3.- LOS AVANCES LOGRADOS SOBRE EL CONCIERTO DE 1981
6) En cambio, como señala Ignacio Zubiri, “en el caso del Cupo no ha habido
We‘ve seen in earlier sections that the standard conception of grammar takes the principle of autonomy to play an important role in Wittgenstein‘s later conception of grammar. This principle is intimately associated with what Hacker calls ‗the independence requirement‘ according to which questions of sense are antecedent to, and independent of, questions of truth. He takes it that ―Wittgenstein embraced this principle in his earlier writings and adhered to it... through-out his life‖ (Hacker 1972, 161). In a more general sense, this means that language, as Hertzberg puts it, ―is impervious to any contingencies‖ (forthcoming, p. 354).
In contrast to Hacker‘s focus on the autonomy of grammar where ―the rule and nothing but the rule determines what is correct‖ (B&H 1985, 172), the anthropological conception emphasises the ways in which our language, our concepts and what we say, are fundamentally dependent on facts about us as practical thinkers and judgers, our life with others and the world we live in. The ultimate appeal for later Wittgenstein is not to rules but to forms of life. Neither ―the grasping of universals or the books of rules‖ can ensure that we will use words correctly in different contexts, but the fact that we normally do use them consistently is a matter of our shared human forms of life (Cavell 2002, 52; 1979, 29-30). The idea that human beings agree not merely about definitions and rules, but also in the form of life and in judgements they make (PI §§241, 242), is, on this conception, one of the Investigations‘ central insights. The notion of combinatorial grammar that a priori decides what counts as a proposition with sense, as well as correctness (truth)-conditions, is taken to belong to the old picture where ―language must operate no matter how the world is, in a vacuum of fact‖ (Goldfarb 1997, 85).
Thinking of grammar and language as ―presuppositionless‖ (Goldfarb) and immune to contingencies is not, on the anthropological interpretation, something that Wittgenstein
46 subscribes to anymore in the Investigations. The anthropological interpretation is not committed to the view Hacker rejects – i.e. that grammar is justifiable by, or answerable to, the nature of things – but rather, the point is that grammar alone (understood as a set of rules for well-formed combinations) is here not thought to decide the bounds of sense, that is, what we will be ready to count as a proposition with sense. Here is how Hertzberg describes the contrast between Wittgenstein‘s early view of the independence of language from facts and his later critical response to this view:
On this view, if the character of our concepts were not such that their application in every possible case was unambiguously given, then the question of how they were to be applied, and whether they had any application at all in particular cases, would depend on something external to language, hence to that extent meaning would be an a posteriori matter. In the Philosophical Investigations, however, these are no longer seen to be two separate options. The application of what is said does not depend on the form of words itself, but is a matter of the part they play in a context of human interaction. (Hertzberg forthcoming, p. 355)
On Wittgenstein‘s mature view, in contrast to what the standard interpretation suggests, grammar understood as a set of general, combinatorial rules does not have the last word vis- à-vis the sense of what is said, because ―there must be agreement not only in definitions but also (queer as this may sound) in judgments‖ (PI 242). To be sure, Hacker does not discard the role of the agreement in judgement all together, but construes it as ―part of the framework within which a language-game is played‖ (B&H 1985, 243), rather than making it a constitutive factor in determining the sense of what is said.53 By introducing the idea of agreement in judgement, Wittgenstein, on the anthropological view, brings to the fore the role the human sensibility to particular contexts in which language is used plays in linguistic communication. Thus, grammar‘s proposals as to what makes sense and what does not can be significantly modified by what we can find or understand as sensible (or
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On Hacker‘s account the agreement in judgement collapses into the agreement in definitions in that agreeing about the methods of measurement (definitions) ipso facto represents ―an agreement over the method of application, hence an agreement in the practice of measuring‖ (B&H 1985, 250). But Wittgenstein's remark in PI §242 suggests that ―agreement in definitions‖ and ―agreement in judgement‖ are, after all, different things.
47 not) relative to a particular circumstance and occasion in which a sentence is uttered.54 Travis formulates this constraint on grammar‘s (arbitrary) proposals by what he dubs ―our parochial sensibilities‖ as follows:
―So there is, after all, one sort of criticism that can be made of grammar: what it presents as propositions are not things we are able to treat as propositions. A grammar can go wrong in that sense... Note that the crucial reference [in PI §520] to us. Who the ‗us‘ is may be somewhat negotiable. But something on the order of we humans; not, in any event, we thinkers... So the point needs to be about an entirely parochial form of thought. We are thinkers of a particular kind, equipped by our nature with certain sensitivities, equipped to treat the world, in thought and deed, in certain ways.‖ (Travis 2010, 203)
I mentioned earlier (1.2.2) that the notion that grammar is arbitrary also raises the issue of the extent to which Wittgenstein‘s later account of language is a conventionalist one. On the anthropological conception, the notions of conventionalism and naturalism are not in conflict when it comes to human beings and their life with language. Human conventions are not something we agree upon beforehand, but rather, the conventional character of human language comes from the fact that human users of language normally agree in forms of life and judgements (in the sense of being attuned). This notion of conventionality is, however, a way of characterising human nature itself. Cavell writes, ―[we] are thinking of convention not as the arrangements a particular culture has found convenient... but as those forms of life which are normal to any group of creatures we call human‖ (1979, 111). Similarly, the concept of normality is closely tied with the idea of naturalness and primitive reactions, but also with having to do something as ―we do it‖, hence, in accordance with certain conventionally developed techniques of counting, inferring, measuring, continuing a series etc. With regards to these elementary human abilities and practices, the conventional and the natural aspects of life are seen as inseparable. Investigations of grammar are thus closely related to investigations of the natural history of mankind, since determining what we mean or say in using language can‘t be disconnected from its application in our lives. Even so, a grammatical investigation as a sort of philosophical inquiry is not concerned with matters of fact. It does not collapse into a historical or anthropological study of actual
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48 human practices because it is concerned with possibilities and imaginary, invented histories and language-games, as well as it is with our actual practices.55
By highlighting the role of our agreement in judgement and not just in definitions, the anthropological reading brings to light that in Wittgenstein‘s later framework grammar‘s arbitrary proposals vis-à-vis sense (the representational content of our sentences) are constrained by our sensibilities to particular occasions. The standard reading downplays the contribution of our sensitivity to surroundings to determining what is said, which contribution resists the formulation in terms of occasion-invariant rules. Developing on this position, in chapters 4 and 5, I shall argue that Hacker‘s emphasis on the autonomy of grammar in Wittgenstein‘s later philosophy, and his claim that this challenges the metaphysical realism of the Tractatus, completely misunderstands both the early and the later work, and thus the relation between the two. I shall argue that the right place to focus on in understanding this contrast is on Wittgenstein‘s later criticism of the grammar‘s sense-determining role, namely, what grammar alone, as a set of combinatorial principles (combinatorial grammar), can and cannot achieve vis-a-vis the sense of what is said.
1.5 Summary
It was my main aim in this chapter to introduce three different treatments of the concepts of rules and grammar in Wittgenstein‘s later work. We can now summarise important contrasts between the standard, methodological, and anthropological interpretations of rules and grammar as follows.
On the standard view the grammar of our ordinary language consists of rules which function as standards of correctness or norms for correct application of words. The rules of grammar determine which combinatorial possibilities are licit, and which aren‘t; they, thus, distinguish meaningful from meaningless sentential constructions. But they also function as norms we follow when we speak meaningfully. Rules are inherently general and valid for the multiplicity of occasions. On this view, meaningful uses of language (understood both as combinatorial possibilities of words and particular instances of speech) are necessarily rule governed: there is no such thing as a meaningful use independently of rules. The claim that grammar is arbitrary i.e. not answerable to, or justifiable by, reality marks
55 ―What is of concern to philosophy… are not the facts of nature themselves, but the relation between them and language: the way in which language is dependent on them‖ (Hertzberg 1994, 93)
49 Wittgenstein‘s turn from the metaphysical realism of the Tractatus to his later philosophy. Understanding of grammar as a free-floating system of rules that govern meaningful speech is intimately connected with understanding of Wittgenstein‘s philosophical method as aimed at the clarification of confusions that arise due to violations of grammatical rules. The methodological conception of grammar and rules is formulated as a critique of the standard conception. On this view, the standard conception misses the real point of Wittgenstein‘s turn and thus ascribes to later Wittgenstein the dogmatic, essentialist view of language and methodology that characterised his earlier philosophy. This interpretation calls for a re-thinking of the status of Wittgenstein‘s notion of rule. Rather than understanding the notion of rule as normative and as a general standard of correctness that speakers actually follow, we should understand rules purely as instruments of clarification belonging to Wittgenstein‘s later methods. This notion has a status of an object of comparison with the actual language use and it shouldn‘t be taken as something that must be given in our linguistic practices that a philosopher gives an expression to. Only if we understand the notions of rules and grammar in this way could we avoid attributing to Wittgenstein philosophical theses.
Finally, the anthropological reading criticised the role of the notion of a rule as a principle that determines what counts as an instance of meaningful speech independently of a particular language-game or occasion. This view highlights that the central characteristic of the later Wittgenstein‘s concept of grammar (as a description of operating with words) consists in identifying the context of human activities as part and parcel of the investigation of what our words mean and what we mean by using them. Certain facts about human beings as those who speak and understand language, pragmatic or natural-historic elements, and other facts about circumstances in which language is used, ought to enter into the discussion about the semantics of our expressions.56 The idea of arbitrariness of grammar is an object of the later Wittgenstein‘s criticism rather than something he adheres to in the Investigations. Grammar‘s proposals concerning what is meaningful are significantly constrained by human agreement in judgement and form of life, and by the work of our parochial sensibilities that resist exhaustive formulation in rules.
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50 One of the key features of the standard view advocated by Peter Hacker is that no relevant distinction has been made between two dimensions of use; there is a single notion of use that covers both the logico-syntactical employment of expression and significant utterances of them on particular occasions. A corollary of this treatment is that both aspects are understood as apt to be accounted for in terms of ―inherently general‖ rules. Correspondingly, the standard interpretation adopts a single model of grammar conceived of as rules that equally govern combinatorial possibilities of words in meaningful sentences and instances of meaningful speech on different occasions. In contrast, the other two interpretations, in their own ways, emphasised the importance of distinguishing different notions and dimensions of grammar. Thus, they brought to view (i) the contrast between grammar of our actual linguistic transactions, or extant language games, and grammar that the philosopher constructs to describe our actual uses of language (by means of constructed games with strict rules); and (ii) the contrast between the logico-syntactic employment (which may be captured by the model of combinatorial grammar) and the use of expressions on particular occasions or in particular language-games (where general rules or definitions are not sufficient for determining the sense of what is said).
In the next two chapters it will become clearer that these distinctions between different notions and dimensions of grammar and use, which the standard view takes no notice of, are very important to the later Wittgenstein. They are particularly important for his conception of philosophical problems and the methods of their solution. They also reflect the contrast between Wittgenstein‘s early and later philosophy. To the extent that it glosses over these fundamental distinctions, the standard interpretation demonstrates a misunderstanding, not only of the concept of grammar, but of the relation between the early and later philosophy of Wittgenstein, of the source and nature of philosophical problems that preoccupy Wittgenstein in the Investigations, and of his way of responding to them. In chapter 2 I show how the standard and anthropological interpretations conceive of the distinction between ―surface grammar‖ and ―depth grammar‖ as Wittgenstein‘s own way of contrasting two dimensions of grammar and use. I shall argue that, in a failure to notice a fundamental contrast between two dimensions of use and grammar, the standard interpretation interprets Wittgenstein‘s notion of ―depth grammar‖ as a more refined variant of ―surface grammar‖, whilst the anthropological interpretation insists on there being a
51 substantial contrast between the two dimensions. The discussion of surface and depth grammar will also introduce important themes that concern Wittgenstein‘s later methodology of clarification of philosophical problems relating to language use.
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