Abstract
This paper corrects a mistake in John McDowell’s influential reading of Wittgenstein’s attack on the idea of private sensations. McDowell rightly identifies a primary target of Wittgenstein’s attack to be the Myth of the Given. But he also suggests that Wittgenstein, in the ferocity of his battles with this myth, sometimes goes into overkill, which manifests itself in seemingly behavioristic denials about sensations. But this criticism of Wittgenstein is a mistake. The mistake is made over two important but notoriously difficult sections in the so-called Private Language Argument, namely §304 and §293 of the Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein, maximally charitably read, commits no overkill in these two sections. This correction strengthens McDowell’s overall reading, but it is only a first step toward fully bringing out the deep but obscurely expressed insights in §304 and §293, the full treatment of which must await another occasion.
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Notes
I shall use Anscombe’s translation of the PI, which I believe has not been generally superseded by the recent revised translation by Hacker and Schulte. Here and there I modify Anscombe’s translation, always with notice when the modification is significant. I refer to individual paragraphs within numbered sections of the PI in the style of ‘§304a’. The label “the Private Language Argument” is in various ways misleading, but it is still serviceable if used with care.
This paper is collected in his Mind, Value, and Reality, pp. 279–296.
For Sellars’s label “the Myth of the Given”, see his classic Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind.
The “can” in this context is a logical “can”. This becomes explicit in §398, where Wittgenstein compresses the thrust of the Private Language Argument into a single sentence: “if as a matter of logic you exclude other people’s having something, it loses even its sense to say that you have it”. (I have restored the word “even [auch]”, which is unfortunately missing in all existing English translations.)
I have also (1) changed Anscombe’s “pain-behavior accompanied by pain” into “pain-behavior with pain”, (2) added an emphasis on the second occurrence of “something”, and (3) restored Wittgenstein’s emphasis on “one” in “always functions in one way”. The word “have” is still there in the revised translation by Hacker and Schulte.
David Finkelstein (2003, pp. 139–140) suggests that what Wittgenstein is really doing when making the paradoxical statement is implicitly rejecting the interlocutor’s phrase “the sensation itself” as a piece of disguised nonsense, rather than straightforwardly answering that the sensation itself is not a nothing. I think this is false subtlety. In Finkelstein it has multiple sources, but Anscombe’s “have” seems to be one.
Marie McGinn in effect does this when she says (1997, pp. 173–174): “Wittgenstein’s response [i.e. his paradoxical statement] is not to deny the existence of pain, but to reject ‘the grammar which tries to force itself on us here’ (PI, §304). For ‘the paradox disappears only if [...]’ (PI, §304).” That McGinn in effect locates the rejected bit of grammar in §304b is shown by her use of the word “For”.
This excludes three occurrences of “Etwas” at the beginning of sentences, where its use is clearly not special (§§15b, 57, and 92a). I have followed Anscombe in translating the specially used “Etwas” with an italicized “something”. She herself is not consistent in this.
The strength of these two textual connections, I think, explains why most interpreters, despite Anscombe’s extra “have” in §304, get the reference from §304 to §293 right, at least in the sense of frequently discussing the two sections together, if not explicitly securing the reference. A striking exception is Finkelstein, whose quite detailed discussion of §304 (2003, pp. 136–141) contains no reference to §293 at all.
Such a false parallel is drawn by Hans Sluga. He says (1996, p. 328) that the philosophical I in the Tractatus is not a something (in the world), but not a nothing either. There is surely a sense in which this is a good point. But Sluga takes this point to be “analogous” or “parallel” to the point of the paradox of §304. But given how ordinary sensations are and how extraordinary the philosophical I in the Tractatus is, the parallel is at most merely verbal.
Contrast McDowell’s diagnosis with the less charitable one by Peter Strawson in his early review of the PI. Strawson also accuses Wittgenstein of denying the relevant obvious facts, but he blames it on Wittgenstein’s behaviorism (on his “verificationist horror of a claim that cannot be checked”), which Strawson takes to be a “cardinal” element in the PI (Strawson 1954, see especially pp. 84–98).
See pp. 283–284 for the first two paragraphs and p. 286 for the third.
Some readers reject the idea that the ‘object and designation’ model is applicable to sensations. This is not the place to mount a full defense. But we can already see good support for this idea when we realize that the ‘object and designation’ model is essentially just the ‘object and concept’ structure. This structure is the backbone of our language and has extremely wide application, certainly covering inner objects such as sensations. This point is more obvious in German, in which the word corresponding to ‘object’, Gegenstand, has an extremely wide sense, covering anything that can be talked about (which certainly includes sensations).
Such phrases as “a something about which nothing could be said” or “a bare this” may provoke the following reaction: to speak of a something about which nothing could be said is already to say something about it, namely that nothing could be said of it; similarly, to speak of a bare (indescribable) this is already to describe it, namely that it is bare (indescribable) or “has the property of” being bare or being indescribable. This reaction is sometimes nothing more than an instance of verbal flippancy. But sometimes it is based on a deep and genuine feeling for the unsayable, for pure negativity. This feeling has its place in certain highly special contexts (e.g. God, Chaos, or Logic as pure negativity) and is of course not alien to Wittgenstein. But just because it is very special, it is not appropriate for such an utterly ordinary thing as a sensation.
Strictly, McDowell says it is the context “not even ... a something” that indicates that. His ellipsis replaces Wittgenstein’s “as”, which I have simply deleted in (B). But these differences do not matter: the “as” is already contained in the structure of “a something”, that is, in the structure of a particular or object under a concept or designation or classification.
A particularly clear example of this style is the word “here” in §374, first sentence: “The great difficulty here is not to represent the matter as if there were something one couldn’t do.” But where (and couldn’t do what)? One searches in vain in the preceding sections. What Wittgenstein means by “here” becomes clear only in the next sentence: “As if there really were an object, from which I derive its description, but I were unable to show it to anyone.” It is this sentence (which contains a specification of a private object) that shows, retrospectively, what “here” means, namely: “where the temptation to postulate private objects is particularly strong”. (This sentence also supplies the answer to the question “Couldn’t do what?”, namely: to show the object to others.)
This style of slightly deferred explications goes back at least to the Tractatus. For example, in 5.5421[1] Wittgenstein speaks of “the superficial psychology of the present day”. This may leave the reader wondering what his intended target is (and send diligent readers into historical research). But actually Wittgenstein specifies his target in the next paragraph, 5.5421[2]. This is unfortunately lost in the English translations. Ogden and Ramsey translate 5.5421[2] into “A composite soul would not be a soul any longer”, while Pears and McGuinness use “Indeed a composite soul would no longer be a soul”. Both translations fail to capture the connecting word nämlich in the original German [“Eine zusammengesetze Seele wäre nämlich keine Seele mehr”], which word makes 5.5421[2] a slightly deferred explication of what Wittgenstein means by “the superficial psychology of the present day”. The “Indeed” by Pears and McGuiness is too inexplicit to register this connection. A proper rendering should replace it with “That is,” or “For”.
References
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Acknowledgments
I wish to thank John McDowell in particular for supportive discussions, and two anonymous referees for Synthese for helpful comments. I also wish to thank the Despoina-Stiftung for special support, and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (a Chinese funding agency) for financial support.
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Tang, H. “It is not a something, but not a nothing either!”—McDowell on Wittgenstein. Synthese 191, 557–567 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0291-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0291-3