual” isn’t helpful – absent a much better account of what they mean and how the boundaries between them and the “empirical” or “factual” are to be drawn.

    Reply
  5. Philip C

    I come at this question from a slightly different direction, since I am interested in philosophy as a social scientist rather than as a philosopher per se. In other words, I don't take philosophy to be a vocation or a calling in the search for truth, nor do I think of it as an adjunct to science and I don't take it to be a policing function for sense and nonsense. I think of it as a set of critical tools for understanding, picking apart and formulating abstractions. For this reason I like Alfred North Whitehead's definition of philosophy (from Science and the Modern World): "philosophy is the critic of our abstractions." Of course this is quite a vague definition and there are surely many ways of criticising abstractions that are not 'philosophical' but it nevertheless captures pithily what is I find to be useful in philosophy.

    To take a bit of a tangent: Clifford Geertz once defined anthropology's relation to philosophy as (and I'm paraphrasing) that of 'not *answering* abstract, philosophical questions but instead providing a *record* of the answers that others have given to these questions.' Thus anthropology is methodologically relativist at its core – its very possibility depends on *not* adopting a policing function, on treating all abstract conceptual schemes as formally equal and refraining from overarching judgment on them. Yet, of course, this is a *methodological* necessity. No one actually lives by 'relativism' in the vulgar sense of the word – it would make any human existence utterly impossible.

    Anthropology on its own is consequently insufficient. Facing a world of abstractions one either obtains the means to critically interrogate abstractions or one simply accepts whatever the local dogma dictates. Philosophy provides the formal tools by which we may interrogate the world of abstractions into which we, as social beings, are born. Anthropology makes a record of that world, philosophy interrogates it. Philosophy is, then, a way of thinking, a set of inherited practices. Consequently, it doesn't have a specific purview in the sense of biology studying life or geography studying space. It has a defined, limited function (one cannot 'live philosophically' any more than one can 'live anthropologically') but its function is dynamic, subject to change depending on the requirements of the time.

    At least, that's how I sociologise the question. Your mileage will most probably vary.

    Reply
  6. Kris McDaniel

    Some of philosophy resembles what Hacker calls "philosophy". Some of it doesn't. Some of it is a lot like math, because logic is a part of philosophy and logic is a lot like math. But neither math nor logic is focused on "conceptual questions", although both are a priori inquiries. Some of philosophy draws heavily on science; it's hard for me to see how a philosophical account of, e.g., quantum mechanics could deserve to be called 'a priori'. Or, for that matter, theories in philosophy of biology, and other kindred philosophy of sciences. Parts of metaphysics (which is a part of philosophy) must take into account scientific developments — the philosophy of time would be highly impoverished and inadequate were it not to, for example.

    Some of philosophy draws on the empirical more generally, such as certain branches of political philosophy and moral philosophy.

    Some of philosophy is a priori but not concerned with conceptual policing but rather with conceptual innovation. Some of philosophy is a priori metaphysical speculation.

    Some of philosophy is history of philosophy, which also doesn't fit Hacker's conception.

    And so on.

    Reply
  7. Owen Schaefer

    Yes, a good amount of philosophy does seem to involve the sort of conceptual sensibility analysis Hacker discusses. But, as others have suggested, Hacker's understanding of philosophy seems overly restrictive and narrow. It is to exclude vast areas of philosophical discourse and investigation as not being properly philosophical. The items from Kris McDaniel's list are instructive here, as they clearly go beyond purely conceptual analysis.

    Take, for instance, non-ideal political theory, which is concerned with justice (perhaps among other things) in a world like ours where people aren't perfectly motivated to act justly. Any work in non-ideal theory is not just concerned with a conceptual understanding of what justice is (though that analysis will be important), but also whether and how such a concept can be deployed in such-and-such circumstances of non-ideal interactions. So inquiring into the conditions of a just war involves not just reflecting a priori on justice, but also on how people interact, how particular aspects of justice apply in particular cases, how to resolve potential tensions in those applications, and so on.

    The idea that philosophical investigation does not aim to establish truth but only sense is even more restrictive. Note how even Hacker poses the paradigmatic philosophical questions: "…whether the mind is the brain, what the meaning of a word is, whether human beings are responsible for their deeds (have free will), whether trees falling on uninhabited desert islands make any noise, what makes necessary truths necessary." These questions are clearly framed as investigating the truth of an idea, not (merely) whether it is sensible. If establishing sensibility was really the sole point of philosophy, we should properly only talk of whether or not, e.g., the idea that the mind is the brain is nosense. Now, if we answer that any given question or idea is nonsense, then admittedly little or no further progress can or should be made. But Hacker must admit that at least some of these questions will be sensible (or is he suggesting that all philosophical investigation is nonsense?). In those cases, it seems that the job of the philosopher is not yet done – once we have determined that a given question makes sense, we will want to know (or at least try to determine) what the answer is, using the considerable tools of philosophical inquiry at our disposal.

    Perhaps Hacker is implying that anyone who attempts to determine the answer to these questions (at least the ones that are sensible) is not really doing philosophy. They belong in some new field, designated by some appropriate/clever neologism. Well, then this is just a debate over semantics and professional bifurcation. Maybe the word 'philosophy' vaguely encompasses too many broad and diverse traditions and methodologies, with no clear idea of what binds everything together. Alright, but even then it seems a bit unfair for Hacker to appropriate 'philosophy' for the type of conceptual sensibility analysis he prefers and exclude everything else. This exclusion is rather presumptive and will only lead to staunch resistance among philosophers who do not share Hacker's approach. Instead of excluding others, perhaps Hacker and like-minded folks should 'secede' from philosophy, forming their own discipline with a clear and helpful definition like the one he gives (or just be content with a sub-division within philosophy, which is I take it more or less the current state of affairs and seems to be working out OK). Then he avoid engaging with overmuch nonsense without stepping on too many people's toes or get bogged down in semantics.

    Reply
  8. Moti Mizrahi

    According to Hacker, “The only way to scrutinize concepts is to examine the use of the words that express them.” I am not so sure about that. Consider, for example, the concept SPACE. Would examining the use of the word ‘space’ tell us anything about the concept? By doing thought experiments, like the bucket experiment, was Newton examining the use of the word ‘space’ or the concept SPACE? If the latter, should Newton have examined the use of the word ‘space’ instead, as Hacker seems to be suggesting?

    Reply
  9. Dave Maier

    I agree 100% with Michael Rosen's comments above, and with some of (the negative parts of) Charles Pigden's as well. However, the latter's inclusion of Wittgenstein himself in the phrase "the totalitarian tactics of Wittgenstein and the sub-Wittgensteinians such as Hacker" concedes too much to Hacker's (by now anyway) controversial reading of Wittgenstein. We quite naturally distinguish Wittgenstein himself from "Kripkenstein", and surely we can do the same with "Hackenstein" as well.

    Indeed, much of what I object to in "Hackenstein" I do on (what I see as) straightforwardly Wittgensteinian grounds. Philip C's Geertz isn't that far away (from my Wittgenstein) either, in some respects, and Geertz himself thought so too. So watch where you're pointing that thing!

    Reply
  10. Sam Rickless

    I think the world of Peter Hacker's reconstruction of Wittgenstein's views, but I don't think the world of this argument. I really thought we were past this ordinary language stuff…

    Here goes.

    "Let me give you a simple example or two: When psychologists and cognitive scientists say that it is your brain that thinks, then, rather than nodding your head and saying ‘How interesting! What an important discovery!’, you should pause to wonder what this means."

    OK, I'm pausing. I'm not sure I agree with the psychologist and cognitive scientists. But hey, let's go with their hypothesis….

    My brain is doing the thinking. But I am doing the thinking. Ergo, I am my brain. Right, let's move on.

    "What, you might then ask, is a thoughtful brain, and what is a thoughtless one?"

    Well, if I am thoughtful, then my brain is thoughtful. And if I am thoughtless, then my brain is thoughtless. Am I making progress?

    "Can my brain concentrate on what I am doing – or does it just concentrate on what it is doing?"

    If I am my brain (see above), then if I am concentrating on what I am doing, then my brain is concentrating on what I am doing and my brain is also concentrating on what it is doing.

    "Does my brain hold political opinions?"

    I hold political opinions. So my brain holds political opinions. Wow, this is easy.

    "Is it, as Gilbert and Sullivan might ask, a little Conservative or a little Liberal"?

    I'm quite liberal. So my brain is quite liberal. Easier still.

    "Can it be opinionated? or narrow minded?"

    I am opinionated, but not narrow-minded. So my brain is opinionated, but not narrow-minded. This is getting too easy.

    "What on earth would an opinionated and narrow-minded brain be?"

    Well, what would an opinionated and narrow-minded me be? Answer that question, and you're there.

    "Just ask yourself: if it is your brain that thinks, how does your brain tell you what it thinks?"

    Well, let's see. If I am my brain, then I will know how my brain tells me what it thinks when I know how I tell myself what I think. And I usually tell myself what I think by talking to myself. So there's an answer for you.

    "And can you disagree with it?"

    Can I disagree with my brain? Well, the answer to this question depends on the answer to the question whether I can disagree with myself. The answer is no.

    "And if you do, how do you tell it that it is mistaken – that what it thinks is false?"

    Not applicable, because I don't disagree with my brain.

    "And can your brain understand what you say to it?"

    Can I understand what I say to myself? Yes. So my brain can too. Now we're getting somewhere.

    "Can it speak English?"

    I can speak English, so my brain can too.

    "If you continue this line of questions you will come to realise that the very idea that the brain thinks makes no sense."

    Hold on a minute. I'm not following you. And my brain isn't following you either.

    "But, of course, to show why it makes no sense requires a great deal more work."

    You got that right.

    Reply
  11. Dave Maier

    Re: Sam Rickless: Right, or in other words, "one person's modus ponens is another person's modus tollens". Words to live by!

    Reply
  12. Michael Barkasi

    I do not intend to defend Hacker, or ordinary language philosophy/certain interpretations of Wittgenstein. But I do think that Charles' last paragraph is to quick. Someone sympathetic to Hacker can draw daylight between something being used as if it makes sense and it actually making sense by denying that mere use of a word or expression is sufficient to make it meaningful (or have content). Whatever sense or meaning the word has, if it has any way all, is derived from the use (so goes the story), but just because it is used by some in certain ways doesn't entail that it does in fact have sense.

    Or, at least, this seems both reasonably faithful to Wittgenstein and not obviously incoherent. But I'm sure it's not original, so I'm curious what the response is.

    Reply
  13. Christopher W. H. R. Smith

    I strongly agree with Professor Hacker that psychologists and cognitive scientists are talking sheer nonsense when they say that "brains think". After all, one would't say "Peter's brain is thinking", would one? No, rather one would say — in accordance with the proprieties of correct linguistic usage — that *Peter* is thinking. Certainly I would have been the object of considerable ridicule had I come out with the sentence "I wonder what Peter's brain is thinking" during my time in Oxford in the early 1960s, for it would have been painfully obvious to all those present that I had committed an elementary conceptual blunder! Indeed, in speaking in this way the cognitive scientists are guilty of precisely the same sort of egregious error as astronomers when they say that "the earth rotates" even though they must be perfectly well aware of the fact that while ordinary language permits the use of expressions ascribing motion to the sun and moon, it does *not* do so with regard to the earth. How swiftly the wisdom of yesteryear is forgotten! I suspect Quine's influence had a lot to do with philosophers neglecting their proper duties in this respect, and we really ought to be thankful that at least we still have Professor Hacker showing us the proper role of philosophy (i.e. that of assembling reminders to call us back to the path of common sense, and trying to enforce rigorous standards of conceptual hygiene upon our conceptually confused colleagues in other departments). Contra Quine, philosophers and scientists do not belong together in the same boat. Rather, scientists belong out in the boat rowing while philosophers shout out advice about which way it is permissible for them to steer and how they ought to go about properly scrubbing the deck!

    Reply
  14. Ken Taylor

    In a word, "ugh." What a barren uninteresting intellectual enterprise Hacker describes. If that was all or even mostly what there was to philosophy, I'd want almost no part in it. Didn't this sort of thing have its day years ago, back in the last century? Let's keep it there.

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  15. Chris Timpson

    Re: Kris McDaniel's point regarding philosophical accounts of quantum mechanics: I don't believe there is much to trouble Hacker here. He would, presumably, see such accounts as being questions of relating the ordinary concepts of material bodies and the spatio-temporal arena that we have to the more sophisticated (if that's quite the word) concepts which derive from searching empirical investigation at shorter-length and higher-energy scales. The puzzles that arise in QM are, it seems to me, pretty-well characterised as conceptual puzzles: puzzles about how to relate the somewhat bare concepts that the minimally-interpreted quantum formalism gives us to our more familiar concepts.

    This is an instance of the more general point that enquiries as to the structure of concepts (or puzzles about how to think about things) can arise (for better or worse) for *any* set of concepts. Not just some antecedently fixed set. I don't take this to be in conflict with Hacker's own conception. That is, my understanding is that Hacker would be in agreement, broadly, with a Strawsonian conception of descriptive metaphysics, but where that descriptive endeavour did encompass the *new* concepts that successful empirical theorising bequeaths.

    Reply
  16. Jason Zarri

    Christopher and Ken's replies remind me of this quote from Brand Blanshard:

    "The linguistic philosophers would rather philosophize in their own manner than talk about philosophy, and their programme cannot be fully appreciated without following them into their discussions of the language we use about time and induction and universals and fact and truth. It would be interesting to do this if there were space for it, which there is not. But I cannot think our main conclusions about this way of philosophizing would be greatly affected by such a review. We should find many fine hairs split into still finer hairs. We should find a virtuosity in ferreting out verbal distinctions, particularly in such masters of the craft as Austin, which would fill any unprejudiced reader with admiring astonishment. We should find many curious details in our use of such words as ‘if’ and ‘can’ and ‘seems’ and ‘ought’ lit up sharply by flashes of light. And yet at the end we should feel strangely unilluminated. Such a prodigal expenditure of power, acuteness and ink, adding up to—what? Disappointingly little in view of the powers that went into it

    The reason is not far to seek. Words give the philosopher no compass. The interest in usage is centrifugal and dispersive, and unless guided by something other than itself, dissipates among minutiae, some idle, some important; and mere usage cannot tell it which is which. When philosophers in the past asked themselves What is the nature of knowledge? instead of What are the uses of the verb ‘know’?, they usually did so with a conviction, having nothing to do with language, that some types of knowledge, or some claims to it, were of central importance—the insight of the mathematician, the scientific grasp of natural law, the claim of the mystic or the religious authoritarian. These types or claims were then fastened upon for special examination. The inquiries of the linguistic philosophers have, to be sure, thrown light on these claims. But if so, it is because a way of philosophizing different from their own, disruptive of their own, has not been wholly abandoned. A genuine philosopher can draw nourishment even from what W. E. Hocking has called ‘this new method of milking stones’. ‘If’, ‘can’, ‘know’, ‘true’, are after all key words, and one is bound to derive profit from their study. So our complaint is not that these studies are profitless, but that the profit is so meagre in proportion to the price. There are grains of wheat, many of them indeed, and of high quality, among the chaff. But why should one have to hunt for them in these bushels and bushels and bushels of words about words?"

    –Brand Blanshard, Reason and Analysis, pp. 380-81, Open Court, Paperback (second printing).

    Reply
  17. Nat

    It is perhaps worth recalling how much ancient philosophy is aporetic in character: even today scholars often disagree on basic interpretative questions about many of the most foundational works.

    This suggests, to me at least, that philosophy, and that includes metaphilosophy, is a discipline in which asking questions is as least as important, and possibly more important, than answering them.

    The process (pedagogical, critical, and in ancient times often mystical) of philosophical dialogue is thus historically as or more important than the results, since if we are honest the results are largely negligible.

    Such open-endedness is difficult for many to stomach, since it is often accompanied by the fear that if philosophy admits of all problems than it follows that philosophy never knows progress.

    This is the metaphilosophical anxiety at the heart of the discipline, even at the heart of the rigorous branches such as logic, and it explains why non-philosophers are usually very skeptical about what it is philosophers are up to.

    But I think it makes more sense for philosophers to embrace the dialectical open-endedness of the discipline, even if it begs the problem of circularity or regress, than it does to attempt to make philosophy appear to provide the kinds of "final" answers it can't possibly provide.

    Here are two possibly relevant quotes (both from the book "Philosophers" by Steve Pyke, 1993, Zelda Cheatle Press):

    "Philosophers cannot agree on anything. They certainly cannot agree on what philosophy actually is." –M.Frede, 1992

    "Philosophy is that theoretical inquiry whose own nature falls within its own scope." –G.Priest, 1990

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  18. Jonathan Livengood

    Huh. I would have thought that ordinary language philosophy — figuring out how people actually use words — would require empirical research. To use Wittgenstein's turn of phrase: Don't think, but look!

    Looking can be careful or uncareful. One can look at one's own use and project onto everybody else, or one can do the careful, hard empirical work needed to figure out how people actually speak. If you really want to know how people use words, you have to actually go out and look.

    Incidentally, when you do go out and look, you find that Hacker is simply wrong in thinking that psychological predicates only apply to whole living animals.

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  19. Michael Kremer

    Sam Rickless: so, then, you weigh a bit more than a kilogram?

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  20. V. Alan White

    So philosophy's ultimate concern is to assure that its legitimate concerns are not nonsense? What basis secures that assurance inspiring confidence in its truth? Whoops–back to truth we go.

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  21. Anonymous Ex-Adjunct

    Hacker's claim that psychological predicates apply, logically, only to whole creatures (and not to their constituent parts) isn't groundless, contrary to what some here have suggested, and light can be shed on it by inquiring into why we're justified in ascribing psychological states to humans and other animals and not justified in ascribing them to, say, plants. Following Wittgenstein, Hacker invokes behavioural criteria as the primary ground for ascribing psychological predicates to whole creatures, arguing that these grounds are partly constitutive of the meaning of the relevant predicate. E.g., under normal circumstances, if a person smiles profusely, shouts out "Yippee!," and jumps up and down, we take such behaviour to be justifying grounds for ascribing a state of delight or happiness to the person; and these behavioural criteria are part of what the predicates "is delighted," "is happy," etc. mean. (Hacker, incidentally, is no behaviourist. His view is that behavioral criteria are *partly*, not wholly, constitutive of the meaning of the relevant predicate.). But, of course, no plant has ever smiled profusely, shouted out "Yippee!," and jumped up and down. Likewise for brains. Plants and brains don't exhibit–and have never exhibited–behaviour that gives us grounds for ascribing psychological predicates to them.

    Hacker doesn't deny that the brain is a causally necessary condition for us to see, hear, think, etc. He simply denies, rightly, that it follows from this that we are our brains (which we aren't), or that brains see, hear, think, etc. (which they don't).

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  22. Charles Pigden

    meaningful, to rule out words or sentences that are widely regarded and treated as meaningFUL as meaningLESS. The aim is to do down your opponents by portraying them as mere spouters of gibberish and therefore undeserving of a detailed refutation.

    But as Richard Price in the Review Concerning the Principle Questions of Morals (1758) was perhaps the first to notice, there is an obvious counterargument to arguments of this kind.

    1) If your criterion/theory of meaning is correct, X does not really make sense (where X is a stand-in for a word or a sentence)
    2) But X does make sense.
    3) Therefore your criterion/theory of meaning is not correct.

    Now my claim is that arguments of the second kind almost always win out against arguments of the first kind. Why? Well nobody ever deploys arguments of the first kind against terms or sentences that are AGREED to be nonsensical. They only deploy them against terms or sentences that are widely employed by some intellectual opposition (in Hacker’s case all those psychologists and neurophilosophers – and there are a great many of them – who think and say that the brain is what we think with). Thus they deploy them against terms and sentences that figure in countless arguments and discussions, terms and sentences that are reasoned about, argued and debated, terms or sentences that SEEM to be widely understood and which SEEM, therefore, to be make sense. (Wittgenstein: ‘My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense’. To say that this alleged nonsense is ‘disguised’, is to say, in effect that it is prima facie meaningful. Naked nonsense does not need to be unveiled. ) Thus the very existence of an opposition to be reduced to senselessness is prima facie evidence that the theory or criterion of meaning is incorrect. For the existence of such an opposition implies the existence of a body of discourse that is prima facie meaningful (for if it were not prima facie meaningful there would be no need to bother with it). But if this body of discourse is prima facie meaningful then this is prima facie evidence that the theory or criterion which damns it as nonsense is mistaken. Coercive theories or criteria of meaning are prima facie false (or mistaken) since there would not be any point to them if there were not a body of discourse, condemned by the theory or the criterion in question, which some people seem to make sense of and which therefore seems to make sense.

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  23. Charles Pigden

    However, Michael Brakasi was right in complaining that I was ‘a bit quick’ in the final paragraph of my second post. If a word is widely used AS IF it is a predicative adjective then it IS a predicative adjective, and that’s all there is to it. But it does not follow that just because a sentence is widely treated AS IF it meaningful that it IS meaningful. What does follow, however, it is that it SEEMS to be meaningful and that a theory had better be supported by some truly tip-top arguments if it is to overcome these seemings.

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  24. Charles Pigden

    Well and good, you may say. We admit that these revisionary theories and criteria are prima facie false or mistaken, but there is a wide difference between being PRIMA FACIE false or mistaken and being ACTUALLY false or mistaken. OUR theory or criterion has much to be said for it despite the counterevidence, namely yadda, yadda yadda. But here I appeal to the history of philosophy. Most coercive theories of meaning since Hobbes in the seventeenth century have been pitiable affairs, supported by no compelling arguments, often excluding what they are meant to include or including what they are meant to exclude and frequently self-refuting into the bargain. (The theory of the Tractatus that all significant propositions are the truth-functions of elementary propositions, which is not a truth-function of elementary propositions and is therefore meaningless if true, and therefore untrue; the theory of the middle Wittgenstein that the meaning of a [non-analytic] propositions is the method of its verification, which is not analytic and has no method of verification and is therefore meaningless by its own lights etc etc. ) So although it is in principle POSSIBLE that somebody might put forward a progressive theory of meaning whose heuristic can digest the anomalies (the many apparently meaningful expression that it condemns as meaningless) and which results in novel predictions that subsequently turn to be be verified, I don’t think that the philosophical community should be holding its collective breath.

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  25. Mathieu Carpentier

    Maybe the question itself — "what is philosophy?" — is not particulary interesting. Philosophy is whatever philosophers do qua philosophers.

    Now, if the question is about "what philosophy *should* be", then we reach the wonderful kingdom of wishful thinking.

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  26. Eric Campbell

    I nearly had Sam's (nicely done) reconstructed conversation in my head as I read this. I felt pretty sure that my brain was amused when this series of rhetorical questions ended in the conclusion that if I were to continue this little question and answer game that I would realize at the end that the whole thing had made no sense from the beginning.

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  27. Michael Kremer

    Eric and Sam: I have started to wonder about the point of Sam's little dialogue. At this point:

    ""Can it speak English?"

    I can speak English, so my brain can too."

    I want to interject:

    "But your brain can't speak English. It doesn't have a mouth.

    So in fact at the end of Sam's story it has already become clear where the line of questioning leads."

    Or maybe that was the point and I am dense. If so I blame it on my brain.

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  28. Brandon N. Towl

    Generally, I like Hacker's gloss on what (large parts of) philosophy does. Indeed, I use a similar sounding description in my intro class. So that was well worded.

    We must be careful, however, with the example used and the lesson drawn from it. For instance, the lesson to be drawn from Hacker's own example should be that our *concept* of a mind is different from our *concept* of the brain. (Or, instead of concept, maybe we should substitute "theory", "conception", "way of imagining", or something else). Not being careful with our conclusions makes philosophers in general look like anti-science rubes. (A phrase from some scientists I've spoken with, not from me.)

    As for the example, I don't think it makes the point that Hacker wishes. Let's make the same argument with a similarly structured but distinct example:

    "When scientists say that sound is just vibrations in a medium, such as air, then, rather than nodding your head and saying ‘How interesting! What an important discovery!’, you should pause to wonder what this means. What, you might then ask, is a heard vibration, and what is a silent one? Can a vibration be sharp or dull, loud or soft, high-pitched or low? If you agree that vibration is motion- how is sound motion? Is sound moving anywhere? – If you continue this line of questions you will come to realise that the very idea that vibrations are sound makes no sense. But, of course, to show why it makes no sense requires a great deal more work."

    Hat tip to Bishop Berkeley, of course, for this example. But we and the scientists around us live in a Lockean world, and so Hacker might need to adjust his examples accordingly. But not to fear: I hear that Locke also had a phenomenal mind 🙂

    Thanks to Hacker for the interesting food-for-thought, and to Leiter for sharing it.

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  29. Charles Pigden

    My post at 22 got truncated. her is is again with the top bit reattached.

    There is, as somebody has remarked, a modus ponens/modus tollens problem here. From the 17th century onwards philosophers have been inclined to argue as follows:

    1) If my criterion/theory of meaning is correct, X does not really make sense (where X is a stand -in for a word or a sentence)
    2) My criterion/theory of meaning is correct.
    3) Therefore X does not make sense.

    Such arguments are commonly deployed to CONTRACT the realm of the meaningful, to rule out words or sentences that are widely regarded and treated as meaningFUL as meaningLESS. The aim is to do down your opponents by portraying them as mere spouters of gibberish and therefore undeserving of a detailed refutation.

    But as Richard Price in the Review Concerning the Principle Questions of Morals (1758) was perhaps the first to notice, there is an obvious counterargument to arguments of this kind.

    1) If your criterion/theory of meaning is correct, X does not really make sense (where X is a stand-in for a word or a sentence)
    2) But X does make sense.
    3) Therefore your criterion/theory of meaning is not correct.

    Now my claim is that arguments of the second kind almost always win out against arguments of the first kind. Why? Well nobody ever deploys arguments of the first kind against terms or sentences that are AGREED to be nonsensical. They only deploy them against terms or sentences that are widely employed by some intellectual opposition (in Hacker’s case all those psychologists and neurophilosophers – and there are a great many of them – who think and say that the brain is what we think with). Thus they deploy them against terms and sentences that figure in countless arguments and discussions, terms and sentences that are reasoned about, argued and debated, terms or sentences that SEEM to be widely understood and which SEEM, therefore, to be make sense. (Wittgenstein: ‘My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense’. To say that this alleged nonsense is ‘disguised’, is to say, in effect that it is prima facie meaningful. Naked nonsense does not need to be unveiled. ) Thus the very existence of an opposition to be reduced to senselessness is prima facie evidence that the theory or criterion of meaning is incorrect. For the existence of such an opposition implies the existence of a body of discourse that is prima facie meaningful (for if it were not prima facie meaningful there would be no need to bother with it). But if this body of discourse is prima facie meaningful then this is prima facie evidence that the theory or criterion which damns it as nonsense is mistaken. Coercive theories or criteria of meaning are prima facie false (or mistaken) since there would not be any point to them if there were not a body of discourse, condemned by the theory or the criterion in question, which some people seem to make sense of and which therefore seems to make sense.

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  30. Charles Pigden

    With apologies to Sam Rickless I am going to redo his little dialogue on the assumption that his brain is the PART of him that thinks.
    1) cognitive scientists say that it is your brain that thinks, then, rather than nodding your head and saying ‘How interesting! What an important discovery!’, you should pause to wonder what this means."
    OK, I'm pausing. I'm not sure I agree with the psychologist and cognitive scientists. But hey, let's go with their hypothesis….
    My brain is doing the thinking and I am doing the thinking. Ergo, my brain is that part of me that is doing the thinking. Right, let's move on.
    2) "What, you might then ask, is a thoughtful brain, and what is a thoughtless one?"
    Well, if I am thoughtful and my brain is my thinking part then my brain is thoughtful. And if I am thoughtless, and my brain is my thinking part then my brain is thoughtless. Am I making progress?
    3) "Can my brain concentrate on what I am doing – or does it just concentrate on what it is doing?"
    If my brain is my thinking part then if I am concentrating on what I am doing, then my brain is concentrating on what I am doing and my brain is also concentrating on what it is doing.
    4) "Does my brain hold political opinions?"
    I hold political opinions. My brain is my thinking part. So my brain holds political opinions. Wow, this is easy.
    5) "Is it, as Gilbert and Sullivan might ask, a little Conservative or a little Liberal"?
    I'm quite liberal. My brain is that part of me responsible for my opinions (since it my thinking part). So my brain is quite liberal. This why people can write books with titles like ‘The Liberal Brain’
    6) "Can it be opinionated? or narrow minded?"
    I am opinionated, but not narrow-minded. My brain the part of me responsible for my opinions. So my brain is opinionated, but not narrow-minded. This is getting too easy.
    7) "What on earth would an opinionated and narrow-minded brain be?"
    A brain responsible for the thoughts that issue in the words and actions characteristic of narrow-minded or opinionated people.
    8) "Just ask yourself: if it is your brain that thinks, how does your brain tell you what it thinks?"
    How does the thinking part of me tell the thinking part of me what it is thinking? In other words how is it possible for the brain to form representations of its own representations? I really don’t know. This is a big topic in cognitive science. For it seems that there are many creatures with proto-thoughts that are not aware that they have thoughts or of the contents of the thoughts that they seem to have. Thus the thinking part of human beings seems to have a capacity that that the thinking parts of most other creatures do not. This is a major area of scientific enquiry.
    9) "And can you disagree with it?"
    Disagreement is an activity that involves thinking. It is something you do with your thinking part. So the question becomes ‘Can my thinking part disagree with my brain, that is, with my thinking part?’. Since I can be ’in two minds’ about something, it seems that my thinking part can disagree with itself. But it is not possible for the rest of me (that is my non-thinking parts) to disagree with my thinking part, (that is, my brain) since disagreement involves thought and my non-thinking parts don’t think.
    10) "And if you do, how do you tell it that it is mistaken – that what it thinks is false?"
    Not applicable, because although my thinking part can disagree with itself, the non-thinking parts cannot disagree with it. There is no ‘I’ over and above my thinking and non-thinking parts to disagree with my thinking part.
    11) "And can your brain understand what you say to it?"
    Can my thinking part understand what it says to itself? Yes (usually).
    12) "Can it speak English?"
    Well it can think in English and it can speak English with the assistance of the right body parts. But it can’t speak English by itself, no. We might say, if my vocal cords were cut, that my brain could still speak English, in that if they were repaired, the capacities retained by my thinking part would enable me to speak English again. Thus it would be perfectly sensible – and perfectly meaningful – for a surgeon to say ‘Your brain, of course, can still speak English. It’s not like you’ve had stroke. The problem lies with your vocal cords. We are going to try and fix them so that you can speak again’. However as a philosopher of mind, trying to be precise, I would consider such a remark just a little misleading.
    13) "If you continue this line of questions you will come to realize that the very idea that the brain thinks makes no sense."
    I’m less polite than Sam Rickless. This is an obvious and arrant falsehood.
    14) "But, of course, to show why it makes no sense requires a great deal more work."
    You can’t show what isn’t so.

    Comment. Note how Hacker's rhetorical question at 8) burkes an interesting and important line of enquiry.

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  31. Sam Rickless

    @ Michael Kremer: Hi Michael, nice to hear from you! I think Charles Pigden at #30 summarizes most of what I would want to say in reply to your questions, about how much I weigh and whether my brain can speak English. I should note that I disagree with Charles about the possibility of my brain's disagreeing with itself. To be "of two minds" is to be undecided. In any event, even if what I said entails things that are false (e.g., that I weigh less than 1kg), at least what I said wasn't *meaningless*, right? Meaningless sentences are neither true nor false.

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  32. Anonymous Ex-Adjunct

    Assuming that your brain is the PART of you that thinks is even more problematic (to put it mildly) than assuming that you think in virtue of being identical with your brain. If your brain, as a (proper) part of you, does all your thinking, and presumably all your pondering, mulling, wondering, doubting, hearing, tasting, feeling, seeing, concentrating, second-guessing, etc., etc., then you never do any of these things, which is absurd.

    Hacker would no doubt take some of the comments here as proof that he's right.

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  33. Charles Pigden

    This is absurd. My legs are my walking part but it does not follow that because I walk with my legs that I don't walk. My hands are my typing part but it does not follow that because I type with my hand that I don't type. In general it simply does not follow that because I do X with my X part that I don't do X. And even if it did, it would be grotesque non-sequitur to conclude from this that it is MEANINGLESS to say that I do X with my X-part.

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  34. Anongrad

    Philosophical questions are all of the extra questions that have and continue to naturally flow from the curiosity and healthy open-mindedness of individuals who do not feel that the only questions they need to ask are those that let them get on in the world. Some of these questions are more common than others, some have become more famous than others. Those to whom the burden of these questions occurs but that become tired or weary become dogmatic… or overgeneralizing Wittgensteinians (cure the philosophical sickness! that is, cure the sickness of confused questions!)

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  35. Sam Rickless

    @anonymous ex-adjunct: I'm not saying I agree with the thesis that my brain does the thinking in me. But Hacker's questions are designed to lead us to accept the view that the thesis is meaningless gibberish. The fact that you think that the thesis has logical consequences shows that you can use it as a premise in a valid deductive argument that isn't merely about such things as snarks and wabes. And what you claim to be absurd is really something you take to be obviously false. But obviously false sentences are not meaningless either.

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  36. Jason Zarri

    @ Anonymous Ex-Adjunct,

    You say:

    "If your brain, as a (proper) part of you, does all your thinking, and presumably all your pondering, mulling, wondering, doubting, hearing, tasting, feeling, seeing, concentrating, second-guessing, etc., etc., then you never do any of these things…"

    I don't see how that follows. Suppose Jones is a soccer player. If Jones' legs (or feet), as proper parts of him, do all his running, kicking, blocking, passing, etc., does it follow that Jones himself never does any of those things?

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  37. John Dupré

    How did this discussion get from 'My brain thinks' to 'I think with my brain'? The view, which I share, that the former is somewhere between plainly false and nonsense, hardly entails that the latter isn't an intelligible hypothesis (and in some sense perhaps even true). It's true that the fact that I kick with my leg or type with my hand licenses the synechdoches, my leg kicks or my hand types. But that they are merely synechdoche would become clear if I tried to excuse myself after kicking someone by blaming my leg (or blamed my hand for typing an offensive letter).

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  38. Anoymous Graduate Student

    I think the most damning criticism of Hacker's view (as a stand-alone claim and as a reading of Wittgenstein) is the third offered by Jason Zarri in the first comment above. He writes: "Even given the past century's worth of sustained conceptual analysis, can anyone point to an analysis that is both non-controversial and non-trivial?" The obvious answer, I think, is 'no.'

    However, I think something roughly in the same neighborhood (or maybe the same town, perhaps even the edge of town) as Hacker's view is that attributed to Wittgenstein by Oskari Kuusela is his brilliant book, The Struggle Against Dogmatism: Wittgenstein and the Concept of Philosophy. Kuusela's Wittgenstein still holds that philosphy is not in the business of defending or criticizing theories about anything, and he even holds that "conceptual analysis" (on something like Hacker's understanding) is a useful tool for dissolving philosphical problems (which is the business of philosophy. However, I think Kuusela does a good job of showing how one can hold such views without becoming dogmatic. If that's right, then Zarri's third criticism misses Kuusela's Wittgenstein, along with anyone who wants to follow him.

    All that to say this: While Hacker's reading of Wittgenstein has been a valuable stepping stone to better readings, it is now an obstacle to a more fruitful discussion between Wittgensteinians and others. As Dave Maier recommends, let us call Hacker's Wittgenstein "Hackenstein." We can then talk about the "totalitarian tactics" of Hackenstein, and leave Wittgenstein out of it.

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  39. Anonymous Ex-Adjunct

    Charles Pigden,

    "My legs are my walking part but it does not follow that because I walk with my legs that I don't walk."

    But you didn't say that your brain is the thing you think WITH. You said something quite different, viz., that you would proceed on the "assumption that [your] brain is the PART of [you] that thinks." There's a big difference between the claim that we think with our brains and the claim that our brains do our thinking in us. This latter claim, the one I thought you made, is the one I criticized.

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  40. Anonymous Ex-Adjunct

    Jason Zarri,

    "Suppose Jones is a soccer player. If Jones' legs (or feet), as proper parts of him, do all his running, kicking, blocking, passing, etc., does it follow that Jones himself never does any of those things?"

    But Jones's legs don't do all his running, kicking, blocking, etc. Jones does those things. It would be most odd to praise Jones's legs, and not Jones, for a great pass.

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  41. Anonymous Ex-Adjunct

    Sam Rickless,

    I can talk about the absurd consequences of saying that colourless green ideas sleep furiously. E.g., I can talk about the absurdity of ideas being both green and colourless, of ideas sleeping, etc. In other words, the thesis that colourless green ideas sleep furiously can be used as a premise in a valid deductive argument. It doesn't follow that "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously" is meaningful. As it happens, I'm not sure whether the thesis that brains think (feel, etc.) is meaningless or obviously false. Perhaps, as John Dupré has put it, it's somewhere in between.

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  42. Charles Pigden

    Claim; My brain (my thinking part) thinks. It does not follow from this that because my brain thinks I do not. When we are talking about some kinds of organized entities when the X part does something the whole entity does it too. (When the appropriate officials declare war, the nation declares war. They – the President and the Senate, the Cabinet or the Foreign office – are, so to speak the war-declaring parts, of the nation.) This being so, the principle to which Anonymous ex-adjunct was appealing, namely that if your X-part does X you do not , is simply false. So in saying that that brain thinks , I not saying anything with the consequences alleged.

    Note what it happening here. In order to defend one false conceptual claim (that 'The brain thinks' does not make sense) you have to invent another which is also false, namely that if the X part of something performs some X type activities, the entity of which it is a part does not.

    Reply
  43. Sam Rickless

    @ Anonymous ex-adjunct:

    Your argument at #32:

    1. If my brain thinks, then I don't think.
    2. I do think.
    So, 3. My brain doesn't think.

    Here's another argument:

    1*. If colorless green ideas sleep furiously, then I don't think.
    2. I do think.
    So, 3*. Colorless green ideas don't sleep furiously.

    I would think that you think that 1* is meaningless (by virtue of having a meaningless antecedent), but do you really think that 1 is similarly meaningless (by virtue of having a meaningless antecedent)? It seems to me that if you endorse the argument from 1 and 2 to 3, then you take 1 to be true, hence meaningful. And if 1 is meaningful, then its antecedent is meaningful. So it is meaningful to say that my brain thinks (even if it's false).

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  44. Jason Zarri

    @ Anoymous Graduate Student

    I'm sympathetic. Though I haven't read Kuusela's book, I think I would be more comfortable with that reading, and with the views it expresses, than I am with Hacker's. I have a lot of respect for Wittgenstein, but I still don't see why philosophy can't be "in the business of defending or criticizing theories about anything…". Nevertheless, I still think *some* philosophical problems may be better dissolved than solved, and for those problems Wittgenstein-style therapy may the best remedy–it's just that I think that there are substantive problems as well.

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  45. Mike

    John Dupré and Anon Ex-Adjunct,

    Why would someone who thinks that a leg kicks be committed to praising or blaming legs? We don't blame books for falling off desks, therefore they don't fall (or to say they fall involves synecdoche)? We don't blame our digestive tracks for digesting, therefore they don't digest? Come on.

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  46. Anonymous Ex-Adjunct

    Mike,

    Because if legs kick, block, pass, etc. then legs do something for which we sometimes assign praise and blame. When a book falls off a desk, it hasn't done anything (i.e., it hasn't performed an action). At any rate, legs don't kick (except by reflex), block, pass, etc. People (animals) do these things.

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  47. John Dupre

    We don't blame our legs because they don't literally kick anyone; we do. When a book falls off a desk we don't blame anyone or anything because there is no question of blame (unless someone has left it precariously balanced). We don't blame our digestive tracts for digesting because that's what they're supposed to do. If they fail to digest, we do hold them causally responsible (though obviously not morally responsible), because they are sadly not a part of our body within our control. If I kick someone, someone is morally responsible, and it's not my leg.

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  48. Mike

    John Dupre and Anon Ex-Adjunct,

    You asserted that legs don't kick (and that it would be nonsense or figurative to say otherwise). It seems to me perfectly fine to say that legs kick; why should I think it's nonsense? The only justification you seemed to offer was that it would be odd to blame legs for kicking. But this is no reason for thinking legs don't kick, any more than not blaming books for falling is a reason for thinking that books don't fall. You still have to show that the reason we don't blame our legs is because they don't kick (and not, e.g., simply because they don't intend to kick, or because they're not agents, etc.).
    In you replies, you've repeated your claim that legs don't kick and that this is why we don't blame them, but have offered no arguments that this is so.

    Anon,
    Tornadoes kill people. We sometimes assign blame for killing people. Thus tornadoes do something for which we sometimes assign praise and blame. So what? Surely not that tornadoes don't kill people.
    You say that legs don't kick, animals do. Is the fact that animals kick supposed to establish that legs don't? Why? Does the fact that I move establish that my legs don't?

    John,
    So you agree that digestive tracts digest food. Do people digest food?

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  49. Derek Bowman

    Although I might try to find another way to characterize the relevant questions, I hope Anongrad will someday see fit to publish this insightful remark elsewhere in nonanonymous fashion:

    "Some of these questions are more common than others, some have become more famous than others. Those to whom the burden of these questions occurs but that become tired or weary become dogmatic."

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  50. Anonymous Ex-Adjunct

    Your view, Mike, is unclear. Is it that it's meaningful, but false, to say that legs kick (walk, pass, block, etc.)? Or is it that it's both meaningful and true to say that legs kick? Frankly, I wouldn't know what to say to someone who holds that it's true that legs kick, so I'll assume your view is that it's meaningful but false to say that legs kick. As I said to Sam Rickless, I'm not sure whether claims like "Legs kick," "Brains think," etc. are meaningless. Perhaps sense can be attached to these claims, so I'm willing to concede, for the moment, that they're meaningful. Even so, they're patently (indeed, laughably) false.

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