Recall the way Socrates would respond to difficult questions of this sort. He would reframe the question to focus on the controversial concept: “What do you mean by ‘think’?” Turing set out to address this philosophical question in his seminal 1950 paper, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”: “The original question ‘Can machines think?’ I believe to be too meaningless to deserve discussion” (CMI, p. 449), so he designed a test. Turing was also afraid that people would automatically feel that computers could not think and that this was a sort of prejudice. Just as men through history had been prejudiced against people of other races or against women, so too we may also be biased against silicon-based entities that are not made of the same carbon-based stuff as we are. Therefore, he wanted to find a test that would prevent these kinds of prejudices from coming into play.
Turing proposed that we test an entity’s ability to think according to its ability to answer a wide range of questions plausibly. If we take an adult human of normal intelligence, who obviously can think, and a computer, and we are allowed to submit questions digitally, the computer could be said to “think” if we are unable to tell which is the computer and which is the human after comparing their digitally conveyed answers over some period. This came to be known as the “Turing Test,” though he called it the “imitation game.” Of course, computers in 1950 were far from being able to pass the test. But Turing predicted “… that in about fifty years’ time it will be possible to program computers, with a storage capacity of about 109, to make them play the imitation game so well that an average interrogator will not have more than 70 per cent chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning” (CMI, p. 449). Clearly, Turing was making some rather arbitrary (yet educated) guesses here, but his main point is clear—computers would be able to pass the test in the foreseeable future. And, more importantly, there is nothing about a computer that inherently prevents it from being able to pass the test. Much of his paper is devoted to countering the numerous possible objections.
Wittgenstein’s approach to this issue was typical—conversational, brief, and inconclusive. He did not use quotation marks to indicate different voices, but dashes:
Could a machine think?—Could it be in pain?—Well, is the human body to be called such a machine? Surely it comes as close as possible to being such a machine.
But surely a machine cannot think!—Is that an empirical statement? No. We say only of a human being and what is like one that it thinks. We also say it of dolls and perhaps even ghosts. Regard the word “to think” as an instrument! (PI §359-360)
In an earlier passage he had written: “It amounts to this: that only of a living human being and what resembles (behaves like) a living human being can one say: it has sensations; it sees; is blind; hears; is deaf; is conscious or unconscious” (PI §281).
One of these voices seems to express just the sort of prejudice that Turing feared—that only human beings could think. And it was certainly true that in the mid-20th century, and even now, we don’t speak of machines thinking in our ordinary language games. So, on a use-theory of meaning machines don’t and couldn’t think.
But the voice is not actually that strict, for it allows us to say this of humans and “what is like one” or “what resembles (behaves like)” one. Could a machine be “like” a human in relevant respects—especially in respect to behavior? Well, this is exactly the point that Turing tried to make—that machines could behave like humans. Turing saw this as an empirical issue whether and when it might be accomplished. But a voice asks whether this is an empirical issue, and answers that it is not.
Wittgenstein then acknowledged that we do extend the use of “thinking” to things beyond humans—dolls and ghosts, for instance—at least in a manner of speaking. And, on the other hand, he reminded us that a human being could be thought of as a machine. This, in fact, is crucial to the research program of artificial intelligence. Human abilities can be represented, and thus replicated, in machine-like ways.
Turing’s prediction that machines might well pass the test “in fifty years’ time” did not turn out to be true. There have been Turing Test competitions for decades now, and no computer has come close to passing the test. Automated customer service calls are probably familiar to most readers of this book. They are notoriously frustrating. Online “chatterbots” are specifically designed to engage in conversations that approximate the Turing Test. The 2013 film “Her” starred a phone operating system that clearly would pass the Turing Test (if it were real).
But in 1997, IBM’s computer Deep Blue won a chess match against the reigning (human) World Champion Garry Kasparov. IBM’s computer Watson beat two human champions in a two-day Jeopardy match in 2011. (Watson had 4 terabytes of memory—4 x 1012.) And Google has now designed a successful self-driving car.
While we should discount his overly optimistic expectation, Turing concluded: “I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted” (CMI, p. 449). Wittgenstein would acknowledge that our language games can and do evolve over time. And this is certainly one way that they could change. Wittgenstein’s proposal: “Regard the word ‘to think’ as an instrument!” supports the notion that our concepts are dynamic tools for understanding the world, not passive labels to be attached once and for all.
In the later remarks attached to the Investigations, Wittgenstein had an extended discussion of “seeing as.” His famous illustration is the duck-rabbit figure, which can be seen as a duck or as a rabbit (PI, p. 204).
What do you see? A duck or a rabbit? Wikimedia Commons
His proposal that we see the concept of “thinking” as an instrument suggests that we can opt to see a machine as thinking, for certain purposes. So the issue is not whether we can discern “thinking” in the machine, but whether it is helpful to treat the machine as thinking. In another passage, Wittgenstein wrote: “My attitude towards him is an attitude towards a soul. I am not of the opinion that he has a soul” (PI, p. 187). Rather than form an opinion about whether something thinks or has a soul, one takes up an attitude towards it as thinking or having a soul. This might express itself in how we treat it or interact with it. This is indicative of the sort of pragmatic approach that is taken by researchers in artificial intelligence.
The Ladder
Wittgenstein presented the propositions of the Tractatus as a ladder that would bring the reader to a new place. From this new place, the reader would appreciate the limits of language. In the Investigations, Wittgenstein was concerned that the reader had been disoriented, and his task was to bring the reader back to Earth—back to the solid ground of ordinary language. In a way, that is where the reader already is, but the reader may have thought that somewhere else would be better—somewhere founded on a philosophical theory: “I might say: if the place I want to get to could only be reached by way of a ladder, I would give up trying to get there. For the place I really have to get to is a place I must already be at now. Anything that I might reach by climbing a ladder does not interest me [any more]” (CV, p. 7).
This raises the question of whether or how an enlightened philosopher is any better off than a person who never gave a thought to philosophy. One might think that on Wittgenstein’s view, there is no difference.
For comparison, consider the character Platon from Tolstoy’s War and Peace. The protagonist, Pierre, meets Platon in a prisoner of war camp. Platon is the archetypal good Russian peasant and soldier:
To all the other prisoners Platon Karataev seemed a most ordinary soldier. They called him “little falcon” or “Platosha,” chaffed him good-naturedly, and sent him on errands. But to Pierre he always remained what he had seemed that first night: an unfathomable, rounded, eternal personification of the spirit of simplicity and truth. Platon Karataev knew nothing by heart except his prayers. When he began to speak he seemed not to kn
ow how he would conclude.
Sometimes Pierre, struck by the meaning of his words, would ask him to repeat them, but Platon could never recall what he had said a moment before, just as he never could repeat to Pierre the words of his favorite song: “native” and “birch tree” and “my heart is sick” occurred in it, but when spoken and not sung, no meaning could be got out of it. He did not, and could not, understand the meaning of words apart from their context. Every word and action of his was the manifestation of an activity unknown to him, which was his life. But his life, as he regarded it, had no meaning as a separate thing. It had meaning only as part of a whole of which he was always conscious. His words and actions flowed from him as evenly, inevitably, and spontaneously as fragrance exhales from a flower. He could not understand the value or significance of any word or deed taken separately. (Book 1, Part 4, Chapter 13)
Platon’s conversation embodies the conception of language that Wittgenstein once offered to a friend as summarizing a good deal of his philosophy: “An expression has meaning only in the stream of life” (MM, p. 75). A person such as this could not get into philosophical confusions. But would we want to be Platon, incapable of philosophical confusion, or even philosophical reflection?
Wittgenstein is sometimes called an “anti-philosopher.” You can see why he would get that label if his goal were to (get us to) become like Platon. This criticism might be reinforced with the quotation from Wittgenstein’s notebook: “Philosophy is a tool which is useful only against philosophers and against the philosopher in us.” But is the philosopher in us just an illness?
The comparison of philosophical puzzlement to an illness (PI §255) raises the parallel question of whether or how a person cured of an illness is better off than a person who never contracted it. A cured person may have two advantages—she may have acquired an immunity to the illness or learned how to cure the illness, which can then be an advantage to others as well.
But, despite his comparison, I don’t think Wittgenstein saw philosophical problems as simply illnesses. For he also regarded the temptations that get us into philosophical problems as natural—either built into the language or into our psyche. Could a natural condition really be considered an illness?
Someone who doesn’t even encounter philosophical problems is not fully aware or fully reflective. While the cure for philosophical temptation is to appreciate the ordinary language games where our words have their homes, this appreciation isn’t complete unless it is accompanied by awareness of its challenges and its alternatives. While there is something to admire in Platon, there is also something missing in him.
When Wittgenstein compared himself to a tour guide, he implied that philosophical puzzlement is like being lost: “A philosophical problem has the form: ‘I don’t know my way about’ ” (PI §123). Doesn’t a lost person need to get somewhere else, even if not by a ladder? Not necessarily, for not knowing your “way about” does not mean you are in the wrong place—just that you are disoriented. Someone who was disoriented and now is oriented may have the advantage of knowing the lay of the land better. How is a tour guide better than a local? Imagine Platon offering these directions to a person who is lost: “Go down this road and then turn left where that old trailer used to be.”
Wittgenstein’s contemporary, T. S. Eliot, captured the notion of reorientation in the poem “Little Gidding” from his Four Quartets series (1942):
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
There is a kind of knowledge of place that comes from having been displaced. It is a critical awareness in place of a naïve unawareness.
The End
Wittgenstein retired from teaching in 1947 to focus on finishing his book, and to avoid the distractions of teaching. He spent much of the time in retirement in Ireland—first in Dublin and then on the western coast. But he became ill and eventually lived with friends in Oxford and finally in Cambridge.
Through his life, Wittgenstein lived in many places. I have called him an “exile” (WE, p. 48), though his exile was as much a cultural as it was a geographical one. His travels certainly suited him to be the tour guide that he had imagined as a metaphor for the philosopher. But these journeys were often motivated by the desire to escape some situation and to find solitude to do his work. I don’t think that either in his geographical travels or in the journeys of his life, Wittgenstein ever found the place he searched for, or the satisfaction he sought from the place where he was. This is indicated by his continual moves and by his inability to finish his book. In the Investigations, he said, “The real discovery is the one that enables me to break off philosophizing when I want to.—The one that gives philosophy peace…” (PI §133). But later, when discussing with a friend this idea that one can reach a resting place and stop doing philosophy, Wittgenstein remarked: “That’s a lie! I can’t” (CW, p. 219). He never felt he made that “real discovery.”
One evening shortly before his death, Wittgenstein recalled for a friend the inscription Bach added on the title page of his Little Organ Book: “To the glory of the most high God, and that my neighbor may be benefited thereby.” Pointing to his own pile of manuscripts he said, “That is what I would have liked to have been able to say about my own work.” Yet, his friend and student, Elizabeth Anscombe, recalled: “I once heard someone ask Wittgenstein what it all came to, what was so to speak the upshot, of the philosophy he was teaching in the 1940’s. He did not answer.”
There is no culmination of Wittgenstein’s work—no final insight. What there is, and what remains his real contribution, is a set of tools for thinking about various topics, and many examples of how he grappled with those issues.
A Wonderful Life
Wittgenstein died on April 29, 1951. He had suffered from cancer for a few years, finally taking hormone and x-ray treatments. But he gave them up in February of that year, and his physician Dr. Edward Bevan and his wife invited him to stay with them during his final months. Many years later, Bevan wrote: “I have never met anyone who made a greater impression upon me, and I came to respect and love him. He was a great and a good man, above all … honest, humble, unafraid and grateful: and I don’t think he was unhappy at the end.”
As his condition worsened on April 28, Wittgenstein was informed that his friends would be coming the next day. His last words said (in English) to Mrs. Bevan before losing consciousness were (MM, p. 81): “Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life!”
Was this an accurate description of Wittgenstein’s life? Did he mean to say something true, or something consoling for his friends? What did he mean by “wonderful?” (How) can we understand this? Mrs. Bevan offered no interpretation. Norman Malcolm, one of his friends, who, however, was not in England at the time, first published these words in 1958. He found them to be a mystery:
When I think of his profound pessimism, the intensity of his mental and moral suffering, the relentless way in which he drove his intellect, his need for love together with the harshness that repelled love, I am inclined to believe that his life was fiercely unhappy. Yet at the end he himself exclaimed that it had been ‘wonderful’! To me this seems a mysterious and strangely moving utterance. (MM, p. 81)
Then, in a revised edition in 1984 he decided (p. 84) that, though Wittgenstein’s life seemed unhappy, he must have derived considerable satisfaction from his work and friendships.
In 1958, Malcolm interpreted “wonderful” as synonymous with “enjoyable.” By 1984, however, he saw it as synonymous with “worthwhile.” Another model for Wittgenstein’s sense of the word could be Frank Capra’s 1946 film, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Indeed, it is hard to imagine Wittgenstein, a great fan of popular American films, making this statement without being aware of its similarity to the title of this film. Yet, it is hard to see what this similarity might have been. None of these interpretations seems satisfy
ing.
Another scholar has proposed to interpret “wonderful” literally as “full of wonder” (WW, p. 510). Though this stretches its colloquial use in English, Webster’s 2nd Edition does offer “adapted to excite wonder.” It is clear that the capacity to wonder was important for Wittgenstein. In 1929, in his “Lecture on Ethics,” he offered “wonder at the existence of the world” (PO, p. 41) as an illustration of what had intrinsic value for him. And he feared that this capacity for wonder was endangered by modern conceptions of science and progress: “Man has to awaken to wonder… Science is a way of sending him to sleep again” (CV, p. 5). The progress of modern science, perhaps, “always looks much greater than it really is.”
Wittgenstein strove to have a life of wonder, and this construal of his dying words would, in a sense, crown that life. If we can achieve a view of the world unconstrained by theories and untainted by a misunderstanding of language, we may find ourselves, as Wittgenstein once put it, “walking on a mountain of wonders” (WT, p. 186).
Simply Wittgenstein Page 11