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Horwich on Wittgenstein

Brian Leiter

I usually ignore The Stone blog–its quality is, on average, low and it's a scandal for philosophy to be represented in public by a blog "moderated" by a sophomoric hack like Simon Critchley–but this piece by Paul Horwich (NYU) is timely given our recent poll.  It starts on an odd note, claiming that,

Apart from a small and ignored clique of hard-core supporters the usual view these days is that his writing is self-indulgently obscure and that behind the catchy slogans there is little of intellectual value. But this dismissal disguises what is pretty clearly the real cause of Wittgenstein’s unpopularity within departments of philosophy: namely, his thoroughgoing rejection of the subject as traditionally and currently practiced; his insistence that it can’t give us the kind of knowledge generally regarded as its raison d’être.

If Wittgenstein is actually "unpopular…within departments of philosophy," then it is odd that hundreds of philosophers declared Wittgenstein "the most important" philosopher of the past 200 years!  But once we get beyond the stage-setting, Horwich's blog posting is quite interesting.  He writes:

Wittgenstein claims that there are no realms of phenomena whose study is the special business of a philosopher, and about which he or she should devise profound a priori theories and sophisticated supporting arguments. There are no startling discoveries to be made of facts, not open to the methods of science, yet accessible “from the armchair” through some blend of intuition, pure reason and conceptual analysis. Indeed the whole idea of a subject that could yield such results is based on confusion and wishful thinking.

 So far, this is just Quinean naturalism, not anything distinctively Wittgensteinian.  If you want to know what there is and what we know, well those are scientific questions, and philosophers might, at best, help tidy up the best scientific theories, but there is no "special business of the philosopher," no "a priori theories" on offer.
 
Horwich continues: 
This attitude is in stark opposition to the traditional view, which continues to prevail. Philosophy is respected, even exalted, for its promise to provide fundamental insights into the human condition and the ultimate character of the universe, leading to vital conclusions about how we are to arrange our lives. It’s taken for granted that there is deep understanding to be obtained of the nature of consciousness, of how knowledge of the external world is possible, of whether our decisions can be truly free, of the structure of any just society, and so on — and that philosophy’s job is to provide such understanding. Isn’t that why we are so fascinated by it?

If so, then we are duped and bound to be disappointed, says Wittgenstein. For these are mere pseudo-problems, the misbegotten products of linguistic illusion and muddled thinking. So it should be entirely unsurprising that the “philosophy” aiming to solve them has been marked by perennial controversy and lack of decisive progress — by an embarrassing failure, after over 2000 years, to settle any of its central issues. Therefore traditional philosophical theorizing must give way to a painstaking identification of its tempting but misguided presuppositions and an understanding of how we ever came to regard them as legitimate. But in that case, he asks, “[w]here does [our] investigation get its importance from, since it seems only to destroy everything interesting, that is, all that is great and important? (As it were all the buildings, leaving behind only bits of stone and rubble)” — and answers that “(w)hat we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand.”

This is a striking articulation of what has always struck me as the non-sequitur at the heart of Wittgenstein.  Wittgenstein and Quine agree that there are no distinctively philosophical methods (conceptual analysis, a priori reason, intuition, etc.) for discovering "the ultimate character of the universe," but Quine's conclusion is that we should consult those disciplines whose a posterioi methods have proved fruitful at discovering these things, while Wittgenstein's is to dismiss these questions as "mere pseudo-problems." 
 
Horwich's nice explanation of the "four related claims" Wittgenstein makes in support of his skepticism about philosophy is helpful on this score:

— The first is that traditional philosophy is scientistic: its primary goals, which are to arrive at simple, general principles, to uncover profound explanations, and to correct naïve opinions, are taken from the sciences. And this is undoubtedly the case.

—The second is that the non-empirical (“armchair”) character of philosophical investigation — its focus on conceptual truth — is in tension with those goals.  That’s because our concepts exhibit a highly theory-resistant complexity and variability. They evolved, not for the sake of science and its objectives, but rather in order to cater to the interacting contingencies of our nature, our culture, our environment, our communicative needs and our other purposes.  As a consequence the commitments defining individual concepts are rarely simple or determinate, and differ dramatically from one concept to another. Moreover, it is not possible (as it is within empirical domains) to accommodate superficial complexity by means of simple principles at a more basic (e.g. microscopic) level.

— The third main claim of Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophy — an immediate consequence of the first two — is that traditional philosophy is necessarily pervaded with oversimplification; analogies are unreasonably inflated; exceptions to simple regularities are wrongly dismissed.

— Therefore — the fourth claim — a decent approach to the subject must avoid theory-construction and instead be merely “therapeutic,” confined to exposing the irrational assumptions on which theory-oriented investigations are based and the irrational conclusions to which they lead.

 I take it a Quinean naturalist can agree with versions of 1-3, but will view the fourth claim as a non-sequitur.  If you want to know what there is and what we know, leave the armchair and avail yourself of fruitful methodologies.  What is the Wittgensteinian argument against this, if there is one?  Why isn't #4 a non-sequitur.  (We had an excellent thread on being "Drebenized" years ago which may be relevant to this discussion.)

Comments welcome; signed comments very strongly preferred. 

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20 responses to “Horwich on Wittgenstein”

  1. Tom Hurka

    Why accept the assumption of the second Wittgensteinian claim that the only concepts philosophy can deal with are ones that we already have and that, in particular, are expressed in ordinary language? Why can't it propose new concepts that, though related to those, don't serve multiple functions and are therefore better suited to e.g. philosophical explanation? That's arguably what many philosophers of the last century have been doing.

    Reply
  2. Matt LaVine

    ***Since this is an inordinately long comment, I'll break it into three parts.***

    For what it’s worth, I think that Horwich just gets Wittgenstein wrong on point four. He’s not alone in this, though. There is a whole host of “deflationary” readings of Wittgenstein (which, notably, come from all sides of this debate) that I think misunderstand what Wittgenstein meant by saying that we shouldn’t put forth theories (and by PI 109, generally). What I take to be a “deflationist” reading of Wittgenstein is any one which holds that there is, what we might call, “quantitative” advice to be found in PI §109 and related remarks. What I mean by this is that, one is a deflationist, on my usage, if they hold that Wittgenstein’s no-theories view is advising us to go numerically lower on some scale which we are already at a certain point on. I think that Wittgenstein is instead using his no-theories view to make us recognize that the philosophy scale is a different one than we realized altogether. Soames, then, has a deflationist reading because he thinks that Wittgenstein is telling us we currently ask a certain number of questions in philosophy and we need to ask fewer of them. Searle has a deflationary reading because he thinks Wittgenstein is telling us that the measure of the generality of our philosophical statements needs to go down from where it currently is. Horwich’s own brand of deflationism comes out in his book on Wittgenstein’s meta-philosophy when he says that the philosopher should not “formulate profound a priori theories [or] sophisticated arguments in support of them”.

    Reply
  3. Matt LaVine

    Now, I think there is strong textual support for my anti-deflationist reading in the thick of Wittgenstein’s remarks which are clearly on meta-philosophy (PI §89- PI §133). Surprisingly, I think this support comes, in part, from one of the remarks which deflationists have often taken as
    support for their own view, PI §124.
    PI §124- Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it
    can in the end only describe it. For it cannot give it any foundation either. It
    leaves everything as it is…
    This is supposed to give support to the deflationist reading by showing that Wittgenstein thought philosophy could not lead to large-scale revision (i.e. interference) in any arena it dealt with. It just isn’t that powerful. Unfortunately, when this view is combined with a slightly earlier remark, we end up with a refutation of deflationist readings.
    PI §121- One might think: if philosophy speaks of the use of the word
    “philosophy” there must be a second-order philosophy. But it is not so: it is,
    rather, like the case of orthography, which deals with the word “orthography”
    among others without then being second-order.
    That is, Wittgenstein is making the important realization that the philosophy of
    philosophy is just a proper part of first-order philosophy; that unlike other disciplines, the question “what is the discipline?” is a part of that very discipline for philosophy. Combining these thoughts, we get the following argument:
    P1: All topics which philosophy investigates must not be largely revised by the
    philosopher. (PI §124- Philosophy leaves everything as it is.)
    P2: Philosophy is a topic which the philosopher investigates (i.e. metaphilosophy,
    unlike any other meta-discipline, just is a part of first-order
    philosophy). (PI §121)
    SC: Philosophy must not be largely revised by the philosopher. (UI, P1, P2).
    P3: If deflationism is right, then philosophy must be largely revised by the
    Wittgensteinian philosopher (by asking many fewer questions, by giving many
    fewer arguments, by being much more obvious, etc.).
    CONCLUSION: Deflationist readings of Wittgenstein are not right. (MT, SC, P3)
    This particular argument against the deflationist thesis also undermines one of its motivations and/or corollaries (depending on who you talk to); that Wittgensteinian philosophizing contains no rigorous argumentation and, as a result, only obvious (or potentially obvious) claims are made by “true” Wittgensteinians. For I have here come up with an argument which has as premises remarks straight from Wittgenstein’s book. The argument is composed of at most one more element; namely, the inference rules used, universal instantiation and modus tollens. Presumably Wittgenstein does not deny the validity of these rules. Surely, then, one (not even Wittgenstein) could not fault somebody else for making the argument. But, if it CAN be made, on what grounds can we allow it to be permissible that Wittgenstein wouldn’t make it? Worst of all, wouldn’t we be being uncharitable interlocutors if we didn’t attribute this argument to him?

    Reply
  4. Matt LaVine

    When we look at particular deflationist claims Horwich makes, the textual evidence is against him as well. One such claim he makes in his book is that, since the equation of meaning with use is obvious, Wittgenstein offers no arguments aimed at making one think it is the correct view. As Horwich himself puts it, “it would be quite wrong… to think that the point of the discussion is to expound and support [his] opinion… and he offers no arguments in favour of it.” This is demonstrably false and requires no more than one remark to undermine it (a role which many remarks could play). For simplicities sake, I choose PI §40. This remark reads:

    PI §40- Let us first discuss this point of the argument: that a word has no meaning
    if nothing corresponds to it.—It is important to note that the word "meaning" is
    being used illicitly if it is used to signify the thing that 'corresponds' to the word.
    That is to confound the meaning; of a name with the bearer of the name. When
    Mr. N. N. dies one says that the bearer of the name dies, not that the meaning
    dies. And it would be nonsensical to say that, for if the name ceased to have
    meaning it would make no sense to say "Mr. N. N. is dead."

    This remark comes in the part of the argument (which Wittgenstein explicitly refers to) where, before Wittgenstein can convince us that meaning is use, he must first show us that meaning is not reference. Furthermore, the end of the remark contains an enthymeme which, if my intro logic students extracted in any other way than the following, their grade would suffer immensely:

    P1: If referentialism is true, then the meaning of ‘Mr. N.N.’ is identical with the
    bearer (i.e. referent) of ‘Mr. N.N.’.
    P2: If the meaning of ‘Mr. N.N.’ is identical with the referent of ‘Mr. N.N.’, then
    the meaning of ‘Mr. N.N.’ ceases to exist when Mr. N.N. dies (since the referent
    of ‘Mr. N.N.’ does, in fact, cease to exist when Mr. N.N. dies).
    SC1: If referentialism is true, then the meaning of ‘Mr. N.N.’ ceases to exist when
    Mr. N.N. dies. (P1, P2, Hypothetical Syllogism)
    P3: If the meaning of ‘Mr. N.N.’ ceases to exist when Mr. N.N. dies, then it will
    make no sense to say “Mr. N.N. is dead” when he has died.
    SC2: If referentialism is true, then it will make no sense to say “Mr. N.N. is dead”
    when he has died. (SC1, P3, HS)
    P4: It will make perfect sense to say “Mr. N.N. is dead” when he has died.
    CONCLUSION: Referentialism is not true. (SC2, P4, Modus Tollens)

    Again, if we are going to follow Horwich in saying that, rather than arguing for it, “both components of his discussion of meaning pre-suppose the correctness of his famous definition of it”, we have to not attribute this argument to Wittgenstein. I just don’t see how we can do that, though. Which premise does he deny? Does he have a problem with hypothetical syllogism or with modus tollens? Hopefully, for his sake, he holds no such wildly-revisionary views.

    Reply
  5. Bill Bristow

    I’m certainly the wrong person to speak up for Wittgenstein, but I can’t help it. I’m provoked. I don’t think Wittgenstein lays down strictures about what constitutes decent approaches to the subject of philosophy, thinking of the latter as something located within disciplinary boundaries in universities. I also don’t think he is against people leaving their armchairs to answer interesting, empirical questions using appropriate methodologies. However, if such people are in the grip of a picture, to use his phrase, then their researches are not likely to be fruitful, and what is called for is the kind of therapy that Wittgenstein’s writing aims to provide, what is described here as “mere” therapy. When it works, Wittgenstein’s writing provides a release and a liberation that doesn’t make you want to be beyond the need of such therapy. To want not to need the kind of therapy provided by Wittgenstein’s philosophy is to want not to be human. For Wittgenstein, the deeply human want not to be human underlies many of the pictures that grip us. I recognize that there are passages in Wittgenstein that suggest the aim and the desire to get beyond the need for philosophy altogether, once and for all, but I’ve learned to see such passages as untrue to his own practice. Accordingly, and disagreeing with Horwich, I don’t see Wittgenstein’s orientation and practice as incompatible with respecting philosophy “for its promise to provide fundamental insights into the human condition”. To the contrary. But the kind of insights Wittgenstein’s sort of philosophy provides are unlike the discoveries in the natural sciences, and more akin to the self-revelatory experiences in the domains of art and religion.

    Reply
  6. Richard Wein

    "If you want to know what there is and what we know, leave the armchair and avail yourself of fruitful methodologies. What is the Wittgensteinian argument against this, if there is one?"

    I don't think Wittgenstein is arguing against that proposition. Rather, he is saying that traditional philosophical questions fail to ask about what there is and what we know. They fail to make sense.

    I'm not entirely happy with Horwich's four-claim argument. I would advise attending more to the subsequent passage, in which he addresses the question "What is truth?". Of course that's just one example, and perhaps a relatively uncontroversial one. To fully appreciate Wittgenstein's position I think you have to understand his view of language more deeply, and come to see that it undermines many philosophical questions.

    Rightly or wrongly, I see my own views as broadly Wittgensteinian. However, it seems to me that Wittgenstein takes the word "philosophy" rather narrowly. If we take it more broadly, as referring roughly to all the sorts of subjects that typically get discussed under the rubric of "philosophy", then I would say that there are certainly some "philosophical" subjects on which meaningful things can be said. Philosophy need not be "merely therapeutic". I would say that "philosophy" is a very fuzzy word, and there's something like a continuum from the most distinctively philosophical (especially metaphysical) questions–the sort that Wittgenstein was mainly concerned with–to questions that border on and overlap with nearby fields of discourse, including science, and which can be more meaningfully addressed.

    In his fourth claim, Peter Horwich opposes theory construction to mere therapy, as if philosophy must do one or the other. This is too dichotomous for my taste. On some philosophical questions (at least in my broad sense of "philosophy") we can do more than therapy, if less than theory construction. After all, Wittgenstein himself had something substantive to say about some philosophical subjects, particularly but not solely about language.

    Reply
  7. David Mathers

    A worry I have about the alternative confusion exposing project which Horwich takes Wittgenstein to be proposing as an alternative to the standard philosophical project (if such it is) of trying to discover deep truths about reality from the armchair, is that it might be vulnerable to the same inductive argument from past failures that Wittgensteinians (and Quinean naturalists too, but I take it that they're not vulnerable to this sort of argument, whatever the merits and flaws of their approach more generally) bring against the standard project. I admit to not being very expert in this history of philosophy, but haven't philosophers claimed that some debates are rooted in conceptual confusion rather than differences about how the world is (i.e. Hume on free will comes to mind as an example, even if a somewhat mixed one, since his discussion is saturated with reference to his more theoretical views about the real nature of causation and causal thought.) And haven't those attempts to expose confusion typically met with similar levels of disagreement and lack of consensus as attempts by philosophers to theorize about how the world really is?

    There's also the worry that if the project of exposing confusions is basically a descriptive account of how we actually use words that it might be in competition with empirical linguistics. (Although Wittgenstein can hardly be blamed for being in competition with branches of linguistic which had barely gotten started when he wrote the Investigations, if the relevant branch of linguistics is formal semantics.)

    Not that problems with the alternative that Horwich sees Wittgenstein as proposing exempts us from having to answer his negative case against theoretical philosophy (perhaps philosophy is just a bad idea!), but it might support the idea that the Quinean naturalist project is a better alternative than Wittgenstein's.

    Reply
  8. Paul Horwich

    Brian Leiter is right to observe that Wittgenstein's critique of traditional philosophical theorizing does not at all impugn properly conducted empirical investigations into the nature of reality, knowledge, consciousness, action, etc. And he is right that traditional philosophers might well find in that critique a reason – or an additional reason – to abandon their attempts at a priori explorations of such matters and instead give their energies to the relevant sciences.

    I am sorry for having left a contrary impression in my NYT piece, and can only plead that the non-scholarly context of my brief discussion required a fair amount of oversimplification. But readers of my recent book on Wittgenstein, or my reply to Williamson's review of it, will see that I am in considerable agreement with Leiter's position.

    Still – and perhaps this is a disagreement – I think it's worth emphasizing that if (as Wittgenstein argues) traditional philosophy has been largely driven by a distinctive form of puzzlement – a sense of the phenomena at issue as weird, baffling, and paradoxical – and if, as he suggests, the conceptual tensions that engender such feelings are the product of our irrational presuppositions rather than our scientific ignorance, then the way forward is to conduct the painstaking therapeutic self-examinations that are illustrated by his treatments of meaning and sensation in the Investigations, and his treatment of knowledge in On Certainty. Science may well be able to answer other interesting questions about the phenomena, but it isn't designed to resolve the self-inflicted problems (or pseudo-problems) most characteristic of the subject.

    Finally, I must say that I'm delighted to hear that Wittgenstein won a poll of 600 of our colleagues for 'most important philosopher of the 20th century'. But I remain surprised. How is this result to be squared with the fact that his views about meaning, experience, knowledge, and philosophy itself figure so little these days in debates amongst the leading figures in these areas?

    Reply
  9. Mike

    Wittgenstein's metaphilosophy at UCD, Horwich, Williamson



    Reply
  10. Jonathan Livengood

    The first of Horwich's four points seems to me exactly backwards. Philosophy is not scientistic. Rather, science is philosophistic.

    The special sciences as we have them today are the results and continuations of philosophical investigations. And, to my mind at least, the projects pursued by scientists today are always or for the most part *still* philosophical investigations. I think it is only by forgetting the history of philosophy and of the sciences that one could say with a straight face that philosophy "has been marked by perennial controversy and lack of decisive progress — by an embarrassing failure, after over 2000 years, to settle any of its central issues."

    If one treats all of the cosmological, physical, biological, and psychological questions, problems, and speculations of great philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Newton, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, and Peirce as either non-central or non-philosophical, one might be tempted to say that philosophy has made no serious progress. (Though even that strikes me as pretty badly mistaken.) But why think that, for example, Plato's discussions of the origins of the universe or of the nature of matter are any less central or philosophical than his discussions of the nature of justice? Why think that Leibniz's theorizing about space is any less central or philosophical than his theorizing about God? Why think that Kant's nebular hypothesis is less philosophical than his views about morality? Why think that Peirce's pendulum-swinging was less philosophical than his work on logic?

    The last 2,000 years — and especially the last 400 — have witnessed staggering progress in philosophy. We sell ourselves and our predecessors very, very short to say otherwise.

    Reply
  11. Joe Hatfield

    My sense is that a Quinean naturalist would reject all of these assumptions (with the possible exception of #3 which is merely a complaint), because they seem to presuppose a stronger distinction between the empirical (read: science) and non-empirical (read: metaphysics) than Quine is willing to grant.

    Reply
  12. Curtis Franks

    I think this contrast between Wittgenstein and Quine is overstated. In particular:

    "If you want to know what there is and what we know, leave the armchair and avail yourself of fruitful methodologies. What is the Wittgensteinian argument against this, if there is one?"

    Far from either having or needing an argument against this idea, I think that Wittgenstein agrees with it. He illustrates this repeatedly, throughout the Investigations, with one of his characteristic devices: The "interlocutor" asks, "What is the relationship between, say, language and world?" and he replies, "Well, what is it? Let's look at this example, now this one, …" This, then, frustrates the interlocutor, who insists that that sort of "first order inquiry" is not getting at the question originally posed.

    The main difference between Wittgenstein and Quine is then a matter of what piques their interests. Quine is more interested in engaging in the first order inquiry itself, in saying "I don't care if you think I am missing the point, just doing psychology. I think I am doing epistemology, and the world will wake up to this over time." Wittgenstein is more interested in the interlocutor's (our) reaction, in what it reveals. Why are we disinclined to see what first order inquiry has to offer as satisfactory? What notion of ultimacy, what picture of the world, makes us think that the scientific restatement of the philosophical question leaves out everything important? How many of the perennial problems of philosophy are tied up with that picture?

    Despite this difference of emphasis, Quine is doing what Wittgenstein has called on people to do.

    As for the "non-sequitor": Of course it doesn't follow from the fact that first order inquiry is the only available way to answer questions that philosophical problems are pseudo-problems. Wittgenstein takes himself to be exposing a further fact that underwrites this inference (some of the time), the fact that when some folks say, "Here's how I understand your question about intentionality, freedom of the will, linguistic reference, etc., and here's how I propose we go about answering it," some others reply, "No, no, that's not what I meant at all; I'm talking about something that no methods of that sort could ever touch." This reaction frames the "something" that Wittgenstein wants to expose and dissolve. Quine, it seems to me, agrees with all of this except the part where Wittgenstein suggests that the exposure and dissolution will be rewarding and interesting. He prefers just to ignore that attitude and proceed with his proposal.

    A second difference between Quine and Wittgenstein is that Wittgenstein thinks the recalcitrant attitude just sketched and the picture driving it are much more insidious and deeply entrenched than Quine does. So Wittgenstein thinks that (1) there is really a lot of insight to be had just in repeatedly discovering this reflex at work, (2) the problem doesn't have to do with professional philosophy per se but is a more ubiquitous feature of the modern condition (any sophomore can be made to feel the sting of radical skeptical doubt in half an hour), and (3) if we fasten prematurely on the initial insight about first order inquiry and rush headlong into "naturalized epistemology" without pausing first to exorcize these ghosts, the risk of falling into the same trap with respect to our understanding of what science is uncovering is very high. We have to change not just our methods but ourselves.

    But these two differences derive from a shared attitude, not a disagreement, about armchairs, fruitful methods, and philosophical questions.

    Reply
  13. j.

    curtis franks' reply gets at essentially the sort of thing i wished to say, so i would just add:

    if the alternative is 'theories or therapy?', then presumably one should keep in mind what quine's theories are theories of, and how little he himself, despite styling philosophy as continuous with science, did any science per the lay understanding of it (experiments, evidence, etc.). it is not a question of 'leaving the armchair' or not, it's a question of the extent to which you take your work, from that armchair, to be to accommodate the scientist's understanding of the world.

    BL COMMENT: Just to note my agreement that Quine, in practice, was a bad Quinean naturalist.

    Reply
  14. Nat

    I have a few random thoughts (hopefully not too self-indulgent) here.

    First, this meta-philosophical conversation might perhaps be helped by distinguishing between two kinds of philosophical question:

    a) Those aiming at the logical clarification of our understanding of reality as it presumably exists more or less objectively and independently of our particular subjective experiences of it (i.e. questions that often overlap or informed by the natural sciences)

    b) Those aiming at the logical clarification and conceptual enrichment or enhancement (or cultural “therapy”) of the more or less intersubjective realm that encompasses our morals, values, desires, social customs, and human-built systems

    It needs to be said that not all questions dealing with the second realm (questions that deal with such things as ethics, politics, law, etc.) are hopelessly circular or insoluable. For instance, if I say the question “how are we to live?” is a traditionally philosophical question, but if I also say that the question (since it pertains to contested human values rather than to uncontested natural facts) has no ultimate answer—or at least has no clear-cut answer the way a question such as “what is the flash point of carbon?” does—does that mean the question itself is effectively meaningless? I think most of us would say no; i.e. we would defend the question “how are we to live?” as a useful one, or even a necessary one, to being human.

    Thus I doubt that the first claim or premise above (i.e. that “traditional philosophy is scientistic: its primary goals, which are to arrive at simple, general principles…are taken from the sciences”) is true: though there may be no “simple, general principle” whereby we can agree on how best to conduct our lives, certainly the domain of that question falls within the scope of “traditional philosophy.” Furthermore, given that least since Socrates sought (Phaedo 96b) to distinguish philosophical inquiry from naturalistic explanation, there has been a good argument to be made that philosophy is a dialectical enterprise entirely distinct from science–and thus "traditional philosophy" is not scientistic, but is self-consciously pursuing other aims entirely.

    Now philosophy has both a negative and positive function: its negative function is to critically entertain certain radically skeptical arguments, counter-intuitive thought experiments, and seemingly insoluable logical puzzles in order to undermine our dogmatic tendency to assume that something like the platitudes of “common sense” are all that is necessary to understand reality, and its positive function is to stimulate “big question” theoretical speculation that may (or may not) eventually prove of conceptual value either to more emprical or “concrete” questions in the natural sciences or to real, pressing human questions confronting us in the realms of law, politics, the environment, socioeconomics, etc.

    Now the positive function is especially difficult to measure, since we do not always know historically how many scientific insights first began as more philosophical ones (although as a data point we should surely take Einstein seriously when he credits philosophy and the free play of the imagination in his own intellectual development).

    There is a tendency to think that with the historical waning of natural philosophy and the triumph of the scientific method in the modern era, that philosophy today has to some degree outlived its usefulness—and survives largely as a relic of a time before the ascendency of science. I think it is a mistake to think this way for two reasons: first, because we do not yet know how the philosophical might inform or stimulate the sciences in the future, and second, because the premise ignores the human side of the equation (i.e. the side that deals with morality, politics, history, etc.)

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  15. Jonathan

    Just a short comment with respect to the alleged discrepancy between a poll showing Wittengstein to be the most influential philosopher of the twentieth century and the claim that he is nevertheless unpopular among philosophers today. Accepting for the sake of argument that the latter is true, I don't think there's much reason to be puzzled. The poll was an historical question: who from the twentieth century had the most influence. It seems to me entirely possible that one can answer that question "Wittgenstein" and still not find him to be a very good philosopher. Hasn't Jerry Fodor, for example, been saying that for years?

    Reply
  16. Dave Maier

    I remember that post by Horwich (and commented on it at the time (http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2013/04/horwich-vs-lynch-on-wittgensteins-therapeutic-conception-of-philosophy.html — like Horwich's, a "non-scholarly" effort). In general I agree with others here who see Wittgenstein to be not so deflationary as he seems (and I thank Matt LaVine for his interesting argument to that effect).

    As for Quine, he and Wittgenstein don't seem to me to be saying quite the same thing here, though as commenters have noted, Wittgenstein certainly has no *objection* to empirical inquiry, and is just as resistant to traditional "metaphysics"; but their actual relation is not so easy to delineate. I would say the most salient objections to Quinean naturalism from a more-or-less Wittgensteinian perspective come not from loyal Wittgensteinians but instead from (Quine's self-described "faithful student") Davidson. In fact an interesting (if Whiggish and admittedly somewhat Procrustean) reading of Wittgenstein could be given which has him pressing what will only later emerge as a coherent philosophy in Davidson's sustained attack on the scheme-content dualism. We can't see this, though, if we dismiss Davidson as providing "philosophical doctrines" in an unacceptably dogmatic sense, which is why I hope we can get past blanket denunciations of same from "Wittgensteinian" quarters.

    Reply
  17. Michael Lynch

    Here is my half of the exchange over Wittgenstein's metaphilosophy–mentioned above– also published at NYT: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/of-flies-and-philosophers-wittgenstein-and-philosophy/

    Reply
  18. Richard Marshall

    FYI

    http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/deflationism-and-wittgenstein/
    http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/modality-and-metaphysics/

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  19. Alex K.

    Horwich dubs the subject of Wittgenstein’s critique “T-philosophy”. T-philosophy has two main features. First, it is theoretical in nature – “the aim is construction and defense of important philosophical theories” (p. 21). What makes T-philosophy theoretical is the fact that its principles go beyond what is commonsensically obvious, i.e. our common-sense commitments, in order to organize, explain or correct the latter. Hence, its principles are initially controversial. A crucial aspect of T-philosophical theories is that they are scientistic: their goals and methods are modeled upon those of empirical sciences; accordingly, they aim at establishing “simple and precise generalizations that can accommodate the relevant data” (p. 25). Second, T-philosophy’s principles must be a priori. This is where it differs fundamentally from empirical sciences. In short, a T-philosophical theory is “a non-obvious body of a priori principles—one that offers a complete, systematic, precise, and basic account of some pervasive yet puzzling phenomena” (p. 21).

    According to Horwich, the later Wittgenstein makes a strong case that T-philosophy is misconceived. The structure of the argument of Horwich’s Wittgenstein can be reconstructed roughly as follows:
    1. The goal of both science and T-philosophy “is a body of simple and precise generalizations that can accommodate the relevant data”.
    2. The relevant data are (extremely) messy though and thus stand in the way of achieving the goal in question.
    3. Scientists overcome the limitations imposed by the messiness of their data by finding simplicity at some deeper level of empirical reality.
    4. “No such strategy can be successfully employed in T-philosophy” for a priori reality does not exhibit the required features.
    5. Other strategies to come to terms with the messiness of philosophical data, such as drawing subtile distinctions or trying to accommodate all of them, cannot possibly lead to any fruitful results.
    6. Hence, the messiness of the data of theoretical philosophy – concepts, meanings, a priori convictions etc. – makes the construction of important philosophical theories a futile endeavour.

    To sum up: At the root of T-philosophy is a deep and insurmountable conflict between its goals – simple and precise a priori generalizations – and its (extremely) messy data. This is what drives philosophical theorizing and dooms it to failure.

    Now I find Horwich’s reconstruction of Wittgenstein’s argument against traditional philosophy fraught with problems.

    First, it distorts Wittgenstein’s view of the nature and the scope of traditional philosophy. To begin with, Wittgenstein treats scepticism about knowledge as an important part of traditional philosophy; it doesn’t amount to a T-philosophy since it is anything but scientistic. Another problem with Horwich’s characterization of T-philosophy is the fact that there are philosophical theories which explicitly denounce aprioristic philosophy, respectively a priori theorizing about (any kind of) phenomena. If I’m not mistaken, Horwich’s account of T-philosophy doesn’t seem to do justice to Wittgenstein’s sceptical attitude toward non-apriorist scientistic philosophy a la Peirce, Mach or Quine. Thus, it faces a dilemma: either to deny that anti-apriorist traditions like empiricism, pragmatism, historicism, philosophy of life, hermeneutics, postmodernism, etc. advance philosophical theories or to accept that certain theoretical endeavours in philosophy are legitimate. By my lights, Wittgenstein’ later (meta-) philosophy opposes any theorizing in philosophy and not just the a priori one. In § 109 PI he says: “And we may not advance any kind (my emph.) of theory.”

    Second, by my lights, Horwich’s reconstruction of Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophy is not Wittgensteinian in spirit, let alone in letter. Wittgenstein does not raise the question of why the messiness of sensorily perceived phenomena does not impede the construction of extremely successful empirical theories. Nowhere does he suggest that scientific progress has something to do with the existence of more fundamental and simpler levels of empirical reality. The crucial part of the argument, namely that a priori reality – unlike empirical reality – doesn’t have deeper levels and thus doesn’t allow the construction of important philosophical theories is nowhere to be found in the entire corpus of Wittgenstein’s writings. The picture that emerges from Horwich’s argument strikes me as very un-Wittgensteinian: there are different levels of reality which are objectively more or less fundamental, simple and messy; the more fundamental levels can be accessed via inference to the best explanation. Accordingly, our concepts can be changed so that they no longer stand in the way of simple and precise generalizations, i.e. they can be made to correspond to the simpler nature of the deeper level of reality.

    Third, it is not clear how Horwich’s brief account of scientific progress relates to the progress of arguably non-empirical fields like mathematics and logic. Given that the data for mathematical theorizing are messy too and that there is no deeper level of a priori reality, how could we explain the fact that mathematical theories are both a priori and precise (successful)?

    Fourth, Horwich’s seems to use two different accounts of the messiness of our linguo-conceptual practices which are not easy to reconcile for the first is rather anti-realist and the second rather realist. On the one hand, he assumes that these practices “evolved (…) to serve a variety of much more humdrum practical purposes and to serve them in a way that conduces to the complex contingencies of our nature, our culture, and our environment”. Presumably, that circumstance explains their messiness. Thus the messiness of our concepts isn’t induced by the messiness of the corresponding phenomena; indeed it is rather the opposite: “if the usage isn’t nicely systematizable, the claimed reality won’t be either.” (p. 36) On the other hand, Horwich’s account of the success of empirical sciences seems to imply something quite different. The phenomena that provide the data for scientific theorizing projects are, so to say, objectively messy, i.e. due to reasons which pertain to the deep structure of reality. Therefore, the “superficial facts” can be “explained as the causal products of simple underlying laws in combination with a messily varied spatio-temporal array of particular circumstances.” Presumably, the concepts by which scientists unveil the deeper level of reality are less messy than the concepts through which the superficial facts are/were stated for the former represent less messy phenomena. Otherwise, the deeper level wouldn’t be nicely systematizable either, i.e. simple and precise generalizations wouldn’t be possible. I have already suggested that such an account seems to imply scientitific (or even metaphysical) and semantic realism.
    Those two accounts of the messiness of our linguo-conceptual practices pull in opposite directions. If the messiness of the superficial facts is due partially to the messiness of the usage of the respective terms, i.e. due to the “complex contingencies of our nature, our culture, and our environment”, then they would resist explanation by reference to some deeper level of reality and no simple and precise generalizations would be possible.

    Fifth,Horwich's account of traditional philosophy strikes me as rather theoretical in nature. It offers a deep explanation of certain empirical phenomena, namely the fact of scientific progress and the absence of similar progress in philosophy. The account tacitly assumes that the empirical reality of traditional philosophy has different levels. On its surface level, T-philosophy is extremely messy for it includes a great variety of profoundly different doctrines, methods and styles of thinking, e.g. the ideas of Plato, Aristotle, Thomas from Aquino, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Russell, Quine, etc. On that level, T-philosophy doesn’t seem to possess an essential nature; hence, no simple and precise generalizations about its character and its failure as a theoretical endeavour look possible. However, there is some deeper level of the reality of T-philosophy, at which it reveals itself as a unified, structured and nicely systematizable phenomenon. Once we grasp the essential nature of T-philosophy, we can see (1) how profoundly different kinds of philosophical theorizing emerge from it naturally, and (2) why they all fail to achieve what they generally aspire to. Here the question arises why the messiness of the concepts of philosophy, theory, science, etc. does not impede the success of the abstract considerations and generalizations about the essential nature of T-philosophy and its necessary failure. Is Horwich’s account of the nature of T-philosophy coherent?

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  20. Gary Kemp

    I'm very much in agreement with Franks. I've something coming out in the Journal for the History of Analytic Philosophy on the matter of what piques their respective interests; preliminary printing here:

    https://www.academia.edu/4350405/Pushing_Wittgenstein_and_Quine_Closer_Together_forthcoming_in_JHAP_

    I think Q more or less agrees that many or most philosophical topics are at best topics for therapy, at worst just confusion. Somewhere (Quiddities?) he says that we ought really to give up the notion 'knowledge' as a bad job. (and 'concepts', and 'necessity' etc.)

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