In Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, he writes that the ideal philosopher “treats a question; like an illness” (PI 255). This move from treating a question as something to be answered to treating it as something to be cured might encapsulate the focus of the Investigations; it certainly sums up Wittgenstein’s approach to various problems relating to the philosophy of language, the philosophy of logic, and the philosophy of mind. In this sense, Wittgenstein considers his method therapeutic and concludes that philosophy should do nothing more than demonstrate how its own questions are rooted in mistake. But Wittgenstein does not treat one particular question which, in light of his therapeutic method, seems particularly problematic: “What ought I to do?” i.e. the ethical question. This paper seeks to perform Wittgensteinian therapy on that question. In section I, I present my interpretation of Wittgenstein’s therapy, which I argue entails both intellectual and aesthetic reversals. In section II, I use my interpretation of his therapy to begin treating the ethical question, attempting to at least provide a model of the therapy which intellectually treats the question. In section III, I show that a full treatment of the ethical question will necessarily entail a positive ethical account, and suggest one such account by an appeal to a religious aesthetic rather than a philosophic one. I conclude with a discussion of the ethical purpose of the Investigations in light of this positive account.

I. Philosophy and Therapy

In order to establish a firm understanding of Wittgenstein’s philosophical therapy, we must start with the so-called illness. What, exactly, is the philosophical condition which Wittgenstein intends to cure? Though it is tempting to answer with “participating in the western philosophical tradition,” i.e. engaging in the content of most western philosophy courses, it is not clear that Wittgenstein’s project is focused upon targeting such a broad, academic audience; since Wittgenstein himself fails to specify exactly who he is targeting, it is helpful to situate him within his philosophical milieu. G.P. Baker and P.M.S Hacker portray Bertrand Russell, one of Wittgenstein’s influences, as representing the antithesis of Wittgenstein’s philosophical therapy in his advocating philosophy as “the most general of sciences” (Baker and Hacker, 458). In reaction to the worry that philosophy has, after two millennia, achieved no concrete breakthroughs comparable to those of the sciences, Russell sought to develop a philosophical system that could support an accumulation of theories and therefore provide an avenue for progress. As Baker and Hacker write, Russell thought that philosophy’s lack of progress “is a symptom that philosophers have been mistaken in their methods. The remedy is to emulate the method the sciences follow with such conspicuous success” (ibid). Without further investigation of Russell’s theory, we already have a clear illustration of a condition that Wittgenstein intends to cure. The philosopher finds that he is dissatisfied, for the intellectual tradition that he finds himself within has apparently failed to provide adequate answers to the problems that it poses. His dissatisfaction operates on two levels: (i) meta-philosophically, in his dissatisfaction with philosophy as a whole – for example, the realization that philosophy has made such little progress while the sciences have, and (ii) philosophically, in his dissatisfaction with his own answers (or lack of answers) to the questions of philosophy. This dissatisfaction, as Baker and Hacker note, is unconsciously taken as a “symptom”: but rather than the symptom prompting a diagnostic process, i.e. the description of why one feels as one does, it prompts the philosopher to seek out a novel way of solving the problems, as Russell did. Wittgenstein rejects this second method as the appropriate response to philosophical dissatisfaction.

In writing “A philosophical problem has the form: ‘I don’t know my way about’,” (PI 123) Wittgenstein implicitly identifies this condition of dissatisfaction with Plato’s aporia, the state of being at a loss that one finds himself within upon realizing that he lacks knowledge. Wittgenstein’s remark highlights that philosophical problems are formally aporetic; it is the nature of a philosophical problem to effect aporia. Where our portrait of Russell depicts him as unconsciously taking aporia as a symptom of philosophical failure, Wittgenstein contends that philosophy is essentially aporetic: to engage in philosophic discourse is to be at a loss. And it is a specific kind of lostness that Wittgenstein describes as the aporetic condition, one produced by grammatical confusion rather than lack of knowledge. The problems of philosophy begin in mistake. He writes, “what confuses us is the uniform appearance of words when we hear them in speech, or see them written or in print. For their use is not that obvious” (PI 11). Here Wittgenstein, in highlighting the uniform appearance of words, may be noting a variety of phenomena: that a sentence in our language always requires a subject and a predicate, that we have adjectival and nominal forms of the same word (e.g. happy and happiness), that our verbs alternate between different forms (is, to be, being), etc. Whatever the nature of the uniformity, it produces problems which arise when the use of a word is not obvious and therefore is confused with a different, unintelligible (thought seemingly intelligible) usage. This may be the moment when, for example, we see that “His sermon was very meaningful,” is an intelligible sentence, and so we begin to wonder, “Is life meaningful? What is the meaning of life?” although that usage is not grounded in the same practice as the former. And at this stage, language is officially suspended: “For philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday” (PI 38). And so the formal beginning of philosophy – the articulation of a philosophical problem – arises out of a mistaken approximation as to the usage of certain words and phrases.

There is, however, an additional element which contributes to the philosopher’s aporia: what more idealistic thinkers have termed “wonder” concerning the problems of philosophy, Wittgenstein discusses in terms of “captivation”. In comment 114, Wittgenstein includes a confessional remark regarding his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in which he claims that the prior work was an attempt at capturing the essence of reality; immediately following, he writes, “A picture held us captive. And we couldn’t get outside it, for it lay in our language, and language seemed only to repeat it to us inexorably” (PI 115). This confession introduces the aesthetic relationship of the philosopher to the question: the aporetic condition extends beyond a misunderstanding of language to a seemingly inescapable attachment to that misunderstood language. The picture held them captive because it was captivating, being rooted in the language they had adopted and deeply seated within their aesthetic framework, i.e. “the frame through which we look at it” (PI 114). This aesthetic results when a philosopher, having been mistaken about his language, becomes wedded to the philosophical vocabulary; this contributes to “an urge to misunderstand [the workings of our language]” (PI 109). This urge is motivated by some attractive ideal located within the philosophical vocabulary: in Wittgenstein’s case, he reports that this ideal was the “crystalline purity of logic” (PI 107). Robert Fogelin, however, discusses how this aesthetic might develop given any philosophic vocabulary, and that the general process runs thus: “Impressed by a certain feature of language, we elevate it to the status of a model for the description of all language. We become absorbed in certain similes and distort phenomena to fit under them” (Fogelin 141).

It is this distortion that characterizes Wittgenstein’s aporia, as the philosophical language begins to conflict with the language from which it was derived. This leads the philosopher to the form of the philosophical problem: “I don’t know my way about” (PI 123). The philosopher unconsciously abandons language informed by practice, and thus loses the ground upon which he conducts his reasoning. For philosophical discourse is conducted in language – yet Wittgenstein maintains that the philosopher is only utilizing the appearance of language, a confused language, not a language legitimated by practice. The tension produced by the conflict between this pseudo-language and legitimate language effects aporia: “We feel as if we had to repair a torn spider’s web with our fingers” (PI 106). Moreover, the philosopher’s aesthetic binds him to his aporia, as he remains attracted to his mistaken notion of an ideal because of its sheer impressiveness. It is this combination of mistaking language’s usage and adopting the philosophic aesthetic that constitutes aporia; aporia is therefore not, as the traditional philosophers might say, an indication that one doesn’t “actually know” something. As Wittgenstein would say, this response would itself be grounded in the mistaken language.

Wittgenstein’s response, on the other hand, is therapy . I will present a plausible account of Wittgenstein’s “justification” for his therapy later in this essay, as I find that it is deeply intertwined with the possibility of positive ethics stemming from the Investigations; for now, our interest is in the therapeutic method itself. As aporia results from both (i) the mistaken application of language and (ii) the philosophic aesthetic engrossed in that mistake, effective therapy would require both an intellectual reorientation and an aesthetic reorientation. This, I argue, is just what we find in the Investigations.

The intellectual reorientation occurs upon the moment that the philosopher realizes his error and corrects it. Having realized his mistake, the philosopher will reappropriate language grounded in usage, and his philosophical problems will disappear; as such, there will be no need for them to be answered. Wittgenstein’s greatest challenge here is resisting a method that itself adopts a philosophical vocabulary and thereby fails to adequately escape aporia . In order to avoid this, he resists explanation and emphasizes description: “All explanation must disappear, and description alone must take its place. And this description gets its light – that is to say, its purpose – from the philosophical problems. These are, of course, not empirical problems; but they are solved through an insight into the workings of our language” (PI 109). This process appears to operate sequentially: (1) the philosopher realizes that he is at a loss, having engaged philosophically with a problem; (2) he, or his therapist, engages in the explanatory process of describing the language which the problem is couched within (i.e. the description gets its light from the problem); (3) the philosopher experiences an “insight” as to how the problem illegitimately arose, and he thus abandons his philosophical vocabulary and returns to legitimate language. Wittgenstein here uses the vague term “insight” intentionally, as he is avoiding positing a theoretical model as to the nature of “understanding” and is instead using experiential language to convey the immediate reality of the event. Such language, I might add, is grounded in usage, as when we say, “It all just clicked,” or, “A light bulb went off in my head”. Wittgenstein would betray his own position if he were to explain the nature of the insight.

Wittgenstein does, however, allow for more concrete methodological techniques in his therapy. He writes that some of our misunderstandings “can be removed by substituting one form of expression for another; this may be called ‘analyzing’ our forms of expression, for sometimes this procedure resembles taking a thing apart” (PI 90). Wittgenstein’s allowance for this being called “analysis” is explained by its common definition, “to take apart, to break up and examine”. More importantly, though, Wittgenstein’s remark is self-referential: in substituting “analysis” for “substituting one form of expression for another”, he demonstrates the spirit of his remark. For he does not intend to claim that such an analytic method would constitute a process that would reveal the “real meaning” of an expression; rather, he intends to show that it effects different ways of beholding the same expression. By beholding “analysis”, “substituting one expression for another”, and “taking apart and examining”, simultaneously, we may be able to grasp the ethereal connection between the three and understand how we came to assign “analysis” a special meaning, if we did at all. Thus the analysis does not provide an explanation, but rather arranges the circumstances such that an “insight” can occur; it is a method conducive to description, not explanation. Nevertheless, this method does allow for concrete, therapeutic techniques, should we find them amicable to achieving an insight.

Wittgenstein, however, does intend to push against a rigorous, singular methodology in the Philosophical Investigations: he makes this point clearly, in saying, “There is not a single philosophical [therapeutic] method, though there are indeed methods, different therapies, as it were” (PI 133, my note in parentheses). This remark respects the individuality of each patient’s experience, allowing Wittgenstein to avoid positing a theoretical and comprehensive model as to the phenomenology of aporia. It also, though, calls attention to the norm which Wittgenstein intends to effect through his therapy: a true aesthetic reversal. James Peterman describes this in saying: “Philosophical therapy, like aesthetic critique, is designed to get someone to change a philosophical view and ultimately his or her philosophical sensibility” (Peterman, 123, my italics). I will clarify, or perhaps dispute, Peterman’s word choice when he claims that philosophical therapy initially changes someone’s “philosophical view” – I maintain that Wittgenstein intends to defy the terms of philosophy altogether in effecting a non-philosophical view of a certain phenomenon in language. And ultimately, following Peterman’s claim, Wittgenstein intends to effect a non-philosophical sensibility, which is not a manner of beholding a single proposition or phenomenon but one’s entire world.

This distinction explains Wittgenstein’s intention in saying that “the clarity we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear” (PI 133). Questions disappear when we, in a sense, stop asking them. For the elimination of one philosophical problem through therapy cannot guarantee that the real problem is in fact treated, which is that the philosopher finds himself so wedded to the philosophical vocabulary. And so Wittgenstein’s positing that philosophy ought to be inherently therapeutic is done with an eye to effecting a sensibility that beholds language and phenomena in such a way as to not give rise to philosophical problems. This will entail a permanent abandonment of the philosophical vocabulary and a complete return to legitimated language. So, we take again our caricature of Russell. As we portrayed him, Russell’s philosophical problem was that, loosely speaking, philosophy had not quite uncovered truth as a result of deficiency in its methods; and so he developed an entirely new philosophical system that might be able to adequately answer the problems of philosophy. But let’s say that we now performed therapy on Russell, and through analysis got him to see that his new philosophy somehow stemmed from a misappropriation of language. Might we expect that his next move would be to develop an entirely new philosophical system? Because Russell (as we characterize him) is obsessed with finding the answers of the philosophical problems – and though we may have succeeded in getting him to realize that his one particular view was mistaken, there is no guarantee that this will make his philosophical problems completely disappear. What will make those problems completely disappear, though, is a total change of sensibility. James Edwards illustrates this nicely: “The change in belief about the temperature might well leave every other belief unaltered; the aesthetic reversal could not but bring about other differences in its train: hence calling it an alteration in sensibility” (Edwards, 135).
And, Wittgenstein posits, one of those “other differences” that the aesthetic reversal is supposed to bring about is peace. “The real discovery,” he writes, “is the one that enables me to break off philosophizing when I want to. – The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself in question” (PI 133). The state of being wedded to the philosophical vocabulary is characterized as torment – presumably because philosophical thinking is categorically at odds with the language from which it developed, and so can never provide adequate answers to its own questions. The philosophical sensibility will therefore live in continual disappointment – Russell’s realization that philosophy has provided inadequate answers to its own questions will continually happen. And so the aesthetic reversal, i.e. the “real discovery,” will allow the philosopher to not only abandon a philosophical issue but to stop philosophizing completely. This in turn will bring peace – freedom from philosophical captivation.

II. Treating the Question

And so, in summary, the cessation of philosophy brings the philosopher peace. It is in (i) treating the particular questions of philosophy – and experiencing an insight as to what mistake brought each question about – and (ii) in experiencing a change of sensibility which frees us from even wanting to engage in philosophy, that we are freed from philosophizing altogether and can then go about living our lives peacefully. This process, on some level, may intuitively strike us as plausible, even desirable, when we have philosophical questions in mind that seem categorically unsolvable and somewhat superfluous: for example, certain questions of metaphysics and epistemology (e.g. What is being? Is the cat on the mat?). I think, however, that this process seems deeply disturbing when applied to what I will call “the ethical question,” of which a common formulation is, “What ought I to do?” Nevertheless, the history of philosophy suggests that this question is distinctly philosophical – and certain formulations or treatments of this question have undoubtedly slipped into the kind of philosophical mistake that deserves therapy. I will attempt, using the methodologies outlined above, to hazard a Wittgensteinian treatment of this question. I do not intend to demonstrate that Wittgenstein’s method especially applies to one particular tradition, nor do I intend to claim that Wittgenstein himself would support my analysis. Rather, I intend to show how such a treatment remains consistent with Wittgensteinian therapy.

Stage 1: Aporia

The salient characteristic of any philosophical problem, and the indication that it deserves therapy, is that it effects aporia. In what sense might “What ought I to do?” be understood as formally aporetic? This particular question resembles Wittgenstein’s formal definition of the philosophical problem (PI 123) in two striking and distinct ways: (i) it is a confusion in language, in that it indicates that the philosopher does not know how to properly apply certain linguistic concepts (such as the word “ought”), and (ii) it is a clear articulation of ‘not knowing one’s way about’ in a very practical way, for it indicates that the philosopher very literally does not know his way about life. As such, the ethical question participates in the form of the philosophical problem in a much more apparent way than many philosophical questions: we could imagine a philosopher saying, “What ought I to do? I don’t know my about,” including the second sentence by way of explanation of the first. That is, the ethical question not only follows the aporetic form; it itself is also an expression of aporia. And if this is the case, then the question itself – when asked in a philosophical way – can legitimately be taken as a symptom of philosophical aporia. The therapist, therefore, has grounds to proceed.

Stage 2: Analysis

Given that the analytical process is one of the few concrete methods that Wittgenstein provides in the Philosophical Investigations, I will attempt to demonstrate it here as applied to “What ought I to do?” Recall that this will entail a type of “substituting one form of expression for another” (PI 90) that may provide the conditions under which an “insight” might occur. Firstly, let us examine the many different iterations of the question in an effort to perceive the language within which the question is buried. For example, the question may appear as: What ought I to do; What should I do; What is the right thing to do; What is the best thing to do; What is the best way to live; What is the right way to live; What action is the most moral; What is the moral life; What is the good life; etc. From this we see that the ethical question is intimately tied to language of compulsion (ought, should), language of correctness (right thing to do), superlative language (best thing to do, best way to live, most moral), language considering orientation towards life (the moral life, the good life) and language of value (moral, good), among other linguistic tropes.

Here we must tread carefully, for Wittgenstein stresses that therapy must abandon explanation and instead hinge upon pure description in order to legitimately free itself from philosophy. Thus, rather than attempting to reconstruct how these regions of our language brought about the ethical question, we will rather investigate those regions further. Compare these uses of such regions:

1. You really should go to the store; we’re out of cereal.
2. You ought to call her back, you said you would.
3. Everyone should donate around Christmas time.
4. Given the choice, you should fly Alaska instead of United.
5. It’s better to give food, and not money, to homeless people.
6. The right thing to do would be to pay for the parking ticket.
7. One should act only according to that maxim which you can at the same time will to be a universal law.
8. Oh, I should just go to sleep, I won’t get anything more done tonight.
9. You should love your neighbor as yourself.

Which of these different uses, the therapist might ask, were you thinking of when you asked the question “What ought I to do?” Being generous, we might say uses 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 9 broadly fall under the question when asked philosophically, whereas uses 1, 4, and 8 certainly do not. However, the philosopher might really only have wanted an answer like 7 or 9 when they asked the question; or perhaps only an answer like 5. The important thing, though, is to notice that the grammar of example 1 is related to the grammar of example 7 – for both answers would function as appropriate responses to the question “What ought I to do” if it were asked under different circumstances.

Stage 3: Insight?

And having received such therapy – and, undoubtedly, much more – we are thus in a condition to experience an “insight” into the nature of our problem that allows us to dissolve it. I maintain that such an insight is ineffable under Wittgensteinian therapy – to articulate the insight would be to posit a theoretical model of the origin of a philosophical problem which would itself lead to philosophical problems. For example, one might be tempted to think that because obligatory language is utilized in example 2, we were tricked into applying that language to a non-existent universal standard, thereby making the question “What ought I to do?” misguided. But here, we have already slipped back into making a philosophical claim – namely a claim about the ontological status of a moral standard. And so a traditional philosopher might retort to our insight, “But how can you really know that the standard does not exist?” and we would have to defend ourselves philosophically. If, on the other hand, we allow our insight to remain an ineffable experience, taking the form of a realization that shakes us from the philosophical vocabulary and returns us to everyday language, we have legitimately escaped the problem.

III: A Religious Aesthetic

The second and more meaningful aspect of Wittgensteinian therapy is its emphasis on the aesthetic reversal. As I have argued, therapy is not complete until the philosophical questions have completely disappeared, and as such our therapy on this question is not finished until we have stopped asking it. And yet – can we stop asking such a question? As I have discussed, philosophical therapy intends to alleviate aporia, but it seems as if denying the meaningfulness of the ethical question is in fact condemning the philosopher to eternal aporia. For if we cannot ask “What ought I to do?” then what do we do? If we are not allowed to formulate theories concerning how to live our lives, then how will we live? Having treated the ethical question, it seems as if the philosopher might still be at a loss, if not intellectually then practically; for he remains without direction. For this reason, I argue that an effective aesthetic reversal will not only be one that entails the cessation of asking the ethical question, but also be one that includes an ethical reversal. For the patient cannot stop asking “What ought I to do?” until he knows what to do. In other words, the possibility of positive ethics must be included in any account of treating the ethical question with Wittgensteinian therapy; I will spend the rest of this paper discussing this possibility.

There is little help from within the Philosophical Investigations that aids in the construction of this positive account. Wittgenstein does, however, stipulate some provisions as to how we ought to go about it. The only clearly relevant remark that he includes is within proposition 77. Embodying a traditional, philosophical voice, he articulates the worry that his critique of philosophy will lead to the assertion that “everything – and nothing – is right.” Wittgenstein’s response, of course, neither directly attacks nor defends this claim; instead he notes that, “And this is the position in which, for example, someone finds in ethics or aesthetics when he looks for definitions that correspond to our concepts” (PI 77). Notice that the worry Wittgenstein’s interlocutor articulates is an expression of the aporetic condition, i.e. the form of the philosophical problem. And Wittgenstein’s response is to point out that aporia results when we look for ethical definitions that correspond to his concepts. Wittgenstein’s provision here is: do not attempt to draw absolute, one-to-one correlations between the thoughts presented in the Philosophical Investigations and ethics; this will lead to the formalization of a philosophical theory and therefore to continual enslavement to philosophy’s error. The particular position that Wittgenstein is guarding against is the ethical stance that “because I have performed therapy on the ethical question, everything goes.” This would represent a lapse into the philosophical sensibility, as it would continue to assume that ethical standards have ontological status (either “there” or “not there”) and that this status informs ethics.

With this in mind, I will turn to one more place in the Investigations that might prove useful in constructing a positive ethical account: Wittgenstein’s saying, “Once I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: ‘This is simply what I do’”(PI 217). The corresponding ethical definition to such an attitude might be construed as a kind of “everything goes” morality of the variety that Wittgenstein dismissed above. That is, we might be tempted into thinking that Wittgenstein is denying the need for justification on philosophical grounds and that therefore we are authorized to act in any manner whatsoever without justification. Yet we are trying to escape the kind of morality that needs “authorization”, and such a position would itself be appealing to a type of justification.

It seems clear, then, that a positive ethical position stemming from the Investigations will be one that does not rely on philosophical justification at all because, in a sense, it justifies itself. We will not be able to arrive at such a position through argument. Instead, I propose that we must arrive there through a movement of passion. In the compilation of Wittgenstein’s remarks Culture and Value, we find a caricature of religious conversion that will serve as my model for the aesthetic-ethical reversal which can legitimately overcome the ethical question. Wittgenstein writes:

“It strikes me that a religious belief could only be something like a passionate commitment to a system of reference. Hence, although it’s belief, it’s really a way of living, or a way of assessing life. It’s passionately seizing hold of this interpretation. Instruction in religious faith, therefore, would have to take the form of a portrayal, a description, of that system of reference, while at the same time being an appeal to conscience. And this combination would have to result in the pupil himself, of his own accord, passionately taking hold of the system of reference. It would be as though someone were first to let me see the hopelessness of my situation and then show me the means of my rescue until, of my own accord, or not at any rate led to it by my instructor, I ran to it and grasped it.” (CV, 64)

This caricature both contains all the necessary elements of the aesthetic reversal and provides an avenue through which they might legitimately occur. The process follows a familiar pattern: (i) the pupil realizes that he is living in aporia. The teacher helps him do this by showing him the “hopelessness of [his] situation”. Of course, it is in seeing that he does not know how to live that the pupil is brought to a place in which he can legitimately learn, just as the philosopher must realize that he does not know his way about in order to find it. (ii) the pupil is instructed in the means by which he might escape aporia. This resembles the therapist describing the features of language that a philosophical problem is couched within, except the religious instructor describes a system which is wholly new. What is most important, though, is that the instructor is appealing not to the pupil’s philosophical sensibilities, but to his conscience. Again, I take it that Wittgenstein purposefully uses a vague term – to demand that he give a metaphysical account of “conscience” would be misguided, as he intends to convey the immediate reality of the experience of encountering the doctrine. (iii) the pupil actively develops a passion for the doctrine, and seizes upon it. This is the moment of the aesthetic reversal. For the philosopher beholds an ethical position in light of its justification; our convert beholds his faith in light of his passion. He has thus changed his “way of living, [his] way of assessing life” not only in content, but also in form. And in evaluating his own position, the convert does not have to appeal to a philosophical vocabulary in order to justify his actions. Rather, he is legitimately able to say, “This is simply what I do” (PI 217). It is significant that the convert cannot be lead to his faith by the instructor, as this would align more with the philosophical aesthetic. In philosophy, the recipient of one’s argument ought to have no choice but to concede; in religious training, by contrast, the pupil ought to have total control of his choices. This insures that the pupil does not convert because of some justification provided by his teacher and therefore that he does not slip back into the philosophical mode.

From here we can consider whether the ethical question has completely disappeared for the convert. One the one hand, it is clear that the convert is no longer at a loss. He is committed to a system of reference and therefore knows his way about. On the other hand, the convert also has abandoned the philosophical aesthetic, having underwent an aesthetic reversal which brought him to an ethical view rooted in passion. And so the question “What ought I to do?” appears to have legitimately disappeared. If this Wittgensteinian therapy has been successful, the convert’s movement will bring him peace; Norman Malcom, an associate of Wittgenstein’s, illustrates how this might plausibly happen: “The function of the words, ‘It is God’s will’, when said religiously and seriously, in a time of trouble, is not to offer the final explanation, nor any explanation at all. Instead, they are an attempt to bring an end to the torment of asking ‘Why did it have to happen’ – an attempt to give the tormented one rest, to provide peace” (Malcolm, 86). In other words, the claim “It is God’s will” functions not as a justification but as a description of a situation, and it is by beholding a situation in this way that its philosophical potentialities disappear.

Conclusions

James Edwards, in his final analysis of Wittgenstein’s work, advances the claim that, “Wittgenstein’s later work… is itself intended as an ethical deed” (Edwards, 219). When we understand that Wittgenstein’s therapy is not justified by an appeal to philosophical reasoning but that it ‘is simply what he does’, as if religiously, then we can finally appreciate the gesture that the Philosophical Investigations communicates. The Investigations can present its therapy because its author came to his ethical position through therapy. The work thus represents a therapeutic aesthetic which justifies itself. As such, it need not be defended, at least philosophically, for presumably it is more a labor of passion than of duty. Moreover, we can view the nature of the “religious” conviction that Wittgenstein emulates as being a bit broader than we might have initially conceived. For there is nothing “religious,” in the common sense of the word, in writing a therapeutic book. There is, however, a certain religious attitude that Wittgenstein must have adopted as the driving force of the work. This attitude perhaps explains his comment to M.C. Drury: “I am not a religious man but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view” (Malcolm, 1). It is in presenting an account of therapy, without justification, that Wittgenstein embodies the ethical message of the work: that we must be completely free of the need for justification, relying solely upon our aesthetic orientation, in order to legitimately live.

Bibliography

Baker, Gordon P., and P. M. S. Hacker. Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Pub., 2004.
Edwards, James C. Ethics without Philosophy: Wittgenstein and the Moral Life. Tampa: Universityes of Florida, 1982.
Fogelin, Robert J. Wittgenstein. London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1976.
Hacker, P.M.S. “Philosophy.” Wittgenstein: a Critical Reader. Ed. Hans-Johann Glock. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001.
Hallett, Garth. A Companion to Wittgenstein’s “Philosophical Investigations” Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977.
Malcolm, Norman. Wittgenstein: a Religious Point of View? Ithaca: Cornell Univ., 1994.
Peterman, James F. Philosophy as Therapy: an Interpretation and Defense of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophical Project. Albany: State University of New York, 1992.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, and Joachin Schulte. Philosophical Investigations. Trans. G.E.M. Anscombe and P.M.S. Hacker. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Culture and Value. Ed. G. H. Von Wright and Heikki Nyman. Trans. Peter Winch. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1980.

Michael Putnam (’13) is a Philosophy Major at Whitman College

By Travis McIntyre

Abstract: This paper concerns the concept of reference within the field of semantics. W. V. Quine argues in his Word and Object that the relation between words and the objects they refer to is metaphysically indeterminate; there are no facts in the world which can determine what objects words refer to. This paper refutes this thesis by expanding the available facts for establishing reference from behavioral facts (stimulus meaning) to include mental facts which include peoples‟ intentions (intentional semantics). I go on to point out how this new set of facts does not entirely escape Quine‟s indeterminacy thesis. There remains an epistemic problem of knowing what objects given words refer to. This epistemic problem seems to fall under the general skeptical problem of under determination of theory by data. But the paper shows that the epistemic problem is a more significant threat than under determination of theory by data.

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Semantics is a crucial aspect of language and much has been written on it since the start f the field. One of the most fundamental concepts within semantics is the reference relation. It is the relation between words in a language and the objects they refer to. Intuitively, this relation is and must be determinate in that there are facts in the world which determine what object a given word refers to. If this relation is in determinate, language would be of little use because what is being referred to would be unknowable. But there are several philosophers who have questioned the determinate nature of language and concluded that language cannot have a determinate reference from words to objects in the world.1

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The second chapter of W. V. Quine’s Word and Object is devoted to showing that the reference of words to the world is indeterminate. Further, Quine takes the meaning of words to be metaphysically indeterminate: there are no facts in the world which can give words a definite meaning. This paper explains why the metaphysical claim about the nature of language is fallacious. But while the metaphysical claim is fallacious, there remains a genuine epistemic problem about the inability for someone to know what someone else is referring to when using a particular word. This problem reduces to under determination of theory by data, so in order for the epistemic problem to be significant there must be a difference between the under determination of theory by data found in the sciences (e.g., physics, biology, etc) and that of semantics. This paper shows that a significant difference between the under determination of theory by data found in the natural sciences and that of semantics exists. Therefore it shows that Quine‟s case for metaphysical indeterminacy entails a genuine epistemic problem for the relation of reference from words to objects in the world.

Notes

Art courtesy of maxspider.

Abstract: In this paper, I examine David Lewisʼ treatment of vagueness as a problem of “semantic indecision” and conclude that this position on vagueness is inconsistent with the metaphysics of his theory of modal realism, with specific regard for counterparthood and the counterpart relation. To reach this conclusion, I employ a thought experiment in which an exact counterpart of Lewis is subjected to a series of possible worlds treatments designed to satisfy Lewisʼ criteria for counterparthood, as well as to test the limits of semantic treatments of higher-order vagueness. In doing this, I find that Lewisʼ suggestions for dealing with vagueness fails to pick out counterparts at several points in this series, even when given a satisfactorily precisified set of criteria for the qua relation. Rather than a clear candidate for counterparthood, one encounters instead a problem of infinite regression that could destabilize the whole project of Lewisian de re modal realism. I conclude by noting that accepting metaphysical vagueness into the Lewisian theory of modal realism changes nothing in the overall theory, and may in fact be the only way to save the theory from its problem of infinite regression.

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I. Background

The sentence “All bachelors are unmarried.” and the sentence “The author of this paper is typing on a computer.” are both true. However, these two sentences are not true in the same way. To understand how they are different, let us examine how each sentence can be considered true. In the first example, truth appears to be a function of the meaning of the word “bachelor” in relation to the rest of the sentence. This is because the first example states a specific and important property of the concept of being a bachelor. It is almost a kind of definition, and its truth is derived from the relationship between its form (what kind of sentence it is) and its semantic content (what the sentence means). The first example sentence demonstrates that the relationship between the form and the content of a sentence is one way to measure the truth of a sentence. The second example presents an exception to this rule. The form of the second example sentence does not follow the pattern of the first, yet (much to the authorʼs chagrin as I watch the clock) it is still true.

So what does it mean to say that the two sentences are true in different ways? In this case, it means that they arrive at being true by taking two different routes. The first example must always be true; the word “bachelor” carries somewhere in its meaning the idea of being unmarried, and the property of being unmarried is a definitive property of the word “bachelor”. The second example need not be, but by all respects still is, true. Truths that must be true, like the first example, are called necessary truths. This means that there is some quality of the words of the sentence or the things being discussed by the words in that sentence which requires the sentence to be true. The second example illustrates what is called a contingent truth. Contingent truths are not true in virtue of structure or meaning per se, but rather are true with regard to a given situation. Another way to put this is to say that there is no quality about me that would require, as a matter of necessity, that I be sitting at my desk writing this paper. I could just as easily be sleeping, or going for a walk, or touring the country with my world famous band instead.

Hypothetical statements like the one above, which gives some examples of ways in which my life might have been different, are called “counterfactuals”. Counterfactuals are just what they sound like: statements that consider cases in which the facts are contrary to the way things actually are. Often stated in the form of conditionals (“If X then Y”), counterfactuals are aimed at examining the ways in which the world could (and could not) be different by positing alternate situations for conceptual analyses. Take the statement “If I werenʼt writing this paper, I would be asleep right now” as an example. The purpose is to assert that under specific circumstances that are contrary to the actual ones (“If I werenʼt writing this paper,”), a different set of statements about the world would turn out to be true, and I would be in bed.

What counterfactuals illustrate is called “modality”, or the measure of necessary or contingency. It would seem that in order to be able to evaluate modality correctly, and in doing so evaluate the truth-value of the sentence in question, there must be some properties, or kinds of properties, of the thing being discussed that remain true about that thing across all counterfactual statements. Here, I must bring up another distinction, one concerning interpretations of things about which the modalilty is in question. With regard to modality, there are two ways to gloss a given sentence. One such way is called a de re reading (from the Latin for ʻof the thingʼ). The other reading is a de dicto reading (meaning ʻof the wordʼ). De re readings of sentences are concerned with the modality of the actual physical thing(s) referred to by the terms of a sentence. De dicto readings are concerned with the modality of the words of the examined sentence itself. This differentiation is relevant to the ways by which the truth-value of a given sentence can be evaluated as necessary or contingent. To illustrate the difference between a de re and a de dicto reading, examine the sentence “The President of the United States could be a woman.” Under a de dicto reading, this sentence means that it is possible for a woman to become the President of the United States. Under a de re reading, this sentence means that the legal status of Barack Obamaʼs marriage is in serious jeopardy under current law.

In contemporary analytic philosophy, the truth-values regarding the modal properties of a sentence are often evaluated in terms of “possible worlds”. Though there is significant disagreement about the nature of these worlds, such as when it is appropriate to assign de re or de dicto readings to statements made about them, it must be the case that possible worlds are at minimum conceptual spaces in which one can run thought experiments to determine the necessity of a truth-value of a sentence. The classic examples used to illustrate this are “Aristotle is Aristotle” and “Aristotle is the teacher of Alexander”. Under a de re reading, it is simple to see that the first statement must always be true, because if there is an “Aristotle” about whom this statement can be made, then that Aristotle must be self-identical. However, there is no quality about such an Aristotle that necessitates that he be “the teacher of Alexander”. Rather, this is something that happened to be the case only as a matter of course and not as a matter
of the things involved those circumstances.

Note the inherent import here of a robust idea of identity. When employing possible worlds as a measure of modal properties, especially under a de re reading, identity is assumed as a most basic property. Generally, identity can be understood with the following two premises: (1) All things are self-identical and (2) no two things are identical to each other in all ways. Identity is a philosophical issue unto itself, however due to the limited scope of this paper it must suffice to say that identity is the metaphysical property of self-sameness. As such, an issue like metaphysical vagueness would appear to be an important area to explore when discussing de re modality, if only because in any dialogue that takes as its subject the modal properties of things must start first with an understanding of the thing about which modal properties are to be discussed. If one is to understand how a thing could have been different, as well as how it could not have been different, then one must first encounter that thingʼs identity. In this paper, I will contrast David Lewisʼ treatment of de re modality (Lewisian modal realism) against that of another philosopher, Saul Kripke. I argue that modal realism necessarily admits of metaphysical vagueness, and until that theory is modified to accept this fact, modal realism is not a feasible theory of modality.

II. De Re and Vagueness

Saul Kripke explores de re interpretations in his work Naming and Necessity. In this lecture series, Kripke abandons the skepticism of his predecessors such as Quine about de re readings. He argues that rigid designators, which are terms that pick out the same thing across all possible worlds (where that thing exists), are the appropriate means of evaluating claims de re. Examples of rigid designators are names, numbers, and natural kind terms such as “water” or “gold”. Under this treatment, possible worlds need be nothing more than hypothetical scenarios run in oneʼs mind. For Kripke, to exist is to be the extension of a term.

The Kripkean treatment of de re modality is what is called “ersatz” modality (ersatz meaning substitution) and is semantic in nature. This is to say that Kripkean possible worlds are constructs of meaning located in the mind, and are intended to exemplify counterfactual possibilities about actually extant things. Kripke does not assert that using possible worlds to evaluate modal claims has any ontological implications. As such, a Kripkean treatment de re allows for the existence of “transworld identity” which means that the singular identity of a thing being discussed can be distributed over all possible worlds. Another way to put this is to say that for Kripke, the “Aristotle” in any of the worlds in which Aristotle was not the teacher of Alexander is self-identical to the Aristotle in this world.

David Lewis accepted the premise of possible worlds re-introduced to analytic philosophy by Kripke. The function of possible worlds for Lewis is almost exactly the same as for Kripke; they measure the necessity of a claim. However, according to Lewis, possible worlds are real physical places—as real as our own world—in which real things exist. This is Lewisian modal realism. As Lewis discusses at great length in On The Plurality of Worlds, there are innumerable such real worlds, and the inhabitants of these worlds are the subjects of the counterfactual conditionals that possible world scenarios evaluate. Among other things, Lewis asserts that counterfactuals are evaluated by means of a relation of counterparts in possible worlds to things in the actual world. This means that when we say something could have been different in any way from the way it actually is (for example, to say that I might have been a concert violinist instead of a philosopher) is to say that there is some possible world in which the counterpart of that thing actually is that way (my counterpart is a concert violinist in some possible world).

In §4 of his book, Lewis argues that possible worlds are spatiotemporally isolated from each other. He also argues that spatiotemporal location is a necessary property of identity, and that the criteria of identity can only be sufficiently met by sharing exactly all the same qualities, including spatiotemporal location. From these two premises arise the need for the counterpart relation to take the place of transworld identity, because identity can only be granted to objects that are at least spatiotemporally identical, and also because in Lewisʼ theory individuals in different possible worlds are separated and thus anything in one world is spatiotemporally isolated from anything in another. What will eventually run Lewis aground here remains unproblematic for Kripke because Kripkeʼs specific theory of possible worlds has no ontological implications and all he needs to grant identity is that a termʼs extension be the same across all possible worlds. However, for Lewis it is clear that it is not possible to grant identities across possible worlds because their referents differ in spatiotemporal location, so he must create some new theory to take its place.

The counterpart relation is the theory that Lewis proposes for this purpose. It is the basis for being able to assess counterfactuals in Lewisʼ account. The counterpart relation is one of “relevant similarity”, or comparative similarity of desired properties between token-specific candidates for counterparts across possible worlds. That which makes an individual in another world a counterpart of an individual in the actual world is an overall comparison of similarity among all possible candidates in any given possible world. Counterparts are only counterparts to each other in virtue of a given “qua relation.” For example, if a counterfactual involving having a certain number of hairs on oneʼs head is being discussed, the proper way to assign counterparthood would be to say that person X in World 1 (W1) is a counterpart of person Y in W2 qua Xʼs and Yʼs number of head-hairs. Thus, one person can be a viable candidate for the counterpart of another person if and only if those two people, as Lewis states, “closely resemble [each other] in important aspects.”

There is no room in Kripkeʼs ersatz treatment of possible worlds for vagueness to arise as an issue. In virtue of the fact that there are no ontological assertions made by ersatz possible worlds, there can be no ontological vagueness. Furthermore, because rigid designators grant identity across possible worlds and the fact that to have an extension, as far as Kripke is concerned, is to exist, there can only be semantic vagueness in the evaluations of modal claims.

This is not the case for Lewisʼ theory of modal realism, though. Modal realism is a large and complex theory that leaves much room in which the problems of vagueness might take hold. Notably, however, Lewis famously decries the whole project of metaphysical vagueness:

The only intelligible account of vagueness locates it in our thought and language. The reason it’s vague where the outback begins is not that there’s this thing, the outback, with imprecise borders; rather there are many things, with different borders, and nobody has been fool enough to try to enforce a choice of one of them as the official referent of the word `outback.’ Vagueness is semantic indecision. (Lewis 1986, 212)

Many such quotes fill the pages of On The Plurality of Worlds. The idea is always the same: the world is not vague, but rather it is our representations of the world, our words, that are. That David Lewis, the famous metaphysician, is so vehemently opposed to metaphysical vagueness is a bit shocking at first. Why should someone so deeply involved in metaphysics, especially someone whose project is specifically a refutation of a larger semantic theory, seek the solution to the problem of vagueness in a semantictheory? If nothing else, this is strikingly counterintuitive.

Much like others who found vagueness to be a problem of language and not of the world, Lewis seeks to eliminate vagueness by precisifying problematic language:

If a sentence is true over an entire range, true no matter how we draw the line, surely we are entitled to treat it as simply true. But also we treat a sentence more or less as simply true, if it is true over a large enough part of the range of delineations of its vagueness. (For short: if it is true enough). (Lewis 1983, 244)

Here Lewisʼ position on how to deal with problems of vagueness is clear. Because vagueness is “semantic indecision,” the proper manner by which it should be dealt with is to look at the way sentences admit of vagueness and re-evaluate how they are interpreted. Vague sentences are “true enough” to be considered true when they are true over some sufficient range (the “large enough part of the range”) of precisifications. Lewis avoids dealing with the question of what counts as “true enough” by calling this itself a vague matter. This is for Lewis, however, not an important enough issue to pursue, as is evidenced in the next paragraph of the text:

When is a sentence “true enough”? Which are the large parts of the delineations of its vagueness? This itself is a vague matter. More important for our purposes, it is something that depends on context. What is true enough on one occasion is not true enough on another. The standards of precisions in force are different from one conversation to another. (Lewis 1983, 244-245)

One should assume, at risk of otherwise creating a straw man argument, that Lewis expects his own semantic prescription for handling vagueness should be sufficient to explain away the vagueness he himself admits is inherent in how he tells us to handle such problems. However, in at least one case, Lewisʼ account is not a sufficient method of explaining away vagueness as semantic indecision.

Consider the following scenario: there is a series of possible worlds in which at one end there is one and only one possible counterpart of Lewis, and he is a spitting image of Lewis in every single possible relevant manner. At the other end of the series, there is a world populated entirely by just one single rooster. This set-up is consistent with how Lewis assumes possible worlds work. Now, assign to this series, in the search for counterparts, the highly precisified set of criteria for counterparthood that is exactly and only the breadth of wingspan and the volume of caw. Lewis would acknowledge that his spitting image meets all the relevant criteria to be his counterpart. He would agree as well that he is not a counterpart of the rooster at the far end of this sequence, being that he meets no relevant criteria for being its counterpart and thus is not, in any way, a viable candidate of counterparthood.

If one observes the series of worlds that starts in the world of the lonely rooster and ends in the world in which there is an exact duplicate of Lewis illustrates a possible worlds sequence of a Lewis/rooster chimera that runs in reverse. Actual-world Lewis would admit that there is one world in this series in which the counterpart relation ceases to be sufficient enough under the relevant criteria for the thing in that world to count as a counterpart of the rooster. By extension, in virtue of the nature of the relevant criteria of this sequence, it is logically true (assuming that counterparthood is cardinal) that there is also some point in this sequence at which the Lewis/rooster chimera ceases to meet any relevant criteria for Lewis-counterparthood.

The problem that Lewis is forced to acknowledge, by his own justification of the counterpart relation, is that there remain penumbral cases of counterparthood in this series. Specifically, there are at least some worlds in which it is indeterminate whether or not the most Lewis-like thing in that world can be rightly called a counterpart of Lewis qua the relevant criteria, but are still, definitely, the counterparts of other non-Lewis counterparts in the series qua those same criteria. Every case in this series in which the chimera is more like a non- counterpart of Lewis, but is still a Lewis/rooster chimera, yields an indeterminate counterpart relation for Lewis. Each further attempt to create more precise semantic boundaries for vague predicates such as “is a counterpart of Lewis” serves only to shift the problem up by one degree of order; there is no way in Lewisʼ treatment of vagueness for there to be enough precisification to eliminate vagueness as a problem of semantics alone.

III. Saving Modal Realism

The basic premises Lewis works from are as follows:

1. The world is made of material things
2. Modal realism is true
3. All possible worlds are spatiotemporally and causally isolated
4. Spatiotemporal location is a necessary quality of identity
5. Counterpart theory is the means of measuring counterfactuals across spatiotemporally isolated worlds
6. Vagueness is semantic in nature

My thought-experiment shows that modal realism is philosophically unsound if Lewis accepts a theory that uses counterpart theory and eschews metaphysical vagueness, because his prescribed semantic treatment of vagueness results in an infinite regression. However, the counterpart relation is essential to Lewisʼ modal realism, and thus cannot be given up without losing the larger theory. It is the only way he can account for being able to assess counterfactuals. In the above example, I have shown that even under Lewisʼ strict semantic treatment of vagueness, there no precise cut off point at which a thing in the example series is still be enough like Lewis that, were there no other Lewis-like things in its world, it could be determined whether or not that thing would still be Lewisʼ counterpart.

Meeting all of Lewisʼ criteria for hyper-precisification of the relevant criteria fails to eliminate vagueness of the counterpart relation in the above example. I submit that this is the case because the notion of counterparthood and the counterpart relation are based in comparative overall similarity. The problem with such evaluations is that the terms of these evaluations are themselves vague predicates. Thus, we enter an infinitely reiterating argument that fails to address the issue at hand (that being the location of vagueness as being in language or the world). It is a necessary consequence of precisely this is that Lewisʼ system does not function to evaluate modal properties with any hope of being other than accidentally correct. As such, Lewisʼ theory of modal realism with vagueness as a semantic problem is less than a sufficient account of de re modality.

However, I propose that if Lewis were to add to Premise 6 that vagueness can be semantic and metaphysical, he would no longer face an issue of infinite regression. Lewis argues against metaphysical vagueness because he conceives of identity as a most basic property, which he effectively argues to be unique self-sameness, and his argument against vague objects is based on the fact that he assumes there is a finite answer to the question “how many objects are in the world?” Lewis is correct to state that if vagueness is metaphysical, then it would be a fact of the world that there is no finite number of objects in the world. However, why should it be assumed that there is a finite number of objects in the world? I can think of no compelling reason to assume this to be the case, and Lewis certainly fails to give a sufficient account supporting his personal predilection for there being a finite number of things in the world. At every opportunity, he fails to address the issue as he turns questions of metaphysical vagueness into questions of semantic vagueness.

For Lewis to accept vague objects, he is not required to give up any other part of modal realism. Revising Premise 6 as I have prescribed has no impact on the previous five premises. However, the real issue at hand here is that extending Premise 6 to acknowledge the existence of vague objects might be the only way for Lewisʼ modal realism to survive. Rather than supporting modal realism, his position on vagueness as a problem only of semantics actually undermines his project of modal realism. There is no sufficient argument provided as of yet that can semantically explain away problems of vagueness. The problem of infinite regression that Lewisʼ solution entails makes it unjustified and therefore philosophically unsatisfactory. The existence of vague objects is not only simply the more logical solution, but may possibly be the only way he can salvage modal realism from its problem of infinite regression.

Works Cited

1. Kripke, Saul. Naming and Necessity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1972, 1980
2. Lewis, David. On The Plurality of Worlds. Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing. 1986.
3. Lewis, David. “Counterparts of Persons and Their Bodies.” The Journal of Philosophy Vol. 68 (1971). 203-221.

Jaime Harrell (’10) is a Philosophy major at University of Maryland College Park.

Art courtesy of gromyko.

By James Fox

Abstract

Since its publication Gettier’s Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? has become the seminal work in modern epistemology. This paper challenges the very assumptions of Gettier’s counterexamples and is therefore a radical alternative to both the proponents, and critics, of Gettier. By showing how knowledge is found, not in mere words or statements, but within the fundamental beliefs of the speaker, I expose the way in which ambiguity in language can mislead us into rejecting the traditional definition of knowledge as Justified True Belief.

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“What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and wouldn’t wait for an answer.”
– Francis Bacon

Pilate’s question has haunted humanity, and its answer I shall not presume to give; suffice to say that it will be an answer both beautifully simple and excruciatingly complex. However, as a preface to any study of Truth and knowledge, this question, simpler and less frequently asked, must be considered: Where is Truth? If we are to discover Truth, where should we look? There are many sources that purport to be true – spoken words, manuscripts and books, scientific theorems and even the deepest feelings of men’s hearts. In this essay I intend to address two main questions. The first is the relationship between a true statement or belief and Truth Itself. Is a statement True by its own virtue, or by what it causes or by what it reveals, for instance. Secondly, I intend to defend the view that Knowledge is Justified, True Belief, one which has only recently been challenged and yet is now almost entirely rejected. I shall not attempt to define knowledge, only to break it down into its three components.

So, to our business of finding Truth. I must make it clear that I am not attempting to investigate the nature of Truth itself, its many complexities and misattributions. As Beauty is commonly used to describe many things which are not truly beautiful, merely elegant, picturesque, alluring or some lesser aesthetic quality, it is quite possible that our notion of Truth would include those which, if a thorough consideration were applied, would need to be demoted. However, this is not my aim. As it is acceptable, for the purposes of buying an oil painting, for instance, to use a wide and admittedly imperfect notion of beauty, I hope that it will serve my purposes to do the same for truth, and that you, my reader, will forgive my failure to think more clearly and precisely. Truth then, for the purposes of a preface only, we may take as corresponding to reality, as it is described by science and believed by men of common sense. Let us for now put metaphysical speculations aside and concentrate on the lives of men, leaving the Forms to their business.

“Lying lips are an abomination unto the Lord,” we are told by Solomon in the Book of Proverbs. Indeed, for most of us our first encounter with the truth is as a child, when we are told to tell the truth, and not to lie. Is this then where the philosopher should search for Truth? When we look at those who do not deceive, we see that what they are saying corresponds with what they believe. However, this is not Truth in itself. For one could imagine a lie, by coincidence, being factually accurate and therefore true. On the other hand, the thoughts of a liar, and his beliefs and opinions, may be true, while what he says is not. It seems that in this area, it is better to consider the issue of sincerity. A sincere man will say what he thinks, which may be true or not. To speak the truth, however, we must be more than sincere, we must have some knowledge of it, and our words must express this.

Let us then return to statements which are made, being able as we now are to ignore those which are insincere, and to concentrate our search for truth in those sayings and writings which accurately reveal the author’s beliefs. I believe that there are two ways to search for truth in a statement of language, and that it is the understanding of these which is the key to this question. However, with spoken expressions, we almost always have a fair amount of knowledge concerning the speaker – even if they are a stranger to us we know what they are wearing, their height, accent, and can usually gain a little of the motivation for what they say by considering the circumstances. Therefore our knowledge of the speaker influences our analysis of the statement itself. However, when reading, particularly when reading classics or other works where we are far removed by time and place from the author, we are forced to consider to a greater extent the words on their own merits. Here, then, is where we see the contrast most starkly.

A clear example of this is with the Holy Scriptures. For many of the books of the Bible, the authorship is uncertain, and what is known about the authors is severely limited. In addition, the writers lived in both places and times far removed from our own. Despite this, vast numbers of people, both inside and outside of organised religious traditions, have scoured its pages in a search for Truth. It is also certain that there is considerable disagreement as to how this resource is to be used. Broadly speaking, there are two main methods, although most readers will use both techniques and will not draw sharp boundaries.

There is one group who read books and apply them to their own lives, seeking to find truth which may not have been explicitly intended. This does not mean that each person’s interpretation is equally true, but it does mean that it is possible for there to be truth in a sentence which was not explicitly proposed by the author. This can be seen in Shakespeare’s use of irony, where what is said by the characters delivers an apparently unintended truth to the audience. Historians and others of a similar mind do not attempt this, but seek to discover what was intended by the author. In order to do this it is important to know the context, to make comparisons with other contemporary writings and to, as far as one can, enter the mindset of the author. As already mentioned, many will use a combination of these practices according to their objectives and their situation.

These two methods or comprehensions can be applied to any work. When applying oneself to Machiavelli’s Discourses, for example, one man may find it useful to read a biography of the Florentine, to compare his work to those of the period, to examine his letters and habits, so as to gain the greatest insight into the intended argument. When asked how useful and accurate the composition before him is, he will examine the arguments that the author made, and, if a fault can be found in them, will conclude that the book, while intriguing, is flawed, or relevant only to its particular period. Another man, however, may do none of this. Instead, he says to himself, “As this work has been preserved for many years, there must be something in it. Let’s give M the benefit of the doubt, and construct the best possible argument from what is written that we may use this to aid our understanding of politics.” When asked how useful the book is, the second man will recite what he has been able to glean from it, and if the argument he has produced is stronger, and more useful than that particularly intended by the author, he will not mind one jot. We cannot say that one of these modes of thought is superior to the other; they have entirely different aims. The first man is trying to understand Machiavelli’s psychology, his motivations, and his beliefs as a man and as a politician. The second may as well not know who has written the book at all, he is trying to gain knowledge of the subject for himself, and is more interested in the politics and philosophy than history and psychology. Indeed, it can be interesting to have both ways of understanding a book in mind when reading it, so one can gain knowledge of all of the above fields, and understand, if a stronger argument can be made, why the original writer did not manage to express this.

This distinction, however, gives us considerable insight into the relationship between spoken and written statements and Truth. Indeed, it shows that a statement’s truth depends on how it is read, and indeed, it is clear that, depending on the context in which it is spoken, and the reception that it receives, the same statement can be seen as being both true and false. For example, the statement “The princes in the tower” would seem true, if I were asked to name victims of Richard III. However, it would seem manifestly false if the question were “Who commanded the Armada?” From this, it can be seen that a statement is not simply true or false in itself; the truth we apply to it depends on the beliefs which underlie our utterances. Is this really that surprising? For, after all what distinguishes a statement from a clanging cymbal, or an inscription from mere gashes in a stone? Solely the fact that it can be interpreted. We cannot apply truth to mere noise, or knowledge to mere ink on parchment. A statement, as a string of words written or uttered, is neither true nor false.

We will find if we are being precise, it is wrong to call statements made using language true or false at all. The statement is a mere vehicle, an imperfect but usually reliable way of transmitting information about our beliefs. The statement itself does not correspond to reality. Instead, it is our belief that a state of affairs is so that either corresponds to reality or does not. Thus, only a belief, and not a written sentence or a remark which is spoken, can be said to be true or false. Thus, it is in our beliefs that we must look for truth, and be wary of falsehood.

This may seem like the mere splitting of philosophical hairs. After all, we do not know what another believes except by interpreting their statements and actions. If statements are all we can possibly know, then the above distinction, even if it is accurate, is not worth the paper upon which it is inscribed. However, I will attempt to show that this distinction is vitally important when we consider the question of knowledge, which is surely of great importance to philosophy. In particular, I wish to show that if the above is considered, the Examples given by Mr. Gettier, when he argues that Justified True Belief is not knowledge, do not cause a problem to the definition, and that, as this is the main stumbling block which has been encountered, the tripartite definition of knowledge is as far as we know correct.

The first example I shall consider is one of Gettier’s own1. In this situation, Smith and Jones are both applying for a job. Smith is justified in believing that Jones has 10 coins in his pocket. Smith is also justified in believing that Jones will get the job. The proposition The man who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket seems therefore to be an accurate portrayal of Smith’s justified belief. However, against all expectations, Smith is offered the job. Unknown to him, he also has 10 coins in his pocket. Initially, it looks as if his proposition is true, and as it is also believed with justification, we are tempted to conclude that this is indeed a Justified True Belief. As, however, we would not like to say that Smith knew this; hence this definition of knowledge is inadequate.

In the storm that this example caused when first released, philosophers grappled with what seemed to be the most ambiguous part of the definition, namely the justification clause. However it is clear that in this situation S is justified in believing P. Now, in the light of our earlier discussion, let us take another look at the proposition. It is possible, by modelling the world as such, that “who will get the job has 10 coins in his pocket” can be entirely unambiguous – there is only one job, which only one man can get, we agree on a definition of coins and pockets, and of ownership of these. However, The man must be ambiguous, as in order for the example to work there must be two men, Smith and Jones. P is therefore true/false, depending on the identity of the man, which, I think we can safely conclude, refers to one, actual, concrete man rather than an abstract concept of any man. If we were determined to discover whether P is true or false, we would have to seek out Smith and ask him, which man did he mean? It seems clear that in this situation he would reply that, as he believed that Jones would get the job, the man refers to Jones. However, by substituting these now-identical terms, we have made the proposition false; Jones did not get the job. Smith’s belief, although justified, is now not true. It seems sensible that by clarifying the ambiguity in the language, we have not changed Smith’s belief about the state of affairs, so we must conclude that his belief was false all along, and he therefore never had knowledge of P.

Here the sceptic could object that Smith was indeed talking about a man in the abstract, not a concrete figure. For instance, he could, it must be admitted, simply believe that a man with 10 coins in his pocket will get the job, without identifying this in any way with Jones. However, if this is the case, how can it be that his belief is justified? He is justified in believing that Jones has 10 coins, but we have not seen Smith rifling through the pockets of an abstract form of a man!

It may however be accepted that this example fails, while still holding that some Gettier examples are conclusive. The original two situations are now rarely used to illustrate the criticism of Justified True Belief; they are usually replaced by more recent examples. I shall now take a more complex and persuasive example and show that the same method can be used to discount the criticism of the tripartite definition, before looking, in more general terms, at the failings of all such examples.

Imagine that I am sitting in my study, and I hear a siren from the direction of Broad Street. I know that, when one hears a siren of this description, it is produced by a police car, and therefore believe, with considerable justification, that there is a police car on Broad Street. However, I am mistaken; there is instead a prankster who is activating a siren in an attempt to cause a nuisance. There is in fact a police car on the street, driving quietly so as to intercept this disturber of the peace. Here the statement ‘There is a police car driving down Broad Street’ seems to be doubtless true. There is even a causal connection between the justification and the truth of the proposition. Surely here we have a Justified True Belief which is nevertheless not knowledge?2

Let us look at what exactly it is I believe when I make the statement, ‘there is a police car driving down Broad Street.’ I believe that there is an object in that location, that it is moving, that it is a car, and more specifically a police car, that inside are police officers, and that it is sounding its siren, and many other things about it. I must believe that it is sounding its siren, as if not, my belief cannot be said to be justified. Hearing a siren is not a justification for believing that there is a car driving silently nearby. I can therefore make many propositions about the state of affairs, all of which I believe, some of which are true. It is not true, however, that the police car has its siren on. In this situation, the term police car is ambiguous, it does not give me enough information to make a decision as to the truth or otherwise of my belief. When clarified, my belief, that there is an object in that location with the attributes listed above, is not true.

The obvious reply to this is that although my belief is a bundle of propositions, not all of them have to be true in order for the belief to count as Justified and True. However, let us consider what would occur if a different proposition was altered. It could be the case that I am correct in believing that there was a moving object carrying police officers in that location, sounding a siren. However, instead of being a car, the policemen in question are riding a pink rhinoceros down Broad Street, which has been conveniently equipped with a siren. Here we would not say that I am correct in believing that a police car was driving down Broad Street, with a siren and all of the other attributes above. By altering any one of the propositions which make up my belief, the belief is fundamentally altered. Thus, in order for our belief to be true, all of the propositions need to be correct, and any falsehood will remove the status of knowledge.

In view of this, we need to reconsider how we think about knowledge. Although the tripartite definition is usually referred to, saying that knowledge is a justified true belief, this is used to mean a proposition which is believed and also true and also justified, hence the term ‘propositional knowledge’. This is made explicitly clear at the start of Mr. Gettier’s paper, for instance. However, we have seen that beliefs are not single propositions, but whole bundles of them, which we could not hold independently, but only together in relation with one another. For propositions do not exist in the mind; only beliefs exist in the mind. It is the ambiguity of spoken and written language, and the desire for brevity at the expense of clarity, which leads us to think that a single proposition can be in itself a belief. Knowledge, being a relationship between internal beliefs and the external state of the world, deals in beliefs as they are, rather than as they are expressed.

It is important to note that this distinction in no way shows that Justified True Belief is knowledge. It shows, however, that the Gettier counterexamples do in no way argue that it is not knowledge, and so for the time being we should accept the tripartite definition. There is, I put to you, in every ‘Gettier case’ at least one term which is ambiguous as to its reference. This leads to the sentence being justified on one reading of it, and true only on another reading of it, while that word must refer to only one object in reality. Now if more evidence comes to light that this is not how we should define knowledge, this must be addressed and the definition changed. However, for the moment there can be no objection to defining knowledge as Justified, True Belief.

By ERIK HINTON

Elizabeth Anscombe’s notorious claim in The First Person, that “I” is not a referential term, has suffered an unfair history of discredit. Although, I will ultimately conclude that Anscombe’s position is untenable when argued to apply for all uses of “I”, to deny the irreferentiality of “I” in many common uses is equally wrong-minded. The assumption which undermines both Anscombe’s argument and criticisms thereof is that “I” must always be either referential or not. While this claim seems to be intuitively true, our clinging to the fixity of “I” is purely a result of a fear that to sacrifice the fixity of “I” would be to sacrifice the fixity of self. I will show in what follows that we latently accept an “I” that is, at times, referential, and, at others, not. In doing so, we shall salvage Anscombe’s argument in part.

First, we must dispel a possible misunderstanding of Anscombe’s argument: that its putative failure arises from an unclear notion of “I-reference.” Perhaps, objectors to Anscombe’s argument merely afford “I-reference” a greater latitude of meaning than Anscombe, and this is to account for the fact that what Anscombe finds to be true runs absolutely counter to the common-sense conceptions of the matters. However, Anscombe defines, quite clearly, what she has in mind by saying that “I” is irreferential.

Reference simply is the indicating of some object by some word or expression. The general logical formulation of “reference”-a position Anscombe is not satisfied with-is that for a word or expression to refer to something, it must be exchangeable salva veritate with another name for that thing, when that thing is the subject of some assertion. To this definition of “reference” Anscombe wishes to add that referring terms are in some way intentioned to their objects, although the reference may be incorrect. When she says that the “I” does not refer, she is denying that “I” is a true subject of a sentence in that it does not signal something in the world. There is nothing which “I” “gets hold of” and, furthermore, the “I” is not intended to get a hold of any such object.

Anscombe begins her argument against “I” as a referring term by asking to what “I” would refer were it to indeed refer. She eliminates any other possibilities other than the Cartesian Ego by illustrating with her “man in a tank” example that even if we were completely unaware of our bodies we could still use “I.” If we were blinded and anesthetized in a tepid tank, we would presumably be unaware of our bodies but we would still have “I” thoughts such as “I will never let myself get in this situation again.” Therefore, our bodies cannot be the referent of “I”. The only option left for which to the “I” to refer is some immaterial soul or mind or ego.

At this point, Anscombe recognizes her argument as something of reductio ad absurdum in that if “I” does refer, Descartes must have been right, a position she sees as impossible. If “I” always refers to one’s Cartesian Ego, there is required some identification of the referent across “I” thoughts. This consistency of self-identification is an improper one that requires the positing of some continuous “self” which only leads to confusion. Take the amnesiac. Is his “self” then changed by his loss of memory because it presents itself to him as a discontinuity? The amnesiac uses “I” fine even though his earlier identity is not accessible to him. Many such difficulties arise when we try to posit identification as a continuous self required by the Cartesian Ego. Such an idea leads to a dispute that is, “…self-perpetuating, endless, irresolvable…” (Anscombe 58).

Furthermore, Anscombe notes that “I” might even refer to more than one subject, were it to refer at all. There is certainly a possibility that “I” could have collective reference, a position which Anscombe reinforces by reference to religious life.

From these two objections with “I” as reference, Anscombe concludes that “I” is not a referring term. As she has just demonstrated, “I” does not always “get hold” of the right object because either, in her Cartesian Ego objection, the “self” is not properly an object, or, in her several referent objection, the “I” may refer to sometimes one thing, sometimes more. However, the “I” can also never get hold of the wrong object because the thought or use of “I” demands that there be something which speaks or uses “I”. Even though cases are imaginable where what one says of themselves with “I”, this only shows that one can be wrong about what they self-attribute and not about the (alleged) reference of I. Therefore, the only resolution is to accept that “I” does not get hold of any object whatsoever; “I” is not referential.

This conclusion, as often argued, is patently incorrect. Anscombe’s argument is largely compromised by her insistence that when someone makes an I-statement they must possess and assert a full sense of self. Although her tank argument is convincing, in that I-statements can refer to the speaker in a way that does not require bodily reference, it does not entail that some self must be posited and grasped by the speaker. Gareth Evans writes:

“…it does not follow that in order to elucidate the intention of satisfying ‘x refers to x’, we need a grasp of the self-conscious Idea-type that we have of ourselves. Indeed, it seems plausible that the explanatory direction goes the other way: the fully self-conscious use of ‘I’ can be partly explained, precisely, as a use in which the subject knowingly and intentionally refers to himself (satisfies lx (x refers to x))” (Evans 258-9).

While Anscombe’s argument seems convincing for statements such as “I am John Smith”, statement such as “I am six feet tall” do little to uphold Anscombe. Truthfully, though, even the former sentence may avoid any apprehending of the self. Imagine the actor who is playing John Smith or someone who has assumed the anonymous identity of “John Smith.” In such cases, “I am Jon Smith” may be as simple as “My name is John Smith” and does not require Anscombe’s grasping hold on the “self.” Clearly, Anscombe is incorrect in resolving that if ‘I’ refers it must refer to a Cartesian Ego, her reductio conclusion. [Could be more clearly worded. Something like "Clearly, Anscombe is wrong to conclude that if 'I' refers it must refer to a Cartesian Ego." MH]

However, it is from this failure in Anscombe’s argument that many conclude the opposite of Anscombe, that ‘I’ is referential. To do so is to make the unfortunate mistake of throwing the baby out with the bath water and neglecting the value of Anscombe argument, namely her demonstration of how I-statements could be meaningful and understood without being referential. What is necessary to reconcile Anscombe with her objectors is to adopt a model of I-statements in which “I” may be referential in some cases and non-referential in others.

If the notion that “I” may be sometimes referential and sometimes not seems to run against linguistic sensibility, this is only because one has not separated words themselves from their uses. Strawson writes, “We are apt to fancy we are talking about sentences and expressions when we are talking about the uses of sentences and expressions…Meaning…is a function of the sentence or expression; mentioning and referring and truth and falsity, are functions of the use of the sentence or expression” (Strawson 7). With this model we will demonstrate that the problems we have with “I” result from conflating the word with its use. It should prove uncontroversial that a word (or in Strawson’s terminology, an expression) can be used to sometimes refers, sometimes not.

Consider, for reference, the word “it”. As Anscombe writes in a parenthetical, “…no one thinks that “it is raining” contains a referring expression, “it”…” (Anscombe 55). [Interestingly, Shakespeare did: "The rain it raineth every day"] Clearly, there is a use of “it” and, indeed, many uses of “it” in which the expression “it” does not refer. “It is cold today”, “It is five o’clock”, “It is ten miles to the store”. All such “impersonal expressions” as they are commonly called, feature an “it” that is not used to refer to anything. “It” is merely a grammatical construction to indicate a state of affairs in a certain way, much like “I” does in Anscombe’s proposed model of self-attribution.

However, in other cases, the far more common uses of “it”, the expression is certainly used referentially. “What color is the ball?” “It is blue.” In this exchange, “it” is used to clearly refer to the ball. We naturally countenance such a dual use of “it”, why, then, should “I” not enjoy a similar double use character?

Most of the cases presented when “I” is discussed feature some abstract existentiality such as “I am John Smith.” From these statements, all kinds of elaborate thought experiments are concocted in which the speaker is confused about his identity, unaware what his name is, joking about his name, etc. This led Anscombe to posit that were “I” to be referential it would have to indicate some “self” which is untenable when pushed to these extremes, these odd cases of language. This is an apt reaction and indeed these “John Smith” examples do seem to run counter to an “I” which refers to a Cartesian Ego. There seems to be no problem in denying that “I” is referential in these cases. Anscombe’s assertion that these sentences have no subject and are merely construction of self-attribution seems correct.

However, from this conclusion, we cannot infer that “I” must always be irreferential. The preceding cases were merely instances of “I” used without reference. Consider the sentence “I am six feet tall.” No “self” needs to be posited to assert the height of the subject. “I am six feet tall” seems to be no different from “The body of the speaker of this sentence is six feet tall” or (to use Anscombe A-users example) from “A is six feet tall”. In fact, were it possible for a body to speak this sentence without having a mind, we would not find it strange. If a machine reported “I am six feet tall,” we would likely happily countenance the usage. However, a machine saying “I am John” would be met with greater apprehension and would likely be translated in the listener’s receptivity into “My name is John” or “I have been called John.” Thus, Anscombe’s reductio falls apart.

This is simply because “I” is being used in a different way. We must not assume that referentiality is stored within a word. Rather it is a product of referential use. If we adopt such a model of “I” we will quickly see the problems with its grammar vanish. Like most problems that arise when we prod our language past the conventional usage which does not trouble us, the problem of “I” proves to be a specter born out of muddied conception of word and use.

Works Cited

Anscombe, G.E. M. “The First Person.” Mind and Language. Ed. Samuel Guttenplan. Oxford:

Clarion P, 1975.

Evans, Gareth. The Varieties of Reference. Ed. John McDowell. New York: Oxford UP, 1982.

Strawson, P. F. Logico-Linguistic Papers. Grand Rapids: Ashgate, Limited, 2004.

Erik Hinton (’10) is a Philosophy & Film Studies double major at University of Pittsburgh.

Cover art courtesy of winstoncamille.