Grazer Philosophische Studien 71 (2006), 205–225. THE TRANSITION FROM CAUSES TO NORMS: WITTGENSTEIN ON TRAINING Wolfgang HUEMER Universität Erfurt Summary Anti-reductionist philosophers have often argued that mental and linguistic phenomena contain an intrinsically normative element that cannot be captured by the natural sciences which focus on causal rather than rational relations. This line of reasoning raises the questions of how reasons could evolve in a world of causes and how children can be acculturated to participate in rulegoverned social practices. In this paper I will sketch a Wittgensteinian answer to these questions. I will first point out that throughout his later philosophy Wittgenstein draws a sharp distinction between “teaching” and “training”: newly-born children are trained (conditioned) to react to specific stimuli in specific ways, which then allows them to acquire concepts and follow rules. I will then show that this picture presupposes a strong analogy between concepts and capacities, which is also present in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. In the last section I will point out that Wittgenstein only discusses the ontogenetic question of how individual children can acquire speech, but not the phylogenetic question of how rule-governed behavior could evolve in the first place. I will argue that this strategy should not be seen as a shortcoming, but rather as an expression of Wittgenstein’s approach that can be characterized as naturalistic in a wide sense. When philosophers reflect about perception, they typically focus on the question of how our empirical beliefs and knowledge can be justified by facts in the world, mediated by perceptual experience. Unlike neurophysiologists, who analyze the causal relations that take place in our nervous system and eventually bring about perceptual experience, philosophers ask for justification. Reductionist attempts to reduce philosophical theories of perception to their scientific counterparts notoriously face the difficulty of coping with the fact that justificatory relations contain an intrinsically normative element that cannot be accounted for in the language of sci- ence.1 Anti-reductionist approaches, on the other hand, face the difficulty of explaining where the normative aspect of the mental comes from. After all, persons who perceive and hold empirical beliefs are part of the physical world, their mental episodes can be conceived as a function of their brain, the working of which can be explained by neurophysiology. According to an old ideal it is the ultimate goal of science to formulate one universal theory of everything. If this is more than a shallow claim, we should expect that scientific theories are able — at least in principle — to account for our having mental episodes as much as they can account for there being black holes, molecules, or electric fields. In consequence, antireductionists (given that they do not want to buy into ontological pluralism) stand in need to provide a perspective of how normativity can emerge from the level of causality without, of course, unveiling systematic relations between the two levels, for that would betray their anti-reductionist program. One might not want to go so far as to push them to elaborate a detailed account, but one can expect them to provide an outlook on which place normativity holds in a purely physical world, in which relation, in other words, the realm of norms stands to the realm of causes. In this paper I will analyze how Wittgenstein conceives the relation between norms and causes. I will first focus on Wittgenstein’s remarks concerning the acculturation or, to use Wittgenstein’s term, the training [Abrichtung] of children, a process by which they become part of a community that is constituted by (rule governed) social practices. Next I will discuss Wittgenstein’s remarks on the relation between the level of causes and that of norms, which provide interesting insights into the topic, but also have clear ramifications. Wittgenstein’s primary goal, I will argue, is not to provide a satisfying answer to this question, but rather to shift our perspective, challenging, as he does, our urge to formulate the question in the first place. We have to content ourselves that there is no further explanation for the level of norms — “explanations come to an end somewhere” (PI § 1). Our philosophical worries are relieved not by developing theories that explain how the realm of norms could evolve from the realm of causes, but by understanding the senselessness of this project and acknowledging that reasons, like causes, are part of our everyday world. he realm of the 1. Sellars brings it to the point when he states that “the idea that epistemic facts can be analyzed without reminder — even ‘in principle’ — into non-epistemic facts, whether phenomenal or behavioral, public or private, with no matter how lavish a sprinkling of subjunctives and hypotheticals is, I believe, a radical mistake — a mistake of a piece with the so-called ‘naturalistic fallacy’ in ethics.” (Sellars 1997, 19, § 5) 206 normative, thus, does not stand in need of explanation; “It is there — like our life” (OC § 559). 1. Wittgenstein on Training hroughout his later philosophy, Wittgenstein uses examples of learning, especially of language acquisition, to illustrate his position. Since he does not develop a systematic theory of learning — a fact, however, that, given Wittgenstein’s notorious aversion to theories, should not come as a big surprise — and since we can reasonably expect that the first language games a young child comes to play are simple and clear, one might be tempted to assume that Wittgenstein uses these examples merely for didactic reasons. In fact — as Meredith Williams (1999, 188f.) already indicated — most of the secondary literature regards Wittgenstein’s appeal to learning as an expository or a heuristic device, and thus tends to overlook the fact that it plays an important systematic role in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. Furthermore, Williams rightly pointed out that the process of training should be seen as “pivotal in creating the logical space for the very distinction between the grammatical and the empirical. […] understanding the role learning plays sheds light on the nature of normativity itself ” (Williams 1999, 189). I will now turn to show how Wittgenstein’s remarks on language acquisition can sketch a picture of how we should imagine the transition from pattern-governed to rule-conforming behavior. hese remarks are characterized by a sharp underlying distinction between teaching and training that is operative in all of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy; a distinction not always fully appreciated in the secondary literature. In the English-language literature, this might (at least in part) be based on a problem of translation. Already in § 5 of the Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein states: “Das Lehren der Sprache ist hier kein Erklären, sondern ein Abrichten.” Anscombe translates this sentence as “Here the teaching of language is not explanation, but training,” thus translating the German verb “abrichten” with the English “to train.” hough the translation is definitely literal, it is crucial to note that there is an important difference between “abrichten” and “to train”: while the English word “to train” can be used for persons or animals — we speak of a trained piano player and can train children to ski or to ride a bike — the German “abrichten” is exclusively used for animals, for training dogs to sit down on the command “sit,” or horses to gallop when the rider performs a certain bodily 207 movement (typically she increases the pressure of the left leg and keeps the reins loose). he German word for training a child to play chess, to ski, or to speak a language is “lehren” or “beibringen” rather than “abrichten.” What Wittgenstein has in mind, thus, comes closer to conditioning than to training. He talks about a process that sets up stimulus-response patterns that do not involve any kind of intellectual activity on the side of the trainee. Unlike teaching or explaining, it does not involve any kind of linguistic instruction, but is based merely on the reinforcement of patterns of behavior. In his Brown Book, a text he dictated to his students in English, even Wittgenstein uses the word “to train” in places where in his German version of the text he uses “abrichten.”2 At the first occurrence of the word, he does add a clarifying remark, though: “I am using the word ‘trained’ in a way strictly analogous to that in which we talk of an animal being trained to do certain things. It is done by means of example, reward, punishment, and suchlike” (BB 77). hus, when Wittgenstein emphasizes that teaching language is training rather than explanation, he insists that the first steps of language acquisition can be fully explained by a setting up of stimulus-response patterns; they take place at the level of patterngoverned rather than rule-conforming behavior. We condition children to occupy their first positions in the language game which, from the adult speakers’, but not the children’s point of view, contain an intrinsically normative element. Wittgenstein draws our attention to this difference when he remarks: I have been trained to react to this sign in a particular way, and now I do so react to it. But that is only to give a causal connexion; to tell how it has come about that we now go by the sign-post; not what this going-by-the-sign really consists in. On the contrary; I have further indicated that a person goes by a sign-post only in so far as there exists a regular use of sign-posts, a custom. (PI § 198) While the adult members of the community are following a rule when they react to the signpost in a particular way, children are merely behaving in the way they were conditioned to behave. In consequence, the causal connection, the process of training, can explain only the children’s behavior, but not that of the adults who have the freedom to react in a different way. It is noteworthy, however, that children are trained by adults 2. One year after dictating the Brown Book to his students, Wittgenstein started to work on a (slightly altered and expanded) German version of the text, probably to prepare it for publication (cf. Rhees 1989, 10). 208 who already do engage in social practices that do contain an intrinsically normative element.3 he prominence of language acquisition in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy becomes apparent already in §1 of the Philosophical Investigations, where he introduces the Augustinian picture of language. According to (Wittgenstein’s) Augustine, we acquire language by hearing adults uttering words when drawing their attention to specific objects in their environment. By observing their bodily movements, the expression of the face, or the play of the eyes4 as well as the objects towards which the latter are directed, children draw a connection between words and objects; they so learn to understand the meaning of the words uttered. Wittgenstein’s critique of this Augustinian picture has two strands. First, he criticizes atomistic theories of meaning, according to which meaning can be explained on the basis of the relation of reference between single words and single objects. Atomistic theories hold that we can learn the meaning of words like “red,” “dark,” or “sweet”5 in isolation, independently of the rest of language. Wittgenstein, as is well known, replaces this view with a holistic theory of meaning, according to which the meaning of a word is determined by how it is used by the speakers of a language.6 here is, however, a second strand in Wittgenstein’s argument: he criticizes not only atomistic theories of meaning, but also turns against Augustine’s picture of language acquisition. Augustine cannot explain, 3. his explains why they are often eager to interpret the behavior of the child as “following a rule,” even though it does not yet. In his remarks on reading (PI §§ 156–73) Wittgenstein discusses the difficulties to decide when the child’s behavior is no longer a conditioned reaction, but it is rather following a rule. How can the teacher tell that the pupil knows to read? Is there a first word it can read? Wittgenstein denies this when he states: “Nor can the teacher say of the trained [vom Abgerichteten, which Anscombe translates misleadingly as “pupil”]: ‘Perhaps he was already reading when he said that word’. For there is no doubt about what he did. — he change when the pupil began to read was a change in his behaviour; and it makes no sense here to speak of a ‘first word in his new state’” (PI § 157). At some point we are justified in saying that the child is now following a rule, but there is no single moment when we can say that now, “for the first time,” the child is following a rule. Along similar lines we can argue that at some point a child does have mental episodes, but it does not make sense to speak of a “first mental episode.” I have discussed this point in Huemer 2005, 61ff. 4. I am quoting here Augustine’s formulations as cited in PI § 1. 5. I am using Wittgenstein’s examples (cf. PI § 87). Empirical concepts are normally thought to be the first that one can acquire, for (according to empiricist theories) they require only to establish a connection between a word and a certain kind of sense-datum. 6. A concise expression of this view can be found in the Philosophical Investigations: “For a large class of cases — though not for all — in which we employ the word ‘meaning’ it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language” (PI § 43). 209 Wittgenstein argues, how children acquire their first, but rather, how they learn a second language. he child, in other words, would need to already have a language (she would have to be able to think about objects, which presupposes her having concepts) in order to acquire language. Wittgenstein summarizes his critique in the following way: And now, I think, we can say: Augustine describes the learning of human language as if the child came into a foreign country and did not understand the language of the country; that is, as if it already had a language, only not this one. Or again: as if the child could already think, only not yet speak. And “think” would here mean something like “talk to itself ”. (PI § 32)7 hus, when Augustine claims that children learn to establish a connection between words uttered by adults and objects in their direct environment, he presupposes too much: he must hold first that children already understand what an ostensive definition is and what role it plays in our language game; second, that they are already informed about the referential function of language before they become players of a language game; and third, that they are already in a position to perceive objects as objects, to perceive, for example, chairs as chairs. Wittgenstein addresses this last point when he notes that Augustine treats the child as if it were able to already think — where “think,” as he specifies, “would here mean something like ‘talk to itself ’” (PI § 32). In order to see objects, one must be able to categorize them as falling under a certain concept. In order to see this thing in front of oneself as a green apple, for example, one must be able to categorize it under the concept apple. Hence, in Augustine’s picture, the child must already possess concepts to learn a language. Since children have not yet mastered any of these aspects before learning a language, we cannot teach them the meaning of words by explanation — neither by nonverbal, ostensive definition, nor in the way our French teacher explained us that “pain” in French means “bread” in English — for that would presuppose that they have already acquired a language, have concepts, or have at least mastered a practice of non-verbal explanation. We rather train them to speak — in the drastic sense of abrichten explained above.8 7. I have slightly altered Anscombe’s translation, changing “strange country” to “foreign country” in order to avoid the connotation of “odd”, which is not present in Wittgenstein’s German formulation “fremdes Land.” 8. To the ears of German-speaking readers, Wittgenstein’s affirmation that we have to abrichten our children is quite drastic, since that seems to put human children at the level of animals, which would undermine all principles of enlightened education to which we have — fortunately enough — grown acquainted in the last few centuries. We can put Wittgenstein’s point less drasti- 210 Before acquiring language the child’s behavior is guided by natural impulses; it does not yet contain a normative aspect. Only in the process of training (in the sense of Abrichtung) do children become players of the language game, which is constituted by rules. hey make a transition into the realm of the normative and thus become fully accepted members of our community. heir behavior is not any longer guided only by their instincts, but also by social norms; it can now be corrected by other members of the community. he second aspect of Wittgenstein’s critique of the Augustinian picture of language, thus, consists in his diagnosis that Augustine does not distinguish between the children’s pattern-governed behavior and the adults’ rule-conforming behavior. A newly-born child might cry and thereby signal hunger to her parents. he adults can react to this signal only by trying to satisfy the child’s need; they cannot question or discuss her justification to cry at this moment. he behavior of the newly-born is guided by purely biological mechanisms that play an important role: they ensure the child’s survival, but do not contain an intrinsically normative aspect. hings are different when a ten year old child communicates her being hungry. he parents might try to explain her, for example, that it is not a good idea to eat now, since dinner will be ready in an hour. Other than the newly-born, the ten year old is more likely to be open to reasoning of this kind since, in the process of being acculturated, the child makes a transition from craving to wishing to eat,9 which shows that only the latter cally by stating that in the Augustinian picture newly-born children are treated like small adults with a faculty to reason. All parents, even those who try to follow the most enlightened principles of education, however, cannot expect their newly-born children to understand arguments; they rather have to train them into certain patterns of behavior. Once children have acquired minimal capacities of reasoning, parents can try to explain them their educational measures at the respective level of understanding. “he basis of each explanation,” as Wittgenstein puts it in a manuscript dated January 20, 1948, “is training. (Educators should keep this in mind)” (MS 136, 135b) [my translation: “Die Grundlage jeder Erklärung ist Abrichtung. (Das sollten Erzieher bedenken.)”]. 9. Pirmin Stekeler Weithofer (forthcoming) distinguishes between craving [begehren] and wishing, where the former is an undifferentiated longing for something that is satisfied when it comes to an end. My craving for food, for example, can be satisfied by a nice meal, a punch on my stomach, or a sudden event that completely absorbs my attention. Wishing, on the other hand, must involve a propositional content. Consequently, there are strict criteria that determine when my wish to eat is satisfied: the consumption of a nice meal does count as a satisfaction of my wish, but not the other scenarios considered. Wishing, but not craving, is accompanied with a clear intention that determines these criteria. Animals and newly-born children can crave, but not wish in this sense. 211 can be considered a part of rule-conforming behavior that constitutes the social practices of our form of life. his very example might be thought to show that the distinction between pattern-governed and rule-conforming behavior is less strict than I have suggested. After all, one might argue, also the behavior of the newly-born can be described as following rules. he child can ensure her survival only by signaling hunger with crying. he newly-born, thus, follows a rule that we might express roughly along the following lines: “If you feel the need to be fed soon, you should cry loud.” his rule even allows for error: we can imagine children who fail to signal their hunger in this way, with the fatal consequence of drastically diminishing their survival value. his suggests that also the instinct-guided behavior of the newly-born contains a normative element, it is following norms with which we are well accustomed from evolutionary biology. It is important to note, however, that the norms we know from the sciences differ in an important respect from the norms that constitute our social practices. In both cases, containing a normative aspect means that there are independent standards, according to which a theory, an event, or a certain kind of behavior can be evaluated. It is crucial to note, however, that these standards play a very different role in scientific theories than in our social practices. We can see this difference clearly by a “direction-offit” consideration: theories of physics are committed to the ideal of truth; if they fail to satisfy this ideal — if the world, in other words, does not behave in the way predicted by the theory — we have to change the theory, not the world. Our social practices, on the other hand, are committed to conformity with the rest of the social group. If an individual fails to satisfy these norms, she has to change her behavior, not the rule she is following.10 Moreover, changing one’s behavior presupposes that one is in a position to reflect on one’s behavior and consider alternatives. he standards of evolutionary biology play a mongrel role: insofar as the 10. For this reason we might say that scientific theories are normative at a descriptive level — they follow epistemic norms like truth — while our social norms contain an intrinsically normative element. I discuss this difference in more detail in my “Intrinsic Normativity” (forthcoming). I should add that this short discussion works with an idealized picture of science which, however, should suffice for my concerns. When the world does not behave in the way predicted by the theory, we have not only the option to revise the theory, but also to reject the observation statement, as Neurath (1983) and Quine (1980) have pointed out. But even in this case, we alter or reject the linguistic entity, not the state of affairs it describes. Similarly, when we point out to someone that she violates a norm, she will typically correct her behavior. She can also react, however, by challenging the norm. 212 theory speaks about species that are not able to reflect their behavior, they are normative at the descriptive level. If the members of a species behave in a way that, according to our theory, drastically diminishes their survival value but survive nonetheless without there being an obvious explanation for the exception of the rule, we need to seriously consider reformulating the theory. If, on the other hand, the survival value of our own species is concerned, we can consider changing our behavior — we can consider to stop building atomic power plants or avoid burning carbonic fuel in order to increase the survival value of our species, for example. When doing so, we turn biological standards (survival value) into moral standards (ecologically correct behavior). his transformation requires rational insight and can be justified, which undermines the reductionist project to reduce the norms that govern our social practices to the norms that govern evolutionary biology.11 his short discussion shows that while the instinct-guided behavior of newly-born children might increase their survival value, it nonetheless cannot be described as intrinsically normative. 2. From Pattern-Governed to Rule-Conforming Behavior: Concepts and Capacities Wittgenstein’s notion of training can shed a light on how children are conditioned to behave according to the rules imposed by the adult members of the community. his does not yet explain, however, how children can enter the realm of the normative, how, in other words, they come to apply concepts and to follow norms. In order to understand the transition from pattern-governed to rule-conforming behavior along Wittgensteinian lines, we have to pay attention to the close relation between concepts and capacities that Wittgenstein elaborates in his late philosophy. In his last text, On Certainty, he remarks that learning a language does not require a child to have a certain amount of knowledge, but rather to have a certain range of capacities: 11. Arguments along these lines have been proposed by advocates of evolutionary epistemology who aim to reduce epistemic norms to the norms of evolutionary biology. It is by no means obvious, however, that holding true beliefs can increase one’s survival value, as Quine has suggested when he famously stated that “creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praiseworthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind” (Quine 1969, 126). Ruth Millikan (1993, 90) quotes examples of species — she writes about beavers who often wrongly believe to be in danger — that increase their survival value by holding predominantly false beliefs. 213 But is it wrong to say: “A child that has mastered a language-game must know certain things”? If instead of that one said “must be able to do certain things”, that would be a pleonasm, yet this is just what I want to counter the first sentence with. (OC § 534) What kind of capacities does a child have to have in order to master a language game? It seems obvious that there are different kinds of capacities involved. First, mastering a language requires capacities children have by their very nature, innate capacities, as it were. If children were not able to react to stimuli that are similar (in some relevant sense) in similar ways or to imitate the behavior of the adults we could not train them in the first place.12 Wittgenstein hints at this point when he notes: hink about the gestures and moves one makes to bring a dog to retrieve. But not every animal will react to these gestures like the dog. A cat will not or misunderstand these gestures; that simply means in this case: it will not retrieve. And if the child does not react to our encouragements, like a cat one wants to teach to retrieve, it will not come to an understanding of an explanation; or rather, the understanding begins here with reacting in a certain way.13 12. It is a question of empirical research to determine the exact nature of these abilities. In a recent study, the cultural biologist Michael Tomasello argues that language acquisition requires two sets of skills: (a) various “intention-reading” skills such as the abilities to “share attention with other persons to objects and events of mutual interest […] to follow the attention and gesturing of other persons to distal objects and events outside the immediate interaction […] to actively direct the attention of others to distal objects […] to culturally (imitatively) learn the intentional actions of others,” and (b) “pattern-finding” skills that include the abilities “to form perceptual and conceptual categories of ‘similar’ objects and events […] to form sensorymotor schemas from recurrent patterns of perception and action […] to perform statistically based distributional analysis on various kinds of perceptual and behavioral consequences […] to create analogies across two or more complex wholes” (Tomasello 2003, 4f ). For a discussion of Tomasello’s views in connection with Wittgenstein’s account of aspect-seeing, cf. Eldridge (forthcoming). 13. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Eine philosophische Betrachtung (Das Braune Buch). Werkausgabe Bd. 5. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1989, 131; my translation: “Denke an die verschiedenen Gebärden und Bewegungen, die man macht, um einen Hund zum Apportieren zu bringen. Aber nicht jedes Tier wird auf diese Gebärden reagieren, wie der Hund. Eine Katze wird diese Gebärden nicht, oder mißverstehen; das heißt in diesem Fall einfach: sie wird nicht apportieren. Und wenn das Kind auf unsere Ermunterungen nicht reagiert, wie eine Katze, die man das Apportieren lehren möchte, so gelangt es nicht zum Verständnis einer Erklärung; oder vielmehr, das Verstehen beginnt hier mit dem Reagieren in bestimmter Weise.” Wittgenstein’s German text is an elaboration of the text he dictated to his students in English. We find a parallel, but shorter version of this remark in the English version of the text (BB 90): “Imagine the gestures, sounds, etc., of encouragement you use when you teach a dog to retrieve. Imagine on the other hand, that you tried to teach a cat to retrieve. As the cat will not respond to your encouragement, 214 his clearly shows that training presupposes capacities the trainee has by her very nature; they are, as we could say, innate, i.e., the trainee has them due to her biological constitution. In addition to these innate capacities (without which she could not be trained in the first place), there are abilities a child learns from the members of the social community in which she grows up by imitating the behavior the adults perform in the world — and with the world: a great part of these practices are actions that are performed with and on objects in the environment of the child. By imitating this behavior the child learns to act, and, as Wittgenstein points out, “it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language-game” (OC § 204). In his Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics Wittgenstein draws an analogy between “concept” and “grasping” when he notes: “And concepts help us to grasp things. hey correspond to a particular way of dealing with situations” (RFM VII § 67).14 Children acquire a language by learning to move in the world and to manipulate some of the objects in this world: they so learn to recognize certain structures in the world. Wittgenstein gives an illuminating example of this process when he notes: “Children do not learn that books exist, that armchairs exist, etc. etc., — they learn to fetch books, sit in armchairs, etc. etc.” (OC § 476). hus, before acquiring words like “chair” or “glass,” the child learns to sit on chairs and drink from glasses. Based on these capacities the child acquires concepts like chair and glass, etc., which, in turn, is a prerequisite for acquiring the respective words. With this close connection between concepts and capacities Wittgenstein sketches a picture according to which there is a direct link between world and language. We can acquire concepts only by manipulating objects in the world around us.15 Moreover, if the world were different, or if it would radically change, we would not — or even: could not — use the same concepts (any longer) to describe it. Certain events would put me into a position in which I could not go on with the old language-game any further. In which I was torn away from the most of the acts of encouragement which you performed when you trained the dog are here out of question.” 14. In the German formulation of this remark the analogy is even stronger, for Wittgenstein draws on the common etymological roots of the expressions Begriff (concept) and begreifen (grasping): “Und Begriffe dienen zum Begreifen. Sie entsprechen einer bestimmten Behandlung der Sachlagen” (RFM VII § 67). I have altered Anscombe’s translation, who translates “begreifen” with “comprehend.” 15. As a consequence, the sceptic who doubts that physical objects exist, cannot possibly be right: if he was, he could not even come so far as to formulate his doubts, for he could not have acquired language in the first place. 215 sureness of the game. Indeed, doesn’t it seem obvious that the possibility of a language-game is conditioned by certain facts? (OC § 617) Wittgenstein, thus, resists the idea that there is a gap between language on the one hand and the world on the other, a gap that is to be bridged in some mysterious way by meaning or intentionality. He rather insists that language is part of a form of life that is constituted by practices that involve objects and facts in the world. In a way we can say that the world (or at least relevant facts in the world) is part of our language. About the fact that water boils and does not freeze under such-and-such circumstances, for example, he explicitly states “his fact is fused into the foundations of our language-game” (OC § 558). Wittgenstein does not, however, go so far as to equate concepts with capacities. his would be the kind of simplification that Wittgenstein warned about over and over again. His later philosophy is characterized by a method of grammatical investigations that allows him to appreciate the variety of phenomena and resist the reductionist aspect of theories.16 With respect to concepts he points in this direction when he states that “‘Concept’ is a vague concept” (RFM VII § 70). When children are first trained to engage in certain practices, they do not yet have concepts. In a remark from 1944 Wittgenstein says, referring to the language game introduced in Philosophical Investigations § 2: It is not in every language-game that there occurs something that one would call a concept. Concept is something like a picture with which one compares objects. Are there concepts in language game (2)? Still it would be easy to add to it in such a way that “slab”, “block” etc. became concepts. […] here is of course no sharp dividing line between language-games which work with concepts and others. What is important is that the word “concept” refers to one kind of expedient in the mechanism of language-games. (RFM VII § 71) Language game (2) involves only two players and four words: “block,” “pillar,” “slab,” and “beam.” When player A calls out one of these words her assistant B brings the object she has learnt to bring when the respective word is uttered. We can easily imagine that children are trained to this 16. I do not want to go so far as to say that Wittgenstein was opposed to any kind of theory. He clearly warns of the dangers inherent to theories, however, and sets apart his own approach when he states, for example, “we may not advance any kind of theory. here must not be anything hypothetical in our considerations. We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place” (PI § 109). 216 sort of behavior.17 When this is the case, they do not yet speak a language or have concepts. Since only these four words can be used and only commands can be given (Wittgenstein does not contemplate the possibility that B utters “slab?” to question the command) the players have no means to reflect the working of their language game. Only if the language game has been extended and thus reached a level of complexity that allows us to reflect the usage of a certain utterance and, thus, point out errors, it can contain concepts — as it is the case when we, i.e. adult speakers of English, speak about language game (2). Wittgenstein does not explain how and by whom the language game can be extended. Are the players themselves in a position to carry out this extension, or is this done by more sophisticated speakers who already possess a richer language? To answer this question, we should consider that Wittgenstein does not discuss the phylogenetic question of the origins of language. He always focuses on the training of a particular child, performed by adults who already do engage in social practices and speak a language. In addition, he says that the “simple language-games” introduced in the first paragraphs of the Philosophical Investigations are “set up as objects of comparison which are meant to throw light on the facts of our language by way not only of similarities, but also of dissimilarities” (PI §130). his clearly hints that for Wittgenstein this extension is not performed by players A and B, nor by the trained children, but rather by their trainers, adult speakers, who are already initiated in the realm of the normative and already speak a language. Moreover, in his remarks against the sceptic idealist, Wittgenstein argues that also intrinsically normative epistemic notions like truth, knowledge, or doubt do not evolve from the realm of the causal, but are already anchored in a social practice which children are trained to play. When they first learn to occupy certain positions in the game, they cannot yet make moves that go beyond the positions they have been trained to occupy. Children cannot, for example, doubt the existence of objects that are relevant to this language game. “he child learns by believing the adult. Doubt comes after belief ” (OC § 160). To doubt means to occupy a position in the language game that the child has not yet acquired. In language game (2), 17. Wittgenstein explicitly draws this connection in his Brown Book, where he already introduces the language game (2) and then notes: “he child learns this language from grownups by being trained to its use” (BB 77). his passage is followed by Wittgenstein’s clarification that training is here understood as an activity normally performed on animals, as quoted above. 217 for example, player A can only give commands, but cannot formulate doubts, questions, make ironic comments, etc. We teach a child “that is your hand”, not “that is perhaps (or “probably”) your hand”. hat is how a child learns the innumerable language-games that are concerned with his hand. An investigation or question, ‘whether this is really a hand’ never occurs to him. Nor, on the other hand, does he learn that he knows that this is a hand. (OC § 374) And a few paragraphs later he states: “In the language-game (2), can he say that he knows that those are building stones? — ‘No, but he does know it’” (OC § 396). Only when children acquire language games that allow them to speak about the truth value of propositions or to say that they know that this-and-this is so-and-so do they acquire the capacity to make more complex moves in the logical space of reasons. Adult speakers, on the other hand, can attribute knowledge to the child when they think it appropriate. Words like “knowing,” “truth,” or “agreement with reality” have their meaning only within and relative to language games of which they are part. “Here we see that the idea of ‘agreement with reality’ does not have any clear application” (OC § 215). Children acquire concepts like knowledge, truth, or doubt in the same way as they acquire the rest of language: by being trained to partake in complex social practices. Only when this level of complexity is reached we are in a position to reflect and, if we think it necessary, to modify our language game. It is an important aspect of Wittgenstein’s anti-sceptical argument that we cannot do this for the whole of language at once, replacing, as it were, one language with another, for if we were to try this we would lose the tools necessary to make these revisions. “If I want the door to turn, the hinges must stay put” (OC § 343). In sum, we can state that capacities play a crucial role in Wittgenstein’s account of language acquisition: children need to have certain (innate) capacities to qualify as a trainee. hey then start to imitate certain forms of behavior from the adults, a process by which they come to structure the world and apply concepts. With continuous training the adults enrich the children’s capacities to react to an increasing number of situations with an increasing vocabulary and to make moves in the language game, until they have reached the minimal level of complexity needed to call them a speaker of the language — “Light dawns gradually over the whole” (OC § 141). 218 3. Causes and Norms: Wittgenstein’s “Naturalism” Wittgenstein’s remarks on training show how an individual child can be acculturated in a society of adults who already engage in complex social practices guided by rules. Wittgenstein hardly discusses, however, how such a society is possible; how, that is, the first human beings came to form a social group and to engage in social practices. He does, in other words, not discuss how the realm of norms could evolve from the realm of causes, but only, how we can initiate our children into the realm of norms. he close connection he conceives between concepts and capacities, however, suggests that these two realms are closely related. I will now turn to the question of how Wittgenstein conceives this relation; how he would, in other words, answer the question concerning the role of normativity in a world of causes that I have raised in the opening paragraphs of this paper. In his later philosophy, Wittgenstein develops a picture of language that has been characterized with the thesis of the autonomy of language. According to this thesis, language is autonomous; it is independent of (1) psychological episodes and mental representations, (2) the referential relation between words and the objects referred to, (3) the acquisition of language, and (4) pragmatic goals (the aim of language and epistemological arguments) (cf. Burri 1995, 208). With this picture, Wittgenstein resists the reductionist impulse to explain the rules that govern our language games on the basis of the causal regularities that hold in our physical world. A language is for Wittgenstein […] independent both of the psychological inner world and the material outer world. Neither its ontogenesis nor its integration into a goal oriented human praxis have an influence on the shape of its constituting rules. (Burri 1995, 208)18 Wittgenstein’s main goal is to argue against a picture of language that regards truth and reference as the basic notions and “against the idea that they [the rules of grammar] have to mirror a putative essence of reality” (Glock 1996, 50). he discussion of the close relation between concepts and capacities shows, however, that language is at least to some degree determined by our form of life, i.e. by the social practices we engage in, and by the world in which we perform these practices. In On Certainty, 18. My translation: “Eine Sprache ist für Wittgenstein […] sowohl von der psychischen Innenwelt als auch von der materiellen Außenwelt unabhängig. Weder ihre Ontogenese noch ihre Eingliederung in eine zweckorientierte menschliche Praxis haben einen Einfluß auf die Beschaffenheit der sie konstituierenden Regeln.” 219 Wittgenstein draws an analogy between the rules that govern our practice and the primitive, instinct-guided behavior an animal can come to play: I want to regard man here as an animal; as a primitive being to which one grants instinct but not ratiocination. As a creature in a primitive state. Any logic good enough for a primitive means of communication needs no apology from us. Language did not emerge from some kind of ratiocination. (OC § 475) he primitive being (or, for that reason, the newly-born baby) only acts by instinct; it does not act for reasons. In general we can say that the first social practices human beings come to engage in are not the result of reasoning, they are merely caused: “he game proves its worth. hat may be the cause of its being played, but it is not the reason” (OC § 474).19 hese remarks clearly show that human beings have developed language through practices that were not justified; they did not (yet) have a normative aspect. he world imposes constraints that determine which practices we can and cannot engage in. he child can be trained to take part in a practice only if this practice proves successful in this world. It is possible that people of other cultures develop practices quite different from ours. All of these practices, however, have to fit this world, as it were. he world does not force us into a specific kind of practice, it excludes certain practices from the realm of the possible, though. In On Certainty, Wittgenstein states: “By this I naturally do not want to say that men should behave like this, but only that they do behave like this” (OC § 284). Later in the text, he states again that there are no reasons for the concrete form of our language game: “You must bear in mind that the language-game is so to say something unpredictable. I mean: it is not justified. […] It is there — like our life” (OC § 559).20 he thesis of the autonomy of language must not be misunderstood as a complete detachment of language from the physical world and from our form of life. Our social practices, including our language games, are, as I have tried to show in the preceding section, deeply rooted in the physical world. Moreover, our rule-governed behavior is based on instinct-guided behavior we share with animals. In this way, the world shapes our social 19. I have slightly altered Paul’s and Anscombe’s translation, replacing the last word of this sentence, “ground” (in German: “Grund”) with “reason.” Wittgenstein does not seem to be interested in questions concerning foundationalism, but, more general, in questions concerning justification. 20. Again, I have slightly altered the translation, replacing “it is not based on grounds” with “it is not justified.” he original German text has: “Es ist nicht begründet” (cf. OC § 559). 220 practices (including our language) by putting constraints on what practices are possible; it does not justify them, though. If we would try to explain why our ancestors adopted one set of rules rather than another when they first developed language, we can quote only causes, for there are no reasons (yet) that regulate this process. If, on the other hand, we try to account for the sophisticated practice of language we now find in our community, we realize that we cannot derive its rules from the causal regularities that govern the physical world — the rules of (our) language are autonomous, they belong to the realm of norms, not to that of causes. Wittgenstein’s picture is based on the assumption that we can clearly distinguish causes and norms. He does resist, however, the urge to draw an insuperable demarcation line between the two, distinguishing, as it were, two separate realms of reality. Rather, he insists that both, or better, a combination of both are part of our nature. “Commanding, questioning, recounting, chatting, are as much part of our natural history as walking, eating, drinking, playing” (PI § 25). In a way we could therefore call Wittgenstein’s position a form of naturalism. It is crucial to see, however, that this form of naturalism is radically different from reductionist naturalism that is widespread in contemporary philosophy of mind.21 Wittgenstein does not try to reduce the normative to the causal, nor does he think that a scientific theory could justify the rules that govern our practice and our language game. If the formation of concepts can be explained by facts of nature, should we not be interested, not in grammar, but rather in that in nature which is the basis of grammar? — Our interest certainly includes the correspondence between concepts and very general facts of nature. (Such facts as mostly do not strike us because of their generality.) But our interest does not fall back upon these possible causes of the formation of concepts; we are not doing natural science; nor yet natural history — since we can also invent fictitious natural history for our purposes. (PI II 230) his remark shows that although Wittgenstein conceives causes and norms as two aspects of one and the same reality, he is not interested in the question of whether or how theories that describe this reality at different levels, say physics and psychology, can be unified into a universal theory of everything, a theory, that is, that develops one complete and coherent picture of the world. 21. For a discussion of the differences between Quine’s naturalism and Wittgenstein’s position with regard to concepts, cf. e.g. Raatzsch 1995. For a comparison of Davidson’s and Wittgenstein’s conception of causes and norms, cf. Schroeder 2001. 221 Moreover, in his late philosophy he sheds an interesting light on the question of what place norms have in a world of causes. he urge to answer this question arises when we draw a distinction between a scientific description of the world and one that can account for the normative aspects that govern our mental and social life — a distinction, to put it in Sellarsian terms, between the scientific and the manifest image. Wittgenstein warns against the abstractions of the scientific image, insisting, as he does, that we find ourselves in a world and in a community that are regulated by reasons and causes. he scientific image abstracts from the level of reasons in order to develop a comprehensive picture of the causal regularities in this world, without which the sciences could not have made such impressive progress over the last centuries. Notwithstanding these achievements, however, we must not fail to see that the scientific image could be developed only on the basis of the manifest image, from which it abstracts. According to Sellars, the manifest image is the “framework in terms of which man came to be aware of himself as man-in-the-world” (Sellars 1963, 6). It is the result of a “refinement or sophistication of what might be called the ‘original’ image” (Sellars 1963, 7). he scientific image, on the other hand, is derived from scientific theories that postulate “imperceptible objects and events for the purpose of explaining correlations among perceptibles” (Sellars 1963, 19). Sellars clearly suggests that though the manifest image comes first in time, preference should be given to the scientific image. He does not think that we should completely eliminate the manifest image — he explicitly argues for a synoptic vision that should incorporate elements of both. Nonetheless, he develops an outlook according to which irreducible elements of the manifest image, “the conceptual framework of persons,” should be joined to the scientific image, thus granting dominance to the latter.22 he predominant positions in contemporary philosophy of mind take the Sellarsian distinction between manifest and scientific image as their starting point (even though most philosophers prefer not to use Sellars’ terminology) and share his view that we should give priority to the latter. While some reductionists would go along with Sellars and opt for a synoptic view, mostly in the hope to explain the level of norms with the 22. Interestingly enough, Sellars admits that we are not (yet) in a position to understand how such a unification can be achieved: “We can, of course, as matters now stand, realize this direct incorporation of the scientific image into our way of life only in imagination. But to do so is, if only in imagination, to transcend the dualism of the manifest and the scientific images of man-in-the-world” (Sellars 1963, 40). 222 means provided by the language of science, eliminativists, convinced by the impossibility of this strategy, opt for eliminating the manifest image altogether. he main motivation for this strategy lies in the undeniable advantages of the abstraction from the framework of persons and the level of norms in the development of the sciences. he problem arises, in my view, only when what has started as a working assumption for scientific theories turns into a full fledged picture of the world. What works for science might not work for gaining an understanding of persons and their position in this world. he scientific image cuts ourselves out of the picture, thus overlooking that it is us who develop this picture in the first place. When it comes to understanding persons, we have to take a step back and take all relevant phenomena into account. Wittgenstein’s method to examine what lies there open before our eyes in detailed grammatical investigations can offer an interesting alternative to this scientistic view. Rather than focusing on the question of whether and how the framework of persons can be reconciled with the scientific image, it requires us to acknowledge that we find ourselves in a world of things and persons; a world that contains causal and rational relations. “Our mistake is to look for an explanation where we ought to look at what happens as a ‘proto-phenomenon’. hat is, where we ought to say: this language-game is played” (PI § 654).23 he urge to do philosophy (and, in general, science) stems from our finding ourselves in this world and trying to gain orientation and to understand who we are. “A philosophical problem has the form: ‘I do not know my way about’” (PI § 123). he abstractions of science prove fruitful when we focus on specific, clearly defined phenomena. When it comes to develop a more comprehensive picture, though, this abstraction can prove too restrictive. Our (and Wittgenstein’s) restlessness stems from the temptation to universalize scientific theories and approaches that have proven locally successful into a universal theory of everything — a temptation that makes us overlook the limitations of the respective theories. he fact that Wittgenstein does not provide an answer to the question of how we can reconcile the scientific with the manifest image should not make us believe that his remarks are irrelevant to this topic. His aim is to make us shift our perspective. He reminds us that in order to achieve a deeper understanding of ourselves we must first acknowledge that we live 23. I have slightly changed Anscombe’s translation, who has the last sentence in the past tense (“where we ought to have said”); the original German sentence is formulated in the present tense. 223 in a world and in a community that are regulated by causes and norms. his world lies open before our eyes, and the task is not to grasp it with one abstract theory, but rather to describe it in detailed analyses and, while doing so, continually to reflect this very process. In this way we can hope to get a fuller grasp of what it means to speak a language, to be part of a community and engage in rule guided practices, or to have conceptual consciousnesses, in short, what it means to be human.24 REFERENCES Burri, Alex 1995: “Kritische Bemerkungen zur hese der Sprachautonomie in Wittgensteins Grammatik”, in: Logos N.F. 2, 207–35. 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