CAPÍTULO 2 DISEÑO DEL SISTEMA
2.3 REQUERIMIENTOS DEL SISTEMA
Before attempting to give a new interpretation of the Tractatus remarks on solipsism, it is important to draw some conclusions from our previous considerations. Firstly, the fact that Wittgenstein concludes his discussion of solipsism by saying that philosophy can (even ‘must’ -
NB 11.8.16) ‘talk about the self in a non-psychological way’ (TIP 5.641), suggests that his exploration of solipsism has yielded a substantial (i.e. not an ultimately empty) insight into this non-psychological view of the self. We must therefore try to uncover what view of the self he has in mind here, how solipsism reveals it, and which is the correct (i.e. non-psychological) way for philosophy to talk about it. Secondly, since Wittgenstein explicitly mentions ‘solipsism’ in his remarks, we must make sure that our account shows exactly how the insights uncovered by Wittgenstein may be drawn from the solipsist’s doctrine. Even if these insights do not coincide with what a solipsist might generally be taken to say, we must show that they are contained within and/or can be deduced from something that he can generally be taken to say.
This section will begin by examining what Wittgenstein might mean by the metaphysical, non- psychological self in TLP 5.641, and will then describe the kind of solipsistic argument that he may have had in mind when he wrote the Tractatus.
3.1
A non-psychological view of the subject
Our first task is therefore to clarify what Wittgenstein means by ‘the philosophical self. In order to do this, it is useful to return to the notion of the self ‘as it is conceived by the superficial psychology of the present day’ (TIP 5-5421), which is explicitly contrasted by Wittgenstein to that of the philosophical subject in TLP 5.641.
3.1.1 The third-personal self of psychology
Since Wittgenstein explicitly draws a contrast between the philosophical notion of the self and the psychological one in TLP 5.641, examining again the latter can help us gain an insight into the former. We already know, from Part VI, that the self ‘as it is conceived by the superficial psychology of the present day’ is a simple self. According to this superficial, psychological view:
A composite soul would no longer be a soul. (TLP 5.5421)
We also know that Wittgenstein rejects this notion of a simple self. Having established that Hacker’s interpretation misrepresents Wittgenstein, we concluded that Wittgenstein’s attack on the idea of a simple self is contained within TLP 5-541 - 5-5421, and ends with Wittgenstein’s all-out rejection of it (see Part VI). Wittgenstein discards all notions of a simple self, whether located in the world or belonging to its limits.
However, this doesn’t mean that, according to the Tractatus, psychology is left with no subject matter. Rather, Wittgenstein’s point is that the genuine subject matter of psychology cannot possibly be a simple self. Psychology, being a natural science {TLP 4.1121), can investigate only that which is factual. It therefore needs to present itself as exploring, not some supposedly simple self, but the composite, empirical minds which are located within the world, and which consist of facts (i.e. of empirical thoughts, of mental representations of the world). This composite mind is therefore ‘the self of psychology’, once psychology has rid itself of its mistaken, ‘superficial’ assumption about the simplicity of self.
The legitimate subject matter of psychology is the composite, empirical mind. We therefore need to ask ourselves what are the distinctive features of the psychological way of viewing the composite mind. What is distinctive about this way of talking about the self, which could be contrasted with
the philosophical way of talking about it?
The most salient feature of the psychological treatment of the mind is that operates within the third-personal perspective.’^ It is indeed from this third-personal point of view that psychology carries out its investigations: the task of the psychologist is to consider her or his subject matter from the outside, in the hope of providing an objective account. Hence, psychology presents and views the self as something which is thing-like, an object of experience and study (in the ordinary senses of ‘thing’ and ‘object’), which can be explored from the impersonal point of view. (Unless otherwise specified, I will, in what follows, be using the terms ‘thing’, ‘thing-like’ and ‘object’ in their ordinary, non-Tractarian senses. )
I am indebted to William Child for pointing out this connection between psychology and the third-personal point of view, and, more generally, for stressing the relevance of the contrast between the first-personal’ and the ‘third-personal’ perspectives in interpreting Wittgenstein’s remarks on solipsism. Although my interpretation of Wittgenstein’s discussion differs from his, the initial inspiration for it came from reading his article ‘Solipsism and First Person/Third Person Asymmetries’. See Child (1996).
Wittgenstein accepts psychology and its outlook on the self so long as psychology recognises that it is the composite mind, and not some supposedly simple self, which is its legitimate subject matter. Indeed, this third-personal view on the mind has applications which go beyond the discipline of psychology. After all, as TLP 5-542 - 5-5421 show, it is to such composite minds that we refer when we say things like ‘A believes/?’. The third-personal notion of the mind is part of our ordinary language, and has a clear use, not just for psychologists, but for the linguistic community at large.
We make use of this notion of the self whenever we speak of the mind from the third-personal point of view, whether we are referring to somebody else’s mind, or to our own mind regarded as an object of study. The latter takes place, for instance, in psychoanalysis, where patients are encouraged to consider their minds from the external, psychoanalytical, point of view: part of the aim of psychoanalysis is indeed to get the patients to view themselves from this external, objectifying perspective.
The reason why Wittgenstein wishes to speak of the self in a non-psychological way is not, therefore, that the third personal notion of psychology is useless, but that it fails to capture something which is of deep importance to us, and of great interest to philosophy. Indeed, if all that we had was this third-personal concept of the mind, sentences such as T believe p ' would have to be presented as being equivalent to: ‘A believes p and A is this mind’. In other words, if all that we had was the psychological approach, all apparently first-personal expressions would have to be translated into third-personal terms. According to Wittgenstein, this would be unacceptable, in that there is something fundamentally important which cannot be captured by such a third- personal viewpoint.
What the third-personal perspective fails to capture is that we are not just minds to be explored from the external point of view: we are not just objects of experience and awareness, but also
subjects. And this is something which could never be captured by an exclusively third-personal
approach to the mind. The third-personal, psychological view of the mind, although useful, is of no deep interest to philosophy:
Psychology is no more closely related to philosophy than any other natural science. (TIP 4.1121)
very mysterious to him (NB 5.8.16), will therefore have to be contrasted with the mind, viewed from the third-personal point of view, which is the legitimate subject matter of psychology.
It is useful to end this section by pointing out what this third-personal approach to the mind encompasses. For, as we said above, this approach doesn’t restrict itself to the domain of psychology. All of the following notions belong indeed to the third-personal viewpoint (this list is not meant to be exhaustive);
i The mind viewed as a composite cluster of thoughts. This is the legitimate subject matter of ordinary psychology. It is also that to which we sometimes refer when we say things like ‘A believes p\
ii The brain, regarded as a complex material object, which is the subject-matter of neurology.
iii The self conceived much more ordinarily as a person, in other words as a mind connected to a body via the will. We often refer to this too when we say things like‘A believes/)’.
3.1.2 A first-personal notion of the subject
It is therefore reasonable to suggest that the philosophical subject, which is to be contrasted with the self of psychology, is characterised by the fact that it is not thing-like. It is not an object (be it simple or complex in the Tractarian senses), but