Month: February 2021

Random thoughts on random topics

Martin Stokhof Various Tags: , ,
Lingyin temple, Hangzhou

Ineffability and judgment

Why would the ineffability of ethics preclude ethical judgments? Of course, if we construct ‘judgment’ as ‘meaningful proposition’ the answer is obvious, but we do not need to do that. Couldn’t a judgment take on a different form, say that of an action, or an attitude? Or do we lack objective criteria for two such judgments to be the same, i.e., wouldn’t we be able to decide whether we agreed on the ethical aspect of an action unless we were able to discuss it? But why would that be the case? (And why think that the ability to discuss does come with any guarantee?)

Although the mark of a happy life can not be expressed, it must be an intrinsic aspect of our actions, not something over and above them. And that suggests that it is accessible even though it is ineffable. In general the question whether we need a verbally explicit statement of ethical principles must be distinguished from the question whether there can be such a statement. For if the answer to the first is negative, the answer to the second becomes immaterial from an ethical point of view. Whether we can do without verbalisations presumably depends on whether other means of conveying ethical principles are available. Would poetry, music, action itself, qualify?

Could we say that the ‘experiences of the second kind’ that Wittgenstein mentions in ‘A Lecture on Ethics’ (i.e., not experiences of facts in the world, but experiences that pertain to the world as such), although ineffable, do have an intersubjective potential? I.e., they point towards similar experiences other people may have had in virtue of which they are able to understand what Wittgenstein is aiming at? That would go beyond the mere recognition of other subjects as willing subjects, since it would actually differentiate between people, and could be the basis of moral conversation (instruction, etc.)

Martin Stokhof
from: EOL Discussion Board
date: spring 2004

Random thoughts on random topics

Martin Stokhof Various Tags:
Amsterdam

Tidbits

Ah, the eternal issue of footnotes. There are those who honestly feel that footnotes are a sign of sloppiness (in writing, and hence probably also in thinking): either what is stated in the footnote is important for understanding what is said in the text and then it should be part of the text; or it is not, and then it can be left out. Purists …

Others delight in the possibilities of adding ‘irrelevant’ details, side-remarks, hedges, that footnotes offer: entire underground battles are being fought there, scores are settled, new enemies are made. Here you can state an opinion without arguing for it, this is the place to display your knowledge and learning even if it has nothing to do with the topic. Exhibitionists …

Martin Stokhof
from: EOL Discussion Board
date: spring 2003

Random thoughts on random topics

Martin Stokhof Various Tags: , , ,
Sliema, Malta

Ineffability

There is an interesting parallel between Davidson’s arguments against the analysis of metaphor in terms of simile, and Wittgenstein’s way of arguing that religious expressions are not similes in ‘A Lecture on Ethics’. In both cases the point is that something ineffable is explained in terms of something that is expressible, or to put it differently, that something that does not have cognitive content is equated with something that has. Essentially, it is the distinction between showing and saying that is at stake in both cases.

Martin Stokhof
from: Interpretation
date: fall 2001

Random thoughts on random topics

Martin Stokhof Wittgenstein Tags:
Rotterdam

On the linguistic turn in Wittgenstein

On the linguistic turn. How should it be evaluated? On the one hand: the isomorphism of language and thought places the Tractatus squarely in the traditional, epistemologically inspired framework. (Cf., in connection with this, the first formulation of the aim of the book in the preface: ‘Das Buch will also dem Denken eine Grenze ziehen’.) On the other hand: the assignment to the principles of logic of the place that before that was reserved for the principles of thought (and perception) does constitute a fundamental step (one that is reflected in Wittgenstein’s characterisation of epistemology as ‘philosophy of psychology’ (4.1121)). For now the limits of thought are determined by something that is of a different nature than thought itself: logic. In the traditional framework there was the possibility of thought, including its limitations and fundamental principles, being its own subject matter. (A possibility left open by Kant, taken up with gusto by German idealists, to which Schopenhauer emphatically objected.) After the linguistic turn, thought appears to be forced into a more passive role. (Is it to emphasise this that the Tractatus assigns logical principles an ontological status?)

The resulting picture is mixed. What we see is a transition that potentially represent a fundamental break with the past, but the consequences of which are by and large not worked out. Locating the limits of thought outside thought itself opens up a space of possibilities. But bu opting for logic as the source not much of that space is actually explored, let alone exploited. For both, logic and thought, are essentially discursive (which is why it is possible for the Tractatus to regard them as isomorphic). It is only from the angle of language that it becomes visible what the limitation is: only the discursive (‘logical’) part of language is within the scope of the analysis that the Tractatus offers.

In the years following the Tractatus we see a shift from logic to grammar (in Wittgenstein’s sense of the word), and concommittant with that attention for other functions of language than just the discursive one. One consequence of that shift is a relaxation of the concept of ‘limits of thought’: there are as many ways of thinking as there are different, autonomous languages games. Even stronger: the central role itself of thought (in both a positive and a negative sense) is being questioned.

It is only at this point that the consequences of the linguistic turn come into their own: the diversity and multiplicity of language, of grammar, shows that there cannot be such a thing as a determination of ‘the’ limits of thought ‘as such’, that thought itself is not a monolithic whole but rather consists of various practices, with various links between them and embedded in our ways of acting. In this sense, one can say that it is only in his later work that Wittgenstein fully and completely ‘takes the linguistic turn’, and that, by doing so, he finally brings about the radical break with the old ‘philosophy of consciousness’ that he was after.

Martin Stokhof
from: Aantekeningen/Notes
date: 09/03/1992