Philosophy

by Sharon Kaye

  Continental philosophy: Thought characteristic of the continent of Europe

  Dionysian force: The dangerous, cruel and wild theme in Greek tragedy

  Eternal recurrence: How would you live your life if you knew you had to repeat it the same way over and over again for ever?

  Dasein: The experience of being that is peculiar to humanity

  Hermeneutics: The reinterpretation of historical texts and traditional concepts

  Nihilism: The view that there is no objective meaning in the world

  Perspectivalism: The view that, while there is no absolute truth, everyone can develop their own interpretation of the world

  Phenomenology: The study of the structure of consciousness

  Übermensch: The ‘over-man’ – the godlike existence towards which human beings are capable of evolving

  Will to power: The instinctual urge to seize the highest possible position in life

  Fact-check

  1 When Nietzsche asserted that ‘God is dead’, he meant which of the following?

  a That God is actually alive

  b That the story of God no longer inspires great things

  c That people have lost their religious faith

  d That the being of God is unintelligible

  2 Which of the following authors was the founder of phenomenology?

  a Nietzsche

  b Husserl

  c Heidegger

  d Sartre

  3 Nietzsche ultimately advocates which of the following?

  a The master morality

  b The slave morality

  c Utilitarianism

  d None of the above

  4 Which of the following questions concerned Heidegger?

  a What would the Übermensch be like?

  b How can we maximize happiness and minimize pain?

  c How did Christianity corrupt Western civilization?

  d What is the meaning of being?

  5 Which of the following leads Nietzsche to nihilism?

  a Worshipping an unintelligible God

  b Seeking meaning only to discover that there is none

  c Making the most of the will to power

  d Raping, pillaging and plundering without apology

  6 What does Nietzsche intend to accomplish through the eternal recurrence?

  a To discover the meaning of being itself

  b To spread out and dominate his environment

  c To inspire his readers to love their life

  d To take back much of what he originally wrote

  7 Which of the following would Nietzsche admire the most?

  a Alexander the Great

  b St Thomas Aquinas

  c Plato

  d Peter Singer

  8 Which of the following is Nietzsche’s most likely pick for a great way to spend a day off from writing?

  a Bow-and-arrow hunting

  b Helping the poor

  c Touring a medieval cathedral

  d Playing chess

  9 Which of the following is not a dominant theme among continental philosophers?

  a The use of clear and ordinary language

  b The rejection of a single, objective or scientific point of view

  c An emphasis on the freedom of the individual

  d Concern with the methods and aims of philosophy as a discipline

  10 Why has Nietzsche’s perspectivalism influenced the art world?

  a Because it argues that there is no point to anything

  b Because it emphasizes the radical freedom of interpretation

  c Because it revitalized interest in Greek tragedy

  d Because it shows how studying historical texts and their traditional ideas of the world yields valuable insights

  Dig deeper

  Lawrence J. Hatab, Nietzsche's Life Sentence: Coming to Terms with Eternal Recurrence (Routledge, 2005)

  S. Mulhall, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Heidegger and ‘Being and Time‘, second edn (Routledge, 2005)

  Bernard Reginster, The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism (Harvard University Press, 2006)

  12

  Wittgenstein and language

  ‘If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.’

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  In this chapter you will learn:

  • why Wittgenstein rejected metaphysics

  • the import of the picture theory of meaning

  • about Wittgenstein’s contribution to formal logic

  • the role of logic in analytic philosophy

  • why language is a game according to the later Wittgenstein

  • the philosophical significance of family resemblance

  • why Wittgenstein denied that minds exist

  • about Wittgenstein’s connection to behaviourism.

  Thought experiment: iMe

  The doorbell rings. You peer out of the window. Standing on the steps are two men in suits, one with dark hair, the other blond. The one with dark hair notices you at the window and flashes a badge.

  It says FBI.

  Nervous, but also curious, you open the door. The dark-haired officer introduces himself and his partner and asks to speak with you inside.

  ‘We won’t take much of your time.’

  You let them in.

  After some small talk and basic questions about your life and work, to which they already seem to know the answers, the officer with dark hair gets down to business.

  ‘We’re here to ask you about your co-workers. How many of your co-workers would you classify as androids?’

  You raise your eyebrows. ‘You mean robots?’

  Your interviewer is nodding.

  ‘Wow,’ you reply, surprised by the line of questioning. ‘I mean, we have a lot of computers, of course… But I haven’t seen anything more advanced than that.’

  The officers glance at one another, stone-faced.

  ‘Do any of your co-workers behave in a way you consider… odd?’

  A moment of silence passes while you think about what he is asking.

  ‘Well, they’re all a little odd, I suppose. Aren’t we all?’

  ‘Sure,’ he agrees. ‘But there’s odd and then there’s… not quite human.’

  You feel your brows knitting your forehead tightly together. The faces of your co-workers are flipping rapidly through your mind. Are some of them robots? Is it really possible to make robots that realistic now? You look from one officer to the other for a sign that this interview is some kind of joke.

  It’s then that you notice something off about the blond officer. He seems to be wearing a wig. And his skin is shiny, a little too shiny. His eyes are occluded behind tinted glasses.

  You freeze in your seat, realizing that he hasn’t spoken yet.

  ‘I’m sorry, what was your name again?’ you force yourself to ask the blond officer.

  ‘Agent Tom Blandish,’ he replies. And his voice is not quite right. Not quite right at all. You feel your skin crawling under your clothes and an overwhelming urge to get away – fast.

  ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t help you, officers,’ you stammer, rising to your feet, ‘but I’m… late for an appointment… and so I need to ask you to leave now.’

  The officers stand. The dark-haired one tilts his head, squinting at the back of your neck.

  ‘It’s in the back,’ he tells his partner. ‘Go ahead and press it now.’

  Your hand flies to the back of your neck to see whether you can feel what he’s referring to. A shiver of panic rushes through your body. You begin backing towards the door.

  Before you can get away, Agent Blandish grabs your arm with superhuman strength and reaches around your neck. Before you can make another move, you hear the ‘click’ of a button and the lights go out.

  Organic machines

  No doubt you would be shocked to learn you were an android. You probably feel quite certain you’re not. After reading the above thought experiment, you weren’t overwh
elmed with the need to feel for a button at the back of your neck.

  And yet, human beings are machines – organic machines – meaning that we grew naturally rather than being made artificially. Few people would contest the claim that our bodies are machines; the claim many would contest is that this is all we are.

  What is it that’s so disturbing about the idea of talking to, working with or being an android? Engineers are creating more and more realistic androids every year. If one of them was standing before you right now, would you find it creepy? Would you have a sense that no one’s ‘home’?

  How do you know anyone is ever ‘home’? All the cues (focused eyes, facial expression, tone of voice, tiny movements, a subtle scent, radiating warmth, etc.) can, in theory, be reproduced artificially. If we can make androids that behave exactly like human beings, do we have any right to believe that there is something more to us? Not at all, according to the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951). Wittgenstein’s analysis of human language eventually led him to the thesis that no one is ever really ‘home’.

  The mystery of language

  Though he was from continental Europe, Wittgenstein studied in England with the great logician Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) because he wasn’t interested in the poetic metaphysics of continental philosophy. His first undertaking was to develop an account of language according to which all traditional metaphysics (such as idealism, which we examined in Chapter 2, or Descartes’s dualism, which we examined in Chapter 5) is literally nonsense. It begins with a careful analysis of reference – the way words connect to the world.

  How is it that we refer to things when we speak?

  Suppose you and I meet by chance out in the street, and you say, ‘Where’s your dog?’ The sounds you make (represented here with marks on a page) cause me to think about what you were thinking about. Your words are very powerful: they somehow point to a particular object, drawing my attention to that object, even against my will. How can mere sounds (and marks) wield such power? This is actually a great mystery, though we take it for granted every day.

  Wittgenstein’s first attempt at a solution is known as the ‘picture theory of meaning’. It holds that words correspond to the world in the same way pictures do. Suppose that, when you ask me where my dog is, I respond: ‘He’s sleeping in my kitchen.’ I’ve presented a picture of my dog sleeping in my kitchen. If this corresponds to the actual ‘state of affairs’ in the world, then the sentence is true; if it doesn’t, then the sentence is false.

  Notice that you can’t make a picture of something unless it’s physically observable. Metaphysics, by definition, goes beyond the physical world. It tries to refer to things like God, the soul, free will, causality, conscience, and so on, none of which can be observed. It therefore goes beyond the reach of human language on Wittgenstein’s account. No wonder, then, that traditional metaphysics is so hard to understand: it’s literally unintelligible!

  Logic

  Wittgenstein asserts that any intelligible statement, called a ‘proposition’, has truth value, meaning that it is either true or false. He developed a method for assigning truth value to complex propositions from their atomic parts. Known as ‘truth tables’, this method has become a standard component of formal logic.

  Formal logic is the systematic study of the relationship between propositions. Logicians use variables, such as ‘P’ and ‘Q’, to represent propositions and symbols such as ‘¬’ and ‘^’ to represent operations, or ways propositions are used.

  Consider the following two propositions:

  P: The dog is sleeping in the kitchen.

  Q: It is raining.

  I can use these two sentences in a variety of ways. For example, I can say, ‘The dog is not sleeping in the kitchen.’ This negation would be symbolized as:

  ¬P

  Or I can say ‘The dog is sleeping in the kitchen and it is raining.’ This conjunction would be symbolized as:

  P ^ Q

  Needless to say, propositions can become very complicated. The logician’s job is to break them down into their atomic parts and show what they imply, without making any assumptions about whether they are true or false. Wittgenstein’s truth tables help with this process by assigning all the possible truth values in a simple format.

  For example, the truth table for the conjunction P ^ Q looks like this:

  This table shows that the logical operator conjunction can operate on P and Q in four different ways.

  • The first line shows that when P and Q are both true, then the conjunction is true.

  • The second line shows that when P is true and Q is false, then the conjunction is false.

  • The third line shows that when P is false and Q is true, then the conjunction is false.

  • The fourth line shows that when P and Q are both false, then the conjunction is false.

  Bearing in mind that P and Q can stand for any propositions, the truth table proves that any conjunction is true only when both propositions are true, and false otherwise.

  Granted, this is not an earth-shattering revelation! Any three-year-old who can put sentences together with the word ‘and’ already knows what this truth table proves. But we’ve looked at only one very simple example. The same process can be used to analyse extremely complex sets of propositions. Formal logic is very useful in clarifying human language, as any computer programmer knows.

  Case study: Bertrand Russell and strange genius

  Wittgenstein’s teacher, Bertrand Russell, launched his career with a massive three-volume work called Principia Mathematica in which he and his co-author, Alfred North Whitehead, set out to prove that 1 + 1 = 2. They were not successful.

  You thought that was an easy one, huh? Then give it a try yourself.

  Hint: you may need to come up with a complete set of axioms and inference rules for all of mathematics.

  On second thoughts, don’t bother trying. After reading Principia Mathematica, the Austrian-American logician Kurt Gödel proved that the complete set it requires is impossible because, for any set of axioms and inference rules, there will always be some truths of mathematics that cannot be deduced from it.

  Oh well. So much can be learned from an epic failure.

  Russell went on to write on a wide range of philosophical subjects, most of which were much more accessible than the Principia Mathematica. In fact, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature for championing humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought.

  No ordinary chump himself, Russell gives us insight into Wittgenstein’s strange genius. He writes:

  I got a letter from Wittgenstein written from Monte Cassino, saying that a few days after the Armistice, he had been taken prisoner by the Italians, but fortunately with his manuscript. It appears he had written a book in the trenches, and wished me to read it. He was the kind of man who would never have noticed such small matters as bursting shells when he was thinking about logic. […] It was the book which was subsequently published under the title Tractatus. […] Just about at the time of the Armistice his father had died, and Wittgenstein inherited the bulk of his fortune. He came to the conclusion, however, that money is a nuisance to a philosopher, so he gave every penny of it to his brother and sisters. Consequently he was unable to pay the fare from Vienna to The Hague, and was far too proud to accept it from me. […] He must have suffered during this time hunger and considerable privation, though it was very seldom that he could be induced to say anything about it, as he had the pride of Lucifer. At last his sister decided to build a house, and employed him as an architect. This gave him enough to eat for several years…

  The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (London: Routledge, 2010 [1968]), pp. 330–31)

  In truth, philosophers have always been known for their eccentricities.

  Spotlight

  Bertrand Russell’s mother, Kate Amberley, and John Stuart Mill’s stepdaughter Helen were fellow feminists and good friends. A few months before Mill’s death, Amb
erley named him ‘godfather’ to her newly born baby Bertie. (We put ‘godfather’ in scare quotes because all parties to the deal were atheists.)

  Analytic philosophy

  In his quest for precision, Wittgenstein went beyond logic, helping to found the analytic school of philosophy.

  Many philosophers, especially in England and the United States, continue to follow Wittgenstein’s lead in using logic to break down and analyse lofty philosophical claims, banishing nonsense whenever they can.

  The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts.

  Philosophy is not a theory but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. The result of philosophy is not a number of ‘philosophical propositions’, but to make propositions clear.

  Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 4.112 (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5740/5740-pdf.pdf)

  The above passage comes from the Tractatus, in which Wittgenstein developed his truth tables and his picture theory of meaning. This work defines the early part of Wittgenstein’s career. Having dismissed metaphysics and apparently solved the mystery of language, Wittgenstein pursued architecture, thinking there was no work left to be done in philosophy.

  But he was dragged back. According to legend, someone who had read the Tractatus, and disagreed with it, crudely gave Wittgenstein the finger, saying ‘Picture this!’ Astonished, Wittgenstein instantly abandoned his picture theory of meaning. He evidently realized that making a crude gesture is a paradigm instance of human language, and it isn’t like making a picture – it’s more like making a move in a game.

  The builder’s game

  The later Wittgenstein developed a theory of language that doesn’t rely on reference at all.