Joseph Agassi

Comments on Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations should be respectful and not defensive: they should follow his own guidelines whenever possible, but critically, not in blind admiration. And they should include explicitly discussions of critics of his philosophy and their impact. Their natural starting point is the generally agreed on: the book says something new about rules. He first deemed the rules (of logic) meaningless, even though they are understood and should be obeyed; in his Philosophical Investigations he changed: he says there, following some rules is right, and this makes them (not meaningless, TLP, §85, but) empirical (PI, §84)!

The great change at the turn of the twentieth century, in philosophy in general and in logic in particular, was the transition from the view of logic as the logic of science – of proven informative truths – to the view of logic as the logic of formal languages – of correct speech, of following grammar. In artificial systems, the rules of grammar are worded in advance; proper formulas – strings of words – are well-formed (wff), and then they are true or false (Frege), within the language to which they belong (Tarski). For natural languages this holds only partially; they are given and their grammars are only partially given; and so is synonymy within them (Tarski; Quine). This was progress, as it led from the old concern with concepts to the new concern with statements and contexts. Yet the progress caused some regress: the traditional center of logic with inferences shifted to a concern with tautologies. This led analytic philosophy away from formal logic. It returned to logic, only partly under the influence of Wittgenstein, since his later philosophy was concerned with fragments of language and neither with language as such nor with its global problems, whereas the concern with logic is global by definition. Wittgenstein expressed concern for this – repeatedly and on diverse occasions.

The present global political situation is serious and desperately invites public awareness and concern. Global problems cannot be solved locally; they must be studied locally with an eye towards a mass-movement that would raise awareness of the severity of the problems as well as the absence of viable solutions. A comprehensive view should evolve through critical discussions regarding both problems and possible solutions. The movement must seek to create minimal scientific literacy. The movement must be educational and democratic; it must encourage individual autonomy. It must freely confess ignorance and slowly develop ideas in a combination of broad propaganda and proper research. Philosophy can contribute by developing a comprehensive view of the situation. Academic research should attend to practical problems. Ideally, the movement will offer grassroots education that will enable graduates to compel appropriate institutions to enact legislation directed toward the alleviation of global problems.

The “Vienna Circle” worded young Wittgenstein’s philosophy as the identification of language with the language of science. He had claimed to have solved the problem of induction. They had to respond to Popper’s new solution to it. They took his solution to be in the framework of Wittgenstein’s identification of language with the language of science, although Popper rejected it, as he followed the traditional view of the negation of a scientific theory as unscientific: this is a denial that science is closed under negation (as a language should be). Carnap and Hempel managed to ignore this fact. They then found it easy to prove Popper’s theory of science is inconsistent.

A good theory of rationality should accommodate debates over first principles, such as those of rationality. The modest challenge made in this article is that relativists try to explain the (intellectual) value of some debates about first principles (absolute presuppositions, basic assumptions, intellectual frameworks, intellectual commitments, and paradigms). Relativists claim to justify moving with relative ease from one framework to another, translating chunks of one into the other; this technique is essential for historians, anthropologists and others. Thus ideas concerning false prophecy are transferable to contemporary discussions. Ancient false prophets offered illusions of overcoming difficult problems cheaply; relativists do that too. The problem that relativism purports to solve cheaply is that of legitimizing pluralism. As the absolutist theory of truth is intuitively problematic, relativism seems intuitively more acceptable, but this intuitive advantage vanishes when it manifests as false prophecy.

Extensionalism makes it possible to study logic independently of any theory of meaning. Frege’s logic was not fully extensional, however: he developed a theory of meaning in order to have classes uniquely determined. That theory is also flexible enough to allow statements of identity to be at times analytic, at times not. He rejected the traditional empiricist epistemology as an obstacle since it is psychologistic – even though he could not replace it. (A few years after Frege died Popper proposed the first non-psychologistic theory of science.)

Self- Deception in General "A Liberal Decalogue" suggests (Russell, 1967, pp. 60-61) not to envy people who live in a fool's paradise: It is a place only for fools. This saying invites detailed commentary. A fool's paradise is not a place, but a state o f mind; it is a system of opinions, of assessments of situations, that calms one down, that reassures one into the opinion that all is well, even when all is far from well. Fools may be ignorant of the severity of their situations, perhaps because being well informed tends to get them into a panic. This happens regularly, and there is little that can be done about it, except that the wise would still prefer to be well informed so as to try to cope with the panic more constructively. They would not easily fa ll for the reassuring hypothesis, preferring to examine any reasonable alternative hypothesis about any risk that might invite action - - so that if the hypothesis is corroborated they can try to mobilize some appropriate action.

The hermeneutic literature in Wittgenstein will benefit from following the rules of hermeneutics more closely. This will suit the view of him as a moralist. And then, although he thought he was great and would have been disappointed to learn that he was not, if this option is to be overruled, this should not be taken as self-understood. Even though commentators take for granted that his influence was beneficial, they have to discuss it, and to be ready to consider seriously some criticism of his views and of his lifework. On the whole, as far as the concern is with the verdict on Wittgenstein, at present the jury is still out.

Summary and conclusions As a new field, cognitivism began with the total rejection of the old, traditional views of language acquisition and of learning -- individual and collective alike. Chomsky was one of the pioneers in this respect, yet he clouds issues by excessive claim s for his originality and by not allowing the beginner in the art of the acquisition of language the use of learning by making hypotheses and testing them, though he acknowledges that researchers, himself included, do use this method.