Rupert Read

Nothing is shown:A 'Resolute' Response to Mounce, Emiliani, Koethe and Vilhauer

H. O. Mounce published in this journal two years ago now a Critical Notice of the The New Wittgenstein, an anthology (edited by Alice Crary and Rupert Read) which is evenly divided between work on Wittgenstein’s early and later writings. The bulk of Mounce’s article was devoted to those contributions primarily concerned with the Tractatus. There is a straightforward sense in which this selective focus is natural. The pertinent contributions – most conspicuously those by Cora Diamond and James Conant – describe a strikingly unorthodox interpretation of Wittgenstein’s early book on which it is depicted as having an anti-metaphysical aim. Mounce takes an interest in this interpretation because he believes that, in characterizing the Tractatus in anti-metaphysical terms, it misrepresents the central Tractarian doctrine of ‘saying and showing’ – a doctrine which he understands in terms of the idea that “metaphysical truths, though they cannot be stated, may nevertheless be shown” (186). Mounce argues that Diamond and Conant et al. fail to treat this doctrine as “one that Wittgenstein himself advances,” and he claims that they therefore make Wittgenstein’s thought “less original than one might otherwise suppose” (186) by implying that it is “indistinguishable from positivism” in the sense of “not even attempt[ing] to provide positive knowledge [and] confin[ing] itself to removing the confu-

An Elucidatory Interpretation of Wittgenstein's Tractatus: A Critique of Daniel D. Hutto's and Marie McGinn's Reading of Tractatus 6.54

Abstract Much has been written on the relative merits of different readings of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico‐Philosophicus. The recent renewal of the debate has almost exclusively been concerned with variants of the ineffabilist (metaphysical) reading of TL‐P – notable such readings have been advanced by Elizabeth Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and H. O. Mounce – and the recently advanced variants of therapeutic (resolute) readings – notable advocates of which are James Conant, Cora Diamond, Juliet Floyd and Michael Kremer. During this debate, there have been a number of writers who have tried to develop a third way, incorporating what they see as insights and avoiding what they see as flaws in both the ineffabilist and resolute readings. The most prominent advocates of these elucidatory readings of TL‐P are Dan Hutto (2003) and Marie McGinn (1999). In this paper we subject Hutto’s and McGinn’s readings of TL‐P to critical scrutiny. We find that in seeking to occupy the middle ground they ultimately find themselves committed to (and in the process commit Wittgenstein to) the very ineffabilism they (and Wittgenstein) are seeking to overcome.

De-mystifying tacit knowing and clues: a comment on Henry et al.

Our first response to this interesting paper by Henry et al. [1] would be to refer them back to Loughlin’s very clear and constructive contribution to the discussion [2]. There Loughlin expressed sympathy with the basic thrust of Stephen Henry’s original paper on Tacit Knowing [3], while raising some basic and fundamental objections to the way that paper occasionally lapsed into a sort of semi-mysticism. We join Loughlin in sharing those sympathies and misgivings. The notion of tacit knowledge can be used in two ways: • One way serves to highlight the way in which oftenunacknowledged occasionand context-specific non-generalizable particulars along with background and framing factors play an epistemologically significant role (the significance of which is downplayed or dismissed by those in the grip of a positivist or quasi-positivist epistemology). This way of thinking about what is called ‘tacit knowledge’ ties it back into taking seriously human embodiment (and not abstracting away from the body into ‘culturalist’ fantasies nor into an excessive emphasis on the mind). • The other way the notion of tacit knowledge is sometimes invoked is by way of gesturing at the putatively ineffable, and thus can seem reminiscent of Donald Rumsfeld’s ‘known knowns . . . known unknowns . . . and unknown unknowns’ speech. On this model, tacit knowledge is the unmentioned fourth possibility implicit in Rumsfeld’s typology: that of unknown knowns. Things one allegedly knows without being aware that one knows them. The central paradox or irony of this version of tacit knowledge is, ironically, that it (tacitly) figures tacit knowledge as exactly the same as ordinary knowledge except that it is tacit. (In this way, it is reminiscent of problematic models of ‘the unconscious’ which simply assume the unconscious to be a kind of unconscious conscious.) Tacit knowledge is in effect then said to be exactly the same in every way as standard cases of knowledge – except that it is ineffable, or inaccessible, tacit. Therefore, this second – unfortunately, very widespread, virtually standard – way of employing the notion of tacit knowledge is to be treated with suspicion. The reason being that it trades in a sort of mysticism, whereby we can gesture at something, claim to know of it and demand that it be acknowledged by our interlocutors as just as good as all the other knowledge that they already acknowledge, while at the same time claiming it to be inarticulable and constitutively unable to take its place alongside the standardly cited evidential data. Unfortunately, rather than acknowledge Loughlin, the authors of the article under review here seem to have ignored his commentary and proceeded to build on Henry’s original paper without taking heed of these issues. Indeed, we find that there is now further reason for concern, over and above that identified by Loughlin. So, to recap: towards the end of his short commentary, Loughlin furnished us with the following illustrative example: Consider the statement ‘My mother is unhappy today’. ‘I might come to believe this statement true on the basis of certain ‘evidence’: her facial expressions, the tone of her voice, her mannerisms as she goes about certain mundane tasks. The fact that someone who does not know her so well might encounter the same behaviour but fail to come to the same conclusion shows that the evidence for the claim does not logically entail the conclusion. If that person sees no reason to believe that my mother is unhappy he is not guilty of a formal contradiction, but he is wrong, all the same [2]’. Loughlin and the other person, who we will call Smith, observe the same scene, though Smith resists accepting Loughlin’s conclusion that his mother is unhappy today. We can say that what is going on here is that Loughlin has access to tacit knowledge that Smith doesn’t. Do we rest comfortable with that conclusion? We would suggest not. We propose that the difference between Loughlin and Smith, hereabouts, can be described as owing to a difference of sensitivity to the non-generalizable particulars of the scene (particulars which might be extremely difficult for anyone who is not Loughlin’s mother’s son to be capable of attending to or be aware of) and those factors that frame and serve as a backdrop to the scene. Such things as Loughlin’s decades-worth of experience regarding his mother’s character traits, the specifics of her emotional manifestations, how she usually goes about certain mundane tasks, what is a look of trust, what a look of defiance, and so on. Loughlin’s experience of and relative intimacy with his mother afford him a greater sensitivity to the non-generalizable particulars of the scene, the correct framing of the scene and the backdrop against which it is best situated. None of this is claimed to be ineffable, nor even logically restricted to Loughlin. It is simply

Memento : A Philosophical Investigation

This paper offers a reading of Memento as a therapeutic dialogue, one purpose of which is to loosen the grip of both dualism (the ‘Cartesian’1 picture of mind) and behaviourism. We do this by illuminating aspects of the film with a reading of the opening of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (hereafter, PI).2

Against ‘Time–Slices’

The concept of ‘time–slice’ turns out to be at best philosophically inconsequential, I argue. Influential philosophies of time as apparently diverse as those of Dummett, Lewis and Bergson, thus must come to grief. The very idea of ‘time–slice’ upon which they rest – the very idea of spatialising time, and of rendering the resulting ‘slices’ of potentially infinitely small measure – turns out on closer acquaintance not to amount to anything consequential that has yet been made sense of. Time is, rather, a ubiquitous lived ‘tool’ for the organisation and co–ordination of human activities, a tool so completely involved in those activities that Anti–Realism about it is as unstateable as Realism about it is unnecessary.

Thomas Kuhn's Misunderstood Relation to Kripke-Putnam Essentialism

Kuhns ‘taxonomic conception’ of natural kinds enables him to defend and re-specify the notion of incommensurability against the idea that it is reference, not meaning/use, that is overwhelmingly important. Kuhns ghost still lacks any reason to believe that referentialist essentialism undercuts his central arguments in SSR – and indeed, any reason to believe that such essentialism is even coherent, considered as a doctrine about anything remotely resembling our actual science. The actual relation of Kuhn to Kripke-Putnam essentialism, is as follows: Kuhn decisively undermines it – drawing upon the inadequacies of such essentialism when faced with the failure of attempts to instantiate in history or contemporaneously its ‘thought-experiment’ – and leaves the field open instead for his own more ‘realistic’, deflationary way of thinking about the operation of ‘natural kinds’ in science.

On preparing for the great gift of community that climate disasters can give us

ABSTRACTThere is a widespread (if rarely voiced) assumption, among those who dare to understand the future which climate chaos is likely to yield, that civility will give way and a Hobbesian war of all against all will be unleashed. Thankfully, this assumption is highly questionable. The field of ‘Disaster Studies’, as shown in Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell, makes clear that it is at least as likely that, tested in the crucible of back-to-back disasters, humanity will rise to the challenge, and we will find ourselves manifesting a truer humanity than we currently think ourselves to have. Thus the post-sustainability world will offer us a tremendous gift amidst the carnage. But how well we realise this gift depends on our preparing the way for it. In order to prepare, the fantasy of sustainable development needs to be jettisoned, along with the bargain-making mentality underpinning it. Instead, the inter-personal virtues of generosity, fraternity and care-taking need fostering. One role a philo...

The difference principle is not action-guiding

Utilitarianism would allow any degree of inequality whatsoever productive of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. But it does not guide political action, because determining what level of inequality would produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number is opaque due to well-known psychological coordination problems. Does Rawlsian liberalism, as is generally assumed, have some superiority to Utilitarianism in this regard? This paper argues not; for Rawls’s ‘difference principle’ would allow any degree of inequality whatsoever that best raises up the worst off, and similar psychological coordination problems apply. It concludes that Rawlsian liberalism, designed to solve the problem that Utilitarianism will not give us stable rules and will counsel their violation, and giving us in the process a contract and rights within a semi-consequentialist framework, repeats (in the difference principle) that very problem of Utilitarianism. It fails substantively to guide the level of inequalities permitted in such a framework.

Wittgenstein and the Illusion of ‘Progress’: On Real Politics and Real Philosophy in a World of Technocracy

‘You can’t stop progress’, we are endlessly told. But what is meant by “progress”? What is “progress” toward ? We are rarely told. Human flourishing? And a culture? That would be a good start – but rarely seems a criterion for ‘progress’. (In fact, survival would be a good start…) Rather, ‘progress’ is simply a process, that we are not allowed, apparently, to stop. Or rather: it would be futile to seek to stop it. So that we are seemingly-deliberately demoralised into giving up even trying. Questioning the myth of ‘progress’, and seeking to substitute for it the idea of real progress – progress which is actually assessed according to some independent not-purely-procedural criteria – is a vital thing to do, at this point in history. Literally: life, or at least civilisation, and thus culture, may depend on it. Once we overcome the myth of ‘progress’, we can clear the ground for a real politics that would jettison the absurd hubris of liberalism and of most ‘Leftism’. And would jettison the extreme Prometheanism and lack of precaution endemic to our current pseudo-democratic technocracy. The challenge is to do so in a way that does not fall into complete pessimism or into an endorsement of the untenable and unsavoury features of conservatism. The challenge, in other words, is to generate an ideology or philosophy for our time, that might yet save us, and ensure that we are worth saving. This paper is then a kind of reading of Wittgenstein’s crucial aphorism on this topic: ‘Our civilization is characterized by the word progress . Progress is its form rather than making progress being one of its features.’

Reframing Health Care: Philosophy for Medicine and Human Flourishing

An important insight of Bill Fulford’s work is that there is no such thing as “value-free” diagnosis. To characterise a person as having a particular illness is to make a value-laden claim, whether or not people reflect on what the values are that underlie the diagnosis. We agree with him on this point, but want to ground a view about the role of value-judgments in diagnosis in a broader conceptual framework—one which argues that there is no such thing as an approach to health care (including the science of medicine) that is “philosophy-free”. We explain and justify this claim before bringing out its significance to Fulford’s VBP project and his own underlying assumptions about the relationship between value, philosophy, science and practice. Rather than ‘complement’ EBM with VBP, EBM should, we argue, be sublated. VBP should be dropped, and EBM could morph then into FOM: Flourishing-Oriented Medicine, our own proposed answer. No longer positivistic and scientistic, and more honestly ethical and political. With deliberative fora that, far from being mere tick-box exercises or amalgamations of individuals’ preferences, are actually likely to produce the best and most robust decisions. Decisions that are likelier to be compatible with both medical science and human flourishing.