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We have seen that the transcendental idealism of the Tractatus combines both a conceptual idealism and a conceptual realism in its metaphysics. It presents a conceptual idealism in that the world is limited by the conditions of representation. The world is all that is the case, and the possible facts correspond to that which can be pictured. But in order to discuss the transcendental conditions of representation and the world, Wittgenstein had to discuss those conditions themselves, such as the necessary existence o f objects, which could not be themselves subject to those conditions. In order to combine this realism with idealism, Wittgenstein made a distinction between that which can be said and that which makes itself manifest. For the most part the subject matter of Wittgenstein’s metaphysical statements is the latter, that which can only be shown. So these propositions themselves are nonsensical, since the subject

matter of any meaningful proposition can only be that which can be said. Their value, according to Wittgenstein, lies in their elucidatory power:

6.54 My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognises them as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps—to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.)

He must transcend these propositions, and then he wiU see the world aright.

Seeing the world aright, the reader is supposed to be cured of the temptation to utter nonsense. The final position we are left with is neither idealist nor realist, since neither of these positions can be meaningfully stated. The final meta- philosophical outcome is quietism: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.

We are still left, of course, with a feeling of discomfort: a feeling that a trick has been pulled. There is a contradiction, of which, I think, Wittgenstein was perfectly aware. To say that we have come up against something that cannot be said is to contradict oneself. Something that cannot be said? But have I just not said it, by referring to it as a ‘something? And there is no way to re-express the matter so that the ‘something’ drops out, and the contradiction with it^^. Sometimes this contradiction appears to be a tautology: W e cannot think what we cannot think’ (5.61). But the contradiction always remains, even in the final proposition of the Tractatus^ when Wittgenstein uses the phrase ‘Whereof we cannot speak’. So right to the end, even after Wittgenstein has ‘pulled up the

35 The final ‘proposition’ firom the Ogden translation. 36 At least, not on Wittgenstein’s theory o f meaning.

ladder,’ he leaves us with a contradiction. But I think it is a contradiction that bears reflection. For that very contradiction makes manifest the limits of what can be said.

C h a p t e r 3

CONCEPTUAL IDEALISM

Twentieth Century Idealism and the Possibility of Metaphysics

We are now in a position to describe and discuss the doctrine of ‘conceptual idealism’. In so doing I want to characterise a certain prevalent approach to philosophy as being roughly Kantian, or at any rate post-Kantian, in interesting respects. Not that every aspect of transcendental idealism has an echo in conceptual idealism, or vice versa. It is rather that the latter can be seen as an heir to Kant’s philosophy. More precisely, conceptual idealism is an heir to the question ‘How is metaphysics possible?’ and to the ‘Copemican revolution’ that formed the basis of Kant’s answer.

The assumption that Kant questions at the beginning of his critical philosophy is ‘that our knowledge must conform to the objects’. Since nothing, Kant claimed, had been achieved on this assumption, it is worthwhile pursuing the path that starts with its converse: that objects must conform to our knowledge^ Given the linguistic-analytic turn of the twentieth century, this starting point becomes: ‘things must conform to our concepts’. This is the central tenant of conceptual idealism.

We are in immediate danger of several misunderstandings. Most importantiy, the conceptual idealist shares Kant’s aversion to any form of eînpincal idealism, such as Berkeley’s immaterialism. Indeed, so averse are most conceptual idealists to any philosophy that implies that things are dependent on actually being perceived or thought about, that they eschew the label of ‘idealism’ completely. While this hides the debt that their philosophies owe to Kant, the move is understandable. Witness the difficulty that Kant himself had distinguishing his idealism from that of Berkeley’s. And since the demise of both German and British ‘Absolute Idealism’, the label has fallen on even harder times. Nevertheless, we will call those philosophies ‘idealist’ just in case the ‘fundamental idea of idealism’ (which we formulated in chapter one) can be discerned in them. A doctrine will be called idealist just in case it presupposes that reality is somehow constrained by (or corresponds with) our ability to conceive it. A doctrine will be awarded the title of ''conceptual idealism’ just in case it maintains that reality is somehow constrained by our publicly shared concepts. Different forms of this idealism can be differentiated by the sense they purport to give to the terms ‘reality’ and ‘concept’.

A second point to note about conceptual idealism is that it is not committed to the claim that objects are necessarily perceiv<^^/? as Kant’s idealism of time and space implies^. The claim is that things are necessarily conceivable, or better still, describable. The latter way of putting the matter has the advantage of making it clear that what is at stake here is not the ability of some individual at some point

in time to be able to conceive of a thing (a claim of a kind with empirical idealism). The claim is that things must necessarily fall under some possible concept. How the phrase ‘possible concept’ is cashed out will determine how credible a particular version of conceptual idealism is.