John V. Canfield

The living language: Wittgenstein and the empirical study of communication

Abstract This paper develops a proposal for an anthropological study of communication, one based on a certain reading of Wittgenstein. The proposal supplements work in various related areas of language inquiry and provides an orientation for explorations of language in non-human primates. Its basic conception is that of a language-game: a patterned form of human interaction—a custom—in which words or other symbol-tokens play a role. The aim of the study is a genealogy of language-games, tracing adult uses of words back to their roots in childhood. Using a pilot diary study as a source of illustrative material, I present details of two early language-games, and survey six others. It is suggested that a number of early language-games are found in every human culture. Finally, I consider consequences of the Wittgensteinian model for the question of the origin of language. (Ethnography of speech, language socialization, human ethology, primatology, language acquistion, Wittgenstein.) What we are supplying are really remarks on the natural history of human beings; we are not contributing curiosities however, but observations which no one has doubted, but which have escaped remark only because they are always before our eyes. (Wittgenstein)

Wittgenstein and Zen

Wittgensteins later philosophy and the doctrines of Mahayana Buddhism integral to Zen coincide in a fundamental aspect: for Wittgenstein language has, one might say, a mystical base; and this base is exactly the Buddhist ideal of acting with a mind empty of thought. My aim is to establish and explore this phenomenon. The result should be both a deeper understanding of Wittgenstein and the removal of a philosophical objection to Zen that has troubled some people.

Private Language: the Diary Case

The diary passage at Philosophical Investigations §258 remains tantalisingly unclear, for all the effort put into elucidating it, and despite the air of certainty with which it is sometimes expounded. There Wittgenstein’s alter ego attempts to hypothesise a ‘private language’. A diarist gives the sign ‘S’ a special sort of ostensive definition; concentrating his attention on the mental phenomenon he intends to record, he impresses on himself a connection between sign and referent. In the famous final sentences of §258 (m through p) Wittgenstein replies:

The Self and the Emotions

There is no unowned fear, happiness, or grief — these and their brethren always belong to someone. Apparently, then, to get clear on the meaning of first-person emotion utterances like ‘I am afraid’ or ‘I am angry,’ we must consider both components; on one hand the fear, anger, and so on, and on the other the I that is afraid, or angry, or the like. In addition it seems plausible that light cast on either of the two — self or emotion — will provide a better understanding of the other. Thus the question, ‘So what do we learn about the emotions when we settle on a viable account of the I that has them?’ And conversely, what do we learn about the self given a correct interpretation of the emotions. This chapter is an attempt to answer those questions. Insight into what the I is allows us to see aspects of the emotions we might otherwise miss. What surprised me was the reverse: clarity about the emotions leads to a better grasp of the I.

Ethics Post-Zen

In North America the transplanted Ch’an or Zen sect of Buddhism flourished largely — but certainly not wholly — under the influence of Japanese antecedents. The inevitable conflict between those and North American customs and attitudes placed a strain on Zen’s Western practitioners. For example the Samurai boot-camp aura of the awesome Zen sesshin, or silent retreat, alienated some North Americans used to easier-going ways. Again, an ‘I’m from Missouri’ attitude here threatened certain doctrinaire, traditional Zen beliefs.

Calculations, Reasons and Causes

Suppose we are allowed to put a question to Botvinnik at the point in his win against Capablanca in 1938 when he sacrificed his bishop by placing it on the same diagnoal as Capablanca’s queen. The question ‘Why did you make that move?’ could evoke, in answer, a detailing of the ensuing combination, some eleven moves deep. It is plausible to think that Botivinnik’s envisaging of this combination, his belief that further play must follow these lines, was part of the cause of his moving as he did. Here one’s reason is what one had in mind; and one’s beliefs about the results of one’s actions appear to be part of the causal antecedents of those actions.

‘I Know that I am in Pain’ is Senseless

Professor Chisholm, in one of my many instructive encounters with him as a graduate student at Brown, deflated my enthusiasm for Quine’s Two Dogmas argument by raising the question, essentially, of who says one cannot legitimately use such and such a set of concepts as a basis for an account of analyticity. What is and is not obscure is not lightly to be legislated; nor is it a matter to be settled by philosophical fashion. In doing an article for this commemorative volume, the writer naturally takes on as superego a Galtonian composite of Professor Chisholm, his colleagues from the old days at Brown, and his many talented students. This figure, I see, looks askance at the use made herein of such notions as ‘use’, ‘language game’, ‘point’, ‘function’, ‘senseless’ and ‘nonsense’. (And of course it’s far from the case that only members of ‘Rod’s bunch’ would view the use of such notions with a degree of alarm that would require, at least, scare quotes.) I can only answer that these notions are taught in the Philosophical Investigations by a series of examples, and are thereby raised up from mere jargon. And I appeal to what I learned as a graduate student, that one should not take lightly judgments of obscurity: Who’s to say? It’s a key problem in philosophy to know what is and what is not intelligible. At the same time, it will escape no one that the influence of Professor Chisholm runs deep through the pages of this article; personally I am sure that this influence is all to the good, and for its workings here, as elsewhere, I am deeply grateful.