Two Contemporary Wittgensteinians Fight Against Scientism in Philosophy

 

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The British philosophers P.M.S. Hacker (Peter Hacker) and Paul Horwich speak out against scientism in contemporary analytic philosophy.

[See my previous essay, ‘Two Worshippers of Wittgenstein: Paul Horwich and Peter Hacker’.]

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“[Scientism is] an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation (as in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities). [] [S]ome scholars, as well as political and religious leaders, have also adopted it as a pejorative term [].”

— See source here.

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Dating back to the late 19th century, many philosophers, religious commentators and others have stated that bad philosophy “mimics science”. More relevantly to the theme of this essay, this has also been said specifically about analytic philosophy. [See here and here.]

One account of philosophical scientism I came across (which mentions Paul Horwich, who’ll be discussed in a moment) just seems like fantasy to me. Here is that account:

“It is this scientistic nature that in Horwich’s reading of Wittgenstein is based on the illusion that the philosopher, just like the scientist in the empirical sciences, can make fundamental discoveries if only he uses the same kind of methods the scientist applies to analyze his a posteriori data.”

The fantasy here isn’t that of philosophers attempting to mimic science. The fantasy is believing that all?/most?/many? philosophers have ever done such a thing. More particularly, the fantasy is believing that analytic philosophers particularly have attempted to make “fundamental discoveries” by “us[ing] the same kind of methods the scientist applies to analyze his a posteriori data”.

It was Ludwig Wittgenstein particularly who started this (as it were) anti-scientism war — at least against the philosophers he had in mind at the time. [Mainly the logical positivists. See here too.]

The British philosopher Paul Horwich continues this (Wittgensteinian) anti-scientism-in-philosophy war.

Sure, the charge of “scientism” (with its “hissing suffix”) might well have been true of some philosophers who were around when Wittgenstein was writing (say, from the 1920s to the early 1950s). However, has it really been true of all analytic philosophers since the 1920s until today?…

Has it been true simply of most of them?

Many of them?

Or just some of them?

It can be argued that there was never any literal mimicking of science by any philosophers anyway — even back in Wittgenstein’s day. Sure, materialists, naturalists and positivists admired science. Indeed, they looked to science for philosophical inspiration. However, none of that is the same thing as actually “imitating science”.

So perhaps Paul Horwich’s distinction here is actually between those philosophers who self-consciously mimic science, and those who somehow mimic science by default (or by habit).

Thus, perhaps Horwich has the latter philosophers in mind.

However, even this qualification can be questioned.

Hacker and Williamson on Science and Philosophy

On the one hand, “philosophy” (actually, Horwich and Hacker mean analytic philosophy) gets it in the ear for its (as it’s put) apriorism. On the other hand, it’s also accused of scientism. That said, Paul Horwich’s additional argument is that philosophy could never actually be scientific. Thus, all it can do is mimic science in a rather pedestrian and/or naive way.

So let’s move on to British philosophers P.M.S. Hacker (Peter Hacker) and Timothy Williamson here.

One can see how a Wittgensteinian would have serious problems with what Timothy Williamson says about the relation of philosophy to science.

Peter Hacker’s ‘critical notice’ of Timothy Williamson’s book The Philosophy of Philosophy.

Peter Hacker writes:

“Three themes dominate the book [i.e., Timothy Williamson’s Philosophy of Philosophy]. First, that it is false that the a priori methodology of philosophy is profoundly unlike the a posteriori methods of natural science; indeed that very distinction allegedly obscures underlying similarities. Second, that the difference in subject matter between philosophy and science is less deep than supposed; ‘In particular, few philosophical questions are conceptual questions in any distinctive sense’. Third, that much contemporary philosophy is vitiated by supposing that evidence in philosophy consists of intuitions, which successful theory must explain.”

As already hinted at, Wittgensteinians don’t like “philosophical apriorism”. And they don’t like philosophical scientism either. Hacker believes that Williamson is guilty of both these sins against Wittgensteinian philosophy.

In any case, perhaps all that the words “a priori methodology of philosophy” basically mean is that such philosophy isn’t… well, science. In other words, philosophers don’t employ (to use Peter Hacker’s words) “measurement, observation or experiment”. [Note: observation is the odd one out here.]

In detail.

In the passage above, Hacker quotes Williamson stating that

“few philosophical questions are conceptual questions in any distinctive sense’”.

Perhaps it would have been better if Williamson stated the following instead:

Few philosophical questions are purely conceptual in any distinctive sense’.

Arguably, Hacker, on the other hand, believes that (virtually?) all philosophy should be conceptual analysis. (He comes very close to actually stating this. See here.) Yet Williamson too is wrong to play down “conceptual questions” entirely. Thus, both Hacker and Williamson — at least as quoted here — seem to offer their readers equally extreme positions.

As for “intuitions”.

Hacker has it that Williamson believes that

“evidence in philosophy consists of intuitions, which successful theory must explain”.

Many naturalists and physicalists are suspicious of intuitions too. Yet they usually aren’t also Wittgensteinians. In addition, explaining intuitions isn’t the same as placing them on a untouchable pedestal.

In any case, Peter Hacker also claims that Timothy Williamson sees “fundamental similarities between philosophical and scientific knowledge”. More specifically, Williamson is said to make a move from the “armchair” to “knowledge of truths about the external environment”.

Yet Hacker also hints at (as it were) philosophical apriorism in the following passage:

“It consists of thinking, without any special interaction with the world beyond the armchair, such as measurement, observation or experiment would typically involve.”

Whatever the answers to these questions are, Hacker also says that Williamson “holds that philosophy can discover truths about reality by reflection alone”. Despite that, Williamson also believes that “some philosophical truths are confirmable by experiments”.

That last passage may simply mean that even though “philosophical truths” are “armchair” phenomena, then there’s still nothing to stop them from being backed-up (or “confirmable”) by scientific experiments — or by other a posteriori factors. (This is a little like Laurence BonJour’s position on a priori statements.)…

Actually, if a philosophical truth is indeed a philosophical truth, then some philosophers would argue that it can hardly be contradicted by scientific experiments. And — almost as a consequence of this — it must be confirmable by them too. However, all that would depend on whether experiments can have any impact on such philosophical truths at all.

Thus, in the case of certain philosophical truths at least, it can also be said that scientific experiments can neither confirm nor disconfirm them. In other words, experiments are basically irrelevant to most (or perhaps simply many) philosophical truths.

Peter Hacker’s ‘critical notice’ on Timothy Williamson’s book.

Hacker offers us more on Williamson’s position:

“[S]ince philosophical ways of thinking are no different in kind from other ways, philosophical questions are not different in kind from other questions. Most importantly, philosophy is no more a linguistic or conceptual inquiry than physics.”

As for Williamson himself, he’s attempting to bridge the gap between philosophy and science when he says that “[p]hilosophy, like any other science (including mathematics) [ ] has evidence for its discoveries”. Williamson then says (i.e., against people like Peter Hacker) that “philosophy is no more a linguistic or conceptual inquiry than physics”.

Does all the above basically mean that philosophy both is and is not like science?

Two Worshippers of Wittgenstein: Paul Horwich and Peter Hacker

 

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Paul Horwich (left) and P.M.S. Hacker (right)

[See my next essay, ‘Two Contemporary Wittgensteinians Fight Against Scientism in Philosophy’.]

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(i) Introduction

(ii) The Wittgenstein Interpretation Industry

(iii) Wittgenstein on the True Nature of Philosophy

(iv) P.M.S. Hacker: A Wittgensteinian

(v) Consciousness as a Pseudo-Problem

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“Is Ludwig Wittgenstein truly a hero of philosophy? [] I do think that a lot of people do not regard him as a true hero of philosophy and are too afraid to speak up because everyone else thinks he is a hero of philosophy. []

“I understand that LW was a fascinating figure majorly because of his highly unusual mannerisms and oracular pronouncements. [] [H]e thought most philosophical problems arose out of a misuse of language []. There have been dudes who have stated that we need to calm down about this Wittgenstein dude: Timothy Williamson [is one of them].”

— Ayokunle Afuye (Source can be found here.)

“[Paul Horwich’s] book [] differs in substantial respects from what can already be found in the literature. For it is argued here that [Wittgenstein’s] fundamental idea is not a new conception of language (as most commentators have supposed), but rather a revolutionary conception of what philosophy is []

“Thus the first aim of the present work is to [] explain and justify [Wittgenstein’s] view of how philosophy should (and should not) be conducted, and of what it might achieve.”

— See source here.

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Introduction

The English philosopher Paul Horwich wrote the following autobiographical introduction to his book Wittgenstein’s Metaphilosophy:

“As a schoolboy, I happened upon the Tractatus in Manchester’s Central Library. It was somehow impressive, and I wished I could understand it.”

Is it creepy to find Horwich’s own introduction to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s work creepy?

Let me explain why the word “creepy” was used…

How could a book be “impressive” to a person who also admits that he didn’t “understand” it?…

Unless the Tractatus was impressive to the young Horwich precisely because he couldn’t understand it.

Horwich’s bit of autobiography seems to be (more than) a hint at the fact that he got into Wittgenstein before he even understood a word of his work. So perhaps the esoteric and gnomic nature of Wittgenstein’s prose style (at least as found in the Tractatus) was part of the appeal for Horwich. Indeed, perhaps it was the entirety of the appeal to the young Horwich.

Horwich’s words actually remind me of Julian Baggini’s account of the poststructuralist (or deconstructionist) French philosopher Jacques Derrida.

In an article called ‘Think Jacques Derrida was a charlatan? Look again’, Baggini wrote the following words:

“One of Derrida’s examiners at his prestigious high school, the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, wrote of his work: ‘The answers are brilliant in the very same way that they are obscure.’”

Perhaps this examiner was simply bowled over — or even hoodwinked — by Derrida’s obscurantist writing style. More relevantly, that writing style became one of the (main) reasons why so many people became Derrida’s disciples.

So, just like Horwich’s own personal introduction to Wittgenstein, how did this examiner know that Derrida’s answers were “brilliant” at the very same time as acknowledging that they were “obscure”? Yet Derrida’s answers were clearly not obscure enough for this examiner to recognise that they were brilliant.

Perhaps Derrida’s answers weren’t obscure at all, or they couldn’t actually have been known to have been brilliant (i.e., precisely because they were obscure).

The same line argument can be aimed at Michel Foucault’s words on Derrida. According to Baggini again, Foucault once stated that Derrida’s work was “either an F or an A+”.

To sum this introduction up.

Perhaps it’s indeed cheap and unphilosophical (although still possibly true) to say that many people believe that Wittgenstein was a great and profound philosopher because many people believe that Wittgenstein was a great and profound philosopher. (As already seen, Ayokunle Afuye hints at this in the opening quote.)

Yet, logically, this isn’t also to say that Wittgenstein isn’t a great and profound philosopher. It’s only to say that many people ride on the wave (or assumption) that Wittgenstein is a great and profound philosopher. And that assumption generates some of the (what I take to be) highfalutin and adoring bullshit written and said about the Austrian philosopher.

The Wittgenstein Interpretation Industry

“The only thing that mattered to them [the ‘Wittgenstein cult’] was the question: ‘What did Wittgenstein really mean?’. [] There wasn’t a question as to what’s the best position here [] but what did Wittgenstein really mean?”

— Crispin Sartwell [See source here.]

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Here’s a general overview of Paul Horwich’s take on Wittgenstein.

Much of Horwich’s book (i.e., Wittgenstein's Metaphilosophy) is made up of defences and expositions of Wittgenstein’s analyses.

So do Horwich’s portentous and universal conclusions about Wittgenstein’s philosophy follow from his own defences and expositions?

This isn’t to suggest that Wittgenstein himself was wrong on any of the issues discussed in that book. Instead, what may be wrong are the grand “metaphilosophical” conclusions Horwich and others have derived from their defences and expositions of Wittgenstein.

In any case, it just seems so absolutist and cringeworthy to be against all philosophy. This is especially the case when philosophising against philosophy. Of course, some workers in the Wittgenstein Interpretation Industry dispute that Wittgenstein actually was anti-philosophy…

However, Horwich doesn’t seem to.

[All this is related to the Wittgensteinian-theory-against-theory contradiction, which Horwich claims doesn’t exist. This will be tackled in a later essay.]

And this is where those “Wittgenstein scholars” can be brought in.

So how much of an expert does one need to be in order to say anything about Wittgenstein?

Indeed, how much of an expert does one need to be in order to criticise a Wittgenstein expert?

And this is also where the Wittgenstein Interpretation Industry steps in. [See my ‘The Wittgenstein Interpretation Industry’.]

Paul Horwich himself works in the Wittgenstein Interpretation Industry.

The following passage is Horwich's own industrial product:

“[A]n account of [Wittgenstein’s] mature philosophy can be extracted from Part I of the Philosophical Investigations, and that this work should be taken to override any other writings in tension with it.”

[As quoted by another part of the Wittgenstein Interpretation Industry — the British Wittgenstein Society.]

Now how can anyone make such a categorical claim about all of Wittgenstein’s philosophy?

Indeed, how can a Wittgensteinian make such a categorical claim?

By what possible argument, evidence or whatever could someone know (or simply demonstrate) that Part 1 of the Philosophical Investigations “override[s] any other writings in tension with it”?

Wittgenstein on the True Nature of Philosophy

Paul Horwich (in the first chapter of Wittgenstein’s Metaphilosophy) sums up his prime position when he writes the following words:

“Wittgenstein’s most important insight is encapsulated in his remark that ‘Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language’.”

Of course, there is some truth to that quoted statement from Wittgenstein. The problem is that Wittgenstein’s worshippers (or mere disciples) take it to be an absolute and all-encompassing truth.

It’s also odd that Horwich should states this:

“Arguably, Wittgenstein’s singular achievement was to have appreciated the true nature of philosophy.”

Surely the phrase “true nature of philosophy” is precisely the kind of phrase Wittgenstein himself would have hated.

Or perhaps I should really say this: Wittgenstein should have hated this phrase.

I offer that qualification because this is just my own interpretation of Wittgenstein. So unless Wittgenstein ever actually wrote “I hate the phrase ‘true nature of philosophy’”, then perhaps all we have is interpretation — at least on this precise matter…

And, precisely because of Wittgenstein’s unique and obscure prose style, that’s why we have the Wittgenstein Interpretation Industry.

P.M.S. Hacker: A Wittgensteinian

The English philosopher P.M.S. Hacker (1939-) also offers us what he takes to be (to use Paul Horwich’s words again) “the true nature of philosophy”.

Firstly, Hacker tells us that Wittgenstein was largely responsible for the linguistic turn in philosophy. This turn in philosophy became fashionable for a certain period (say, for two decades). Then it largely went out of fashion. Yet Hacker still believes that “it is what philosophy is good for”.

One result of the linguistic turn is that “Wittgensteinian quietists” (such as Horwich and Hacker themselves) still attempt to “dissolve philosophical problems, rather than solve them”.

So let’s discuss Peter Hacker in a little more detail.

Hacker is useful here because he perfectly encapsulates what a Wittgensteinian is.

Indeed, Hacker hasn’t only interpreted Wittgenstein for a living: he has attempted to become (as it were) at one with the Master.

Hacker expresses the Wittgensteinian position perfectly in the following passage:

“[I’m only concerned with] what makes sense and what does not. The bounds of sense can be violated by the misuse of technical, not ordinary expressions no less than the misuse of ordinary ones.”

[This is taken from Hacker’s ‘Languages, Minds and Brains’ contribution to the book Mindwaves.]

Yet, on the surface at least, surely it is taking a tremendous liberty when a philosopher, scientist or academic uses an everyday word in a completely different way. This is Hacker’s take on that issue:

“And, in particular, [expressions] can and — in the cases I have examined — are violated by unconsciously crossing ordinary uses of expressions with half-understood technical ones.”

(As we shall see, this passage is especially germane when it comes to the later subject of consciousness.)

In any case, Hacker believes in what’s been called the “linguistic-therapeutic approach” to philosophy, as originally advanced by Wittgenstein himself. Basically, then, Hacker believes that the words and concepts used by everyday people should be taken as (as it were) given by philosophers.

Consequently, Hacker sees the role of philosophy (as did Wittgenstein) as one of dissolving (or resolving) philosophical problems by examining (among other things) how words are actually used in everyday life.

More precisely, Hacker deems some?/many?/most? philosophical problems to be primarily conceptual in nature. To him, this also means that these problems can be dissolved (or resolved) purely by “linguistic analysis”.

All this lead us to Paul Horwich again and his stance on what he calls “pseudo-problems”.

Consciousness as a Pseudo-Problem

It was almost inevitable that Horwich would apply his “therapeutic” approach to consciousness. Predictably, he believes that the “mystery” (although not all philosophers use that word!) of consciousness can be dissolved in this way. That is done because “the problem of consciousness” can be shown to be a “pseudo-problem”.

Personally, I am somewhat sympathetic to this account of the problem of consciousness. However, because I’m neither a “Wittgenstein scholar” nor a worshipper of the philosopher, I don’t take every word Wittgenstein wrote (or uttered) on this subject as gospel.

In any case, one problem I have is with Horwich’s resurrection of the 1930’s term “pseudo-problem”. This is his definition of that term:

“[A] pseudo-question or pseudo-problem is one that we should not attempt to answer — not because it is too difficult, but because it there is every reason to expect that no objectively correct answer exists.”

Then the (as it were) logic of pseudo-problems is specifically applied to consciousness. Horwich tells us that his job is

“to explain sympathetically Wittgenstein’s view that the traditional and still widely debated perplexities of consciousness are indeed the result of recognizable defective assumptions rather than the incompleteness of scientific knowledge and of our conceptual repertoire”.

This philosophical position on the philosophy of consciousness is also adopted by Peter Hacker.

Hacker believes that the “problems” and “mysteries” of consciousness dissolve once we realise that everyday words are either being (to use his own word) “misused”, or that new technical terms simply don’t have any substantive content.

(For example, Hacker believes that the term “qualia” is a, as Daniel Dennett has also put it, “philosopher’s artefact”. [See Hacker here.])

This philosophical stance is related to what was once called ordinary language philosophy.

This was a philosophy (rather than a specific school) which saw traditional philosophical problems as being rooted in the misunderstandings philosophers — and also scientists in Hacker’s case! — make when they distort (or simply change) everyday words. The upshot here is that using everyday words in new ways can often create philosophical problems, rather than help philosophers and scientists solve them.

Philosophy: My Posts (or Tweets) on X (8)

 

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(i) Judith Butler’s Peculiar Prose Style

(ii) Reading and Listening to Music at the Same Time

(iii) Reading Kant Seriously

(iv) What Is a “Pseudo-Intellectual”?

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Judith Butler’s Peculiar Prose Style

This is a serious question: Why does Judith Butler write in a very peculiar way?

The English philosopher Julian Baggini once argued that Jacques Derrida’s philosophy was somehow embedded in his “complex and difficult” prose style. This doesn’t mean that Derrida’s philosophy couldn’t help but be written in complex and difficult prose simply because the philosophy itself is difficult and complex. It means that the (supposedly) complex and difficult prose is actually part of the philosophy.

So is the prose style somehow part of the philosophy in Judith Butler’s case too?

An alternative way of looking at this is to say that Butler’s prose style is pretentious.

Butler has been accused of “bad writing” so many times that she’s had a couple of decades (or more) to come up with… pretentious rationalisations for her pretentious prose. She’s a skilled academic. So she can verbally worm her way out of a hermetically-sealed coffin. [See ‘We Got the Wrong Gal: Rethinking the “Bad” Academic Writing of Judith Butler’, which is a defence of Butler’s bad writing.]

So why is Butler’s prose style pretentious?

It’s mainly because it’s a prose style which was adopted by certain (largely American) academics, in certain (largely American) university departments, at a certain point in history. And they’ve adopted this prose style primarily to hide and obscure their bad arguments (or total lack of arguments), banal ideas, and their truisms.

Reading and Listening to Music at the Same Time

I wonder how reading and simultaneously listening to music fits into Bernard J Baars’ post above. Sure, you can’t concentrate as much on the music as you could do if you solely listened to the music. However, surely these two things do occur together. In fact, listening to music and reading is a common phenomenon. (Personally, I don’t do this anymore. However, I once did.)

One wonders — as a non-specialist — what’s going on in both the brain and mind to make this possible.

I don’t believe it’s a case of “switching” either.

That is, it’s not a case of switching between the reading and the music. (Bernard J. Baars writes: “Conscious involvement with one flow of information will always interrupt another.”)

All this reminds me of an example from the philosopher Ned Block of someone reading and all along there’s the noise of heavy wind outside. The reader hears the wind at all times. However, only at a certain time does he actually note (a loose word, admittedly) that it’s the wind he can hear. And he also notes that it’s a heavy wind.

As Block puts it: this person is phenomenally conscious of the wind, and then he becomes access conscious of the wind only at a certain point.

Reading Kant Seriously

What is it to have read Kant “seriously”?

And how seriously must someone have read a philosopher before he or she can quote — or even mention — that philosopher?

Take Wittgenstein and the Wittgenstein Interpretation Industry, which publishes around 1000 articles, books, papers, etc. on the Austrian philosopher every year. (This is a figure I once read for a single year at least. Although it can’t be correct… Surely?!)

Do I need to heavily invest in this industry before I can quote — or even mention — Wittgenstein?

What Is a “Pseudo-Intellectual”?

Most of the time I come across the sneering term “pseudo-intellectual” all it means is that the person who uses it doesn’t like (or agree with) the person he’s criticising.

It also often means “non-academic” or “non-expert”.

Yet that too ties in with the first point.

Another related way the term “pseudo-intellectual” is used is to refer to those intellectuals who express political views that the critic doesn’t like or agree with. Thus, the very fact that the intellectual holds and expresses political views the critic doesn’t like (or agree with) renders him pseudo…

Intellectuals with the correct political views, on the other hand, are Real Intellectuals.

That said, there is so much sneering jargon in the following passage that I don’t really know what to make of it. Here goes:

“Nolan is a pseudointellectual who makes middlebrow blockbusters, but he happens to work in a period in which popular discourse (especially online) is dominated by pseudointellectuals who love middlebrow blockbusters (youtubers, video essayists, podcasters, etc).”

[The following was an additional post on X.]

Sure. Many of Nolan’s films include scientific issues and references. So are you simply accusing Nolan of not being a… scientist? I think he’d hold up his hands to that charge. However, Nolan does have scientists helping him on the screenplays he writes, including Kip Thorne.

Instead of relying so heavily on words like “pseudointellectual”, “BuzzFeed pop science, “dumb”, etc., why not provide an argument? It seems that you rely too much on rhetoric.

Apart from posting on X, what are your own credentials? What gives you the right to speak so loudly on this subject?

Shorter

It couldn’t be a “starting point”.

Solipsism is (or was) the end product of a train of philosophical reasonings (epistemological or otherwise). More simply, it’s a philosophical position. So how could solipsism be an “obvious starting point” for epistemology — or for anything else?

Note that this isn’t to say that solipsism is either a valid or an invalid position.

Shorter

I’m not sure how Justin D’Ambrosio could know that these classic philosophical works would be rejected today…

Actually, if someone sent in a work of transcendental idealism, written in the dense style of of a 18th century German academic, then I suppose that it would be rejected. Yes, it would be a very odd submission. However, this may well apply to all works written before, say, the year 2000. Or even before the year 2020!

… But I don’t believe that’s what D’Ambrosio meant.

The Critique of Pure Reason was written in a very academic style. So it would have that going for it. Still, an 18th century academic style won’t be like the academic styles of 2024.

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My X account can be found here.