An Unknown Tongue: Voice as Method in the Work of Stanley Cavell

A thesis submitted to fulfil requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Year of Award: 2020.

Oliver Gordon The University of Sydney Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

1

This is to certify that to the best of my knowledge, the content of this thesis is my own work. This thesis has not been submitted for any degree or other purposes.

I certify that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work and that all the assistance received in preparing this thesis and sources have been acknowledged.

Oliver Gordon

2

Thesis Abstract: In the 1994 publication of his Jerusalem-Harvard lectures, A Pitch of Philosophy, Stanley Cavell makes an important observation about his most significant philosophical work. With reference to the period immediately following the 1979 publication of The Claim of Reason, Cavell (1994: 58) declares, “if I had had then to give a one-clause sense of that book’s reason for existing it might have been: ‘to help bring the human voice back into philosophy.’” Appeals to the human voice; the theme of its philosophical suppression; and the call for its restoration are ever present in Cavell’s work. However, it is only in these later reflections that Cavell explicitly emphasises the extent to which a defence and attempted reclamation of the human voice in philosophy stands as a unifying impetus to almost all of his thought. Such reflections thus provide a crucial insight into Cavell’s methodological consistency across what might otherwise appear the disparate (though nonetheless impressive) philosophical, political, aesthetic, cultural and literary paths that his work has followed.

The distinct mode of criticism that Cavell has developed and practised throughout his career is, as Cavell himself often notes, inspired by the ordinary language investigations of Austin and Wittgenstein. And yet, Cavell’s inheritance of the work of these figures is not as straightforward as he himself (at least in his early work) sometimes suggests. In this thesis I argue that Cavell’s inheritance of the work of Austin and Wittgenstein is best understood in terms of his attempt to ‘bring the human voice back into philosophy’. I argue further, that that idea should itself be understood in terms of Cavell’s commitment to a vision of philosophy, and a corresponding philosophical methodology, that is always focused upon the individual’s relationship to her own assertions, both in and about ordinary language.

One significant upshot of approaching Cavell’s work through the interpretive frame that I develop in this thesis is that such an approach facilitates a clearer understanding of Cavell’s unconventional approach to—and ultimate understanding of—the debate between proponents of ordinary language philosophy on the one hand, and those sympathetic to the concerns expressed in various forms of (modern) philosophical scepticism on the other. This is particularly important because Cavell’s understanding of the confrontation between ordinary language philosophy and philosophical skepticism provides a backdrop to almost every further philosophical investigation that Cavell has undertaken throughout his career. It is the confrontation between the ordinary language philosopher and the philosophical skeptic which Cavell first recognizes as a manifestation of what he later comes to call ‘the argument of the ordinary’. The confrontation between the ordinary language philosopher and the philosophical skeptic thus presents itself, for Cavell, as a moment in the broader history of the ordinary drive (or desire) to reify or else to repudiate ‘the ordinary’—what Cavell sometimes characterises as the human drive (or desire) to deny the human.

This in turn, means that Cavell’s unique understanding of the confrontation between ordinary language philosophy and philosophical scepticism carries much more than a merely exegetical significance. Cavell’s unique understandings of the philosophical possibilities and limitations of what he comes to call ‘scepticism’ and ‘the ordinary’ play an indispensable role within the critical vocabulary of his work as a whole. As such, clarifying those notions and assessing the central place that they each occupy in Cavell's critical lexicon is an essential step both in attempting to understand and assess Cavell’s critical perspective upon the tradition, and in evaluating his call for a restoration of the human voice in philosophy.

3

Acknowledgements.

First and foremost I must thank my supervisor David Macarthur for his help and encouragement in the writing of this thesis. I am deeply indebted to David both for his introducing me to Cavell’s work (a rather life changing experience) and to the promise of the interpretive approach that I adopt in this thesis. I cannot thank David enough for his guidance (and criticism) as I have tried to take my own steps in this rich philosophical terrain.

When I began this degree, I did not realise how many wonderful people this work would give me the opportunity to meet, talk with, think with, and befriend. I would like to thank all of the faculty and graduate students of the Philosophy Department at the University of Sydney for making the undertaking of this degree such a fantastic experience. I will single out only a few of the many companions who spent hours in the ‘dungeon’ below Fisher Library and in supervision meetings helping me think through my ideas and generally providing encouragement and friendship. Particular thanks to Aaron Baird, Dan Pash, Alistair Taylor, Blaise Prentice-Davidson, Elle Gordon, Ned Howells-Whitaker, and Travis McKenna. Special thanks also to Gavin Kitching for his encouragement and feedback in the later stages of writing - when this thesis felt as if it might finally come to exist as something (at least approaching) a coherent whole.

Each and every member of my family has been a constant support throughout the writing of this thesis. There are too many of you to list. You know who you are and that I love you all. Particular thanks must go to mum (Katherine Gordon) for proof reading large portions of the thesis.

Finally to my wonderful partner Jasmine Clarke, without your love and support none of this work would have been possible. Thank you.

4

Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 5

Bringing the Human Voice Back into Philosophy. 5

CHAPTER ONE 14

Articulating Self-Knowledge. 14

I. Introduction: the Personal in Philosophy. 14 II. Self-Knowledge and Ordinary Language. 16 III. Ordinary Language: Content and Access. 20 IV. Ordinary Language: Evidence and Access. 25 V. Ordinary Language: From a Participant’s Perspective. 35 VI. Philosophical Illusion and Ordinary Language. 40 VII. Conclusion. 42

CHAPTER TWO 48

Convening Criteria, Exemplifying Community. 48 I. Introduction. 48 II. Criteria and Skepticism (A Deferral). 52 III. The Logical Role of Criteria. 54 IV. Criteria and the Second Person. 66 V. Criteria, Convention and Accommodation. 73 VI. Criteria and the Natural. 79 VII. Criteria and Responsibility. 80 VIII. Conclusion. 82

CHAPTER THREE 83

Achieving the Ordinary. 83

I. Introduction. 83 II. Criteria and Rules. 87 III. Rules and the Ordinary. 91

(a) Rules and Nonsense. 92 (b) Rules and Normativity. 100

IV. The Difficulty of Philosophy: Wittgenstein on Following a Rule. 103 V. The Difficulty of the Ordinary. 126 VI. The Threat of Skepticism. 143 VII. Conclusion. 153

5

INTRODUCTION

Bringing the Human Voice Back into Philosophy. “The requirement of purity imposed by philosophy now looks like a wish to leave me out, I mean each of us, the self, with its arbitrary needs and desires” – Stanley Cavell (1990: 77)

In the 1994 publication of his Jerusalem-Harvard lectures, A Pitch of Philosophy—aptly subtitled “Autobiographical Exercises”, Stanley Cavell makes an important observation about his most significant philosophical work. With reference to the period immediately following the 1979 publication of The Claim of Reason, Cavell (1994b: 58) declares, “if I had had then to give a one-clause sense of that book’s reason for existing it might have been: ‘to help bring the human voice back into philosophy.’” Appeals to the human voice; the theme of its philosophical suppression; and the call for its restoration are ever present in Cavell’s work. However, it is only in these later reflections that Cavell explicitly emphasises the extent to which a defence and attempted reclamation of the human voice in philosophy stands as a unifying impetus to almost all of his thought.1 Such reflections thus provide a crucial insight into Cavell’s methodological consistency across what might otherwise appear the disparate (though nonetheless impressive) philosophical, political, aesthetic, cultural and literary paths that his work has followed.

A consequence of this insight is that the idea of “bringing the human voice back into philosophy” itself becomes dauntingly complex. To get an idea of just how much of Cavell’s thought is implicated in this deceptively short one-sentence summary it will be helpful to quote at length the remarks which immediately follow its presentation in A Pitch of Philosophy. Of the task of returning the human voice to philosophy, Cavell writes:

“That is the charter Austin and the later Wittgenstein assume in confronting the reader with their arrogation of voice, in all its ungrounded and in a sense ungroundable arrogance—to establish their sense that the voice has become lost in thought. It has become lost methodically, in philosophy’s chronic distrust of ordinary language, arriving at some final crisis in analytic philosophy’s unfavourable…comparison of ordinary language with logical construction; and lost theoretically, in the conclusion of modern skepticism, whose advent begins (scenically in Descartes and in Hume) by taking the individual voice, or breath away—as in Descartes’s private and mad ‘astonishment’ at what he has discovered about his inability to prove his existence, or in Hume’s anxious sociability, putting aside the everyday incommunicability of what he has to say about the failure of human knowledge.” (Cavell, 1994b: 58-59)

In the publication of his 1988 Carus lectures, Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome Cavell presents another insightful though equally dense and difficult summary of the place of voice in his earlier work:

1 Cavell’s first explicit identification of ‘voice’ as the central theme of his earlier writing comes in his 1982 “Politics as Opposed to What?”. In that essay Cavell (1982: 173) writes, “It is as the recovery of…voice (as from an illness) that ordinary language philosophy is, as I have understood and written about it, before all to be understood.” Over the course of the next decade and beyond Cavell increasingly appeals to the notion of voice in explaining the motivations and aims of his work.

6

“The idea of my voice in my history, in my acceptance of criteria, in assessing my agreement or attunement in language, is a principle theme of the Claim of Reason, which proceeds by way of taking Wittgenstein’s idea of a criterion (in conjunction with grammar) to account both for the acceptance of attunement in the appeals to my voice in ordinary language procedure, and at the same time to account for the rejection of this attunement, hence of my voice, in skepticism; to show the character of our agreement in our words—that our consent or agreement in words cannot be contractual—as well as to show our falling, and our wish to fall, out of agreement or attunement. Since criteria and skepticism are one another’s possibility, criteria cannot be meant to refute skepticism; on the contrary they show skepticism’s power, even something one might call its truth. I sometimes think of this as our disappointment with our criteria.” (Cavell, 1990c: 64)

The sheer breadth of the philosophical themes that Cavell here characterises as intimately implicated in the notion of voice is astonishing. The full range of Cavell’s early (and somewhat idiosyncratic) interests are in play: the ordinary language philosophy of J.L. Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein; Wittgensteinian criteria and grammar; contract theory and the limits of conventionalism; the problems of ideal language theory; a relatively new formulation of the idea of voice in terms of ‘arrogation’; as well as Cavell’s major target in The Claim of Reason, the encounter of all these themes with philosophical skepticism.

Even for readers familiar with Cavell’s work the presentation of these philosophical ideas in terms of the notion of voice will likely remain somewhat opaque. While for any reader acquainted only with traditional discussions of philosophical skepticism, Cavell’s invocation and discussion of that notion in each of the above quotations must appear as a kind of curious non-sequitur—it is not. But nor is the link that Cavell is attempting to draw here an obvious or easy one.

In each of the above quotations Cavell identifies the notion of voice as intimately related both to what he calls ‘ordinary language philosophy’ and to philosophical skepticism. And yet historically, these two positions have been conceived as standing in almost diametric opposition to one another. ‘Ordinary language philosophy’ is generally thought of as a methodology which would deny the reality or sense of various philosophical problems (or questions) from the standpoint of a commitment to the philosophical superiority of supposedly ‘ordinary’ ways of speaking. And philosophical skepticism—say, the kind of external world skepticism investigated by thinkers like Descartes and Hume—provides a prime example of the kind of philosophical (pseudo-)problem that the ordinary language philosopher purportedly reveals to be no problem at all. External world skepticism is precisely the kind of ‘problem’ that the traditional ordinary language philosopher claims to be entirely illusory—generated only by certain misuses of language.

The locus classicus of the confrontation between ordinary language philosophy and traditional epistemology is J.L. Austin’s short and incredibly dense essay “Other Minds”. In that paper Austin accuses the ‘wily’ metaphysician (or skeptic) of misusing language in a number of ways. For example, Austin accuses the skeptic of misusing language when he asks whether anyone could ever know that he was looking at a real table or that he had really seen a goldfinch at the bottom of the garden. Austin’s idea is that in order to sensibly call something ‘real’ one must be able to specify some definite way in which the thing (or situation) in question might be unreal. One must be able to provide a contrast case. For it is the possibility of a contrast case that gives sense to the word ‘real’ in its various (ordinary) uses. According to Austin this is what the metaphysician (or skeptic) fails to do. If the skeptic did provide such a contrast case, Austin suggests that we should no longer be at a loss to

7

answer him. In such a case Austin explains that we would merely avert to various uncontroversial checking procedures. Because there just are recognisably adequate procedures for, say, differentiating real birds from stuffed birds (e.g. getting a closer look; throwing a rock; &c.). What the skeptic exploits, according to Austin, is the fact that there can be no recognised procedure for telling, say, a ‘real table’ from an ‘unreal table’ until we have established some clear and definite sense in which a table might be ‘unreal’. There is no sense in asking whether something is ‘real’ in any and every context because describing something as ‘real’ only makes sense in actual contexts (in all their particularity).

It is a mark of Cavell’s unconventional approach to both ordinary language philosophy and traditional (skeptical) epistemology that he characterises each as not only compatible with what he calls the ‘truth’ or philosophical ‘power’ of the other, but that he characterises the ‘truth’ or ‘moral’ of each as internally related to that of the other. In fact, as Cavell announces in the second of the above quotations, the commitments of the ordinary language philosopher (there characterised in terms of the philosophical appeal to Wittgensteinian criteria) and the commitments of the philosophical skeptic are, on Cavell’s view at least, to be understood as “one another’s possibility”.

This central Cavellian idea is difficult and often misunderstood. But it is also a fundamental consequence of Cavell’s commitment to a radically new method of criticism in philosophy. And thus, also inseparable from his commitment to rehabilitating the human voice within the philosophical tradition.

The distinct mode of criticism that Cavell has developed and practised throughout his career is, as Cavell himself often notes, inspired by the ordinary language investigations of Austin and Wittgenstein. And yet, Cavell’s inheritance of the work of these figures is not as straightforward as he himself (at least in his early work) sometimes suggests. In this thesis I will argue that Cavell’s inheritance of the work of Austin and Wittgenstein is best understood in terms of his attempt to ‘bring the human voice back into philosophy’. I will argue further, that that idea should itself be understood in terms of Cavell’s commitment to a vision of philosophy, and a corresponding philosophical methodology, that is always focused upon the individual’s relationship to her own assertions, both in and about ordinary language.

I believe that this interpretive approach promises several important insights and provides an elegantly straightforward solution to a number of difficulties arising from the interpretation of Cavell’s work.

First, as has already been indicated, approaching Cavell’s work through the lens of his commitment to the idea of ‘bringing the human voice back into philosophy’ allows for the recognition of a unified methodological vision in Cavell’s otherwise extremely diverse philosophical oeuvre. What is more, explaining Cavell’s commitment to the notion of ‘voice’ in terms of his distinct vision for a new kind of philosophical methodology—itself characterised by an unwavering attention to the individual’s responsibilities both in and for speech—serves to demystify Cavell’s otherwise potentially opaque appeals to the strikingly original (and thus inevitably unfamiliar) idea that something as apparently basic as ‘the human voice’ could so much as become alienated from (or within) philosophy.

The interpretation that I put forward in this thesis differs significantly, in this regard, from that put forward by Timothy Gould (1998) in his Hearing Things: Voice and Method in the Philosophy of Stanley Cavell. To date Gould’s work is the only book-length treatment of

8

Cavell’s thought that has sought to place the notion of ‘voice’ at the very centre of its interpretive approach. And yet, the extent of the divergence between my reading of Cavell’s notion of ‘bringing the human voice back into philosophy’ and that put forward by Gould can be clearly articulated in terms of two of Gould’s guiding claims that I do not wish to accept.

Gould conceives of ‘voice’ and ‘method’ as oppositional elements (or moments) within Cavell’s work. In so doing, he professes a desire to counter a kind of mythologization of Cavell’s authorial talent—one that he finds in much Cavell criticism (both hostile and sympathetic). I believe that there is a fundamental difficulty in conceiving of ‘voice’ and ‘method’ as working in opposition to one another in this way. Indeed, I believe that conceiving of ‘voice’ and ‘method’ in oppositional terms, only serves to further entrench the idea that the (undeniably) singular character of Cavell’s authorial voice exerts a kind of unaccountable and hence philosophically inappropriate influence upon his readers.

In the interpretation that I put forward in this thesis, voice is not conceived as something that is realised in opposition to any particular philosophical methodology. On the contrary, one’s own voice can find its philosophical articulation only through the recognition of certain methodological commitments. Thus, on my interpretation Cavell’s voice becomes a central feature of the very methodology he employs. And yet this need not compromise the heritability of that methodology. For others, in accordance with Cavell’s method of philosophising, are necessarily invited to exercise their own philosophical voices in response to Cavell’s claims. (Though I do not mean to suggest that this is at all an easy thing to do).

The second central claim of Gould’s book that I do not wish to accept is that Cavell’s work can be divided into two ‘fundamentally’ distinguishable methodological phases. In this thesis I argue that the theme of voice is intimately related to what Cavell calls the theme of ‘self-knowledge’ in his earlier work and thus forms a major theme of Cavell’s work from the time of his earliest philosophical engagements with the writings of Austin and Wittgenstein. In this thesis I do not limit myself to examining Cavell’s writing from any particular period—but I do not engage with Cavell’s writings on film, or on American Transcendentalism, or upon his conception of Moral Perfectionism. Such limitations are unfortunate but necessary. As a result I do not deal in any detail with the material around which Gould constructs his account of what he calls Cavell’s ‘model of reading’. But I do not find that I recognise Gould’s (1998: 4) characterisations of Cavell’s, supposedly distinct and earlier: “method that invokes ourmost ordinary grasp and use of words” as adequately capturing the complexity of Cavell’srelationship to traditional ordinary language philosophy.

As I will argue, Cavell’s conception of the value of ordinary language philosophy is, from as early as the time of his essay “Must We Mean What We Say?”, a conception that differs significantly from that of the traditional ordinary language philosophers whom he sets out to defend in that paper. While I do not dispute that Cavell’s understanding of what he eventually comes to characterise as ‘the ordinary’ undergoes development and change throughout his career, I do not find the postulation of a fundamental break in Cavell’s philosophical methods and procedures particularly helpful. I also find Gould’s insistence that we attempt to separate our thinking about Cavell’s earlier work from his later reflections upon that work rather perplexing.2 This is not because I am committed to any thesis about Cavell’s authorial

2 See for example: (Gould, 1998: 87)

9

authority; but merely because I find his later reflections upon his earlier work (at least for the most part) insightful and philosophically useful.

Sandra Laugier has also undertaken significant work explicating and investigating Cavell’s appeals to the notion of ‘voice’. Laugier is Cavell’s most prolific European expositor; having worked closely with Cavell in translating a number of his most important works into French as well as having written a number of books and articles on Cavell, Wittgenstein, Austin and W.V.O Quine. Although there are important differences between the interpretation of Cavellon ‘voice’ that I put forward in this thesis and Laugier’s work on the same theme, theinterpretation of Cavell that I advocate in this thesis ultimately shares a much greater affinitywith Laugier’s work than with that of Gould.

As with the interpretation that I put forward in this thesis, Laugier understands Cavell’s earliest engagements with ordinary language philosophy to underpin almost all of his subsequent work.3 As such, for Laugier, a proper understanding of Cavell’s relationship to ordinary language philosophy is crucial to understanding Cavell’s later appeals to the place and significance of the human voice in philosophy.

Laugier conceives of the notion of ‘voice’ in Cavell’s work as intimately connected with the ‘form of life’ that we (human life forms) inhabit. A central claim of Laugier’s work is that ordinary language philosophy—and its investigation of our language as that language is actually used—constitutes a kind of realistic naturalism (to employ an adjective adopted by Cora Diamond—and discussed in more detail in chapter 3).4 On Laugier’s account Cavell’s appeals to the notion of the human voice, as well as its repudiation in philosophy, themselves arise from Cavell’s particular attentiveness to what Laugier characterises as a kind of realistic naturalist conception of language. Laugier’s further contention is that the possibility of undertaking philosophy in this kind of realistic naturalist spirit is itself overlooked in a great deal of contemporary philosophy—where (all important) ‘naturalistic credentials’ are too often identified with a rather narrow (and relatively unexamined) conception of ‘scientific investigation’ and/or presumptions about the reductive implications of certain (often physical) scientifically determinable facts.5

Laugier’s claims about the investigation of ordinary language—as that language is actually used—constituting a form of naturalism, fits well with the account of Cavell’s relationship to ordinary language philosophy that I develop in chapters 1 and 2 of the current work. To say that Cavell’s project is a naturalist project provides another way of approaching the criticisms of Jerry Fodor and Jerrold Katz that I develop in Chapter 1. While Laugier’s emphasis, following Cavell, on the importance of recognising the biological (and not merely the social) dimension of what Wittgenstein calls ‘forms of life’ is something that I aim to recognise in my discussion of that notion in chapter 2 (section VI).

3 See for example: (Laugier, 2011) 4 See for example: (Laugier, 2013: 64-74). Laugier (2013: 4, 12) explicitly connects her project with Diamond’s in her book “Why We Need Ordinary Language Philosophy”. 5 Laugier provides a particularly interesting case study of the distorting effects of this kind of scientism in her (somewhat unorthodox) interpretation of the work of W.V.O. Quine. Though I must admit I find it difficult to share Laugier’s optimism about the extent to which, what we might call Quine’s ‘residual traditional empiricism’ (as exemplified in his, so called ‘naturalized epistemological’ invocations of “nerve endings” and “surface irritations” throughout his work), might be partitioned from the remainder of his philosophical project.

10

And yet, there are also important differences between Laugier’s interpretation of Cavell on ‘voice’ and the interpretation that I put forward in this thesis. Perhaps the most obvious of these differences can be seen in the different conceptions of Cavell’s relationship to traditional ordinary language philosophy, and particularly to Austin’s work, that Laugier and I each put forward. This difference is itself informed by the difference in starting points of each respective interpretation.

Laugier’s discussions of Cavell on voice emerge from her broader investigation (or perhaps better revisiting and reappraisal) of the debate between ideal language theory, and ordinary language philosophy in the 1950s and 60s. As I have already noted, a major claim of Laugier’s work is that ordinary language philosophy offers a kind of realistic naturalism about language that was largely misunderstood or overlooked in the period in which ordinary language philosophy was seen as (or, at least, as a potentially) prominent philosophical paradigm.

As I have also already noted, Laugier’s conception of ordinary language philosophy as a realistic naturalist enterprise accords well with the account that I develop in this thesis of what is valuable about ordinary language philosophy (from a Cavellian perspective).

However, Laugier also connects this idea with a conception of language as an (admittedly rather unorthodox kind of) ‘empirical given’. As such, Laugier conceives of the realistic naturalism of ordinary language philosophy (the revival of which she advocates) as a kind of sophisticated (or ‘new’) empiricism. And that is an idea that I hesitate to endorse.

I should make clear at once that in characterising Laugier’s conception of the value of ordinary language philosophy in terms of the potential for a kind of ‘new empiricism’ I do not mean to suggest that Laugier conceives of language as an unproblematic ‘given’ or as something that might be contemplated from an entirely detached perspective.6 Laugier is fully aware of Cavell’s notion (discussed in Chapter 1, section V) of the ‘problematic we’ that is invoked in the ordinary language philosopher’s appeals to ‘what we say when’.7

One of the central claims that I put forward in this thesis is that our relationship to our own language is a radically second-personal affair. Throughout the thesis I attempt to unfold the implications of the fact that language is the medium (or place) within which we meet others—and not just the abstract others of ‘the linguistic community’, but actual others whose ways of speaking we must confront. In developing this idea, I argue that it is the second-personal reality of our linguistic encounters with particular others which burden us with the particular responsibilities of response that language implicates us in. So I hesitate to identify Cavell’s conception of language and of the individual voice in language as ‘empirically given’ (even in Laugier’s expanded and unorthodox sense), because I am concerned that to do so is to risk underplaying the significance of the radically second-personal nature of our life in language.8

6 One of, what I take to be, the most insightful of Laugier’s questions in her book Why We Need Ordinary Language Philosophy attests to this fact. Laugier asks: 7 See for example: (Laugier, 2015: 69) 8 Again, I do not mean to suggest that Laugier is unaware or totally unable to account for the second-personal nature of our life in language. But I do think that her emphasis upon language as a kind of expanded ‘empirical given’ obscures the significance of our encounters with actual others as opposed to our encounters with ‘language’ as a product of the linguistic community (even when that notion is itself recognized to be

11

Another way to put the same idea might be to say that Laugier’s characterisation of our relationship to our own language as a relationship to an (expanded conception of an) ‘empirical given’ risks emphasising the extent of our agreement in language at the expense of a full acknowledgement of the possibility of our disagreeing in language--and thus also at the expense of recognising the extent of the second personal responsibilities which that possibility implicates us within. (That is a line of criticism that I develop in relation to a number of other accounts of Cavell and Wittgenstein’s visions of language in chapters 2 and 3 of the current work).

In this thesis I also argue that unfolding the implications of the radically second-personal character of our life in language, ought to lead us to a reappraisal of Cavell’s difficult discussions of skepticism—and the complex place that the term ‘skepticism’ comes to occupy in Cavell’s thought after (and even within) The Claim of Reason. As I have already indicated, Cavell’s employment of the notion of ‘skepticism’ throughout his work has generated a number of distinct interpretations. These different interpretations often reflect the broader interpretive approach that a given thinker brings to Cavell’s work—and Laugier’s work is no exception in this regard. An investigation of Laugier’s interpretation of Cavell on ‘skepticism’ lies beyond the scope of the current work. However, I believe that the interpretation of Cavell that I put forward in this thesis lays the groundwork for such a (future) investigation. Within this thesis (particularly chapter 3 section VI) I place Cavell’s invocation of ‘skepticism’ and ‘criteria’ as ‘one another’s possibility’ at the centre of my interpretation of Cavell on skepticism. I argue that doing so exposes difficulties in Cavell’s unified notion of the significance of philosophical skepticism And yet, where Laugier addresses Cavell’s unorthodox notion of skepticism as the twin face of criteria, she seems to accept that idea, and the connection of that idea to traditional (say, external world) skepticism, as unproblematic.9 This then is another important place at which our respective interpretations diverge.

I believe that approaching Cavell’s work through the interpretive frame that I develop in this thesis helps to facilitate a clearer understanding of Cavell’s unconventional approach to—and ultimate understanding of—the debate between proponents of ordinary language philosophy on the one hand, and those sympathetic to the philosophical concerns expressed in various forms of (modern) philosophical skepticism on the other. This is particularly important because Cavell’s understanding of the confrontation between ordinary language philosophy and philosophical skepticism provides a backdrop to almost every further philosophical investigation that Cavell has undertaken throughout his career. It is the confrontation between the ordinary language philosopher and the philosophical skeptic which Cavell first recognizes as a manifestation of what he later comes to call ‘the argument of the ordinary’. The confrontation between the ordinary language philosopher and the philosophical skeptic thus presents itself, for Cavell, as a moment in the broader history of the ordinary drive (or desire) to reify or else to repudiate ‘the ordinary’—what Cavell sometimes characterises as the human drive (or desire) to deny the human.10

‘problematic’—particularly where that is taken to mean: defined only be the extent of our agreement in language). 9 See for example: (Laugier, 2006: 36-37, 2011: 641, 2013: 91-93, 105-06, 2015: 70), 10 C.f. Cavell’s (1969d: 96) assertion at the close of Aesthetic Problems of Modern Philosophy, “…philosophy concerns those necessities we cannot, being human, fail to know. Except that nothing is more human than to deny them.”

12

Cavell’s unique understanding of the philosophical possibilities and limitations of what he comes to call ‘skepticism’ and ‘the ordinary’ plays a crucial role within the critical vocabulary of his work as a whole. As such, if we are to understand and assess Cavell’s critical perspective upon the tradition (or upon any particular philosophical position) we will need to clarify and elucidate the unique conceptions of ‘skepticism’ and ‘the ordinary’ which occupy a central place within his critical lexicon.

Having said that the notions of ‘skepticism’ and ‘the ordinary’ are of crucial importance to almost all of Cavell’s work, I must say something about the unorthodox exegetical strategy that I employ within this thesis. For while I discuss Cavell’s conception of ‘the ordinary’ in its various guises (in terms of appeals to ordinary language; and in terms of our life in language; and our relationship to criteria &c.) throughout this thesis, I do not come to explicitly deal with the notion of skepticism until the end of the final chapter (chapter 3) of the current work. As I will explain in more detail in chapter 2 (section II) and chapter 3 (section VI), I believe that holding the issue of philosophical skepticism off in our initial investigation of the significance of ‘voice’ and of the idea of ‘self-knowledge’ in Cavell’s work has advantages both for our understanding of those thematic concerns and ultimately also for our understanding of Cavell’s unique conception of the problem of philosophical skepticism.

In the first chapter of this thesis I focus upon Cavell’s earliest published engagements with ordinary language philosophy in the essays “Must We Mean What We Say?’ and “The Availability of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy.” I argue that even within these early essays Cavell’s conception of the value of ordinary language philosophy is very different from the conception of ordinary language philosophy defended by prominent proponents of that methodology (such as J.L. Austin and Gilbert Ryle). In doing so I argue further that Cavell is far more interested in the ordinary language philosopher’s mode-of-access to her claims about ordinary language than he is in defending any particular claims about the content of so called ‘ordinary’ language. I argue that this focus, which Cavell’s critics often fail to acknowledge, has important consequences for Cavell’s conception of our language use as an essentially world-involving, second-personal, and inherently both contestable and contested practice. As such, I argue that for Cavell our language use has a kind of existential significance for us, which is almost entirely overlooked on traditional (and traditionally evidential) accounts of our relationship to our own native language.

In chapter 2 I extend my investigation of the Cavellian notion of the existential significance that our language use has for us in discussing Cavell’s inheritance and investigations of Wittgenstein’s notions of ‘criteria’ and of ‘grammatical investigation’. In explicating the Wittgensteinian notion of ‘criteria’ and its application in Cavell’s work I adopt the (somewhat unorthodox) strategy of attempting to hold off (at least temporarily) Cavell’s concern with the relationship between criteria and philosophical skepticism. I argue that doing so allows us to get a clearer picture of the significance that the notions both of our sharing criteria, and of our agreeing (and also disagreeing) in language, hold for Cavell’s conception of the significance of the individual human voice in language. I argue that criteria play an essentially logical role for Wittgenstein and for Cavell (which is to say they are not any kind of epistemic guarantors); and further that Wittgenstein’s (and Cavell’s) conception of criteria as articulating the logic of our language has radical implications for both thinkers’ visions of our life in language. The inherently contestable character of our criteria reveals

13

our uses of language to be more fragile than we would often like to admit. In this chapter I also argue that focusing upon Cavell’s notion of our capacity to accommodate dissonances and divergences in criteria is essential if we are to recognise the radicality of both Cavell’s and Wittgenstein’s conceptions of the individual subject’s responsibilities both to and for her language.

Chapter 3 is perhaps the most ambitious chapter of this thesis. In chapter 3 I seek to compare Cavell’s vision of our life in language and the significance of the individual human voice in language with the work of a number of contemporary interpreters of Wittgenstein. In doing so I aim to build the resources for a clear account of Cavell’s conception of what he comes to call ‘the argument of the ordinary’; and to connect the idea of the ‘argument of the ordinary’ with Cavell’s conception of philosophy as a kind of endless task of (self-)articulation.

I argue that Cavell’s work is fundamentally incompatible with what is often called an ‘orthodox’ reading of Wittgenstein. That is, any reading of Wittgenstein that conceives of his philosophy as concerned with identifying the grammatical rules of ordinary language (and thus the ‘bounds of sense’). In investigating this kind of ‘orthodox Wittgensteinian’ account I am drawn into a further investigation of the idea that the normativity of our language use must be explainable in terms of our use of language being an essentially rule-governed practice. I offer an investigation of the neo-pragmatist philosopher Robert Brandom’s interpretation of Wittgenstein’s so called ‘rule-following’ considerations within the Investigations, as a kind of case study from within a family of interpretations which share this general commitment. (That is to say, a commitment to the idea that Wittgenstein is concerned, in his so called ‘rule-following considerations’, with explaining the normativity of our life in language). I contrast Brandom’s interpretation in this respect with that of John McDowell and Cora Diamond. I go on to argue that there are both important similarities and differences between McDowell’s and Cavell’s reading of Wittgenstein’s ‘rule-following considerations’.

In the context of this comparison I identify Cavell’s distinctive concern, not just with our possession of a shared language, but with our capacity to actively share language. I argue that this concern makes Cavell particularly sensitive to what I call, adapting a phrase from Cora Diamond’s work, ‘the difficulty of the ordinary’. In closing this chapter I discuss both the relationship between what I would like to call ‘the difficulty of the ordinary’ and what Cavell calls the ‘threat of skepticism’, as well as Cavell’s conception of ‘the argument of the ordinary’ and the relation that that idea bears to Cavell’s project of ‘helping to bring the human voice back into philosophy’.

14

CHAPTER ONE

Articulating Self-Knowledge. “Cavell is among professors of philosophy… the least defended, the gutsiest, the most vulnerable. He sticks his neck out farther than any of the rest of us.” – Richard Rorty (1989: 38)

I. Introduction: the Personal in Philosophy. In the introduction to this thesis I invoked Cavell’s discussion of the human voice and its (often suppressed) relevance to philosophical writing. As I then noted, Cavell’s clearest articulation of that idea can be found in a relatively late work, itself subtitled “Autobiographical Exercises”. That work (as its sub-title suggests), contains various recountings of biographical details of Cavell’s own life, facilitating an investigation, on his part, of the effect that certain events and circumstances within his life have had upon his philosophical work. As such, within the context of that late work it is not overly difficult to find one’s feet with Cavell’s talk of the place of the ‘human voice in philosophy’—connected, as that idea is, with explicitly autobiographical moments of recollection and reflection. Indeed within that work Cavell (1994b: vii) introduces as a ‘guiding intuition’ the thought that, “there is an internal connection between philosophy and autobiography, that each is a dimension of the other”. And yet, Cavell does not see the significance of his appeals to the human voice (and its apparent suppression) in philosophy as limited to that explicitly autobiographical work.

As has already been discussed, Cavell sees the idea of rehabilitating the human voice in philosophy as central to his work in The Claim of Reason. It is natural to understand that work as an extension—or even culmination—of much of Cavell’s earlier work. And so, Cavell’s contention that an attempted recovery of the human voice in philosophy is the central theme of The Claim of Reason, suggests that we should also find that idea (at least in germ) within much of his earlier work. But Cavell’s work within The Claim of Reason and within his earlier essays—the vast majority of which are collected in his (1969) Must We Mean What We Say?—is not explicitly autobiographical at all. As with most works of contemporary philosophy, Cavell’s earlier writings do employ various first-personal anecdotes and examples in order to illustrate specific observations and arguments. But it would be implausible to suggest that the use of such examples and anecdotes alone could distinguish those works as particularly autobiographical. So it would seem that the recovery of the human voice in philosophy, for Cavell, cannot be limited to, or realised only within, the parameters of the autobiographical (or at least what we ordinarily think of as the autobiographical). Which should lead us to ask: if the notion of the human voice and its place within philosophy need not be articulated in terms of straightforward autobiography, then how else might that notion find its expression?

In this chapter I wish to suggest that Cavell’s notion of the human voice and its place in philosophy is best understood, not primarily in terms of the autobiographical form that some of Cavell’s later work takes, but in terms of what I would like to call the deeply personal character of almost all of Cavell’s writing (both early and late).

15

It is generally imagined that philosophical writing requires a distinctly impersonal mode of address—that philosophical ideas ought to be communicated in a kind of universal voice—as if necessarily communicable by anyone to anyone. No doubt this convention, at least in part, reflects a venerable commitment to a kind of democratized conception of reason. After all, recognition of the fact that the voice of reason need not speak only for the privileged, or for tradition, or power is a significant achievement of enlightenment. And yet I wish to suggest that the adoption of a ‘universal rational voice’ is not the only option for philosophy. And further, that the pressure to adopt an entirely ‘universal’ or ‘rational’ voice often involves a suppression of the personal voice—a suppression that is itself limiting; and in some cases wholly distorting.

Before continuing I should perhaps say something about what I mean in calling a piece of philosophical work distinctly ‘personal’. What I do not mean by calling a piece of philosophical work or investigation ‘personal’ is that that work or investigation merely evinces a certain formal or grammatical structure. That is to say, in calling an investigation ‘personal’ I do not mean to include any and every statement that takes the grammatical form of a first-person expression. Nor do I mean anything that might be captured by a more philosophically loaded understanding of the particular logical form of a statement. In calling a philosophical investigation ‘personal’ I do not mean to call to mind what John Perry (1979) calls the essential indexicality of certain beliefs or what Elizabeth Anscombe (1975) following Héctor-Neri Castañeda (1967) calls the logic of the indirect reflexive. Instead I mean to use the term ‘personal’ in the much thicker, though also much more ordinary, sense in which that adjective might be used to describe the individual hopes, concerns, anxieties, pre-occupations, interests, and so on of a specific individual human being.

Even the most cursory reader of Cavell’s work will quickly notice the manner in which he repeatedly deploys certain stylistic devices in an attempt to imbue his writing with certain characteristic features of openly personal communication. Cavell conveys within his work a sense of hope attended, as that attitude so often is, by hesitancy; of the vulnerability exposed in personal (and intellectual) honesty; and of the kind of self-doubt with which genuine self-awareness must inevitably contend. Some commentators applaud these stylistic choices, others find them frustrating or obtuse. One critic even goes so far as to label them ‘inexcusable’.11 But just as I do not think that the importance of the personal within Cavell’s work should be seen as in any way restricted to his explicitly autobiographical discussions, or by the grammatical or logical structure of certain claims, I also do not believe that the significance of the personal within Cavell’s work should be seen as a mere quirk of his authorial style. The idea of bringing the human voice back into philosophy is neither a formal nor a stylistic notion for Cavell. It is a thematic concern. And the explicitly philosophical theme which most obviously encapsulates that concern in Cavell’s early work is the theme of ‘self-knowledge’.

11 For influential figures who praise Cavell’s written style see: (Rorty, 1989) and (Danto, 1982). For an example of the incredulity and exasperation that Cavell’s style can invoke see: (Hope, 1981). The characterisation of Cavell’s style as “inexcusable” comes from M. Glouberman‘s (1979: 813) review of the 1976 paperback edition of Must We Mean What We Say?.

16

II. Self-Knowledge and Ordinary Language.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the extent to which the identification and subsequent exploration of a novel understanding of ‘self-knowledge’ forms a thematic backbone for the ten essays comprising Cavell’s earliest collection, Must We Mean What We Say?. Nowhere is this clearer than in the first two essays of the collection. And yet the term ‘self-knowledge’ does not itself appear in the first (titular) essay at all and appears only towards the end of the second (“The Availability of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy”). Nonetheless in both essays the status of Cavell’s unique understanding of the notion of self-knowledge—as a central thematic concern of the entire collection—is established. And in each the notion of self-knowledge is characterised as inextricably bound up with the procedures and aims of what Cavell calls ‘ordinary language philosophy’. 12

In “The Availability of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy” Cavell (1969c: 66) writes:

“If it is accepted that “a language” (a natural language) is what the native speakers of a language speak, and that speaking a language is a matter of practical mastery, then such questions as “What should we say if…?” or “In what circumstances would we call…?” asked of someone who has mastered the language (for example, oneself) is a request for the person to say something about himself, describe what he does. So the different methods are methods for acquiring self-knowledge…”

The questions “What should we say if…?” and “In what circumstances would we call…?” are characteristic of the kind of ordinary language philosophy that Cavell is concerned with defending in each of the two aforementioned essays.13 However, Cavell’s identification of these questions with certain ‘methods for acquiring self-knowledge’ does not obviously accord with a traditional understanding of ordinary language philosophy at all.

As has already been noted, ordinary language philosophy is generally thought of as a methodology which would deny the reality or sense of various philosophical problems or questions from the standpoint of a commitment to the philosophical superiority of supposedly ordinary ways of speaking. I say ‘supposedly ordinary’ because one significant challenge for ordinary language philosophy as it is typically understood, is that of distinguishing in a non-arbitrary way between so called ‘ordinary’, and for example, ‘distinctly philosophical’ or ‘metaphysical’ ways of speaking. That challenge in turn might be understood as correlating to

12 The notion of ‘self-knowledge’ is at work in all but name throughout the essay “Must What We Mean What Say?”. At times the reader can almost feel the strain with which that as-yet unarticulated thematic concern is pressing for expression. As when Cavell (1969b: 18) says that the project of the ordinary language philosopher is not one of “…cutting big ideas down to size, but of giving them the exact space in which they can move without corrupting”, and goes on to explain that this “…is a question of self-preservation: for who is it that the philosopher punishes when it is the mind itself which assaults the mind?” (my emphasis). Or, as in response to the question of when ordinary language philosophy should begin, to which Cavell (1969b: 21) answers “When you have more facts than you know what to make of, or when you do not know what new facts would show. When, that is, you need a clear view of what you already know. When you need to do philosophy.” (my emphasis). Or finally, as when Cavell (1969b: 43) says in closing the essay “…it is by searching definitions that Socrates can coax the mind down from self-assertion—subjective assertion and private definition—and leads it back, through the community, home.” (my emphasis). 13 The first being a response to criticisms of Oxford ordinary language philosophy made by Cavell’s senior colleague Benson Mates. Both Mates’ and Cavell’s papers were originally delivered at a 1957 symposium at Stanford organised by the Pacific Coast Division of the American Philosophical Association. The second being a, rather polemical, review of David Pole’s, The Later Philosophy of Wittgenstein (the first book-length treatment of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy published in English).

17

a broader question facing the ordinary language philosopher, as to what it is that justifies privileging so called ‘ordinary’ language within our philosophical investigations in the first place. So the traditional ordinary language philosopher faces two potentially significant objections which might be presented in terms of two separate charges of dogmatism: (1) dogmatism about the content of—or of what counts as—‘ordinary’ speech, and (2) dogmatism about the philosophically privileged status of ‘ordinary language’.

Characterised in this way, ordinary language philosophy begins to look like just another kind of positivism. For it appears merely to mark some specific domain of language as uniquely ‘legitimate’ on the basis of an as-yet unjustified theoretical commitment to something called ‘ordinariness’. That commitment might itself be conceived as a straightforward substitute for the commitment to the power of formal logical explanation (reflected in the adoption of various artificial languages) underwriting the more dominant positivisms of the 20th Century.14 On such a view ordinary language philosophy appears as a philosophical movement which, far from promoting a new kind of ‘self-knowledge’ or helping to ‘bring the human voice back into philosophy’, would presume to dictate and limit what can and cannot be said and meant both in philosophy and in everyday life.

Against this kind of negative characterisation of ordinary language philosophy, Cavell’s most significant early insight is his defence of the idea that the claims that the ordinary language philosopher makes about ordinary ways of speaking—though based upon neither empirical evidence nor any kind of inference—are nonetheless perfectly justified. To put Cavell’s argument in the simplest terms possible: such claims are justified by the mere fact that the ordinary language philosopher is a native speaker of the language that she is investigating. As Cavell (1969b: 5) puts it the native speaker requires no evidence or inference to support her claims about ‘what we say’, all she requires is the truth of the proposition (repeated at the beginning of the above quotation) that “a natural language is what the native speakers of that language speak”. As Cavell (1969b: 4) further explains, “Such speakers do not, in general, need evidence for what is said in the language; they are the source of such evidence.”

But it should be noted immediately that this observation does not, in itself, justify the philosophical prioritising of ‘ordinary language’ in the first place. In fact, insofar as Cavell defines ‘ordinary language’ in terms of the language that the native speakers of a natural language speak, even assertions that seem unquestionably metaphysical (say for example, an assertion that ‘the past really exists but the future does not (not yet)’) do not appear to be automatically impugnable as extra- or non-ordinary and thus as somehow philosophically illegitimate. And that is because Cavell’s observation that a natural language is just what the native speakers of that language speak, is not so much an answer to the question (1) ‘what might distinguish so called ‘ordinary’ language from ‘distinctly philosophical’ or ‘metaphysical language’?’, as it is an answer to the question: (1a) ‘what is the ordinary language philosopher’s mode of access to facts about our ordinary ways of speaking?’

As such, if Cavell is to be understood as engaged in anything like a traditional project of ordinary language philosophy it would seem that he owes a further answer to the question: (2) ‘why should we privilege ‘ordinary’ language over, say, ‘metaphysical’ or ‘formal

14 Richard Rorty endorses an understanding of ordinary language philosophy along these lines in the introduction to his influential collection, The Linguistic Turn. There Rorty (1992: 12) states that “the only difference between Ideal Language Philosophers and Ordinary Language Philosophers is a disagreement about which language is Ideal.”

18

logical’ language, in our philosophical investigations in the first place?’ It is tempting to view Cavell’s project within these early essays—and indeed much of his work up to and including Parts I and II of The Claim of Reason—as involved in offering an answer to this further question. And yet I think that it is imperative that this temptation be resisted.

On the kind reading that I am warning against, Cavell would be seen as offering a defence of ordinary language philosophy, which, while importantly distinct from that famously offered by his teacher J.L. Austin, would maintain a significant degree of faithfulness to Austin’s larger project.

In “A Plea for Excuses” Austin (1979b: 182) offers his most explicit defence of the methodology of ordinary language philosophy—answering the question of why we ought to privilege ordinary ways of speaking in our philosophical investigations by asserting that:

“…[O]ur common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connexions they have found worth marking, in the lifetimes of many generations: these surely are likely to be more numerous, more sound, since they have stood up to the long test of the survival of the fittest, and more subtle, at least in all ordinary and reasonably practical matters, than any that you or I are likely to think up in our arm-chairs of an afternoon—the most favoured alternative method.”

In this well-known rebuke of traditional philosophical methodology Austin provides an at least prima facie reasonable answer to the second question discussed above. But because Austin does not provide a satisfactory answer to the first question, regarding what counts as ‘ordinary’ language, his answer to the second, more specifically philosophical question, quickly loses much of its credibility.

The above quotation cannot in itself provide an answer to the question of what counts as ‘ordinary’ language, since, as Austin (1979b: 182) notes, ‘ordinary’ language is already replete with the implications of various philosophical theories. As he rather colourfully puts it, “too much trodden into bogs or tracts by traditional philosophy…too much infected with the jargon of extinct theories” (ibid). ‘Ordinary language’ has presumably been so affected for millennia. But if ‘distinctly philosophical’ or ‘metaphysical’ language has withstood the ‘test of time’ as long as any other way of speaking, then Austin’s justification for privileging so called ‘ordinary language’ over philosophical or metaphysical language would appear to collapse in on itself. Thus the charge that Austin displays a certain dogmatism about the content of, or of what counts as, ‘ordinary’ language appears to stand. What is more, it is not clear that anything else that Austin has to say in his explicit attempts to justify his own methodology could quell that particular charge of dogmatism.

This issue is not exactly the same as, but is importantly related to Cavell’s interrogation, in “Austin at Criticism”, of what might be called Austin’s meta-methodological posture. Cavell characterises this posture as expressed in both the terms of criticism that Austin employs against philosophers with whom he does not agree and in Austin’s remarks upon his own philosophical methodology. One of Cavell’s primary concerns in the essay is to argue that Austin’s terms of philosophical criticism—accusing traditional philosophical views of being, for example, ‘mistaken’, ‘imprecise’ or ‘bogus’—fail to exhibit the kind of cautious; measured; and almost endlessly particular attentiveness that Austin displays in his actual investigations of our everyday employments of language. In this Cavell (1969e: 105) sees a stark contrast between the man who “could inspire revelation by telling us a pair of donkey stories which lead us to take in the difference between doing something ‘by mistake’ and ‘by

19

accident’”15, and the same man’s apparently oblique accusation that a fellow philosopher (G.E. Moore) is ‘mistaken’ in certain of his views. (Where nothing that might obviously constitute a mis-identification, on Moore’s part, is apparent).

Perhaps more importantly the critical terminology that Austin employs in criticising other philosophers does not obviously invite communal inspection, potential communal correction or qualification, and ultimately assent, in the manner that his actual investigations of our everyday employments of language aspire to. Austin’s remarks upon his own methodology, and particularly his explicit attempts at justifying that methodology, seem equally to eschew this central feature of the methodology itself. In his examination of our ordinary employment of ‘excuses’ Austin (1979b: 183) proclaims:

“Here at last we should be able to unfreeze, to loosen up and get going on agreeing about discoveries, however small, and on agreeing about how to reach agreement.”

And yet, even here the ‘traditional philosopher’ not only appears to have been locked out from the activity of “agreeing about how to reach agreement”, but it is clearly implied that this exclusion is a necessary condition of the activity’s (even potential) success. A similar Austinian denial of the relevance of the traditional philosopher’s perspective in discussions of ‘knowledge’ and ‘skepticism’ will become a major critical concern for Cavell in The Claim of Reason. Returning to the kind of reading that I am warning against: it is tempting to attribute to Cavell a modified (and we might say slightly subtler) though essentially identically motivated argument to that offered by Austin for privileging so called ‘ordinary’ language in our philosophical investigations. On such an interpretation Cavell’s innovation over Austin comes in Cavell’s beginning his argument, not with a direct answer to the question of why we ought to privilege so called ‘ordinary’ language within our philosophical investigations—an answer of the kind that immediately raises the further question of how we are to determine what counts as ordinary language, and then seems to either founder or else devolve into dogmatism—but instead to interrogate the ordinary language philosopher’s mode of access to so called ‘ordinary’ language. That is, to answer first question (1a) and then to somehow derive from the conclusions thereby drawn, a non-dogmatic justification for prioritizing so called ‘ordinary’ language in our philosophical investigations in the first place.

The primary problem with this kind of interpretation is that the proposed move from Cavell’s answer to the question of what explains the ordinary language philosopher’s mode of access to ordinary language (i.e. nothing more than the ordinary language philosopher’s capacity as a native speaker of that language) to a justification for privileging so called ‘ordinary’ ways of speaking in our philosophical investigations, appears either arbitrary or empty. And that is because Cavell’s explanation of the ordinary language philosopher’s justification for her claims about the content of ordinary language (i.e. the ordinary language philosopher’s mode of access as a native speaker of that language) does not in itself define or limit the scope of so

15 To quote Austin’s (1979b: 185 n.1) celebrated ‘Donkey story’ in full: “You have a donkey, so have I, and they graze in the same field. The day comes when I conceive a dislike for mine. I go to shoot it, draw a bead on it, fire: the brute falls in its tracks. I inspect the victim, and find to my horror that it is your donkey. I appear on your doorstep with the remains and say—what? ‘I say old sport, I’m awfully sorry, &c., I’ve shot your donkey by accident? Or, ‘by mistake’? Then again, I go to shoot my donkey as before, draw a bead on it, fire—but as I do so, the beasts move, and to my horror yours falls. Again the scene on the doorstep—what do I say? ‘By mistake’? Or ‘by accident’?

20

called ‘ordinary’ language in any way. Which is just to say that Cavell does not identify any class of linguistic statements (or even linguistic usages16) as the ‘ordinary’ ones, and hence does not so much as identify anything for us to privilege in our philosophical investigations—let alone justify any such privileging. So while Cavell clearly does wish to inherit something of Austin’s methodology, I think it is a mistake to attribute to Cavell a commitment to anything like Austin’s explicit attempts at justifying that methodology.

III. Ordinary Language: Content and Access. I have just said that Cavell does not identify any class of linguistic statements or usages as the ‘ordinary’ ones, and so cannot be concerned to justify a privileging of so called ‘ordinary’ language over other ways of talking in our philosophical investigations. And yet within the essay “Must We Mean What We Say?” it is easy to see why a reader might get the impression that that is precisely what Cavell is attempting to do. This is in large part because “Must We Mean What We Say?” is a rather uncommon kind of philosophical paper. Cavell’s paper is written in response to another paper, critical of ordinary language philosophy, delivered by Cavell’s senior colleague Benson Mates at a symposium organised by the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association. And yet, “Must We Mean What We Say?” surpasses both in its philosophical ambition and originality anything found in Mates’ paper alone. Nonetheless Cavell shapes his argument in direct response to Mates’ paper, and it is, at least in part, this fact which might seem to invite the kind of misreading that I have been warning against.

Mates’ paper is essentially built around the two questions that I have been suggesting the traditional ordinary language philosopher must face. As such, Cavell, in trying to communicate his own vision of the significance of ordinary language philosophy, sometimes appears as if he is trying to answer those two questions (or more specifically to amend the first in order to answer the second) in the manner outlined above. If we are to see that Cavell is not engaged in this task, we will need to disentangle a number of Cavell’s claims in “Must We Mean What We Say?” from the structure of Mates’ argument—a structure that, at least to some extent, is carried over into Cavell’s response.

As I have already said, Mates’ paper is built around two central questions which correspond to the two questions discussed above. First, what authority or force do the ordinary language philosopher’s claims about ‘ordinary language’ possess? That is, what allows the ordinary language philosopher to speak for ‘ordinary folk’ and their ‘ordinary’ employments of language? In this regard Mates’ is primarily interested in the evidential justifications (or lack thereof) for the ordinary language philosopher’s claims. Second, what special authority does ordinary language itself possess? Which is to say, why should we privilege ‘ordinary language’ over other logical, metaphysical, or otherwise philosophical language in our philosophical investigations?

Any answer to the second question will obviously be influenced by one’s preferred answer to the first. And, since Mates thinks that the correct answer to the first question must be that the ordinary language philosopher’s claims to speak for ‘ordinary language’ are neither justified nor justifiable, he devotes almost all of his paper to arguing for that conclusion. If the appeal

16 The significance of the explicit methodological shift from a focus upon ‘words’ and ‘statements’ to a (Wittgenstein inspired) focus upon ‘uses’ of language, in this context, is discussed in section IV below.

21

to ‘ordinary language’ can itself be shown to be illegitimate or arbitrary then the point of Mates’ second question will be essentially moot.

In prosecuting his argument against the methodology of ordinary language philosophy Mates points to an inconsistency, or what he characterises as a disagreement, among the claims of two pre-eminent mid-century Oxford philosophers regarding the ordinary meaning of the word ‘voluntary’. Gilbert Ryle (1949: 69), in his The Concept of Mind asserts:

"In their most ordinary employment 'voluntary’ and 'involuntary’ are used, with a few minor elasticities, as adjectives applying to actions which ought not to be done. We discuss whether someone's action was voluntary or not only when the action seems to have been his fault.”

Ryle (1949: 71) concludes from this observation that it is primarily certain “unconsciously stretched” uses of the adjectives ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’ in cases in which nothing morally problematic appears to have occurred, which motivate what he calls “the largely spurious problems known as the problem of the Freedom of the Will”. Austin (1979b: 191) in “A Plea for Excuses”, on the other hand, and in a different connection, has this:

“…for example, take 'voluntarily' and 'involuntarily': we may join the army or make a gift voluntarily, we may hiccough or make a small gesture involuntarily..."

Since Austin surely does not mean to suggest that either the giving of gifts or hiccoughing is always morally problematic, Ryle’s and Austin’s characterisations of the ordinary use of the term ‘voluntary’ are at odds.17 Ryle thinks that describing an action as having been performed voluntarily or involuntarily suggests that there is something morally problematic about the action, while Austin clearly does not. Having identified this disagreement Mates (1958: 165) declares, “If agreement about usage cannot be reached within so restricted a sample as the class of Oxford Professors of Philosophy, what are the prospects when the sample is enlarged?”

Cavell’s response to this challenge is simple. He suggests that Mates has indeed found a significant inconsistency in Ryle’s and Austin’s observations about our everyday uses of the terms ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’ but argues that this need present no methodological difficulty for either philosopher. The obvious, and Cavell thinks correct, response to this inconsistency is just to conclude that Ryle is wrong. More importantly Cavell suggests that, at least in so far as Ryle is committed to proceeding philosophically from what we would ordinarily say, he may reasonably be expected to acknowledge his own error if and when presented with Austin’s counterexamples.

Nonetheless, Cavell points out that Austin’s and Ryle’s claims are not diametrically opposed. In “A Plea for Excuses” Austin is, like Ryle, suggesting that the terms ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’ cannot be applied to any action whatsoever in any circumstances whatsoever. As Cavell (1969b: 6) puts it,

“Although we can (sometimes) say, ‘the gift was made voluntarily’, it is specifically not something we can say about ordinary, unremarkable cases of making gifts”

17 Austin does not explicitly discuss the act of calling an action ‘voluntary’ or ‘involuntary’. But as Cavell explains this need present no problem for his (or Mates’) argument. As Cavell puts it, Austin’s talk of ‘joining the army or making a gift voluntarily &c.’ can be understood as ‘material mode’ for ‘we may say that someone joined the army or gave a gift voluntarily &c.’. The significance of this transition is discussed further in section IV.

22

Asserting that a gift was made voluntarily still implies that there was something unusual, unexpected or perplexing about that action. Thus we might say ‘the gift was made voluntarily’ when, for example, Aaron buys a Christmas present for everyone in his (rather large) office despite knowing that a ‘Secret Santa’ game has been set up (at least in part to prevent anybody from feeling obliged to buy gifts for such a large number of colleagues); or when Dan gifts his most treasured (heretofore almost jealously guarded) guitar to a virtual stranger (apparently upon a whim). In each of these cases a native speaker of English can clearly see how the contextual details provided serve to clarify what could possibly be meant in describing Aaron and Dan’s gift giving as ‘voluntary’. Utilising examples of this kind Cavell argues that to say an act was committed ‘voluntarily’ quite clearly does imply that there was something, or something imaginably, untoward (as Cavell puts it ‘fishy’) about that action. Thus, on Cavell’s account Ryle’s mistake was just that he generalized too narrowly by declaring that in describing an action as having been performed ‘voluntarily’ we necessarily imply that that action was morally untoward.

In the remainder of the essay “Must We Mean What We Say?”, Cavell is concerned with exploring the status and character of the kinds of observations about ordinary language just adduced. That is, observations about when it is appropriate to say, for example, that ‘the gift was made voluntarily’ as well as observations about what such a statement implies. To take another of Cavell’s examples (1969b: 9), such observations as:

“if a person asks you whether you dress the way you do voluntarily, you will not understand him to be curious merely about your psychological processes (whether your wearing them ‘proceeds from free choice…’); you will understand him to be implying or suggesting that your manner of dress is in some way peculiar.”

A large part of Cavell’s argument in “Must We Mean What We Say?” is given over to opposing Mates’ suggestion that such observations could be philosophically relevant (or even true) only if they enjoyed some form of strictly evidential backing. As if one should need to take a survey to confirm Cavell’s observation about the implications of asking whether someone dresses as they do voluntarily. Cavell argues that this approach is entirely wrong-headed. It is clear that ordinary language philosophers such as Ryle and Austin did not utilise the kind of empirical procedures employed in many of the social sciences. That is, the kinds of procedures one would implement in, for example, experimental linguistics. It would certainly have come as no surprise to either Ryle or Austin that each’s work was in this way quite different to the kind of work appropriate to a linguist seeking to catalogue and schematise the linguistic behaviour of a given population. And yet Cavell’s argument in “Must We Mean What We Say?” is that though Ryle and Austin do not proceed upon the basis of any kind of statistical or otherwise observational evidence in their explorations of ‘what we say when…’, they do not thereby proceed without justification.

Cavell is concerned to identify and understand the kind of justification that Ryle and Austin do depend upon in their investigations. And, Cavell’s first step towards understanding this kind of non-evidential justification is, as already noted, his observation about the ordinary language philosopher’s non-evidential mode of access to facts about her (natural) language (as a native speaker of that language).

Now, because Cavell’s explanation of the ordinary language philosopher’s access to observations about ordinary language is entered in response to Mates’ objection to the ordinary language philosopher’s lack of evidential justification for her claims, it is tempting

23

to assume that Cavell is also ultimately working to develop an answer to Mates’ further question. That is, the question of why we ought to privilege ordinary language in our philosophical investigations in the first place. According to Mates that question is rendered largely moot by a negative assessment of the ordinary language philosopher’s presumption to speak of (or for) ‘ordinary language’ at all. So, in contesting that negative assessment Cavell re-opens the question of the status of observations about ordinary language in our philosophical investigations. That is why it is tempting to assume that Cavell should then attempt to justify the privileging of such observations within our philosophical investigations in the manner advocated by the traditional ordinary language philosopher. But I contend that within “Must We Mean What We Say?”, and indeed throughout his philosophical career, Cavell does no such thing.

Mates, rightly, asks two questions of the traditional ordinary language philosopher: 1) ‘What allows the ordinary language philosopher to determine what counts as ordinary language?’ And, 2) ‘Why should we privilege ‘ordinary’ language in our philosophical investigations in the first place?’ I have been arguing that in opposing Mates’ suggestion that the ordinary language philosopher’s procedures are ultimately unjustifiable, Cavell asks a different starting question. Namely, 1a) ‘What is the ordinary language philosopher’s mode of access to our ordinary language?’ And I have been arguing further that Cavell does not ask and proceed to investigate this question in order to answer Mates’ second question (2), though it is easy to see why it might appear that that is what he is trying to do.

I would now like to suggest that Cavell asks his first question (1a) in order to broach an entirely different question from that put forward by Mates. In investigating the ordinary language philosopher’s mode of access to facts about our ordinary language Cavell is not interested in justifying the privileging of ordinary language in our philosophical investigations in the manner advocated by the traditional ordinary language philosopher. That is, Cavell is not interested in unmasking supposedly illusory or spurious philosophical problems from the perspective of our ordinary ways of talking. Instead Cavell’s consideration of the ordinary language philosopher’s mode of access to facts about our ordinary language leads him to ask a much more nuanced question: (2a) ‘If claims about our ordinary uses of language derived from the perspective of a particular native speaker of that language seem to conflict with claims made by philosophers, what does that tell us about the nature of that apparent conflict?

Whatever the answer to this question (2a) might be, that answer cannot also provide any straightforward answer to Mates’ original question (2) ‘Why should we privilege ordinary language in our philosophical investigations in the first place?’. And that is because any such straightforward answer is blocked by the obvious observation that the philosopher is herself a native speaker of the language in which her philosophical claims are made. Claims about our ordinary language made from the perspective of a native speaker of that language cannot automatically trump the claims of philosophers, because the claims of philosophers are themselves claims made from a native speaker’s perspective. This means that Cavell’s second question (2a) immediately raises further questions about the relationship between the participants in the apparent conflict between ordinary language philosophy and the tradition. How should we understand the relationship between the ordinary language philosopher and her traditional opponent? And what might the relationship between these two parties tell us about the apparent conflict between them?

24

The fact that Cavell is more interested in examining the relationship between the ordinary language philosopher’s claims and the claims of traditional philosophy, than in diagnosing one set of claims as illusory or mistaken (or else of vindicating one set of claims over another), is clearly attested in the opening remarks of the essay. There Cavell characterises the relationship he is interested in as one of mutual discord, asserting that:

“These ways of philosophy seem, like friends who have quarrelled, to be neither able to tolerate nor to ignore one another”.

That Cavell’s argument in ‘Must We Mean What We Say?’ is not supposed to straightforwardly vindicate the ordinary language philosopher’s dismissal of traditional philosophical claims is equally attested in the fact that Cavell devotes none of that essay to justifying Ryle’s claim, or any similar claim, about what Ryle calls the “largely spurious problems known as the problem of the Freedom of the Will”. Indeed Cavell does not explicitly discuss the relationship between the ordinary language philosopher’s observations about ‘what we say when…’ and the philosophical problem of the ‘Freedom of the Will’ until the closing sections of the essay. In the final paragraph he gives us this rather enigmatic aside:

“Professor Mates, at one point in his paper, puts his doubts about the significance of the claims of ordinary language this way: “Surely the point is not merely that if you use the word ‘voluntary’ just as the philosopher does, you may find yourself entangled in the philosophic problem of the Freedom of the Will” (p.67).18 Perhaps the reason [Mates] thinks this is a negligible consequence is that he hears it on analogy with the assertion, “If you use the term ‘space-time’ just as the physicist does, you may find yourself entangled in the philosophic problem of simultaneity.” The implication is that the problem must simply be faced, not avoided. I, however, hear the remark differently: If you use alcohol just as the alcoholic does, or pleasure as the neurotic does, you may find yourself entangled in the practical problem of the freedom of the will.” (Cavell, 1969b: 43)

These remarks clearly do not constitute any simple rejection of the philosophical problem of the ‘Freedom of the Will’. Whatever Cavell is trying to communicate in the above passage, it is obviously not a clear and flat dismissal of supposedly ‘spurious problems’, like the dismissal offered by Ryle. After all, alcoholism and neurosis may be unfortunate conditions, but they are not ‘spurious problems’.

To articulate exactly what Cavell means to communicate in this enigmatic passage it will be necessary to turn our attention to Cavell’s second question (2a) and the further questions that follow from it about the relationship between the disputants in the apparent conflict between ordinary language philosophy and the philosophical tradition. By the end of this chapter I hope we will be in a position to see that far from constituting any simple rebuke of the philosopher burdened by questions concerning the ‘Freedom of the Will’, Cavell’s analogy in the above passage suggests only that such a philosopher, like the neurotic or the alcoholic, is faced with a distinctly human problem bearing distinctly human consequences. We should by then also be in a position to see why Cavell thinks that investigating the nature of any native speaker’s capacity to speak authoritatively about ‘what we say when…’, ultimately shows that traditional philosophical problems cannot be cast aside as merely ‘illusory’ or as ‘simple mistakes’. Much more will need to be said to make clear why Cavell thinks that this is an important and interesting consequence of his investigations. But for the time being it will

18 Citation in original to (Mates, 1958: 164)

25

suffice to stress that, Cavell is not interested in offering any simple rebuke of supposedly spurious problems.

IV. Ordinary Language: Evidence and Access.

In the last two sections I have been speaking, in a rather abstract way, about a misguided temptation to interpret a number of Cavell’s claims within the essay “Must We Mean What We Say?” as offering an investigation of the ordinary language philosopher’s capacity to speak authoritatively about ‘what we say when…’ and in so doing, as providing a kind of explanation of the source (or sources) of certain (supposedly spurious) philosophical problems. This discussion itself was precipitated by the observation that Cavell’s association of ordinary language philosophy with a kind of self-knowledge (hence an invocation of the personal) does not obviously accord with a traditional understanding of ordinary language philosophy at all. I have been arguing that while Cavell does undertake to investigate the nature of the ordinary language philosopher’s mode of access to her claims about ordinary language, he is not at all interested in unmasking ‘spurious problems’ in the manner advocated by the traditional ordinary language philosopher. In the next two sections I would like to discuss Jerry Fodor and Jerrold Katz’s (1963) early critical interpretation of Cavell, “The Availability of What We Say”. In the next chapter I will also turn to consider Stephen Mulhall’s (1994) much more sympathetic monograph, Stanley Cavell: Philosophy’s Recounting of the Ordinary.

I believe that each of these two interpretations goes wrong in attributing to Cavell’s work precisely the kind of argumentative schema that I have been contesting above. That is, the kind of schema that would understand Cavell’s observations about the ordinary language philosopher’s mode of access to assertions about “what we say when…” as somehow intended to (non-dogmatically) justify the privileging of ordinary language in our philosophical investigations in the manner advocated by the traditional ordinary language philosopher. Though each does so in a very different manner. Investigating how each of these two interpretations goes wrong, will serve to bring Cavell’s actual, and quite radically original, understanding of the value of ordinary language philosophy into clearer view. Doing so will also allow us to begin to understand the connection that Cavell sees between the methods of Austin and the later Wittgenstein and the notion of self-knowledge.

Let us begin then with Fodor and Katz’s early criticisms of the first two essays (later) collected in Must We Mean What We Say?.

The argument against Cavell which Fodor and Katz prosecute, is a particularly curious one, because it is, for the most part, an argument against a position that Cavell does not hold—neither in the essay “Must We Mean What We Say?” (with which Fodor and Katz predominantly engage) nor in any of his other works. At times the mischaracterisations of Cavell’s arguments put forward by Fodor and Katz seem almost wilfully misleading. But I think that Fodor and Katz are driven to misread Cavell in the way that they do because they continually presume that Cavell is offering a straightforward defence of traditional ordinary language philosophy. They thus assume that Cavell is attempting to explain both why the ordinary language philosopher is justified in making observations about ordinary language (‘what we say when…’) and to explain how such observations might justifiably be used to impugn ‘spurious problems’ in the manner advocated by the traditional ordinary language philosopher.

26

Fodor and Katz reject Mates’ characterisation of what could possibly count as evidence for, and thus possibly justify, the ordinary language philosopher’s claims about ‘what we say when…’. Fodor and Katz (1963: 71) describe Mates’ narrow conception of what strictly empirical evidence for linguistic usage might look like—essentially the taking of surveys—as “a caricature of what the empirical investigation of language is like”. But they essentially agree with the spirit of Mates’ overall argument, claiming that traditional ordinary language philosophy ultimately depends upon a fantastical picture of the ordinary language philosopher’s linguistic mastery, amounting to what Fodor and Katz claim to be a completely implausible kind of ‘metalinguistic infallibility’. Fodor and Katz charge Cavell with supporting precisely this position and argue further that it is his endorsement of this idea which leads Cavell to support a view of the privileged position of ‘ordinary language’ within our philosophical investigations. A view which they label ‘the natural language fallacy’.

Of course I have been claiming that it is a mistake to attribute to Cavell any argument for the straightforward privileging of ordinary language in our philosophical investigations, and thus any explanation of the ordinary language philosopher’s supposed ability to impugn certain philosophical problems as illusory. If I am right in saying that Cavell is not interested in defending the traditional ordinary language philosopher’s practice of unmasking certain philosophical problems as spurious, then Cavell cannot be accused of holding the position that Fodor and Katz attribute to him. Thus even if the traditional ordinary language philosopher can be legitimately accused of endorsing what Fodor and Katz call ‘the natural language fallacy’, Cavell certainly cannot.

Nonetheless it will be helpful to examine the position that Fodor and Katz (mis)attribute to Cavell in some detail. For as has already been said, in articulating what is wrong with the position that Fodor and Katz attribute to him, Cavell’s actual understanding of the value of ordinary language philosophy will become much clearer.

Fodor and Katz present two central criticisms of the position that they take Cavell to hold. 19 Both are instructive in that each reveals a certain set of pre-conceptions about what Cavell must be arguing in “Must We Mean What We Say?” if his claims are to have any distinctly philosophical significance—or, to use Fodor and Katz’s (1963: 67) rather condescending phrase, to be at all “philosophically impressive”.

As has already been discussed, in exploring the ordinary language philosopher’s mode of access to assertions about ordinary language, Cavell observes that the ordinary language philosopher does not generally require statistical, or otherwise observational, evidence for her claims (as a linguist seeking to catalogue an unknown language would).

In fact, Cavell’s claim is slightly stronger than this. What Cavell is trying to express is that a kind of philosophical preoccupation with the question of ‘evidence’ can serve to obscure our ordinary relation to certain matters of fact; and that among these relations is our relation (as native speakers) to our knowledge of our own language. To slightly modify an example of Austin’s: if I go to the larder and perceive there to be a loaf of bread before me, sitting right

19 I focus here on what I see as the two most important and revealing criticisms that Fodor and Katz level against Cavell. For a comprehensive and methodical explication of Fodor and Katz’s mischaracterisations and misunderstandings of Cavell’s work see Stanley Bates and Ted Cohen’s (1972) rejoinder to Fodor and Katz, “More on What We Say.” Much of my argument concerning Fodor and Katz is indebted to Bates and Cohen’s excellent paper.

27

there on the shelf, it will not do in ordinary circumstances for me to say ‘I now have evidence (all the evidence I need?) of the presence of bread’.20 To say so would signal that I am taking an extra-ordinary (unusually cautious or doubtful) attitude toward the bread which is, for all the world, right there in front of me.

It is important to note that in entering this observation about our ordinary talk of ‘evidence’, I am not trying to suggest that it is somehow always illicit to talk of ‘evidence’ in such circumstances, or that this practice is the source of ‘spurious problems’. (That would indeed be an instance of exactly the understanding of ordinary language philosophy that I have been arguing against). All that I am claiming is that to treat something as ‘evidence’ where we would not usually talk of ‘evidence’ is to modify one’s ordinary relation to a certain matter of fact. I have not yet given any explanation of what an ordinary non-evidential relation to a matter of fact might be or how we might understand such a relation. But if one is puzzled by the idea of bearing a relation to a certain matter of fact which is not (ultimately) evidential, it might be helpful to call to mind an example that Cavell later offers as a correlate, in this respect, of the ordinary language philosopher’s claims about her own (native) language. In “The Availability of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy” Cavell asks:

“[H]ow does the logician know that (1) ‘Nobody is in the auditorium’ must be transcribed differently from (2) ‘Peabody is in the auditorium?’ By intuition, Careful empirical studies?” Perhaps he will say: ‘But obviously we don’t want the same inferences to be drawn from (1) as from (2), in particular not the inference that somebody is in the auditorium.” But how does he know that?

The implication here is that we do not (yet) know what justifies such transcriptions (and hence that we do not (yet) know what justifies such statements as are made by the ordinary language philosopher). But to imagine that they are always and only justified by evidence would be both to significantly stretch our ordinary notion of what it means to treat something as ‘evidence’, and at the same time to colour our understanding of the kind of phenomena that we are investigating.21 I do not say that this cannot (or should never) be done. Only that such an approach will not be without its consequences.

According to Cavell, as a native speaker of the language that she is investigating, the ordinary language philosopher does not, or at least does not always, ‘go upon evidence’. She is, as a native speaker, rather a source of such evidence. Again, as Cavell puts it, this observation depends upon nothing more than the fact that “a natural language is what native speakers of that language speak”.

It is here that Fodor and Katz’s first crucial misunderstanding takes hold, and it is upon this misunderstanding that they base their first central criticism of Cavell. Fodor and Katz agree that it would be a mistake to require the ordinary language philosopher to provide evidence for each and every one of her claims. They instead endorse a picture of the relevance of evidence to the ordinary language philosopher’s claims whereby those claims operate within a kind of ‘default and challenge’ structure. For Fodor and Katz evidence is properly required for certain claims only when the veracity of those claims is legitimately called into question. Thus, in other (unchallenged) cases the ordinary language philosopher can be understood to enjoy a sort of default entitlement to her claims. A such, for Fodor and Katz the ordinary

20 See: (Austin, 1979a: 106) 21 To suggest that we know how to transcribe such logical statements by convention would be to colour that phenomena in a different, at one time exceedingly popular, shade.

28

language philosopher can rely upon her sense of what is normally said (by native speakers of, say, English) until such time as she is challenged by another competent native speaker or speakers. So far so good. Fodor and Katz, however, attribute to Cavell a much more extreme position, whereby the ordinary language philosopher’s claims about our uses of ordinary language are essentially infallible. And this is because they consistently substitute (or else interpret) Cavell’s discussions of ‘evidence’ for (or as) discussions of what they label ‘empirical evidence’ and thereby distort the meaning and intent of his claims.

An example may be of use here. Cavell suggests that Ryle, when presented with Austin’s counterexamples about the use of the word ‘voluntary’, could reasonably be expected to admit that he had been too hasty in the particular generalization he had offered about our use of that word (about our describing actions as ‘voluntary’ only when we perceive them to be somehow morally suspect). Fodor and Katz agree with Cavell’s suggestion thus far. Cavell then suggests that whatever Ryle ‘goes on’ in recognizing the relevance of Austin’s counterexample, it is not any kind of evidence. Ryle (assuming he is a proficient native speaker of English) could not be shown (presented with evidence) that the word ‘voluntary’ may also be used in the ways that Austin suggests, but only reminded of this fact. In light of this observation Cavell declares that in this case the question of evidence is irrelevant.

Fodor and Katz however take Cavell’s claim that the question of ‘evidence’ at least can be irrelevant in such contexts (and in this case is irrelevant) to mean that the issue at stake between Ryle and Austin is in no way empirical—where empirical is taken to mean ‘to do with some matter of fact’. This leads Fodor and Katz to suppose that Cavell is claiming that empirical evidence is irrelevant to Ryle and Austin’s dispute because Ryle and Austin have access to some other mysterious, and mysteriously much more reliable (even infallible), kind of non-empirical evidence for their observations. But Cavell is claiming no such thing. Cavell’s claim is not that empirical evidence is irrelevant to Ryle and Austin’s dispute, but that any evidence is irrelevant to that dispute—so long as Ryle recognises (in something like the way that the logician recognizes that statements about ‘nobody’ and statements about ‘Peabody’ must be transcribed differently) that his generalization was ultimately incorrect. What is more, Cavell is not claiming that Ryle and Austin’s dispute is in any way non-empirical—if (again) empirical is taken to mean ‘to do with matters of fact’. What Ryle and Austin disagree about (the way we in fact use the word ‘voluntary’) is, quite simply, a matter of fact.

What most interests Cavell is precisely what Fodor and Katz miss, that Ryle and Austin’s disagreement, and the possibility of Ryle’s coming to see that he is wrong by being reminded of ways in which he would himself use (or understand the use of) the term ‘voluntary’, reveals a kind of relation to certain matters of fact (and one may add the descriptor ‘empirical’ if that seems illuminating) with regard to which the question of evidence is not immediately relevant. Austin’s counterexample recalls Ryle to matters of fact not just about how standard speakers of English speak (the kind of thing that evidence might be marshalled to confirm) but of how he (Ryle) speaks—what he would accept as a competent (i.e. meaningful) use of the term ‘voluntary’. As Cavell (1969b: 14) puts it:

“[One in Ryle’s position] needs no evidence... It would be misleading to say he has evidence… for that would suggest that he has done the sort of investigation the linguist [does], only less systematically…And it would be equally misleading to say that he does not have evidence… because that would make it appear

29

that there is something he still needs… [but] there is no evidence (which it makes sense, in general, to say) he has: the question of evidence is irrelevant.”

All that is not to say that Ryle and Austin could never have a disagreement about the uses of ordinary language to which empirical evidence would be relevant. Nor to deny that some kind of ‘default and challenge’ model of evidential justification might be entirely appropriate to that kind of dispute. The claim here is only that such a disagreement would be of a different kind than the type of disagreement that Cavell is interested in.

It is of course conceivable that Ryle, though a competent native English speaker, may be unaware that, for example, ‘to join the daft and barmy’ in certain quarters means ‘to join the army’. Confronted only with the abbreviated rhyming slang ‘to join the daft’, one could reasonably imagine Ryle totally perplexed. If Austin were then to assert that to ‘join the daft’ means, ‘to join the army’ he would have informed Ryle of an empirical fact. 22 If there were some reason to doubt this fact—perhaps if Austin were known to be fond of inventing his own rhyming slang and passing it off as common parlance—then ordinary empirical evidence about what a certain population does in fact say would be undoubtedly relevant to that issue. On the other hand, if Ryle were to demand evidence for Austin’s assertions about the word ‘voluntary’, we should not be inclined to question Austin’s evidence (or lack thereof) for his observation so much as we should be inclined to question Ryle’s presumed competence as a native English speaker. Again in the kind of case that Cavell is interested in—the case of a competent native speaker’s ability to elicit and respond to observations about her own language—the question of evidence is not generally relevant.

It is worth noting that the modifying expression ‘in general’ is important in Cavell’s (1969b: 14) formulation of his observation: that “there is no evidence (which it makes sense, in general, to say) [the ordinary language philosopher] has” for her claims about ordinary language. As we have just seen, it is always possible to imagine situations in which evidence is relevant to a question about a native speaker’s reports concerning her own language. Cavell’s point, however, is that these circumstances, and the kind of evidence relevant to them, will not generalise. If, as in the above example, Ryle suspects Austin of trying to dupe him about the origin of a certain piece of rhyming slang, then evidence about what a certain population says will be relevant to that question. But such evidence will not be relevant to the question of what justifies claims about a natural language made by a native speaker of that language in general.

Cavell does not, as Fodor and Katz suggest, overlook the possibility of a ‘default and challenge’ model of evidential justification in favour of some far more extreme model of mysterious non-empirical evidential justification. Rather he does not endorse a ‘default and challenge’ model of evidential justification with regard to the ordinary language

22 Even here the issue is complicated. For it is not just an empirical fact which one could expect Ryle to recognise in coming to realise that ‘to join the daft’ as an abbreviation of ‘to join the daft and barmy’ means ‘to join the army’. One would also expect Ryle, as a competent native speaker of English, to recognise that this rhyming slang ‘fits’ a possible way of playing with his language—and one that is generally humorous. To recognize that is to recognize more than an empirical fact alone. It is also arguably to recognise more than a mere convention. For while we may wish to say that rhyming is a conventional way of playing with language, it would be decidedly odd to say that rhyming is humorous by convention. Indeed in order to make sense of that assertion I would have to imagine a speaker to be implying that a certain rhyme had failed to be humorous; or else perhaps suggesting that a conventionally humorous form had been adapted in some subversive way—say in the composition of a terribly sad limerick.

30

philosopher’s claims about ‘what we say when…’ because he does not endorse any purely evidential model of justification for such claims. If the question of evidence is, in even some cases, not relevant to the justification of such claims then no model of purely evidential justification could provide an adequate general description of the situations that Cavell is concerned with investigating.23

Before moving to consider Fodor and Katz’s second major criticism of the position they take Cavell to hold it will be helpful to say something more about what Cavell thinks is shown by the fact that the question of evidence is not generally relevant to the ordinary language philosopher’s ability to make (and recognise) claims about her own language (about ‘what we say when…’). Doing so, will require us to say something about what Cavell thinks an investigation of the ordinary language philosopher’s ability to make such observations reveals about her (and thus any native speaker’s) relationship to her native language in general.

We have already encountered two important clues as to what Cavell thinks is revealed by the fact that evidence is not generally relevant to the assessment, undertaken by native speakers, of claims made about ‘what we say when…’ (when those claims are themselves made by native speakers).

First, as Cavell observes, claims made about ‘what we say when…’ reveal a kind of knowledge about an activity that one is competent in performing. They hence constitute a kind of self-knowledge with respect to that ability. This is reflected in the observation that claims about ‘what we say when…’ are claims about what one does as a competent speaker of a natural language. And again, this fact is reflected in the observation that Ryle does not need to be shown what others do, in coming to see that his generalization about the word ‘voluntary’ was overly hasty, but only reminded what he would do (what he does).

Second, when a claim made from the perspective of a native speaker about ‘what we say when…’ is disputed (rightly or wrongly), if the individual who made that claim continues to insist upon its correctness, then the question of the veracity of that claim becomes a question about that individual’s competence as a native speaker. It becomes, a question about a certain kind of correctness in the language and hence an irreducibly normative question.

This fact is reflected in our earlier observation that if Ryle were to challenge Austin’s claim about our use of the word ‘voluntary’ we should be inclined to question Ryle’s competence as a native English speaker (before we should be inclined to question Austin’s evidence for his claim). But this observation might still give us pause. And it might do so on two separate counts. First, our accepting the above observation seems itself to rely upon our acceptance of the fact that Austin’s (1979b: 191) observation, that “we may join the army… voluntarily… [or] hiccough… involuntarily” is a sound one. And yet we may wonder how we came to

23 It is important to note that I am claiming here that Cavell could not accept a ‘default and challenge’ model of purely evidential justification. As we shall soon see, the considerations that Cavell thinks are at issue in the case of a disagreement among native speakers might be profitably characterised in terms of some kind of ‘default and challenge’ model. But that model could not be a model of purely evidential justification. To put this suggestion in the terms developed below, a kind of ‘default and challenge’ model might be helpful in exploring presumptions of competence among speakers, and evidence might sometimes even be relevant to assessing those presumptions but this would not be akin to assessing speakers claims about their own language purely in terms of the evidential justifications that they are able to muster for such claims.

31

judge this claim to be sound if there is no evidence which it makes sense in general to say that Austin has or requires for his claim. Second, and as noted earlier, Austin’s assertion does not seem to be about language at all; but rather about the world (or certain actions within the world). Austin’s assertion does not have the form ‘We say that one can…’ but merely: ‘one can….’. We might therefore think that Austin’s claim is not about any kind of ‘correctness in the language’, and is therefore not any kind of distinctly normative claim (or perhaps better, is a normative claim only insofar as truth and falsity are normative notions).

Turning to the case of a claim about our ordinary uses of language made by a native speaker of that language which is not sound, may help us to articulate the kind of justification that Cavell thinks a claim that is sound, like Austin’s, enjoys. It should also help us to begin to clear up a certain confusion about the relationship between claims ‘about language’, and claims ‘about the world’—and the question of the kind of normativity involved in each.

Let us focus not upon an outlandish claim that seems obviously unsound (perhaps even absurd) but on a claim based upon a mistake that is in some sense ‘understandable’. For there certainly are such cases. What is more, in such cases an individual’s presumed competence with relation to the use of her own language may be challenged and found wanting—and yet, we do not always think that such a challenge poses any significant consequences for our view of that speaker’s competence as a native speaker in general. That is, we do not always think that a mistake made in speaking, has any general consequence for a speaker’s presumed competence in her native language beyond the case of the particular mistake she has made.

We might, for example, imagine a speaker realising in the course of a discussion that she had previously understood the English word ‘inflammable’ as an antonym of ‘flammable’ (incorrectly applying certain assumptions about the prefix ‘in-’). We might even imagine that that speaker had confidently made an assertion about this misunderstanding before discovering her error, saying something like ‘when we say ‘inflammable’ we mean ‘non-combustible’’. Such a mistake, if left undiscovered, might have devastating practical consequences, but it would be implausible to suggest that such a misunderstanding could undermine anyone’s presumed competence as a native speaker of English in general. The mistake is, as we might say, perfectly understandable.

In the case of a misunderstanding about the meaning of the word ‘inflammable’, marshalling evidence about what is said—for example, pointing to occurrences of the word ‘inflammable’ in warnings attached to various highly combustible objects and materials—would obviously help to convince our imagined speaker of that words meaning. And, to take this thought one step further, such a practice might even be necessary if our speaker were (perhaps understandably) reluctant to relinquish commitment to her assumption about the prefix ‘in-’. We might then think that in many other cases—that is, in the case of the meaning of many other words—relevant evidence of a similar kind is always at hand and thereby always potentially decisive (though we may not always need to refer to it). Thinking along these lines we may be inclined to suppose once more that evidence is always relevant to disagreements, even among native speakers, about the meaning of certain words or phrases in their language. And we might also be tempted to think that relevant evidence of this kind is what provides the crucial link between language and the world. Though such evidence might not always be something we are in a position to ‘point to’, we might think that we are never really without such evidence. After all, good evidence of the relevant sort can always be found in a good dictionary.

32

Two simple observations will help to bring out a certain confusion in this line of thinking and will also serve to bring certain important features of any speaker’s relationship to her own native language into clearer view.

First, we should note that there is much that a native speaker knows about her language that will not be found in any dictionary. In the case of English for example, that “We wouldn’t ask whether someone dresses the way they do voluntarily unless we meant that there was something peculiar about the way that they dress”. It is, in part, the fact that this kind of information cannot be found in a dictionary that leads a philosopher like Mates to argue that whatever Cavell has articulated in reminding us of this fact about our ordinary use of the term ‘voluntary’, it is no part of the meaning of the word ‘voluntary’. And yet, in the context of the aforementioned statement (“We wouldn’t ask…”), any insistence that ‘voluntary’ taken by itself does not mean ‘peculiar’ (that, for example, you will not find ‘peculiar’ among the possible meanings of the word ‘voluntary’ listed in a dictionary) seems only to show that there are certain limitations inherent in defining a word ‘taken by itself’—which is to say in isolation from its context of meaningful employment.24 We might then think: so much the worse for dictionaries. But let us now turn to another simple observation. Namely, that there is much to be found in a good dictionary that many competent native speakers will not know about their language. In the case of English, for example: what an ‘abomasum’ is, what it is to ‘absquatulate’, or what it means to describe something as ‘anguilliform’.25

Taken together, these two simple observations raise an important question about the scope of the competence that we attribute to and expect of native speakers. How much does one have to know to be a competent native speaker? What is central and what is peripheral to possessing that competency? Is knowing that ‘We wouldn’t ask whether someone dresses the way they do voluntarily unless we meant that there was something peculiar about the way that they dress’ more important or less important in being a competent native English speaker than, say, knowing what an ‘abomasum’ is?

24 Since the time of Cavell’s writing ‘Must We Mean What We Say’ it has become popular among some philosophers to suppose that statements produced by the ordinary language philosopher of the form under consideration involve a distinctly ‘pragmatic’ kind of implication (as opposed to a strictly ‘semantic’ kind of implication). That distinction is itself drawn from criticisms of ordinary language philosophy first put forward by the Oxford philosopher Paul Grice. Charles Travis (1991) in his “Annals of Analysis’ has presented compelling arguments against accepting any philosophically robust conception of that distinction. (Travis’ arguments are broadly in line with and so complement Cavell’s own discussions of linguistic ‘projection’—see chapter 3 section III(a) of the current work). But even without going into the detail of Travis’ arguments we should note that once the question of the relationship between the pragmatic implications and the ‘semantics’ of a given utterance has been raised, the question of the relationship between the so called ‘semantics’ and the ‘meaning’ of that utterance must also be raised. For if, as the example under consideration above seems to show, the pragmatic implications of an utterance irrevocably effect its ‘meaning’ then the idea of treating its semantic implications as distinct from its ‘pragmatics’ seems, at the very least, to require the support of some prior commitment to the intelligibility of a philosophically robust or ‘deep’ notion of ‘semantics’ in isolation from any notion of ‘pragmatics’. Cavell’s discussions of the significance of linguistic projection (see chapter 3 section III(a)) should help us to see why a commitment of that kind is untenable. 25 It is obvious that many competent English speakers will not know the dictionary definitions of these uncommon words. But reflecting upon this fact might also lead us to question whether it is obvious that competent English speakers are able (or need to be able) to give lexographical definitions of much more common words like ‘chair’ or ‘table’ in order to fully understand their meanings. Such considerations should lead us to question more broadly the relationship between the possession of a ‘definition’ and the competence possessed by a native speaker. More on this below.

33

These questions still display a certain confusion from Cavell’s perspective. But in so far as they begin to articulate an important question about the scope of the competence that we attribute to native speakers of a language, they represent a step in the right direction.

Rather than questioning individual facts about our language, on a case by case basis, Cavell asks about the relationship within which a native speaker stands to her own language by investigating the process of a fully competent speaker’s learning a new word (as from a dictionary). He imagines a native speaker coming across the word ‘umiak’ in a book and turning to her dictionary to find out what an ‘umiak’ is.26 Cavell goes on to observe that,

We may… forget[…] how elaborate a process… learning is. We tend to take what a native speaker does when he looks up a noun in a dictionary as the characteristic process of learning language. (As, in what has become a less forgivable tendency, we take naming as the fundamental source of meaning.) But it is merely the end point in the process of learning the word. When we turned to the dictionary for ‘umiak’ we already knew everything about the word, as it were, but its combination: we knew what boats are and what an Eskimo is. We were all prepared for that umiak… We had the world with us all the time… but we felt the weight of it only when we felt a lack in it… the learning is a question of aligning language and the world. What you need to learn will depend on what specifically it is you want to know; and how you can find out will depend specifically on what you already command.” (Cavell, 1969b: 19-20)

We can illustrate the point that Cavell is making here with reference to our earlier example of a person who does not know that ‘inflammable’ is a synonym (rather than an antonym) of ‘combustible’. Earlier we imagined that in attempting to convince someone of this fact we might point to various warnings attached to inflammable objects. And we observed that that would be a perfectly reasonable thing to do. But such an appeal depends upon more than our interlocutor’s knowledge that a label placed upon a thing generally names that thing. Such an appeal also depends, for example, upon our interlocutor’s understanding that we generally place warnings upon dangerous things; that combustibility is a dangerous property of things; and thus that it would be perplexing (except perhaps in very special circumstances) to encounter a label warning that something was not combustible. Though the question of evidence in such a case is therefore not entirely irrelevant, it remains irrelevant to the question of a native speaker’s overall competence as a speaker of her language. And that is because being a competent native speaker of a language involves more than just making the right sounds (or signals) in the right circumstances. It also involves knowing when, for example, evidence for a particular usage is in order; and when the question of evidence is in order, knowing what will count as evidence of a particular usage in any given case.

It is for this reason that it would be wrong to suggest that the competence of our imagined speaker (who confused the word ‘inflammable’ with the meaning of ‘non-combustible’) could, by that mistake alone, be entirely thrown into question. But now imagine that our speaker refuses as evidence various warning labels reading ‘Caution: Inflammable’ that we point to on various highly combustible objects and materials. And imagine further that our interlocutor does not reject this evidence because she has some specific reason for suspecting, for example, that these warnings have been misprinted or misplaced; but that she just flatly refuses to acknowledge the relevance of such evidence to the question of the meaning of the term ‘inflammable’ all together. In such a case evidence really is entirely irrelevant, and not just because our interlocutor refuses to acknowledge its relevance. In such a case evidence is

26 “A large Eskimo boat, consisting of a wooden frame with skins drawn over it, and propelled by paddles” (Oxford English Dictionary Online).

34

irrelevant because what is at issue is no longer a question that evidence could be marshalled to resolve. It is not just a question about the sounds and signals that our imagined speaker produces (or fails to produce) and how closely related they are to the sounds and signals that we are inclined to produce. What is at issue is instead our imagined speaker’s competence as a speaker überhaupt; her ability to ‘align language and the world’ in a competent manner at all. If she is not willing to accept as evidence what we accept as evidence for what it is correct to say in our language, then our disagreement reveals itself to be about much more than what sounds one ought to make in what circumstances. What is at issue is a much broader competence; a question, as we might wish to say, of the intelligibility for us of our interlocutor’s relationship to language and the world altogether. As Cavell (1969b: 19) observes, in contemplating the process of a competent native speaker’s learning a (new) word in her own language we should be reminded that:

“we learn language and the world together, that they become elaborated and distorted together, and in the same places.”

This observation is of the utmost importance in understanding the significance that philosophers like Cavell attribute to the investigation of language in our philosophical investigations. It is an idea that many philosophers who, from a kind of realist (or metaphysical realist) perspective, criticise the philosophical investigation of language often overlook. In a manner that is characteristic of a great deal of similar criticism, Timothy Williamson in his paper “Beyond the Linguistic Turn”, misunderstands in just this way the inescapable identity that philosophers like Cavell see between our lives in language and our lives in the world. In that paper Williamson (2004: 111), quoting David Wiggins, asserts,

“‘Let us forget once and for all the very idea of some knowledge of language or meaning that is not knowledge of the world itself’ (Wiggins, 2001: 12). In defining words—for example, natural kind terms—we must point at real specimens. What there is determines what there is for us to mean. In knowing what we mean, we know something about what there is. That might prompt us to wonder how far the analysis of thought or language could be pursued autonomously with any kind of methodological priority.”

Williamson mistakenly runs the idea of according the investigation of language a kind of methodological priority together with the idea of treating language use as a phenomenon that might be investigated entirely autonomously. We shall soon see that Fodor and Katz make a similar mistake in their second major criticism of Cavell. But, as we have just seen, far from wishing to characterise language use as an autonomous phenomenon—as distinct from the ‘world outside of us’—Cavell wishes to emphasize the extent to which our experiences of language and the world are inextricably intertwined in a manner that goes far beyond our linguistic capacity to label objects. For Cavell the relationship between language and reality takes on something we might even wish to call a kind of existential significance—revealing our agreements not just in the words and phrases that we use but in our understanding of our engagements with the world and with one another. Our agreement in language is not just agreement in what certain objects are called but of what is of significance (when and why); of what demands action, what restraint; of what is comic and what is tragic; what is interesting and what boring and much, much more. All of this occurs, not at the level of agreement in labelling, but at something like the level of (what the phenomenologists call) our ‘being-in-the-world’.

In a much quoted passage in “The Availability of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy” Cavell (1969c: 52) expresses this idea, in a manner difficult to surpass:

35

“We learn and teach words in certain contexts, and then we are expected, and expect others, to be able to project them into further contexts. Nothing insures that this projection will take place (in particular, not the grasping of universals nor the grasping of books of rules), just as nothing insures that we will make, and understand the same projections. That on the whole we do is a matter of our sharing routes of interest and feeling, modes of response, senses of humour and of significance and of fulfillment, of what is outrageous of what is similar to what else, what a rebuke, what forgiveness, of when an utterance is an assertion, when an appeal, when an explanation—all the whirl of organism Wittgenstein calls ‘forms of life’. Human speech and activity, sanity and community, rest upon nothing more, but nothing less, than this. It is a vision as simple as it is difficult, and as difficult as it is (and because it is) terrifying.

V. Ordinary Language: From a Participant’s Perspective. We can now see that Cavell’s concern with the ordinary language philosopher’s ability to make claims about her own native language (claims about ‘what we say when…’) has a much broader significance than Fodor and Katz recognise. And it must be said that Fodor and Katz’s second major criticism of Cavell, only so much as appears to get a grip on Cavell’s argument if the breadth of the scope of agreement that Cavell sees claims about ordinary language as potentially illuminating, is essentially ignored. Nonetheless, it will be helpful to say something about Fodor and Katz’s second major criticism in order to articulate another major commitment in Cavell’s vision of the significance of ordinary language philosophy.

As we have already seen Fodor and Katz misattribute to Cavell a view of the ordinary language philosopher as infallible with regard to her claims about ‘what we say when…’ because they (erroneously) believe that for Cavell the ordinary language philosopher’s claims are based upon some kind of mysterious non-empirical evidence. And yet, Fodor and Katz argue that even this mysterious infallibility is not enough to justify the prioritizing of ordinary language in our philosophical investigations in the manner advocated by the traditional ordinary language philosopher. Fodor and Katz argue that if ordinary language philosophy is to have the philosophical significance that its traditional advocates accord it, then the ordinary language philosopher’s claims must not only be infallible in the manner already described but must also be infallible in the sense of accurately capturing all the distinctions about matters of fact that could ever be of any possible philosophical significance. As a result, Fodor and Katz argue that Cavell must attribute a kind of infallibility to the ordinary language philosopher’s claims in two dimensions. First, in what we might call the ‘horizontal dimension’ of agreement among speakers of the language. And second, in what we might call the ‘vertical dimension’ of agreement with matters of fact.

Fodor and Katz (1963: 68-69) thus assert that, if ordinary language philosophy is to have the significance that they believe Cavell accords it, then Cavell must endorse the assumption that “English is a philosophically privileged language with respect to the distinctions it codes…that English codes all and only the distinctions that ought to be coded.” Fodor and Katz go on to argue that this proposition about ordinary language, and indeed ordinary English, in the ‘vertical dimension’ is obviously absurd. Remarking that for example “Eskimo-Aleut languages distinguish a wide variety of grades and types of what English speakers just call ‘snow’”. On the basis of this observation Fodor and Katz (1963: 68-69) go on to ask “in what sense is the speaker of English not missing something about the world because he fails to draw a distinction coded by Eskimo-Aleut?”

36

This question, and the view it seems to accord to Cavell is, to say the least, bizarre. And we shall return to it. But we may simply grant for the time being that the position that Fodor and Katz attribute to Cavell is absurd.

Granting that will allow us to press on to the general conclusion that Fodor and Katz wish to draw from these criticisms. Fodor and Katz (1963: 69-70) claim that their arguments have aimed to make clear that,

“[S]howing that one ought to draw a distinction is not something that can be done by appealing to the way speakers in fact talk.”

They continue,

“This mistake of inferring ‘ought’ statements about distinctions from ‘is’ statements about what speakers say deserves the name ‘the natural language fallacy.’”

Finally they assert,

“The general philosophical importance of this fallacy is this: once the natural language fallacy has been recognized, it becomes necessary to raise seriously the question of the utility of appealing to what we ordinarily say as a means of resolving philosophical disagreements.”

Fodor and Katz’s initial observation is quite clearly correct if it is taken to mean that ‘showing that one ought to draw a distinction is not something that can be done by appealing to the way speakers in fact talk alone.’ But the assumption that this is what Cavell is attempting to do is only remotely plausible if one fails to acknowledge the depth of agreement that Cavell thinks claims about ordinary language can, at least potentially, illuminate. Indeed the extent of agreement in language that Cavell is interested in seems to undercut the idea of a ‘philosophically privileged language’ altogether. But Fodor and Katz’s criticism also depends upon their further assumption that Cavell is trying to justify the privileging of ordinary language in the manner advocated by the traditional ordinary language philosopher in the first place. Which is to say, Fodor and Katz’s claim is supported only by their assumption that Cavell is so much as attempting to show what ‘ought’ to be treated as philosophically relevant in any particular discussion merely by appealing to what ‘is’ said in ordinary English. They thus characterise Cavell as providing not only a dogmatic but a highly improbable (arguably absurd) answer to what I have been calling Mates’ second question. On Fodor and Katz’s view Cavell’s answer to the question of (2) ‘what justifies privileging ordinary language in our philosophical investigations’ must be a tacit assumption that ordinary English is something like ‘the world’s own language’ and therefore that any distinction made in any other language (natural or idealised) is somehow misguided or mistaken.

Cavell does not endorse any such assumption; neither tacitly nor otherwise. This should become abundantly clear when we consider a further aspect of Cavell’s actual answer to our earlier question about the scope of the competence that the ordinary language philosopher attributes to native speakers of a language. We have already marshalled two important clues about Cavell’s understanding of the value of the ordinary language philosopher’s practice. The first relating to the ordinary language philosopher’s claims being claims about something that she does, something she (or any other native speaker) is competent in doing. The second relating to the kind of question that is raised by any serious challenge to a claim made by a native speaker about her own language (if that speaker seriously maintains her claim in the face of that challenge). Namely, that any such challenge raises a normative question about

37

that speaker’s competence in her use of her own language. And further, that that normative question may have a very broad scope indeed—potentially pertaining to any number of our lived agreements in our mutual wording of the world. To these two clues we may now add a third, which Cavell registers in observing that the ordinary language philosopher’s claims about ‘what we say when…’ have a very particular form. They are, as Cavell points out, something like modes of inter-personal address. As Cavell (1969b: 14) expresses it,

“The clue to understanding [what] sort of statement [the philosopher’s claims about our ordinary uses of language are] lies in appreciating the fact that ‘we’, while plural, is first person.”

He continues,

“The claim that in general we do not require evidence for statements in the first-person plural does not rest upon a claim that we cannot be wrong about what we are doing or about a claim about what we say, but that it would be extraordinary if we were (often)… If I am wrong about what he does (they do), that may be no great surprise; but if I am wrong about what I (we) do, that is liable where it is not comic to be tragic.”

The importance of this observation is perhaps obscured by the discussion which surrounds its initial articulation in ‘Must We Mean What We Say?’. And yet, Fodor and Katz not only neglect to discuss this crucial idea in any detail as it appears in ‘Must We Mean What We Say?’ but also ignore Cavell’s extended discussion of the same idea in ‘The Availability of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy’.27

In that paper Cavell (1969c: 67) asks,

About what can I speak for others on the basis of what I have learned about myself?... [S]uppose it is asked: ‘But how do you know others speak as you do?’ About some things I know they do not; I have some knowledge of my idiosyncrasy. But if the question is ‘How do I know at all that others speak as I do?’ then the answer is, I do not. I may find out that the most common concept is not used by us in the same way… In part of course [I] find this out in finding out [I] cannot speak to [another]. If speaking for someone seems to be a mysterious process, that may be because speaking to someone does not seem mysterious enough.”

When I speak to you, I address you. To deploy a piece of Austinian vocabulary, if my address is to be ‘felicitous’ (if it is to ‘come off’ well, or indeed badly—if it is to ‘come off’ as an address at all) certain further conditions will have to be met; and they will have to be met by you. When I address you I look for a response from you, and nothing short of such a response (a response from you) will count as your recognising my address as an address. Of course willing acceptance of my address is not the only mode of response that will count in the relevant way. You may engage with my address in kind (say, greet my ‘hello’ with a ‘hi’); but you may equally reject my address (tell me to ‘get lost’); you may challenge my address (‘how dare you…’), or respond in any number of other ways. You may even reject my address by ignoring it; acting as if I had said nothing at all. If I am sure you have heard me, I will take your lack of response as a rejection, and rightly so. (Though, I cannot be rejected by, say, a tree, no matter how many times I may attempt to address it). Addresses are in this

27 In fact Fodor and Katz (1963: 66) merely assert, without argument, that in the case of a disagreement about a statement made in the “first person plural present indicative… since the ‘we’ occurring in them clearly refers to speakers of English in general, only an empirical investigation of what English speakers actually say could decide who is correct in such a disagreement .” Fodor and Katz (1963: 66 n.21) also note, again without argument or reference to Cavell’s texts, that ‘This is the way Cavell himself understands the occurrence of [such] ‘we’ statements.” It is not. (More on this below).

38

sense second-personal. They require some form of acknowledgement by another person to count as the kind of speech-act that they are (or that they aim to be).

Cavell’s observation in the passages quoted above is that the ordinary language philosopher’s claims share this essentially second-personal feature with other (perhaps more obviously ‘addressive’) speech-acts. If the ordinary language philosopher says, “When we ask whether someone dresses the way they do voluntarily we imply that there is something peculiar about the way that they dress.”, her remark is, like an address, second personal. It depends upon something outside of her control to ‘come off’ well (to be ‘felicitous’ as Austin says).28 For such a claim to count as the kind of claim that the ordinary language philosopher wants it to be, others must recognise it as such. As Cavell (1969d: 95-96)later puts it

“The philosopher appealing to everyday language turns to the reader not to convince him without proof but to get him to prove something, test something against himself. He is saying; Look and find out whether you can see what I see, wish to say what I wish to say.”

And yet, this equally means that there is no guarantee that the ordinary language philosopher’s claims about ‘what we say when…’ will receive the kind of recognition she hopes for. Which is to say there is no guarantee that the ordinary language philosopher’s claims will count in the way that she wants them to. Perhaps someone will not accept the ordinary language philosopher’s claim; perhaps no-one will. Then she will find that the ‘we’ she presumed to speak for does not exist (or does not yet exist; perhaps never will). What is more, even if the ordinary language philosopher’s claims do receive explicit assent, even if the ‘we’ she presumes to speak for is confirmed in some circumstances, among some persons, there is no guarantee that her claims will continue to be confirmed in further circumstances, among further (or even the same) people.

What is striking is just how unstable this Cavellian vision of the ordinary language philosopher’s practice appears. But then the appearance of instability in that practice may, in part, stem from the philosophical work that we imagine that that practice is supposed to do. As Cavell points out, our capacity to speak for one another might seem mysterious only because our capacity to speak to one another may not strike us as mysterious enough. Because we just can speak to one another in an astonishing variety of circumstances about an astonishing variety of things; and we don’t (often) think that there is any great instability in that.

28 It is important to note that the ordinary language philosopher’s claims retain this ‘second-personal’ character even if they do not contain an explicit invocation of the first-person plural (‘we’). For example, for simplicities sake throughout this chapter I have been referring to Cavell’s observation that, ‘We wouldn’t ask whether someone dresses the way they do voluntarily unless we meant that there was something peculiar about the way that they dress.’ But it should be noted that Cavell does not in fact phrase his observation with reference to the first-person plural in this way. Instead Cavell (1969b: 9)writes: “[I]f a person asks you whether you dress the way you do voluntarily, you will not understand him to be curious merely about your psychological processes (whether your wearing them ‘proceeds from free choice…’); you will understand him to be implying or suggesting that your manner of dress is in some way peculiar.” The difference in the grammatical subject of Cavell’s observation is inconsequential. For it retains its second-personal character—it says in effect: you would mean… by… (because we would mean… by…). What is more, if you do not accept this observation, then the way to show that it is mistaken (if it is) would be to show that we do not (or do not always) mean… by…

39

I find myself wishing to say, ‘we can talk to each other about everything there is to talk to each other about’—and thereby to convey something beyond the evident tautology in my words. The sentiment that I am trying to give expression to relates both to the depth of our agreement in language and something like the hope of its resilience and persistence. The central idea that Cavell’s claims about the first-person plural are supposed to highlight is that the resilience and persistence of our agreement in language is something that we are ourselves responsible for; hence something that we are ourselves implicated in. As has already been discussed our knowledge of language is not something autonomous, not something that might be isolated from our knowledge of the world, and of ourselves—of our places within the world and amongst each other. It is to our agreement at the depth of those relationships that the ordinary language philosopher makes her appeal when she speaks of ‘what we say when…’. But nothing guarantees that her appeal will be recognized as successful. Just as nothing guarantees that my speaking to you about what matters to me (in any given context) will be met with your understanding (or your caring to understand).

To illustrate this point further we might return to Fodor and Katz’s example of an Eskimo-Aleut language which distinguishes (or as Fodor and Katz say ‘codes’) different varieties of what English speakers merely call ‘snow’. Imagine a speaker of this Eskimo-Aleut language pointing to two things that, to me, look for all the world like indistinguishable patches of snow, and saying something like, ‘we call this … but we do not call that …. we instead call that …’. Of course this speaker does not speak for me in this case. After all, I call both ‘snow’. But, assuming that we understand each other enough to communicate at all, this need not be the end of our conversation. It may well be the start of a new one. It is perfectly feasible to imagine that I will learn to make the distinction that my Eskimo-Aleut speaking companion makes—learn it from her by speaking to her. Doing so will involve learning when it is appropriate to make this particular distinction; how that is done; and to what purpose. But if that is the case, then it should be clear that contrary to the position that Fodor and Katz attribute to Cavell, I very much was missing something about the world before I came to make the distinction in question. My calling these two things ‘snow’ was crude from the perspective of my companion’s Eskimo-Aleut language.

Indeed in coming to see that I might come to see the world (or at least the snowy parts of it) quite differently. Then again, I may not. Perhaps I will see something of the distinction but fail to fully comprehend its significance, or else, understand something of its significance for her but decide that that significance is not something that is (or should be) significant to me. Perhaps I will depend upon her to make the distinction when it does matter to me (matters to things I clearly do care about: my safety for instance.) In all of these cases it remains true to say that my language fails to recognise something about the world. It fails, at the very least, to recognise something about the difference between my relationship to the world and her relationship to the world and therefore, as long as I am ignorant of this fact, is symptomatic of my failure to recognize something about the relationship between us as well. But in this case my language plausibly also fails to recognize something about my relationship to the world in what we earlier called the more obviously ‘vertical dimension’. My language plausibly fails to ‘code’ certain distinctions that might be articulated in, for example, scientific descriptions of the structure and composition of substances having fallen from the sky and being composed predominantly of frozen water.

40

Cavell’s vision of the depth of our agreement in language, combined with the observation that the ‘we’ that the ordinary language philosopher appeals to is always problematic (that the question of who I can speak for and to cannot be taken for granted) serves to highlight the extent to which our speaking together always already implicates us in a kind of responsibility which permeates both what I earlier called the horizontal and vertical axes (or dimensions) of our agreement in language. One of Cavell’s crucial concerns in his later work is to hold open the question of how far our agreements, in each of these inextricably intertwined dimensions, can be pushed or stretched. And, given that these questions make a second-personal claim upon us (that they must be decided between people) and are thereby confronted on a case by case basis one of Cavell’s major concerns is also to interrogate when and where (along what points of these two axes) our agreements in language might fail us. One key strategy that Cavell deploys again and again in his attempt to prevent these questions from becoming prematurely, or presumptively closed to us, is to constantly question the value of characterising either of these two dimensions (the horizontal or the vertical) as more real, or more objective, more useful, or philosophically relevant than the other.

This attempt to hold open questions about the scope of our agreement in language, which characterises all of Cavell’s work, is entirely incompatible with any justification of the philosophical significance of ordinary language in our philosophical investigations of the kind attributed to Cavell by Fodor and Katz. This can be seen most clearly if we shift our attention away from the possibility of a disagreement between a native English speaker and our imagined speaker of an Eskimo-Aleut language and toward the case of a disagreement between native English speakers about the use of their own native language.

Fodor and Katz (1963: 67) complain that Cavell nowhere provides an answer to what they call “the essential problem of how one adjudicates a clash between native speakers [of a language]”(my emphasis). And yet what Fodor and Katz miss is that for Cavell the idea of adjudicating a clash between native speakers is itself based upon a confusion. It is based upon the confused idea that one could identify a perspective outside of the particular uses, to which native speakers of a language put that language, from which to assess some uses as correct and others as incorrect. But, Cavell’s point is that there is no such perspective. Our uses of language are second-personal through and through. They depend upon our recognising each other as competent users of the language we speak together. This does not mean that disagreements among competent language users cannot arise. Only that they cannot be resolved or ‘adjudicated’ from any external, non-participant, or ‘third-person’ perspective.

VI. Philosophical Illusion and Ordinary Language. In the closing sections of ‘Must We Mean What We Say?’ Cavell returns to the question of the philosopher’s use of the word ‘voluntary’ and contrasts this with an imagined speaker who claims that the words ‘inadvertently’ and ‘automatically’ are, as far as she is concerned, entirely synonymous. Cavell (1969b: 35) then observes that,

“When ‘inadvertently’ and ‘automatically’ seem to be used indifferently in recounting what someone did, this may not at all show that they are being used synonymously, but only that what each of them says is separately true of a person’s action. The decanter is broken and you did it. You may say… either: ‘I did it inadvertently’ or ‘I did it automatically’. Are you saying the same thing? Well you automatically grabbed the cigarette which had fallen on the table, and inadvertently knocked over the decanter. Naming actions is a sensitive occupation.

41

Cavell utilises this example to investigate an imagined case of disagreement among native speakers—intending ultimately to draw a conclusion about the ordinary language philosopher’s disagreement with the traditional philosopher about our ordinary use of the word ‘voluntary’ (while taking something of the ‘philosophical heat’ out of that example, so to speak).

Cavell imagines a baker who when told the above story, serving to disambiguate our uses of the words ‘inadvertently’ and ‘automatically’, continues to insist that she uses ‘inadvertently’ and ‘automatically’ as exactly synonymous in every circumstance. Which is to say that Cavell’s little clarificatory story strikes her cold. This imagined baker continues to report that she would just as readily say that she caught the cigarette inadvertently as she would say that she caught it automatically. Cavell (1969b: 35) then asks,

“Don’t we feel the temptation to reply ‘you can say this, but you can’t say it and describe the same situation; you can’t mean what you would mean if you said the other.”

Of course Cavell’s imagined baker could even deny this—could insist that she can means just the same thing by both. And this might seem to leave us in a kind of aporia. But it need not. Cavell (1969b: 35) points out that what we must not do in the case of such a disagreement is to retreat to some notion of private definition; to say “I know what words mean in my language”. As Cavell (1969b: 35) puts it, if I retreat to that position “the argument would have pushed me to madness”. But insisting that my language is our language, that I am right (and she is wrong) about what she says would be equally unhelpful. And yet that is the position that the traditional ordinary language philosopher, in her diagnosis of spurious problems, at least appears to assume. It also the position that Mates and Fodor and Katz attribute to Cavell. But it is not a position that Cavell ever endorses.

Cavell (1969b: 35-36) suggests that we might instead say to the baker,

“If you cooked the way you talk, you would forgo special implements for different jobs, and peel, core, scrape, slice, carve, chop, and saw, all with one knife. The distinction is there in the language (as implements are there to be had), and you just impoverish what you can say by neglecting it. And there is something that you aren’t noticing about the world.”

For Cavell this imagined disagreement is supposed to shed light upon the disagreement between the ordinary language philosopher and the traditional philosopher burdened by question about the “Freedom of the Will’.

As Cavell points out, the ordinary language philosopher might make an appeal to the traditional philosopher very similar to that which Cavell imagines making to the baker of his earlier example. The ordinary language philosopher might argue that, as Cavell (1969b: 36) puts it, “The philosopher who asks about everything we do, ‘Voluntary or not?’ has a poor view of human action (as the philosopher who asks of everything we say, ‘True or false?’ or ‘Analytic or synthetic’ has a poor view of communication.)”

But it is important to note that nothing in that appeal could identify the concern that the traditional philosopher is trying (though evidently unsuccessfully) to express in asking whether actions are ‘voluntary or not’ as illusory or spurious. The ordinary language philosopher’s appeal could only point out that the terms ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’ will not do the work that the traditional philosopher wants them to do here. If the traditional philosopher is really burdened by questions about ‘the Freedom of the Will’—wishes to

42

communicate her sense that something is seriously amiss with our concept and understanding of human action altogether—then the ordinary language philosopher’s observations cannot rebuke that motive. Such an observation can only really serve to show that the traditional philosopher has not managed to convey what she wishes to convey. And if the ordinary language philosopher is acting in good faith then her claims should really only precipitate an invitation to the traditional philosopher to try to express her idea again, and in a clearer fashion. Nothing in the ordinary language philosopher’s practice can show, just like that, that an attempt to express any given concern is fundamentally misconceived or mistaken—only that a certain expression is, as yet, confused.

There is no question of the ordinary language philosopher, at least on Cavell’s vision of the significance of the ordinary language philosopher’s practice, drawing an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’. But this equally means that the ordinary language philosopher is in no position to impugn traditional problems as spurious or illusory. The investigation of ordinary language alone cannot have that negative significance in our philosophical investigations on Cavell’s understanding. But that is no great problem for Cavell because he is not interested in according ordinary language philosophy that negative significance. He is much more interested in what he sees as the positive significance of the ordinary language philosopher’s practice. Cavell is interested in exploring the fact that the ordinary language philosopher’s practice allows her to articulate a kind of self-knowledge; a kind of knowledge that she has as a participant in our mutual agreement (or as Cavell later comes to say: our attunement) in language.

That the discovery of this attunement is often surprising—that a short story about the difference between doing something ‘by mistake’ or ‘by accident’; or doing something ‘inadvertently’ or ‘automatically’ can show us that our language possesses a degree of sensitivity which we more often than not take for granted—shows the philosophical value of their articulation for Cavell. Such observations provide us with data from which to measure the extent of our agreement in language. They also provide us with data from which to interrogate the potential of that agreement (or attunement) to fail us; and therefore a vantage point from which to assess the extent and the significance of our lives in language—with one another and in the world. What they do not do is provide us with any immediate and simple rebuke of the philosophical tradition. They do however hold the potential to dramatically expand our sense of what could possibly count as philosophically significant; and hence have the potential to expand our knowledge of ourselves, and what we do. Entered in this spirit the ordinary language philosopher’s claims hold the potential to broaden and enrich our philosophical imaginations and to bring to our attention certain personal (and irreducibly human) concerns about the status and extent of our lived attunement in language of a kind that traditional philosophy has often overlooked.

VII. Conclusion.

Let us take stock of the argument so far. We began with the observation that Cavell’s invocation of the personal throughout his philosophical work could not be adequately characterised as an invocation of the autobiographical; nor of his investigation or deployment of a particular logical or grammatical form; nor still of his unique written style. Instead it was suggested that Cavell’s invocation of the personal in philosophy is, for him, a thematic concern. We noted that in Cavell’s early work that thematic concern is most clearly

43

articulated in terms of a unique conception of self-knowledge. And we observed that that conception of self-knowledge, for Cavell, proceeds from ordinary language philosophy.

However, we also observed that ordinary language philosophy, as it has traditionally been understood, does not obviously accord with, or open new possibilities for our understanding of, a unique (and novel) kind of self-knowledge at all. This precipitated an investigation of the extent to which Cavell ought to be understood as sharing in the goals and methodological commitments of traditional ordinary language philosophy. It was argued that Cavell’s conception of the value of ordinary language philosophy is quite distinct from that of the traditional ordinary language philosopher. Given that Cavell is not interested in unmasking illusory or spurious problems from the perspective of our ordinary ways of talking, we were driven to question whether it might be misleading to characterise Cavell as an ordinary language philosopher at all. I have argued that it is. Such a characterisation lends credence to a tempting but mistaken reading of Cavell’s philosophical work—both in terms of its motives and its conclusions.

We saw that Fodor and Katz’s misreading of Cavell was motivated by precisely this kind of misunderstanding. And, in discussing what was wrong with their interpretation we began to articulate something that might be characterised as the existential scope of Cavell’s interest in the ordinary language philosopher’s claims—the ability of such claims to recall us to and illuminate the extent of our mutual attunement in language. We saw also that once this Cavellian picture of the value of ordinary language philosophy is appreciated there can be no question of the ordinary language philosopher impugning certain philosophical problems as ‘illusory’ or ‘spurious’ on the basis of the observation of facts about ‘what we say when…’ alone. We observed that, far from closing off the possibility of articulating certain philosophical concerns, Cavell sees observations about ordinary language as expanding our philosophical imagination. So the ordinary language philosopher’s claims cannot serve as straightforward rebukes of the philosophical tradition but may, at most, stand as invitations to further investigation.

Finally we noted that the ordinary language philosopher’s claims, on Cavell’s view, display a kind of inherent instability. They may always be challenged, or even met with incomprehension or ridicule. When that idea first arose I argued that the instability of the ordinary language philosopher’s claims might only appear as a problem because we were inclined to assume that they were supposed to fulfil a role in our philosophical investigations that they could not (and which Cavell never claims that they could) fulfil; namely, that of impugning certain philosophical uses of language (or problems) as illusory. I believe that that observation is warranted. But we might still worry about the instability of the ordinary language philosopher’s claims, as Cavell understands them.

We might wonder what role the ordinary language philosopher’s claims are supposed to play in our philosophical investigations (given that they are not to play the role of straightforwardly unmasking illusory philosophical problems). And, we might worry about whether any understanding or investigation built upon such claims could warrant the name of philosophy. Which is to say, we might worry about whether anything as inherently unstable and endlessly contestable as our claims about ordinary language, entered from a Cavellian (hence personal) perspective, could support anything with the kind of stability, or authority, or significance that philosophy has traditionally been imagined to possess.

44

These questions will occupy us in the following chapter. In what remains of this chapter, however, I would like to discuss a final aspect of Fodor and Katz’s argument against Cavell which I have not yet addressed.

Soon after arguing that the ordinary language philosopher’s relation to her claims about ‘what we say when…’ cannot generally be one that depends upon evidence, Cavell turns his attention in ‘Must We Mean What We Say?’ to an attempt to understand what kind of relation the ordinary language philosopher does bear to such claims. Cavell points out that the traditional philosophical distinction (particularly dominant at the time of the essays publication) between ‘analytic’ and ‘synthetic’ statements is of little help in trying to describe the ordinary language philosopher’s claims about our language use.

In initially contemplating how we might understand the ordinary language philosopher’s statements about “what we say when…”, given that they are neither obviously analytic nor synthetic, Cavell reaches for another traditional philosophical notion. He suggests that, if we focus upon the sense of necessity that seems to be communicated in a statement like “we wouldn’t ask whether someone dresses the way that they do voluntarily unless we meant that there was something peculiar about the way that they dress”, then we might find ourselves wishing to account for that sense of necessity by claiming that such statements are, as Cavell (1969b: 13) puts it, “instances (not of Formal, but) of Transcendental Logic”.

Fodor and Katz seize upon this suggestion, arguing that it demonstrates that Cavell is appealing to some sort of non-empirical (indeed transcendental) evidence to which the ordinary language philosopher supposedly has access. Furthermore they claim that Cavell is committed to the idea that this newly identified kind of evidence is somehow overwhelmingly more reliable than ordinary empirical evidence, and that the ordinary language philosopher proceeds upon the basis of this special kind of virtually infallible evidence in making her assertions about our uses of ordinary language.

As has already been pointed out, and as Fodor and Katz continually stress, such a view would be quite obviously absurd. The ordinary language philosopher is not infallible (or even anything approaching infallible) in the assertions she makes about our uses of ordinary language. Indeed one need look no further than the dispute (which Mates highlights, and Cavell accepts) between Ryle and Austin to see an eminent ordinary language philosopher’s ordinary fallibility on full display. That such a view is so patently absurd should, as with other of their claims, have given Fodor and Katz pause in attributing it to Cavell.

In truth, Cavell moves beyond the suggestion that the ordinary language philosopher’s claims about ordinary language might be profitably understood upon the model of Kant’s transcendental logic almost as soon as he raises it. Cavell (1969b: 16) is quite explicit about this, saying at the end of the relevant section,

“Statements about ordinary language are not analytic, and they are not (it would be misleading to call them) synthetic (just like that). Nor do we know whether to say they are a priori, or whether to account for their air of necessity as a dialectical illusion, due more to the motion of our argument than to their own nature. Given our current alternatives, there is no way to classify such statements; we do not yet know what they are.” (final emphasis mine)

It would be difficult for Cavell to be any more explicit in signalling the resistance to traditional philosophical vocabulary that he finds in the phenomena he is trying to capture. However, despite moving quickly beyond it, Cavell does draw a comparison between the

45

ordinary language philosopher’s claims and Kantian ‘transcendental logic’. I would like to close this chapter by saying something about the insights and limitations of that comparison. Doing so will, I hope, serve to illuminate both the ground we have already covered and the path before us from a slightly different perspective.

In The Critique of Pure Reason Kant (1998: A57/B82) defines ‘transcendental logic’ as concerned “merely with the laws of the understanding and reason, but solely insofar as they are related to objects a priori.”

In the introduction to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argues that certain a priori truths undoubtedly exist and are cognizable as such. For Kant, the thought that 2+2=4 is such a truth, since it is, on his view, not merely empirically (or as he says ‘comparatively’) universal (‘true everywhere we look’, so to speak) but strictly universal and necessary. For Kant this is enough to show that ‘2+2=4’ is an a priori truth. So for Kant, a priori truths, including but not limited to truths of mathematics, can be identified by their strict universality and necessity. What is more, according to Kant, because they possess this strict universality and necessity the authority of a priori truths cannot depend upon any particular experience or class of experiences (they cannot be mere empirical generalizations).

Kant’s idea that transcendental logic can relate to the a priori in terms of the ‘laws of the understanding and reason’ is informed by his well-known idea that in making room for synthetic a priori cognition philosophy must perform a kind of about-face in its conception of its own proper subject matter—what Kant characterised as a ‘Copernican Revolution’ in philosophy. The notion that Kant’s entire ‘transcendental turn’ hinges upon is the idea that certain concepts (or what Kant labelled categories of the understanding) are necessary to the possibility of our experience being the way it is at all. And furthermore that reflectively investigating this fact could give us a priori access to certain ‘laws of the understanding and reason’.

Importantly for Kant the transcendental ‘grounds’ of experience and thought thus discovered do not properly belong to any particular experience or thought—mine or yours; his or hers—but to experience and thought as-such. Thus for Kant they are not only necessary for any imagined experience or thought of mine (or yours, &c.) but for any possible experience or thought. Transcendental philosophy thus requires a conception of experience and thought that is entirely abstract—attributable not just to some particular individual on a particular occasion, but to a kind of abstract ‘everyman’ (always). Thus transcendental philosophy understands itself to be concerned not with this or that experience or with this or that thought but with experience and thought as-such—indeed with some notion of the human mind as-such.

Throughout his work Cavell draws comparisons with certain Kantian ideas and observations. And yet Cavell is seldom explicit about exactly what he wishes to inherit and what he wishes to discard in his invocations of various Kantian ideas. That is not to say that these invocations are hasty or poorly thought through, only that it takes some work to elicit the extent of their implications.

Let us begin then by highlighting some similarities and differences that are already apparent between Cavell’s interest in the ordinary language philosopher’s observations about ‘what we say when…’ and Kant’s conception of the possibility of a ‘transcendental logic’ as we have all too briefly described it.

46

Cavell, like Kant, perceives a certain crisis in philosophy’s conception of its own subject matter. He shares the sense that confronting this perennial problem of philosophy demands a kind of philosophical revolution. Like Kant, he is also driven by an interest in (and commitment to) a certain intuitive sense of ‘necessity’. Hence to something we might call philosophy’s relation to the a priori. What is more both Cavell and Kant are explicitly concerned with differentiating a certain kind of ‘necessity’ from the possibility of mere empirical generalization. Each holds that the kind of necessity in which he is interested is pervasive in everyday life—that to fail to recognise it would be a failure of philosophical imagination. And yet, each holds a very different conception of the kind of necessity that is important in this respect. Finally each sees the need for philosophical revolution in terms of the need for a re-orientation of the traditional understanding of the place of the ‘subject’ in philosophical investigation. Though again, each holds a very different view of how the status and character of the relevant ‘subject’ should be conceived in the context of his own work.

Understanding the difference in the conception of ‘necessity’ upon which Kant and Cavell respectively focus their investigations is crucial in understanding the extent to which Cavell wishes to inherit certain Kantian ideas, while holding off much of the architecture and implications of both the Critical Philosophy, and other more modern developments of broadly Kantian thought. Unlike Kant, Cavell does not take mathematical truth as his paradigm for, what we might (at this stage) call, the pervasive a priori (noting that Cavell himself expresses reservations about the connotations of that particular term). As we have already seen, for Cavell, it is the necessity of meaning in language—the kind of necessity described in the observation that “we wouldn’t ask whether someone dresses the way that they do voluntarily unless we meant that there was something peculiar about the way that they dress”—which provides philosophy with a kind of subject matter that cannot be adequately described by empirical generalization alone. Hence, a subject matter that is distinct from that of the experimental sciences in requiring a kind of non-evidential description and investigation. This difference in the paradigm cases selected by Kant and Cavell, has important consequences for the understanding of ‘necessity’ which emerges from each’s respective project. But it also signals an important difference between Cavell’s project and that of the broader post-Kantian Analytic tradition.

Again, Cavell does not conceive of the kind of necessity in which he is interested as best modelled by the kind of necessity displayed by mathematical truths. Instead he takes as his paradigm the necessity of meaning in language of the kind that the ordinary language philosopher appeals to in her observations about ‘what we say when…’. One crucial difference between this paradigm case and that put forward by Kant is that the paradigm case upon which Cavell models his conception of necessity is fundamentally inter-subjective. Unlike the case of ‘mathematical truth’ which at least lends itself to a picture of individual subjective contemplation, the kind of necessity displayed in a claim like ‘We wouldn’t ask whether someone dresses the way they do voluntarily unless we meant that there was something peculiar about the way that they dress’ always already involves others. It is a claim made in media res about us and what we do—and, as we will come to discuss in the following chapter, such claims are rationally rejectable in a way that (legitimate) mathematical claims are not.

As Cavell puts it in the “Availability of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy”, the ordinary language philosopher’s claims about ordinary language, “are not merely claims about what I say and mean and do, but about what others say and mean and do as well.” Indeed it was precisely the fact that the ordinary language philosopher’s claims are in part about others which tempted philosophers like Mates and Fodor and Katz to think of them as depending

47

upon empirical evidence (as being synthetic a posteriori in Kant’s terminology). And yet, it was the fact that such claims are not just about others which lead us to see that they could not really be described as synthetic (not ‘straightforwardly synthetic’ as Cavell puts it) because of the irrelevance of empirical evidence to such claims. As Cavell (1969d: 95) reminds us in a later paper, “the most characteristic pressure against [the ordinary language philosopher (as in the case of Ryle)] is applied by producing or deepening an example which shows him that he would not say what he says we say.” And whatever the ordinary language philosopher’s relation to this ‘new’ or ‘deepened’ example might be, it is not a relationship to any kind of evidence.

As early as in the essay “Must We Mean What We Say?” Cavell recognizes that it is the fundamentally inter-personal dimension of the ordinary language philosopher’s claims which makes them so philosophically interesting. According to Cavell the ‘clue’ to understanding the important philosophical status of the ordinary language philosopher’s claims about ordinary language comes in recognising the inter-personal significance of such claims as revealed in the assertion of both subjective and inter-subjective validity imparted by the first-person plural ‘we’. The ordinary language philosopher is interested in uncovering something fundamentally inter-personal; not just something about himself; nor about some given population; but something about his community. For Cavell the interpersonal dimension of claims about ‘what we say when…’ is thus the most important feature of those claims. And, it is that feature which radically changes, and importantly problematizes, both Cavell’s conception of ‘necessity’ and his understanding of the philosophical significance of ‘subjectivity’—ideas which he nonetheless views as a kind of Kantian inheritance.

As we might put it, the transcendental psychology of the Critical Philosophy, and the somewhat mythical notions of experience and thought as-such, are shifted in Cavell’s vision of the subject matter of philosophy. For Cavell, the place held by Kantian claims of transcendental certainty—made as if from the perspective of a kind of mythical everyman—is entirely reimagined. That place is instead populated by claims made by actual individuals presuming to speak for an actual (or possible future) community. And yet, for Cavell the claims that the ordinary language philosopher invokes, unlike Kantian transcendental claims, are not certain. They are not underwritten by any transcendental mythology. The claims Cavell is interested in are instead made by actual individuals who must presume to speak for ‘us’ and must thereby assume that there is or will be an ‘us’ to speak for. Elucidating the character of this apparent necessity (this ‘must’ claim) will be a principle task of the following chapter.

But for the time being it is important to note only that the ‘we’ that is invoked by the ordinary language philosopher is always problematic. It might be met with contestation, denial, perplexity, or even ridicule. But that is not a methodological problem for Cavell. It is a human problem. Which is to say, the problematic nature of the ordinary language philosopher’s use of the first-person plural ‘we’ is, for Cavell an instance of a fundamental difficulty of inter-personal human life. It is therefore a problem that Cavell’s methodology aims to make perspicuous, but never one he purports to solve (once and for all).

Cavell claims that the ordinary language philosopher must be aware that her claims may be repudiated—that the community that she aims to speak for may not exist. It is this fact that Cavell later comes to characterise as the ordinary language philosopher’s “arrogation of voice in all of its ungrounded and in a sense ungroundable arrogance”. As a result, in Cavell’s vision of philosophy, the synthetic a priori is untethered from the notions of absolute necessity and strict universality and conceived instead in terms of a claim (or claims) to community.

48

CHAPTER TWO

Convening Criteria, Exemplifying Community.

“I do not see how it can with good conscience be denied that ordinary language philosophers (for example, Austin and Ryle) have found and made trouble for traditional philosophy. But the understanding of the trouble, and so an assessment of its seriousness or permanence, is a problem of a different order.” Stanley Cavell (1969c: 59)

I. Introduction.

In the last chapter I argued that Cavell’s inheritance of ordinary language philosophy, and particularly the ordinary language philosophy of J.L. Austin, is not as straightforward as many critics (and indeed also many sympathetic commentators) have supposed. In the second part of that chapter I focused primarily upon the early criticisms of Cavell put forward by Jerry Fodor and Jerrold Katz in their paper “The Availability of What We Say”. I argued that Fodor and Katz, in their criticisms of Cavell, fail (almost entirely) to recognise the actual import of Cavell’s aims and arguments within both the papers “Must We Mean What We Say” and “The Availability of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy” (the only two of Cavell’s papers with which they engage). In so doing I began to outline something of the much more complex conception of the value of ordinary language philosophy that Cavell puts forward—both in the two aforementioned essays and as pursued throughout almost all of his subsequent philosophical work.

The two most important ideas that emerged out of my discussion of Fodor and Katz’s misplaced criticisms of Cavell each concerned the scope of the proficiency revealed by the ordinary language philosopher’s appeals to ‘what we say when…’; appeals made from the perspective of a native speaker, and to other native speakers, of the language that the ordinary language philosopher is investigating. I argued that for Cavell the proficiency revealed in such claims must be understood to possess a kind of existential significance—revealing agreements (or attunement) in language not merely at the level of ‘labelling’ or ‘naming’ but at something like the level of ‘being-in-the-world’. I argued further that that existential agreement (or attunement) in language must be understood as irreducibly inter-subjective. This latter idea was captured in the observation that the ordinary language philosopher’s claims are always made from the perspective of a ‘problematic ‘we’’—a community that the ordinary language philosopher presumes to speak for, and yet one whose existence the ordinary language philosopher can neither (and need neither) statistically (nor otherwise evidentially) prove nor yet, logically guarantee.

I said that this idea was Cavell’s most important insight in his understanding of the value of the practice of ordinary language philosophy. And, I explained that the import of this insight was most apparent when considered in combination with the existential scope of the agreement in language to which the ordinary language philosopher’s appeals are directed. The combination of these two ideas reveals the question of the scope of the competency that the ordinary language philosopher depends upon to be, in effect, a question about the resilience or failure of our hope (and thus, perhaps inevitably also, our anxiety) with regard to

49

the extent of our mutual attunement in language; an attunement which is inextricably bound up with our understandings both of the world and of one another—of our places amongst each other within the world as both expressed and realised in the context of our shared life in language.

The central argumentative claim of the previous chapter was that any account of Cavell’s conception of the value of ordinary language philosophy which imagines that conception to be concerned with, or involved in, the unmasking of certain philosophical problems as straightforwardly illusory or spurious (in the manner advocated by the traditional ordinary language philosopher) cannot do justice to Cavell’s conception of the existential and irreducibly inter-subjective scope of the competency that the ordinary language philosopher’s practice both depends upon and reveals.

But this leads to a question about what Cavell sees the distinctly philosophical import of his conception of the value of ordinary language philosophy to be. If the value of the ordinary language philosopher’s practice does not reside in her ability to impugn certain problems as illusory or spurious, then we might well ask what its specifically philosophical value is.

In the last chapter I claimed that at least part of the value of the ordinary language philosopher’s practice, for Cavell, must be understood to consist in the ordinary language philosopher’s capacity to expand our philosophical imaginations. I claimed that the ordinary language philosopher does so in her investigations of the pervasive—but also commonly overlooked—sensitivity and precision of our shared language (and therefore also of the depth of our agreement in language in our mutual wording of the world). Thus Austin could teach us the subtle and yet clear distinction between doing something ‘by accident’ and doing something ‘by mistake’ in appealing to a kind of self-knowledge about the use of our own language as revealed in our reception of a simple clarificatory (donkey) story.29 This self-knowledge appeared as something for which we were at once fully prepared —since the distinction that Austin points to is one that we are already completely ‘at home with’, so to speak—and yet also pertains to something that we were (or were most likely) previously both inclined and prepared to overlook entirely.

Observations like Austin’s disambiguation of our talk of doing things ‘by mistake’ or ‘by accident’ undoubtedly affect our knowledge of our own language. Though it is not at all easy to say exactly how they do so. As has already been noted, such observations seem to pertain to things that we already know; pointing out distinctions, for instance, that we knew how to ‘get along with’ perfectly well—in the sense of being able to use them correctly and to recognise their correct use by others—before they had ever been made explicitly apparent to us. Indeed the very possibility of the kind of story that Austin produces having the effect that it does, depends upon our capacity to recognise a kind of correctness in the language that we previously did not know that we could recognise (and thus, in a sense, depends upon something that we did not know that we already knew).

That this phenomenon has the shape of a philosophical issue is, I believe, without question. It might be formulated as a problem: ‘How (in what sense) do we know the things that Austin is pointing to, if it took him to point them out to us?’ What is more, that question does not appear amenable to strictly empirical resolution—at least in part for reasons that we have already canvassed (having to do with a native speaker’s relationship to her own native

29 See: Chapter 1: n10.

50

language and its status as a pervasive—even existential—practical competency).30 But what the significance of this philosophical issue is remains to be articulated.

Cavell clearly thinks that the value of the ordinary language philosopher’s practice in expanding our philosophical imaginations has a greater significance, and therefore constitutes more, than the mere identification of a new kind of philosophical puzzle. Indeed in the “Availability of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy” Cavell asserts that the issue of the status of our knowledge of our own language is:

“not a side issue in the general conflict between… [ordinary language philosophy] and traditional philosophy; [but] is itself an instance, an expression, of that conflict and one therefore we will not suppose it will be simple to resolve.”

Both the question of what our relationship to our own language (as native speakers) is, and the question of what the significance of that relationship is for philosophy, are raised by the ordinary language philosopher’s practice. And yet, they are questions which on Cavell’s view, are not met with any satisfactory response in the work of traditional ordinary language philosophers (like Austin and Ryle).

In grappling with these questions Cavell turns instead to the work of the later Wittgenstein, and in particular to Wittgenstein’s (1953) Philosophical Investigations.31 Cavell’s engagement with the Investigations and his interrogation of the relationship between the work of the later Wittgenstein and traditional ordinary language philosophy finds its first articulation in “The Availability of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy” (originally published in 1962). But it does not attain its most sustained and thorough treatment until the 1979 publication of The Claim of Reason.32 I have already spoken briefly about Cavell’s well-known characterisation of Wittgenstein’s ‘vision of language’ in “The Availability of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy”. In this chapter I intend to explore Cavell’s interpretation of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy in much more detail and to begin to explore Cavell’s understanding of the light that that work of Wittgenstein’s shines upon what Cavell finds most valuable in the practices of traditional (Oxford) ordinary language philosophy.

It should be noted from the outset, however, that Cavell’s turning to the work of the later Wittgenstein might be thought to raise a serious problem for our argument as prosecuted thus far. And that is because on any number of influential readings, and thus in the popular philosophical imagination, Wittgenstein’s project within the Investigations is consistently

30 I do not mean to suggest that no empirical explanation could ever relate to our (often unarticulated) knowledge of our own language. I only mean to suggest that any such explanation could not exhaust our understanding of the significance which that knowledge bears for the creatures who possess it (which is to say: for us). As Cavell puts it, “There may be a scientific explanation of [our linguistic capacities] forthcoming, say from linguistics, or biology. But that will bear to philosophical investigations of what we say (and wish to say and wish we could say) the same relation that, for example, Newton’s calculation which shows why, if the earth spins, we do not fly off of it, bears to philosophical investigations of the fact that we are earthlings: it may change everything or nothing.” 31 References to the Philosophical Investigations will henceforth be given by paragraph number ‘(§—)’ only, excepting unnumbered sections (where page numbers will be provided). References to “Philosophy of Psychology: A Fragment” (previously collected as Part II) will be provided with page numbers. 32 The Claim of Reason was itself written over a period of more than twenty years. The book was initially conceived as a reworking for publication of Cavell’s doctoral dissertation The Claim to Rationality submitted in April 1961. A fairly detailed description of the genesis and development of the original dissertation as well as its transformation into the published version of The Claim of Reason can be found in Cavell’s (1979: xv-xxvi) foreword.

51

identified with exactly the kind of project that I have been arguing Cavell has no interest in pursuing. Which is to say, Wittgenstein’s later work is imagined by a great many philosophers to be concerned with diagnosing various philosophical problems as illusory or spurious from the perspective of an investigation of ordinary language.

It is often said that, ‘Wittgenstein believes all philosophical problems to be the products of linguistic confusions’, or that ‘according to Wittgenstein philosophical problems are actually just problems of language’. These kinds of assertions certainly find support within the text of the Investigations—as when for example Wittgenstein (§109) says “Philosophy is a struggle against the bewitchment of our understanding by the resources of our language”.

So such sentiments are not exactly wrong. But it is not yet clear what it would mean to say that they are right either. What is needed, before these kinds of sentiments can be properly assessed, is an understanding of what Wittgenstein takes our relationship to our own language to be. At (§340) Wittgenstein has this to say about our relation to our own language: “One cannot guess how a word functions. One has to look at its application and learn from that.” He goes on to explain that, “the difficulty is to remove the prejudice which stands in the way of doing so.” And he quite emphatically asserts: “It is not a stupid prejudice.”

What is our relationship to our own language, for Wittgenstein, such that language could so much as ‘bewitch’ our understanding?; or that, as in another well-known metaphor, our understanding could “run[...] up against the limits of language” (§119) (and as Wittgenstein put it, get ‘bumps’ in the process)?

Approached from this angle, an engagement with Wittgenstein’s Investigations appears far more promising. Indeed the question that we just said would need to be answered in order to understand and assess Wittgenstein’s broader project within the Investigations is the very same question that we said, for Cavell, was raised, but provided with no satisfactory answer, by the practice of traditional ordinary language philosophy. That is, the question of what our relationship to our own language (as native speakers of that language) is and what the consequences of that relationship are for philosophy.

Nonetheless, if my argument that Cavell is not at all interested in diagnosing certain philosophical problems either as spurious or as simply illusory is to stand, then it had better not turn out that Cavell’s Wittgenstein is in the business of diagnosing philosophical problems in just that manner. Wittgenstein’s final remark in (§340) seems, quite clearly, to suggest that he is not. As Wittgenstein puts it philosophical confusions (or the prejudices which stand in the way of our investigating our actual applications of words) are not ‘stupid’. They do not lack motivation or sense. But if we are to understand what motivation or sense can be found in certain prejudices which get in the way of our investigation of our own language, we will need first to get clearer on what Wittgenstein thinks an unprejudiced investigation of our language and of our relationship to our language reveals.

Understanding Wittgenstein’s employment of the notions of ‘criteria’ and ‘grammar’ within his later work, will be crucial in accomplishing this task. As such, in this chapter I will offer a reading of Cavell’s interpretation and adoption of the Wittgensteinian notions of ‘criteria’ and of ‘grammatical investigation’. I will focus particularly on what Cavell’s interpretation of Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘criteria’ adds to his understanding of the ordinary language philosopher’s—and more generally, any native speaker’s—mode of access to her own native language. In doing so I will argue that Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘criteria’ both highlights and

52

provides a path for further investigation into the relationship between a native speaker’s mode of access to her own language and her knowledge, or understanding, of that language. Wittgenstein’s appeals to criteria reveal both the character and depth of the native speaker’s responsibility both in and for her language. Such appeals reveal that a native speaker’s responsibilities in and for her language pervade every aspect of her talking and acting in the world. But appeals to criteria also reveal that that responsibility is itself inextricably second-personally constituted. This uncovering and subsequent articulation of the depth of our second-personal responsibility in and for language has radical consequences for Cavell’s conception of the distinctly philosophical significance of the investigation of ordinary language.

II. Criteria and Skepticism (A Deferral).

Before undertaking our investigation of Cavell’s understanding of the Wittgensteinian notion of ‘criteria’ it will be necessary to say something by way of justification about the less than orthodox strategy I intend to deploy in dealing with that interpretation. It should be clear even to the most casual reader of The Claim of Reason that, from the very outset, Cavell’s discussions of ‘criteria’ are multifaceted. His interest in Wittgenstein’s employment of the notion of ‘criteria’ is, from the first, intertwined with questions about the conclusions that might ultimately be drawn from that notion with regard to the problem of ‘philosophical skepticism’. And yet, when Cavell begins his discussion of ‘criteria’ within the first chapter of The Claim of Reason he has not yet even begun to signal to the reader how complex and atypical an understanding of ‘philosophical skepticism’ he is already working with.

In the second chapter of The Claim of Reason Cavell makes the important observation that his use of the term ‘skepticism’ is unabashedly non-standard. As Cavell (1979: 46) there explains, he does not “confine the term to philosophers who wind up denying that we can ever know”. Rather, as he continues:

“I apply it to any view which takes the existence of the world to be a problem of knowledge… taking the very raising of the question of knowledge in a certain form, or spirit, to constitute skepticism, regardless of whether a philosophy takes itself to have answered the question affirmatively or negatively”.

This idea is so central to Cavell’s investigation of the relationship between criteria and skepticism that explaining and assessing it would require an assessment of at least a great deal of the argument presented within The Claim of Reason as a whole. (Though, as Cavell (1979: 47) himself notes, a consideration of Part Two of the book will be particularly relevant to accomplishing that task). As such, our discussion of Cavell’s unique vision of skepticism and its relation to criteria will not begin in earnest until chapter 3 of the current work.

I mention these difficulties here only to point out that Cavell’s readers ought to be somewhat perplexed when, in introducing the Wittgensteinian notion of ‘criteria’ in the very first chapter of The Claim of Reason, Cavell asserts:

“On the part both of those who wish to defend Wittgenstein and those who wish to attack him, it is taken, roughly, that his criteria are supposed to be the means by which the existence of something is established with certainty – in perhaps the most famous case that the criteria of pain (outward criteria of course) are the means by which we can know with certainty that another is in pain…The two most forceful presentations of this view remain, for me, that of Norman Malcolm in his early and important review of the investigations and Rogers Albritton in his essay “On Wittgenstein’s Use of the Term ‘Criterion’”. The

53

permanent value of this view lies in its awareness that Wittgenstein’s teaching is everywhere controlled by a response to skepticism, or as I will prefer to say, by a response to the threat of skepticism.” (my emphasis)

The question that ought to arise for Cavell’s readers, and which finds no immediate answer in the remainder of the first chapter of The Claim of Reason is: ‘What does Cavell mean in saying that Wittgenstein’s teaching is everywhere controlled by a response to the threat of skepticism?’ I mean that this question ought to arise not in the sense of wishing to pre-empt Cavell’s explanation of what this ‘control’ is (or of what Wittgenstein’s response to the threat of skepticism is supposed to be) but in the much more basic sense of asking what kind of ‘skepticism’ Cavell thinks (and according to Cavell, Albritton and Malcolm also think) Wittgenstein is ‘everywhere’ responding to.

Malcolm (1954) makes clear from the beginning of his review that he is interested in interpreting Wittgenstein’s discussions of the relationship between language and ‘inner experience’. Thus he sees Wittgenstein (in at least this area) as responding to a certain kind of skepticism about other minds (a skepticism about our ability to know, for instance, that another is really in pain). Albritton’s (1959) essay ends with a discussion of the same idea. But his work begins with a discussion of the relationship between criteria and logic, and therefore seems to begin with an investigation of ideas that we might more readily identify with a kind of skepticism about ‘semantics’ or a certain philosophical conception of ‘meaning’. Cavell’s own brief allusions to ‘traditional epistemology’ in the remainder of the opening chapter of The Claim of Reason seem (quite definitely) to refer to the tradition arising out of Descartes’ skeptical recital in the Meditations, and the subsequent problem of skepticism about the external world.33 But it is not obvious that all of these different skeptical concerns can be unproblematically united under the banner of a unified conception of ‘philosophical skepticism’ (which is to say, a unified conception that one could ‘respond to’ all to once). Add to this Cavell’s assertion in the following chapter that he intends by his use of the term ‘skepticism’ to refer both to those arguments or positions typically labelled ‘skeptical’ in the tradition as well as those generally thought of as ‘anti-skeptical’, and a reader could be forgiven for feeling more than a little confused. Again, we will return to this issue in chapter 3 (and I will there suggest that there is a difficulty here that Cavell unfortunately never fully acknowledges).

For the time being, however, I wish only to point out how crowded Cavell’s initial discussions of ‘criteria’ should seem to both new and returning readers of The Claim of Reason. In providing his initial explication of his own understanding of the Wittgensteinian notion of ‘criteria’ Cavell is already pre-empting the significant role that that idea will come to play in his own complex confrontation with various kinds of philosophical skepticism—as well as certain as-yet unfamiliar ideas arising out of that confrontation.

Cavell himself seems to recognise the danger in this, and directly after raising the question of the relationship between criteria and skepticism he attempts to ‘put the genie back into the bottle’, so to speak, in explaining that before he discusses criteria in their relation to skepticism he hopes to explain the ‘crucial little’ that he thinks that Wittgensteinian criteria can be invoked to ‘settle’—since he does not think they can be invoked to refute skeptical worries. I characterise this as something of an attempt to ‘put the genie back into the bottle’, for two reasons. First, because Cavell himself continually returns to questions about the

33 See for example: (Cavell, 1979: 17)

54

epistemological status of ‘criteria’ even after he has proposed to postpone such considerations.34 And second (and perhaps more importantly), because it has become standard within the secondary literature to treat Cavell’s interpretation of ‘criteria’ as a notion that is, at least primarily, of interest with regard to its role in Cavell’s confrontation with ‘skepticism’.

To be clear, I do not mean to deny that the relationship between criteria and skepticism is of crucial importance to Cavell. Instead I mean only to suggest that there is much that can be said about Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘criteria’ before that interpretation is brought to bear upon various skeptical problems, and Cavell’s unique ‘re-interpretation’ of what he calls ‘skepticism’s self-understanding’. 35

What is more, I believe that holding off the issue of skepticism in our initial discussion of criteria will help to make clearer Cavell’s conception of the relationship between criteria and the place of the human voice in philosophy. This exegetical strategy will, eventually also assist in making clearer the relationship between the place of the human voice in philosophy and Cavell’s unique understanding of ‘philosophical skepticism’.

Let us proceed then in our investigation of Cavell’s understanding of the Wittgensteinian notion of ‘criteria’ with two key questions in mind. (1) What does Cavell’s interpretation of the Wittgensteinian notion of ‘criteria’ add to his understanding of the relationship between self-knowledge and the practice of ordinary language philosophy? And (2) What does this tell us about Cavell’s conception of the distinctly philosophical import of the kind of self-knowledge that is revealed in the practice of ordinary language philosophy? Remembering that we are ultimately trying to understand the role that this kind of self-knowledge plays in Cavell’s attempt to ‘bring the human voice back into philosophy’.

III. The Logical Role of Criteria.

It will be useful to have some examples of Wittgenstein’s use of the notion of ‘criteria’ before us as we go on to discuss Cavell’s interpretation of that idea. As such, I will begin this section with a rather lengthy quotation from Wittgenstein’s Blue Book. Indeed this is the longest continuous discussion of ‘criteria’ in Wittgenstein’s published work. Wittgenstein (1958: 24) writes:

“It is a part of the grammar of the word ‘chair’ that this is what we call ‘to sit on a chair’, and it is part of the grammar of the word ‘meaning’ that this is what we call ‘an explanation of a meaning’; in the same way to explain my criterion for another person’s having a toothache is to give a grammatical explanation

34 See for example: (Cavell, 1979: 17, 32-33) 35 In so far as this is a criticism of Cavell, it is perhaps a criticism that can be entered only with the benefit of hindsight. As Cavell notes in the quotation above, at the time that he was writing The Claim of Reason Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘criteria’ was generally taken (by sympathetic and critical commentators alike) to constitute a direct response to certain skeptical problems. It is Cavell’s own work, in arguing that ‘criteria’ are not supposed to refute skeptical worries, which so much as points the way to the possibility of considering Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘criteria’ in (at least temporary) isolation from the threat of various skeptical problems.

Cavell himself may have been suspicious of such an (arguably revisionist) exegetical strategy, given that throughout his work he displays a keen sense of the importance of what we might call the ‘autobiographical origins’ (the origins in one’s personal intellectual history) of particular lines of philosophical thinking. Nonetheless I believe that this exegetical strategy can help to make Wittgenstein’s notion of criteria (and thus ultimately Cavell’s inheritance of that notion) clearer—and most importantly for our purposes, also render its relation to the issue of ‘voice’ more conspicuous.

55

about the word ‘toothache’ and, in this sense, an explanation concerning the meaning of the word ‘toothache.’

When we learnt the use of the phrase ‘so-and-so has toothache’ we were pointed out certain kinds of behaviour of those who were said to have toothache. As an instance of these kinds of behaviour let us take holding your cheek. Suppose that by observation I found that in certain cases whenever these first criteria told me a person had toothache, a red patch appeared on the person’s cheek. Supposing I now said to someone, ‘I see A has toothache, he’s got a red patch on his cheek’. He may ask me ‘How do you know A has toothache when you see a red patch?’ I should then point out that certain phenomena have always coincided with the appearance of the red patch

Now one may go on to ask: ‘How do you know that he has got toothache when he holds his cheek?’ The answer to this might be, ‘I say, he has toothache when he holds his cheek because I hold my cheek when I have toothache.” But what if we went on asking: –“And why do you suppose that toothache corresponds to his holding his cheek just because your toothache corresponds to your holding your cheek?” You will be at a loss to answer this question and find that here we strike rock bottom, that is we have come down to conventions.”

Following this discussion Wittgenstein (1958: 24-25) comes as close as he ever does in his published work to defining the notion of ‘criteria’. He says:

“Let us introduce two antithetical terms in order to avoid certain elementary confusions: To the question ‘How do you know that so-and-so is the case?’, we sometimes answer by giving ‘criteria’ and sometimes by giving ‘symptoms’.

And then a little later, Wittgenstein (1958: 25) says that, to state that one thing is a criterion of another, to say, for example, that ‘A man has the flu if he is infected with the influenza virus’, “is a tautology or it is a loose way of stating the definition of [‘the flu’]”.36

Finally, Wittgenstein (1958: 25) asserts that:

“In practice, if you were asked which phenomenon is the defining criterion and which is a symptom, you would in most cases be unable to answer this question except by making an arbitrary decision ad hoc. It may be practical to define a word by taking one phenomenon as the defining criterion, but we shall be easily persuaded to define the words by means of what, according to our first use, was a symptom.”

We now have a fairly lengthy sample of Wittgenstein’s explicit observations about his use of the term ‘criterion’ before us; certainly enough to begin with in explicating why Cavell is particularly interested in that notion. Before doing so, however I must make one more preliminary observation.

I said that for the time being I wished to hold-off the issue of the relationship between Wittgensteinian ‘criteria’ and various kinds of skepticism. And yet, Wittgenstein’s discussion of ‘toothache’ in the first of the passages quoted above might be thought to instantly invite worries about a certain kind of other-mind skepticism. Since I am not interested in discussing that kind of skeptical worry here, let us imagine an analogue of Wittgenstein’s ‘toothache’ example, which does not (even potentially) raise any such worries.

36 Wittgenstein in fact refers to the presence of a certain ‘bacillus’ as a criterion of ‘angina’ here. Wittgenstein clearly has ‘Ludwig’s angina’ in mind, a potentially fatal bacterial infection of the mouth and throat (first detailed by the German surgeon Wilhelm Friedrich von Ludwig). But ‘angina’ in its more familiar use describes a kind of cardiac pain (pain that is not associated with any particular bacillus—nor indeed, necessarily related to any kind of bacterial infection). As such, to avoid unnecessary confusion I have amended Wittgenstein’s example slightly.

56

Suppose that a friend and I are listening to Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”. I say to him, ‘This song ends with a saxophone solo’. He may ask me ‘How do you know that this song ends with saxophone solo?’ I should then perhaps say “listen… wait… there… see?” Unsatisfied, he may ask me ‘How do you know that that is a saxophone?’ I should then say something like ‘Can’t you hear it? Only a saxophone sounds like that!’ or perhaps I will say ‘If you are being serious, you obviously do not know what a saxophone sounds like!’. But what if he (or we) went on asking: – ‘How do I know that?’

—Here we may imagine Wittgenstein’s (1958: 24) final assertion coming back in: “You will be at a loss to answer this question and find we strike rock bottom, that is we have come down to conventions”.37

Let us make a few observations about the Wittgensteinian assertions that we have collected thus far.

It is clear from the first that Wittgenstein’s employment of the notion of ‘criteria’ is intrinsically related to his employment of the notion of ‘grammar’. We might say that it is criteria which are produced by what Wittgenstein calls ‘grammatical investigations’—since Wittgenstein (1958: 24) asserts that “to explain my criterion for… [X] is to give a grammatical explanation about the word…[‘X’].” Thus getting clearer on what exactly ‘criteria’ are supposed to be and what they are supposed to do, will help us to get clearer on what, for Wittgenstein, a ‘grammatical investigation’ is supposed to be and what such investigations are supposed to show.

Grammar (as the term itself suggests), and hence also criteria, are clearly related to language for Wittgenstein. But Wittgenstein does not assume any clear distinction between questions about language and questions about the world. Just before the first quotation I have given from The Blue Book, Wittgenstein (1958: 24) moves from asking “what is the meaning of the word ‘to know’” (an apparently linguistic—and some might wish to say, semantic—question), to “what is it like in this case to ‘get to know?” (an apparently practical—or even phenomenological—question), and then again to “What do we call ‘getting to know?’ (which Wittgenstein describes as a grammatical question). But Wittgenstein makes it quite clear that he thinks that these are really all questions about the same thing. Their different formulations merely bring out different valences—different ways in which the same question might be asked, which each emphasise or suggest different possible routes of investigation.

37 Readers who are aware of certain Cavellian distinctions that I have not yet canvased (e.g. between ‘specific’ and ‘generic’ objects/‘Wittgensteinian’ and ‘Austinian’ criteria) may suspect that in modifying Wittgenstein’s example I have distorted things beyond the scope of the particular change I intended. That is, that in changing the object of Wittgenstein’s example I may have distorted things beyond my intention of merely holding-off the question of other-mind skepticism. The thought behind such a suspicion would have to be something like: being able to judge the sound of a saxophone is a more esoteric (or somehow less generic) capacity than being able to judge that someone has a toothache. Whether that is so in any given case will depend upon the circumstances of the case (the context and the persons involved). For the time being I merely note that I am aware of the difficulties that changing Wittgenstein’s example might—but, I believe, need not necessarily—raise; and assure the reader that I will have more to say on the issue shortly. I might also add here that I believe that Cavell’s talk of generic and specific objects (and his talk of their relation to Austinian and Wittgensteinian criteria) bears its own difficulties. Though we will not come to discuss those difficulties explicitly until we turn to the issue of Cavell’s relationship to skepticism in Chapter 4.

57

We can see then that Wittgenstein is already operating with something like the view that Cavell argued for in “Must We Mean What We Say?” That is, the view that the philosophical investigation of language is not isolable from investigation of the world that language speaks of. Recall that Cavell argued that language has an existential significance for us language-using creatures. We meet the world in language. As such questions about ‘what we say when…’ are questions about our mode of being-in-the-world. What is more, questions about our being-in-the-world are not isolable from questions about the world ‘as-such’. Similarly, for Wittgenstein, questions about criteria, are not just questions about language (in isolation from world), but are questions about the whole nexus of language, language users, language use, and the contexts (the world) within which these phenomena take place.38

Wittgenstein’s demonstrative appeals in offering grammatical explanations highlight this fact. Wittgenstein (1958: 25) says: “This is what we call sitting in a chair”, which means, this is what sitting in a chair comes to. Neither the speech-act nor the act can be defined or explained in isolation from the other.39 This is perhaps most obvious in the case of actions, but at least for Wittgenstein, there is no reason to suppose that the interrelation of language and world is confined to cases of action alone. As Wittgenstein (1958: 24) goes on to explain from the example just cited: to say that “this is what we call ‘an explanation of meaning’” is to say something about what meaning is; or, that whatever we go on in saying that someone has toothache is part of the grammar of the word ‘toothache’—and thus, similarly, cannot be isolated from the question of what toothache is. We can, of course, be wrong in calling something toothache when it is not. But that would not mean that what we call toothache is not related to what toothache is; it would only mean that we have called the wrong thing toothache here—and that possibility depends as much upon the relation between what we call toothache and what toothache is, as does the possibility of our getting it right. This is a difficult idea, and we will return to it. For now I only wish to highlight the affinity between Cavell’s and Wittgenstein’s visions of the inextricable interrelation of language and world.

Wittgenstein not only implies that questions about criteria and questions about the world are essentially inseparable, but also draws a link between criteria and processes of learning. He seems to suggest that criteria are intimately related to the way in which we learn words; or perhaps better: that criteria can in many cases be produced by reflecting upon the way in which we learnt to use particular words. Again Wittgenstein’s affinity with Cavell (and Cavell’s interest in the process of learning a word) is obvious here. But Wittgenstein is even more explicit than Cavell in separating his interest in the process of ‘learning a word’ from any actual empirical instances of learning. What Wittgenstein is interested in is not actual

38 C.f. Wittgenstein’s (1953: unnumbered section, p.52) assertion, “The sense in which philosophy of logic speaks of sentences and words is no different from that in which we speak of them in ordinary life…we are talking about the spatial and temporal phenomenon of language, not about some non-spatial, non-temporal, non-entity.” Compare also Wittgenstein’s assertion at (§120), “In giving explanations, I already have to use language full-blown (not some sort of preparatory, provisional one)” 39 One might give a purely linguistic definition of what we call sitting in a chair: ‘to prostrate oneself in a mostly upright fashion—usually (though admittedly with many variations) bending at the hips and knees, with the weight of the body (again usually) carried by the buttocks and/or upper legs—in a device designed (or else regularly adopted) for that purpose.’ Though it is hard to see what the point of any such definition might be, and such a definition will itself have to be ‘checked’ against the actual practice of sitting in a chair anyway. Similarly only a creature that knows what it is to ‘sit in a chair’, which is to say a creature that understands what we call ‘sitting in a chair’, will understand what it is to find itself in an environment populated by (or else devoid of) chairs—and hence find (or lack) places to sit in the relevant manner.

58

instances of learning new words; but the possibility of learning new words—or the possibility of explaining one’s use of a word with reference to the context in which one initially learnt its use. This was also a feature of Cavell’s discussion of what it is to learn a word. As we might put it, Cavell was interested in understanding how one could do something as complicated as learning a word like ‘umiak’ from the dictionary; rather than what it is like to learn the specific word ‘umiak’. But Wittgenstein’s separation of these two questions is more explicit still.

This can be seen in Wittgenstein’s discussion of the slightly surreal idea of a ‘red patch’ on the cheek operating as a criterion (which is to say a ‘loose definition’) of ‘toothache’. In order to illustrate this idea, let us move to our ‘saxophone case’ and attempt to identify an analogous (possible) criterion. If I am asked ‘How do you know that that sound is a saxophone’ (at the conclusion of Lou Reed’s song), I will probably say something like, ‘I’ve heard plenty of saxophones played before, I know what they sound like in the same way that anybody else does.’ And that would be a perfectly good and correct answer. But it might be that I make a far less familiar appeal. Perhaps I say, ‘Well, whenever I hear a saxophone played I have a strange, but very particular, throbbing sensation in the big-toe of my right-foot. I had that very sensation when we were listening to the end of “Walk on the Wild Side” so I know that there was a saxophone being played in the song.’ For Wittgenstein this explanation, in so far as it holds up, will serve just as well as the more familiar explanation.40 Though it is important to note that for Wittgenstein, if this explanation is ‘to hold up’ I must both be able to consistently (or consistently enough) identify saxophones in this way, and I must also be able to relate my identification of saxophones in this unconventional manner to the things that other people (those we might call ‘non-throbbers’) say about saxophones. We will return to this idea shortly.

The fact that surreal examples of possible learning processes will serve as well as more conventional examples, for Wittgenstein, tells us something about the level at which his interest in the kind of explanation which makes an appeal to a process of learning, is aimed. For what Wittgenstein is interested in is not the particular empirical content of any particular explanation given in terms of a learning process. He is not interested in constructing any kind of empirical genealogy of concepts. Instead he is interested in the logic of the kinds of explanations which make an appeal to one or another process of learning. He is interested in how such explanations operate as explanations, and not about their particular content in any given case. We might note also that Wittgenstein’s willingness to include amongst the criteria of a given phenomenon certain ‘internal’ sensations—as in our example, the throbbing of my toe—shows that criteria are not, as some philosophers have supposed, meant to underwrite any kind of behavioural reductionism.41 It does not matter, for Wittgenstein, whether criteria are externally observable (say, to amend our example, a visible twitch in my toe) or

40 C.f. Wittgenstein’s (1958: 9-10) discussion of the ‘water-diviner’, in The Blue Book. 41 C.f. Wittgenstein’s ‘water diviner’ example once more. Or, towards the beginning of the so called ‘private language argument’, in the Investigations, Wittgenstein’s (§246) assertion: “Other people cannot be said to learn of my sensations only from my behavior—for I cannot be said to learn of them. I have them.” Or, perhaps most explicitly at (§306), “Why ever should I deny that there is a mental process? It is only that “There has just taken place in me the mental process of remembering…” means nothing more than “I have just remembered…” To deny the mental process would mean to deny the remembering; to deny that anyone ever remembers anything.”

59

externally invisible (as a throbbing sensation might be). Criteria are defined by their logical function in our language, not by their content. Again, this is a difficult idea and we will return to it. But let us first register the last of our observations about Wittgenstein’s initial discussions of criteria in The Blue Book.

Toward the end of the first large section of text that I have quoted, Wittgenstein makes the, perhaps surprising, suggestion that if we continue to question a certain capacity—in this case the capacity to tell toothache, or again to return to our saxophone example, to recognise the sound of a saxophone—beyond a certain point we will ‘strike rock bottom’ and ‘have come down to conventions.’ I say that this assertion is ‘perhaps surprising’ because it comes so quickly. Wittgenstein’s interlocutor asks only a handful of seemingly straightforward questions, and then Wittgenstein (1958: 24) proclaims that faced with such questions, “You will be at a loss to answer…&c.”. I want to suggest that there is something significant about the kind of question that generates this response for Wittgenstein. But first I should say something, by way of disambiguation, about what Wittgenstein means in saying that striking ‘rock bottom’ is a matter of having ‘come down to conventions’.

For the moment I only wish to highlight that whatever Wittgenstein is referring to with his talk of ‘conventions’ here, he is not referring to strictly delineated conventions of meaningful language use of the kind theorised by logical-positivist philosophers like Rudolph Carnap or A.J. Ayer—philosophers who, incidentally, took themselves to be inheriting certain ideas from Wittgenstein’s earlier, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.42 In the Investigations Wittgenstein replaces the vocabulary of ‘conventions’, from The Blue Book, with talk of what he calls, ‘forms of life’. But since that notion is arguably more obscure than that of ‘conventions’, explaining that by ‘conventions’ here Wittgenstein means something akin to what he later calls ‘forms of life’ will not serve to explain very much at all. Saying so much does, however, at least suggest the level of complexity that Wittgenstein understands these notions to possess. An ordinary convention may be extremely simple. For example: ‘it’s’ always means ‘it is’ and never the possessive ‘its’ despite the ordinary convention of possessive apostrophe use’.43 It seems plausible to suggest that even the simplest ‘form of life’ will be significantly more complex than that (and here we might recall Cavell’s (1969c: 52) description of “all the whirl of organism Wittgenstein calls ‘forms of life’” discussed in the previous chapter).

But one need not appeal to the later notion of a ‘form of life’ to see that Wittgenstein, though he characterises criteria as operating at the level of ‘conventions’ in The Blue Book, does not mean to invoke any rigid conception of the conventions of meaningful language use. And that

42 See for example: Carnap’s (1950: 23) assertion that: “to accept the thing-world means nothing more than to accept a certain form of language, in other words, to accept rules for forming statements, and for testing, accepting or rejecting them.” Or, Ayer’s (2001: 2) infamous assertion, that on the basis of his so called ‘verification principle’ of meaningful language use we may conclude, that “…it cannot be significantly asserted that there is a non-empirical world of values, or that men have immortal souls, or that there is a transcendent God.” 43 Even this convention depends upon a highly complex background. The very idea of a possessive noun (let alone a possessive pronoun) recalls a hugely complex understanding of our life with language. But it is conceivable that the ‘‘it’s’ means ‘it is’’ convention of English could be understood (or perhaps better: operated with, or implemented) in the absence of that background understanding. That is in part because the ‘‘it’s’ means ‘it is’’ convention is both an essentially unique (in the sense of isolated) and a relatively rigid rule of written English.

60

is because he explicitly says that he does not mean to invoke any such rigid framework. As Wittgenstein himself explains it, what is treated as a criterion in practice is never a rigid matter—one might initially treat something as a criterion, only to later find that it should really only have be taken as a symptom (or vice versa). This idea will become clearer when we discuss the distinction between ‘criteria’ and ‘symptoms’ in the next few paragraphs. And yet, if what can be treated as a criterion is as flexible as Wittgenstein suggests it is, then it seems clear already that criteria cannot form the basis of any strictly delineated rules of language of the kind certain positivist philosophers had theorised. Indeed Wittgenstein is even more explicit about this fact in the paragraphs following the sections of The Blue Book that I have quoted. There he asserts:

“…in general we don’t use language according to strict rules—it hasn’t been taught us by means of strict rules, either. We [philosophers] in our discussions, on the other hand, constantly compare language with a calculus preceding according to exact rules.

This is a very one sided way of looking at language.” (Wittgenstein, 1958: 25)

So much then for strict conventions; let us return to the idea of reaching ‘rock bottom’ and say something about the kinds of questions that might serve to generate such an impasse. I said before that it is surprising how quickly Wittgenstein (1958: 24) declares that “we [will] strike rock bottom” in his discussion of the example of questions about toothache. In order to investigate that idea I would like to return once more to our saxophone example and to try to conceive of an analogous point of interrogation to that which Wittgenstein imagines for his toothache example. That is, let us try to uncover something about the kind of question that will generate the type of response that Wittgenstein imagines as signalling our having hit ‘rock bottom’, by imagining how we might come to a similar impasse in a different case. Doing so will help us to understand what is significant about the possibility of ‘striking rock bottom’ or ‘coming down to conventions’ for Wittgenstein; and thus ultimately what the relationship between this possibility and ‘criteria’ is supposed to be.

In setting up our saxophone example I imagined that an interlocutor might ask ‘How do you know that that is a saxophone’ after I have already pointed out the sound of the saxophone at the end of Lou Reed’s ‘Walk on the Wild Side’. I said that my response should be something like, ‘Can’t you hear it? Only a saxophone sounds like that!’, or, ‘If you are being serious, you obviously don’t know what a saxophone sounds like!’. I said further that if my interlocutor went on to ask, ‘But how do you know that?’ I should be at a loss to answer him, and that this would be an example of the kind that Wittgenstein describes as ‘striking rock bottom’, or, ‘having come down to conventions’. I now want to suggest that there are in fact at least two different ways that my imagined interlocutor’s final question might be understood, and that only upon one of those understandings is it clear that we immediately ‘strike rock bottom’ in Wittgenstein’s sense. Deploying Wittgenstein’s distinction between taking something as a ‘criterion’ and taking something as a ‘symptom’ will help to make the two different understandings I have in mind clearer.

First imagine that my interlocutor asks me how I know that there is a saxophone solo at the end of ‘Walk on the Wild Side’. I say, as before, ‘Wait… listen… there.. see?”. Again, unsatisfied my companion asks ‘But how do you know that that is a saxophone’. And I reply, ‘Can’t you hear it? Only a saxophone sounds like that!’. Now imagine my interlocutor replies ‘But how do you know that?’, and means to imply some definite possibility of error on my part. After all it might turn out that I am wrong in saying that ‘only a saxophone sounds like

61

that’. Perhaps a clever trick has been played with a synthesiser, or a clarinet—even a digeridoo. It might happen that when we examine the liner notes, or undertake some other investigation, we will find out all about the novel (and entirely saxophone-free) technique that was employed to create that sound. Then to my interlocutor’s question, ‘But how do you know that?’, the proper response would have to be ‘I thought I knew but I did not’. And we might diagnose my error by saying that what I took as a criterion of ‘being a saxophone’, say roughly that saxophone-like sound, should not have been treated as a criterion of ‘being a saxophone’, but was only a symptom. Though it is important to note that criteria for being a saxophone are still in play in this case because it was precisely a saxophone-like sound that I heard. Criteria continue to control my application of the concept ‘saxophone’ in identifying the sound as ‘saxophone-like’, even if my identification of the sound as that of a saxophone turned out to be wrong. Indeed my grasp of criteria (for being a saxophone) was what allowed the sound to mislead me in the way that it did.

The possibility of making mistaken judgements on the basis of particular (misleading) symptoms is often utilised in generating a kind of skeptical problem based upon the idea that for any given knowledge claim, any number of ‘alternative hypotheses’ are always, at least logically, ineliminable. Such arguments conclude from this fact, combined with one or another kind of ‘closure principal’, that knowledge is, or at least seems to be, impossible.44 As I have already said, I do not wish to be drawn into a discussion of skeptical problems at this stage. So for now I want to note only that if my companion’s final question is entered to imply some recognisable possibility of error, then we have not yet struck ‘rock bottom’ in Wittgenstein’s sense. My friend and I will be able to keep on talking and in doing so we will most likely go on to refer (and perhaps ultimately defer) to such recognised checking procedures as reading the liner notes, watching a video performance, &c. Perhaps my being able to name the saxophonist will be enough to persuade my companion; perhaps he will be more stubborn than that. Again the point is just that in this kind of case it need not be immediately obvious that we have struck ‘rock bottom’ or ‘have come down to a matter of conventions’.

Now imagine a different turn of events. As before my interlocutor and I reach the point in our conversation at which I say, ‘Can’t you hear it? Only a saxophone sounds like that!’. And my interlocutor now replies, ‘But how do you know that? And how could it be? Saxophones are at least a foot long, normally more, and that sound is coming out of a speaker with a diameter of no more than 15cm.’ or, ‘But how do you know that that is a saxophone, and how could it be? how could a sound be a thing? (and a thing made of brass no less!)’. Or perhaps, in response to my friend’s initial question, ‘How do you know that that is a saxophone’, I say, ‘I have heard saxophones played many times, I know how to recognise their sound in the same

44 A typical version of the closure principle states that that knowledge is closed under known logical implication: if some subject S knows p, and S knows that p entails q, then S knows q. A skeptical conclusion can be drawn from this principle combined with the idea that in the case of any given knowledge claim (p1) there is at least one ‘alternative hypothesis’ (q1) that is both incompatible with (p1) and logically ineliminable. This is, because according to the closure principle stated above, the claim that one knows (p1) is incompatible with the claim that one does not know that ~(q1). On this basis one might form an argument of the form: 1. If Descartes knows that he is sitting by the fire then he must know that he is not dreaming. 2. Descartes does not know that he is not dreaming. Therefore: 3. Descartes does not know that he is sitting by the fire. Or, 1. If I know that Stroud is coming to the party then I must know that he is not about to be hit by a meteorite 2. I do not know that Stroud is not about to be hit by a meteorite. Therefore: 3. I do not know that Stroud is coming to the party.

62

way that anybody else does’. And he replies, ‘But how do you know that? How do you know that saxophones are to be recognised by their sound, and that that is how others recognize them?’

It is perhaps difficult to take such questions seriously. They sound like jokes (and bad jokes at that).45 The observation that such questions sound like jokes might in part be explained by the fact that it is difficult to imagine what a mundane breakdown of criteria would look like. But it may also be true that when such breakdowns do occur it is somehow easiest or least troubling to confront them with amusement—and in that way to avoid facing the uncomfortable dissonance that such experiences might otherwise disclose. We will return to this suggestion.

For now let us just note that in these cases it will not do to say that my interlocutor was raising a definite possibility of error on my part; nor, to put the same idea in a more abstract form: that he was really suggesting that I had treated the sound of the saxophone as a criterion when it was in fact only a symptom. Rather, in so far as we assume that he is being sincere, we will have to say that my interlocutor does not understand what it is for something to be a saxophone. His possession of the concept is confused or deficient; he does not understand how to get along with it.

It is questions of the kind that generate dissonance at this level, which Wittgenstein characterises as bringing us to ‘strike rock bottom’, or else bringing us ‘down to conventions’. Recall Wittgenstein’s toothache example: if someone says, “‘…why do you suppose that toothache corresponds to his holding his cheek just because your toothache corresponds to your holding your cheek?’ You will be at a loss to answer…[&c]”. Of course we can equally imagine a scenario in which this does not leave the respondent at ‘a loss to answer’. Namely, when some definite possibility of error is implied. ‘The poor fellow was punched in the mouth only a moment ago. Most likely that is the source of his pain!’, or, as when a child is frightened, or disturbed by a performance: ‘He’s only acting, darling, pretending for the play. It’s kind of you to offer your icepack, but his tooth doesn’t really hurt, not like yours does.’ In neither of these cases have we struck ‘rock bottom’ in Wittgenstein’s sense.

We might explain why we have not ‘struck rock bottom’ here by observing that in either of these cases—in which something that was taken as a criterion is pointed out to be a mere symptom—we can (or can imagine) pointing to certain marks or features which signal that the case in question is somehow non-standard: ‘One can still see the menacing brute, glowering at the poor fellow from across the room’; or, ‘the man’s cries are too exaggerated, he holds his cheek not naturally but theatrically, he is ‘hamming it up’ even ‘playing it for laughs’’. It is important to note that something’s being a ‘symptom’ does not always mean that there will be definitive marks and features by which we can (or even ideally could) either establish it as, or distinguish it from, ‘the real thing’. (This is a point that Cavell will stress in his discussions of the relationship between symptoms, criteria and skepticism). Nonetheless, when something is being treated as a symptom, the question of identifying or failing to identify certain marks or features at least makes sense. If something is being treated as a criterion, however, it does not make sense to call certain marks or features into question at

45 C.f. Wittgenstein’s (§111) suggestion, “…Let’s ask ourselves: why do we feel a grammatical joke to be deep? (And that is what the depth of philosophy is.)”

63

all—or, more properly, to do so could only be to suggest that what is being taken as a criterion in a certain case, ought in fact to be treated only as a symptom.

My interlocutor might say, ‘the tone of that so called saxophone is too mellow; it's well disguised but it comes through on the low notes, whatever that instrument is, it has the unmistakable tone of wood!” I might dispute that claim by denying (or otherwise explaining away) the marks or features my interlocutor claims to detect. That is, I may defend my initial claim, as a claim about ‘symptoms’, and maintain that what I initially took as symptomatic of ‘being a saxophone’ is still adequate—that his wood-objection is just wrong. But what if I reply, ‘So it is a wooden saxophone!’? Well perhaps it is. But the question of whether we will accept the idea that a saxophone could be made out of wood—that something could be made of wood and still be a saxophone—is no longer a question that can be determined by ascertaining whether certain marks or features are present or not. It is a question about the grammar of the term ‘saxophone’. Which is to say, it is a conceptual question about what a saxophone is.

Contemplating this fact can help us to understand what Wittgenstein means when he speaks of our ‘striking rock bottom’. To ‘strike rock bottom’ for Wittgenstein is to lose our grip with criteria. It is to find our criteria challenged below the level at which justifications can be offered. Again, Wittgenstein’s toothache example may complicate things precisely because it refers to a case in which our criteria can, at least seem, to require further justification—and thus ultimately to generate a kind of other-mind skepticism. (Assessing whether a demand for justification arises naturally in such cases, or whether there is something artificial or forced about such a demand will be important in assessing what kind of problem that variety of other-mind skepticism is). But for the time being I want to focus only on the level at which breakdowns seem to occur in cases like Wittgenstein’s final toothache example, or our most recent saxophone cases.

How could a breakdown occur below the level at which justifications can be offered? Wittgenstein’s claim seems to be that criteria articulate our commitments at a level below which the idea of justification itself fails to get a grip. And that is because justifications themselves depend upon certain background understandings to so much as get going as justifications. If I find that the questions that are being asked of me by an interlocutor suggest to me that he does not know (or does not accept) that, say, we recognise saxophones by their sounds; or that we continue to refer to a sound in terms of the instrument that made it even if that sound has been recorded and thus reproduced; or, that though we sometimes talk of sounds as experiences, we also recognise that they are made by things, and that that is part of our experience of them—then I will not be able to justify myself to him in any of the usual ways. I will not be able to point to more evidence or to argue that he is making some inferential error. I will instead have to recite criteria; to say, perhaps again, ‘this is what we call a saxophone’.

The case of my entertaining the idea of a saxophone being made out of wood may seem to engender a difficulty of a different kind than those confusions suggested above. For one, we might be inclined to think that in our imagined case I am just wrong about the idea that there could be wooden saxophones. But what if we discover that some artisan has crafted out of wood an instrument, which for all the world looks and sounds like an ordinary alto

64

saxophone?46 Anyone who can play a saxophone can play this instrument. Perhaps even expert saxophonists cannot tell it apart from other saxophones until they hold it. Should we then call this instrument a saxophone? Shall we determine, or else deny, that it fits into the schematism of our criteria for ‘being a saxophone’? There is just no ready-made answer to this question. And yet there is a real question about the application of our criteria here. For the time being let us just note that it is not a question that will be answered by producing more evidence or further inferences. As was said above, it is a grammatical question about what we are willing to call a saxophone; hence also a conceptual question about what a saxophone is.

So criteria are very different from what Wittgenstein calls ‘symptoms’. Because symptoms just do admit of justifications in fairly standard ways. We saw this above in those instances where one could rightly say that I had taken something as a criterion of, say, ‘being a saxophone’—that saxophone-like sound—when I should have taken it only as a symptom (as a contestable mark or feature).

Cavell (1969c: 73) characterises what is distinct about Wittgensteinian criteria in this regard by saying:

“…criteria do not relate a name to an object, but, we might say, various concepts to the concept of that object. Here the test of your possession of a concept (e.g. of a chair, or a bird; of the meaning of a word; of what it is to know something) would be your ability to use the concept in conjunction with other concepts, your knowledge of which concepts are relevant to the one in question and which are not; your knowledge of how various relevant concepts, used in conjunction with the concepts of different kinds of objects, require different kinds of contexts for their competent employment.”

Understanding what it is to be a saxophone, for example, involves more than merely ‘getting it right’ when attempting to identify saxophones (labelling the right objects in the right situations, as we might put it). After all one could understand perfectly well what it is to be a saxophone and still misidentify something as a saxophone in any given situation (say, because a clever trick is being played with a clarinet). On the other hand, a parrot might be trained to mimic the word ‘saxophone’ when it hears the distinctive sound of a saxophone. We might even imagine a parrot who exercises that capacity with a reliability approaching perfection (no matter how clever the trick he never responds to clarinets). And yet for all that a parrot cannot understand what it is to be a saxophone. And that is because understanding what it is to be a saxophone involves not just applying the word ‘saxophone’ to certain objects, but knowing how other concepts relate to the concept ‘saxophone’—knowing that a saxophone is a musical instrument, that it doesn’t belong in a traditional bluegrass band, that it can wail, or swing or serenade, that those squeaks mean an inexperienced player is struggling with a new reed, &c. A parrot cannot know what it is to be a saxophone because a parrot does not possess—does not understand how to get along with—the concept ‘saxophone’. Though he might perfectly identify the symptoms of something’s ‘being a saxophone’ in many cases, he does not understand our criteria for ‘being a saxophone’. We might say, he cannot grammatically place the concept within the schematism of our criteria in the requisite manner.

46 Adolph Sax (inventor of the saxophone) reportedly did make early prototypes of his new instrument out of wood before moving to brass. So the same question might equally be asked here: ‘Were these early instruments ‘saxophones’ (will we call them saxophones) or something else?’

65

Let us pause for a moment and take stock of what we have said about Wittgenstein’s notions of ‘criteria’ and ‘grammar’ thus far.

Criteria and grammar are intimately related notions for Wittgenstein. And each notion is intrinsically related to our uses of language. Nonetheless, for Wittgenstein (like Cavell) there is no sharp separation between questions about language and questions about the world. Wittgenstein’s willingness to appeal to demonstrative explanations of criteria (e.g. ‘this is what we call sitting in a chair’) highlights this fact. While discussing Wittgenstein’s uses of demonstrative explanations of criteria we raised the difficult idea that getting things wrong (for example misidentifying toothache, or a saxophone) depends upon our understanding of the grammar of certain relevant notions (e.g. what we call toothache, or what we call a saxophone) just as much as it does when we get things right. We can now perhaps articulate that idea more clearly in saying that without the control of criteria—without an understanding of what other concepts can be related to a specific concept (e.g. being toothache, being a saxophone) and the kinds of circumstances in which relating certain concepts to others is appropriate—there can be no question of correctness or incorrectness. (Which is to say, for example, that it is we—and not the bird—who understand and assess the correctness or incorrectness of our imagined saxophone-reporting parrot). Our elicitations of criteria articulate the background of agreement, against which the ideas of correctness and incorrectness can so much as get a grip. In that sense they articulate the background of agreement, upon which the normativity of our language itself depends.

Having said that, we should also be able to see more clearly what was meant (earlier) in saying that criteria are not defined by their content but by the logical role that they play in our language. As Wittgenstein suggests, it is never a rigid matter whether something is to be treated as a criterion or as a symptom. As in our imagined saxophone cases (or alternative toothache explanations), one might take something to be a criterion and later come to realise that it ought to have been taken merely as a symptom. We might now say that questions about the empirical basis of a claim involve treating that claim as pertaining to (or potentially pertaining to) a mere symptom. While questions about criteria—questions which (or which appear to) call the schematism of our criteria into question—are questions about the grammar of our concepts. They pertain not so much to epistemology—taken in the traditional sense of questioning or establishing the empirical bases of certain claims—but instead to the logic of our language. And yet, it is crucial to remember that for Wittgenstein, as for Cavell, questions about language are not (ultimately) isolable from questions about the world.

One might also gloss these ideas with reference to Wittgenstein’s declaration at (§90), that “…our investigation is directed not towards phenomena, but rather, as one might say, towards the ‘possibilities’ of phenomena.”

That idea has a distinctly Kantian flavour. The notion of investigating ‘possibilities of phenomena’ and similarly that of exploring ‘conceptual relations’ or the ‘schematism of our criteria’, each recall the idea of transcendental investigation. Indeed, noticing that fact might make Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘criteria’ look like the result of (or else a potential basis for) a kind of transcendental claim about language. Which is to say, we might be tempted to think that Wittgenstein’s implied claim in his invocations of criteria is something like: for language to operate in the way that it does (at all) there must be certain background agreements (of the kind that our recitations of criteria articulate). And further, that anything that could (ever) be recognised as a language must possess just such a background.

66

That is not exactly wrong, but perhaps misleading. It is potentially misleading because if we accept the idea that criteria articulate something like the transcendental background for our uses of language, we might be tempted to assume that that background must itself be fixed—must provide a kind of fixed ground of all possible language use. Then we should naturally be driven to try to identify what the particular (fixed) background agreements that underlie any possible use of language are.47 (And here we might recall Kant, who, in an analogous argumentative move, attempted to determine the grounds of all possible experience in his account of the transcendental categories). But attempting to articulate (in the abstract, as it were) specific background agreements upon which our uses of language (or even the very possibility of language use) must depend would be a mistake.

We can see why that would be a mistake by recalling Cavell’s observation (which was already canvassed in the previous chapter, and which Cavell explicitly re-articulates in his discussion of criteria) that claims made about the background against which language always-already functions (the kinds of claims articulated in observations about ‘what we say when…’ or ‘what we call…’) are always entered from the perspective of a problematic ‘we’.

IV. Criteria and the Second Person.

In The Claim of Reason, Cavell begins his discussion of criteria by contrasting Wittgenstein’s employment of that notion with everyday or ordinary (which is to say, non-philosophical) uses of the same idea. He considers a number of everyday employments of the notion of ‘criteria’ in order to come to a rough definition of our ordinary employment of that notion. (That is, for example, of criteria for admission to a university, criteria appealed to by a particular critic in evaluating poetry, criteria used to sort manuscript papers in a writer’s archive, &c.) As Cavell (1979: 9) puts it, “criteria are specifications a given person or group sets up on the basis of which (by means of, in terms of which) to judge (assess, settle) whether something has a particular status or value.” Cavell’s claim is that Wittgensteinian criteria essentially share this broadly functional definition with ordinary criteria. So Wittgensteinian criteria can be thought of as specifications of the particular agreements that a given person or group goes on in judging (or, that in some sense underwrite judgements as to) whether something has a particular status or value.

But as Cavell notes there are also important disanalogies between ordinary criteria and Wittgensteinian criteria. Cavell characterises the most important of these distinctions in terms of the authority upon which an appeal to Wittgensteinian criteria is, and so much as can be,

47 Bernard Williams suggests that Wittgenstein’s project in the Investigations might be understood in just this manner in his (somewhat hedged) identification of Wittgenstein’s view with a kind of transcendental idealism. (For Williams’ qualifications about not attributing any particular view to Wittgenstein see (Williams, 1981: 153)). Williams (1981: 160) asserts, that Wittgenstein’s project is concerned with exploring our world-view from a kind of transcendental perspective: “…finding our way around inside our own view, feeling our way out to the points at which we begin to lose our hold on it (or it its hold on us), and things begin to be hopelessly strange to us.” Williams does not attribute any further (or stronger) project of transcendental explanation to Wittgenstein—but the felt need for just such an explanation forms the basis of his general criticism of the view that he attributes to Wittgenstein (despite his professed qualifications). That Williams (1981: 160) fails to appreciate the significance of Wittgenstein’s invocations of a problematic ‘we’ is shown in his assertion that in the later Wittgenstein’s work: “one finds oneself with a we which is not one group rather than another in the world at all, but rather the plural descendent of the idealist I who also was not one item rather than another in the world.”

67

based. Where ordinary criteria are explicitly ‘set up’ (say by committees or individuals) so as to provide an external authority or constraint upon certain kinds of contentious (or otherwise difficult) value judgements, Wittgensteinian criteria are not explicitly established in advance. What is more Wittgensteinian criteria are never entered with reference to some external authority or special group. They are instead always entered in terms of a first-person plural claim which aims to speak both from and for an actual community.

Ordinary criteria are generally entered with reference to the authority of some specific person or group but Wittgensteinian criteria are never conceived to appeal to any such authority. So, while the interpretation and application of ordinary criteria can be authoritatively settled through an appeal to some relevant authority, challenges to the authoritative status of Wittgensteinian criteria can never be so settled. And this crucially means that, the philosopher, in particular, has no special authority in eliciting or assessing Wittgensteinian criteria. There is no special authority with reference to which Wittgenstein (or any other philosopher) makes his appeals to criteria beyond the authority of his own mastery of the language in which his appeals are made. But since we are all masters of our own native language in the relevant sense, we (each and every one of us) are ourselves equally authoritative in adjudicating the accuracy or inaccuracy of elicitations of our criteria.

Cavell’s (1979: 18) initial explication of this idea is somewhat misleading. He asserts that in the case of Wittgenstein’s appeals to criteria, the community whose authority such appeals aim to draw upon seems to be something like “the human group as-such, the human being generally”. This claim appears to be too strong in that it seems to suggest that an appeal to Wittgensteinian criteria could transcend ordinary linguistic barriers in an extraordinary way. It is surely just not the case that any claim of mine about the criteria I go on in calling things as I do in the English language could purport to speak for ‘the human group as-such’ or for ‘the human being generally’. After all there are a great many human beings who do not speak a word (and indeed who have never even heard a word) of English. Nonetheless, I take it that the idea that Cavell is trying to communicate here is that appeals to criteria (of the Wittgensteinian kind) are always made from the perspective of an actual human being—an individual language user—attempting to speak for us; and that there are, in principle, no limits dictating who might possess the authority to challenge such a claim. Which is to say there are no limits as to who possesses the authority to assert for example, that Wittgenstein does not speak for her—beyond the obvious limits of linguistic understanding.

This may seem like a minor quibble, but it has important implications for the interpretation of Cavell’s account of criteria. And that is because it demonstrates an early instance of a tendency of Cavell’s, at least in his initial articulations of his view of the Wittgensteinian notion of ‘criteria’, to run together questions about the extent and depth of the agreement (hence the extent and depth of community) to which Wittgenstein’s elicitations of criteria appeal, and questions about the conditions which make such appeals so much as possible. As we shall soon see this problematic tendency is repeated in some of Cavell’s most well-known articulations of the philosophical significance of Wittgenstein’s investigations of criteria.

As was just noted, Wittgenstein like the traditional ordinary language philosopher, appeals, in the most proximate sense, to fellow native-speakers of a particular language. But as we saw in the last chapter, human languages are in part recognisable as languages because they are intimately connected with our being-in-the-world. As such, appeals to ‘what we say when…’ or to Wittgensteinian criteria, at least potentially, reveal something about the intelligibility of

68

(or the intelligibility of certain aspects of) our being-in-the-world more generally. They depend (in a more distal sense) upon the conditions of our being able to speak together at all (the conditions of our being at all intelligible to one another). Those conditions are not limited to any particular linguistic community but are, as we might say, shared by all language-users in virtue of their being language-users. They are conditions of the kind that Wittgenstein describes as ‘very general facts of nature’ or as aspects of our ‘form of life’.48

But it is crucial to note, again, that this does not mean that Wittgenstein’s elicitations of criteria somehow escape what is ‘problematic’ in the ordinary language philosopher’s appeal to a ‘problematic ‘we’’. Which is to say that in investigating the link between agreements in criteria and the conditions in light of which those agreements are so much as possible Wittgenstein does not presume to insulate his appeals from the possibility of their failing to speak for others.49 As Cavell (1979: 18) puts it:

“For all Wittgenstein’s claims about what we say, he is always at the same time aware that others might not agree, that a given person or group (a ‘tribe’) might not share our criteria. “One human being can be a complete enigma to another” (Investigations, p.223). Disagreement about our criteria, or the possibility of disagreement, is as fundamental a topic in Wittgenstein as the eliciting of criteria itself is”50

What Wittgenstein’s appeals to criteria aim to show is not that we always agree in language, nor that all human languages must agree on some very general level but that even the most general claims about the conditions of human intelligibility (even claims about what Wittgenstein calls “very general facts of nature”) can only ever be made from the perspective of an actual individual language user purporting to speak for ‘us’.

The idea that an investigation of our talking together can reveal something about the conditions of the very possibility of that phenomenon seems, at least in principle, to apply to the traditional ordinary language philosopher’s appeals to ‘what we say when…’ as much as it does to Wittgenstein’s invocations of criteria. But, as Cavell argues, Wittgenstein’s appeals to criteria make explicit the relationship between the conditions of our being able to speak together at all and appeals to ‘what we say when…’, in a way that the traditional ordinary language philosophers’ observations generally do not. I will have more to say about these

48 See for example: (Wittgenstein, 1953: unnumbered section, p.62); also c.f. Wittgenstein’s assertion at (§241) “So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?” – What is true or false is what human beings say; and it is in their language that human beings agree. This is agreement not in opinions, but rather in form of life.” And c.f. Wittgenstein’s (1953: 238) assertion in the Philosophy of Psychology section XI, “What has to be accepted, the given, is – one might say – forms of life.” 49 C.f. Wittgenstein’s (1953: 241) remark in section XII of the Philosophy of Psychology, “If concept formation can be explained by facts of nature, shouldn’t we be interested, not in grammar, but rather in what is its basis in nature?—– We are, indeed, also interested in the correspondence between concepts and very general facts of nature. (Such facts as mostly do not strike us because of their generality.) But our interest is not thereby thrown back on to these possible causes of concept formation; we are not doing natural science; nor yet natural history – since we can also invent fictitious natural history for our purposes.” Wittgenstein (1953: 241) goes on to suggest that one such purpose might be to make intelligible “the formation of concepts different from the usual ones.” We might recall our earlier discussion of Wittgenstein’s willingness to adopt fictitious (or surreal) examples of ‘learning processes’ in light of this assertion. For a brief but illuminating discussion of these remarks see (Cavell, 2004: 276) 50 Citation in original to, (§325).

69

ideas shortly. But first I must say something about the fragility of the kind of unrestricted interpersonal authority that an appeal to Wittgensteinian criteria attempts to draw upon.

If I am confronted, say in the face of an interlocutor’s strange questions (of the kind characterised in our saxophone example above), with an apparent breakdown of intelligibility between myself and another, I may attempt to overcome this breakdown by recalling myself, and my interlocutor to our criteria. Thus I may attempt to remind us both, as it were, of what we go on in speaking (in this domain) as we do. In reciting Wittgensteinian criteria I will be attempting to explain the way that things are with me; what I go on in offering and accepting the justifications (in this particular domain) that I do. By reciting criteria, I may also try to identify what it is that my interlocutor does not accept (or understand) about what I do accept (which is to say, my understanding of the situation). Thus a recitation of criteria can be called forth by our finding ourselves out of attunement. Such a recitation will then represent an attempt to diagnose and perhaps even to remedy the dissonance between us. If my interlocutor does not accept my recitation of criteria I will have to try to see why he does not accept it. That will not amount to assessing new evidence or making further inferences. It may instead involve trying to see how I might need to adopt the criteria that he is proceeding upon in this case to account for some connection or phenomena that I had not noticed (hence not understood). Of course there is always the possibility that I will refuse to countenance the criteria that my interlocutor appeals to (or else appears to be working with). I may always decide that he is just odd or being unnecessarily difficult or cautious—even mad or obtuse. But then it is equally open for him to make the same determinations of me.

How any such situation will be resolved is, in every case, an empirical matter in so far as it will depend upon our actual negotiation of the situation at hand (his and mine). (Though such negotiations may very well also have conceptual consequences if we find our disagreement to have an articulable conceptual basis; to be the result of an identifiable and resolvable disagreement in our respective applications or understandings of criteria). Nonetheless, if in our attempts at negotiating our impasse we each produce divergent criteria, then neither my interlocutor nor I will be able to appeal to any special authority in order to establish our respective claims. Again, in this respect elicitations of criteria have the same force as do the ordinary language philosopher’s appeals to ‘what we say when…’. As Cavell (1979: 19) puts it, what is produced in a recitation of criteria, or an appeal to ‘what we say when…’ might be thought of as a sample; and as he goes on to explain:

“The introduction of the sample by the words ‘we say…’ [or, ‘we call…’, &c.] is an invitation for you to see if you have such a sample or can accept mine as a sound one. One sample does not refute or disconfirm another; if two are in disagreement they vie with one another for the same confirmation. The only source of confirmation here is ourselves. And each of us is fully authoritative in this struggle. An initial disagreement may be overcome; it may turn out we were producing samples of different things (e.g. imagining the situation differently) or that one of us had not looked carefully enough at the sample and only imagined he wished to produce it, and then retracts or exchanges it. But if the disagreement persists there is no appeal beyond us, or if not beyond us two, then not beyond some eventual us.”(my emphases)

The idea that when we appeal to criteria (or ordinary language) ‘the only confirmation is ourselves’, that ‘each of us is fully authoritative’, and that ‘there is no appeal beyond us’ in such matters—is critically important to Cavell. It is a further articulation of the same idea that I characterised in the last chapter by saying that the ordinary language philosopher’s appeals to ‘ordinary language’ are irreducibly second-personal. The irreducibly second-personal manner in which we inhabit language is characteristic of the ordinary language philosopher’s,

70

and Wittgenstein’s, mode of access to ordinary language precisely because it is characteristic of our lives in language generally. It is, as we might say, a ‘very general fact of (our) nature’. And this idea is intimately related to my earlier suggestion that Wittgenstein (and hence also Cavell) conceives of appeals to criteria as, at least potentially, illuminating something about the conditions of human intelligibility—rather than just articulating the agreements of some specific community of language users.

We can see why Cavell thinks of appeals to Wittgensteinian criteria as illuminating (or aiming to illuminate) something about the conditions of human-intelligibility, by focusing upon the kinds of things that Wittgenstein appeals to criteria to elucidate. As Cavell points out, ordinary (non-Wittgensteinian) criteria are usually set up to regulate judgements in particular (and particularly restricted) domains in which, for one reason or another, an especially difficult or contentious value judgement has to be made. Thus in an Olympic diving competition, for example, there will be established criteria by which dives are adjudicated—and the reasons for having such criteria are fairly obvious (to ensure fairness, consistency, perhaps safety, &c.). But Cavell points out that the cases that Wittgenstein appeals to criteria to explain are not like this at all. They are just the ordinary things and events of our world; the kinds of things that do not ordinarily seem contentious or fraught in any way. As Cavell (1979: 14) reminds his reader, “Wittgenstein’s candidates for judgement… neither raise nor permit an obvious question of evaluation or competitive status.” And he continues:

“Remember the sorts of things Wittgenstein appeals to criteria to determine: whether someone has a toothache, is sitting on a chair, is of an opinion, is expecting someone between 4 and 4:30, was able to go on but no longer is; is reading, thinking, believing, hoping, informing, following a rule; whether it’s raining; whether someone is talking to himself, attending to a shape or a colour, whether he means to be doing something, whether what he does is a matter of course etc.” (Cavell, 1979: 14)

As Cavell stresses there is nothing special about such cases. And that tells us something about Wittgenstein’s conception of criteria. It tells us that criteria are, at least in the first instance, not to be appealed to in determining difficult or exceptional cases, but in recalling us to unproblematic cases, or what we generally take to be unproblematic cases. And it tells us something about the point of such appeals; that they are designed, at least in part, to remind us that if we do not agree upon some things—upon what, for example, an unproblematic case would be—then the idea of a problematic or exceptional case cannot so much as get going.

Cavell (1979: 14) extends this idea by saying that Wittgenstein’s implied claim seems to be “that every surmise and each tested conviction depend[s] upon the same structure or background of necessities and agreements that judgements of value explicitly do… that only a creature that can judge of value can state a fact” (orig. emph.) This is a crucial idea. Cavell’s describing the necessities and agreements which criteria highlight in terms of our capacity to ‘judge of value’, indicates that judgements about the background of our life in language are always open to the same kinds of challenges that judgements of value explicitly are. Which is to say, that like the ordinary language philosopher’s appeals to ‘what we say when…’ elicitations of criteria seek and require second-personal recognition or assent.

It is important to note that what Cavell calls a ‘judgement of value’ here should not be confused with a purely subjective judgement. We might, following an early paper of Cavell’s, invoke Kant’s distinction between a ‘mere judgement of taste’ and a ‘judgement of beauty’ to

71

illustrate why Cavell’s talk of ‘judgements of value’ cannot be reduced to talk of ‘merely subjective judgements’ or ‘judgements of subjective preference’.

In The Critique of the Power of Judgement Kant argues that judgements of beauty must be distinguished from judgements of mere taste. Judgements of mere taste are fully subjective. They refer only to an individual’s particular preferences and so cannot occasion any kind of rational disagreement. I say, ‘I like chocolate ice-cream best’. You say ‘I (you) like strawberry ice-cream best’. Our preferences clearly do not agree, but this could not form the basis of any kind of reasoned disagreement between us. Of course we may disagree about whose preferences should count—what kind of ice-cream we will in fact buy. But it would make no sense for me to say that your preference is wrong. (Or, my saying so could only mean that you do not know yourself—that, for example, though you say you like strawberry best, you are always dissatisfied and cry for my chocolate when it comes time to eat).

Kant argues that judgements of beauty are just not like this. When one says, for example, of Matisse’s Blue Nude II: ‘that is a beautiful painting!’, one voices a judgement of a very particular kind with very particular normative consequences. If someone else declares that the same painting is not beautiful at all, then, unlike in the case of a mere judgement of taste, it would make perfect sense to demand that she justify that claim.—‘How can you say that? Do you mean that it is too bold and powerful, sufficiently uncanny that voyeurism seems ruled out?—but that is precisely its beauty!’51 As Cavell points out, in the face of such a challenge an interlocutor will be free to respond with her own reasons, to say perhaps, ‘You have just been taken in by the passé idea that the work of Matisse’s Nice period is somehow inferior to his work from the period of Blue Nude II; look for yourself, the earlier works are properly described as beautiful; it is no criticism to say that Blue Nude II is something else.’52

For Cavell, recognising the possibility of this kind of disagreement is crucial. For such disagreements demonstrate in a particularly clear manner the possibility of our making claims that cannot be reductively characterised in terms of their ‘truth conditions’ nor their ‘evidential probabilities’. 53 Aesthetic claims of the kind characterised above are claims which call upon others to recognise a particular judgement as exemplary. Such claims are not ‘baseless’ or ‘merely subjective’ because they both can be, and are, reasonably contested by others. But nor can such aesthetic claims be contested in the particular ways that philosophers have often imagined that claims must be contestable if they are to be considered rational. As has already been said certain aesthetic claims cannot be reductively characterised in terms of their truth conditions or evidential probabilities and yet for all that they are certainly not irrational. As Cavell (1969d: 92) puts it, they are clearly not irrational “because they are

51 The implied critique here comes from Arthur Danto (2003: 114) in his The Abuse of Beauty – though Danto describes the painting as “sufficiently ugly that voyeurism seems ruled out.”(my emph.) That appears too strong to me. Danto himself wishes to argue that Blue Nude II is not a beautiful work. Indeed Danto (ibid.) claims that “there is no way, without distorting the concept, to see the painting as beautiful.” This is not the place to dispute that claim; but it serves my purposes well, because my point is just that such a claim is eminently disputable. 52 Again this imagined response is informed by Danto’s (2003: 114) criticism in The Abuse of Beauty. 53 Of course one may appeal to some notion of ‘evidence’ (say, about the features of the painting) to justify or explain one’s claim about the beauty of a work. But such evidence need not (and indeed cannot) be understood on the model of scientific or objective evidence characterised in impersonal terms. To base one’s judgement about the merit of an artwork on entirely impersonal evidence would be to make a different kind of judgement with a very different normative force. (More on this below).

72

arguable, in ways that anyone who knows about such things will know how to pursue.”(orig.

emph.)

So aesthetic claims are not irrational because they are clearly arguable, but nor are they merely subjective. We can see that such claims are not merely subjective by noting that a merely subjective judgement of taste entered in the course of the kind of disagreement characterised above (about Matisse’s Blue Nude II) could not be recognised as a continuation of (or contribution to) that disagreement—but only as a retreat from it. If either interlocutor were to reply, within the context of the above exchange, by saying “well I like Matisse’s Blue Nude II” then she would not have made a contribution to the disagreement—she could not be understood as trying to justify or explain her initial stance—but could only be understood as retreating from it.

Kant (2000: §7, 5:213) expresses this idea in saying, “It would be ridiculous if… someone who prided himself on his taste thought to justify himself thus: ‘This object… is beautiful for me.’ For he must not call it beautiful if it pleases merely him.” To claim that an object is beautiful is to make a value judgement that itself purports to be exemplary. Kant (2000: §8, 5:216) describes such a claim as purporting to speak with a “universal voice”—and he has a complicated story to tell about the (ultimately transcendental) basis of that purport. But one need not adopt Kant’s explanation of our capacity to speak in exemplary ways to recognise that there is something right about his description of the fact that when we make a claim about the beauty of an object we do purport to speak for others, in the sense that we do aim for our judgements in this domain to be taken as exemplary.

Now recall Cavell’s claim about Wittgensteinian criteria—and particularly the kinds of objects and situations that Wittgenstein invokes criteria to describe. Cavell says that Wittgenstein’s implied claim in appealing to criteria in the kinds of mundane cases that he does, seems to be “that every surmise and each tested conviction depend[s] upon the same structure or background of necessities that judgements of value explicitly do.” Having highlighted the kinds of judgements that Cavell means to invoke with his talk of ‘judgements of value’—which is to say, judgements that purport to be exemplary; and in that way inherently call for the recognition of others—we can begin to explain the significance of Cavell’s claim.

Cavell’s contention here is that any and every claim made by an individual language user relies upon (presumes and seeks) certain background agreements that are themselves underwritten by nothing more than the recognition of others. Elicitations of criteria present themselves as exemplary (in the same way that judgements of beauty present themselves as exemplary judgements). Such judgements present themselves as recalling us to the way that we (already) judge in a given situation. And it is the very mundaneness of the kinds of situations that Wittgenstein’s appeals to criteria are invoked to illuminate—the kinds of situations in which nothing special or especially contentious is at stake—which, according to Cavell, reveals something about our understanding of the conditions of human intelligibility. Because nothing guarantees that even the most mundane of Wittgenstein’s appeals will receive the recognition that they seek (and require). Nothing justifies such judgements, beyond their second-personal recognition as justified. Which is to say nothing justifies these judgements other than our recognising that they do in fact describe what we do (or say). And yet, Wittgenstein’s elicitations of criteria aim to illuminate the conditions of second-personal

73

agreement (and indeed, disagreement) upon the basis of which the idea of justification itself so much as gets a grip.

That each and every one of our uses of language is intrinsically second-personal, is shown by the fact that each requires recognition from a participant’s perspective. Again judgements of beauty provide an instructive analogy here. It makes no sense to say, for example, that a certain painting (perhaps again, Matisse’s Blue Nude II) ‘has been determined to be beautiful’. Or to be more precise, if we say, ‘the painting has been determined to be beautiful’ then that statement no longer occasions a judgement of the particular normative kind that a judgement of beauty is. To say, ‘this painting has been determined to be beautiful’ is precisely not to make a judgement which purports to be exemplary—such a statement could only serve to relinquish that responsibility; to try (whether successfully or not) to place responsibility for that judgement elsewhere (on some other person, or group, or impersonal standard). I do not say that this can never be done.54 But in the case of language, as in the case of judgements of beauty, the capacity for individual participants to abrogate (or even to attempt to abrogate) responsibility for their judgements in this way is only ever a derivative capacity.

The practice of commissioning judges in awarding art prizes, for example, only makes sense in a context in which the capacity for individuals to make aesthetic judgements (of the kind which purport to be exemplary) is already widely realised. Similarly the work of an institution like l’Académie Française in officially regulating (or guiding) the evolution of a language only makes sense (or only makes whatever sense it does) in the context of a culture in which individuals already speak that language. But as Wittgenstein’s appeals to criteria aim to show, to speak is always already to purport to speak for others; to implicate oneself in the assumption of agreement with others; to take oneself and one’s speech as exemplary. Of course this does not mean that in speaking one assumes that others will agree with everything that one says, only that if others are to be so much as able to disagree then there must be some background of agreement in our criteria and our applications of criteria (what Wittgenstein calls our agreement in judgements)—and that that agreement is itself irreducibly second-personal. That is to say our background of agreement in the language that we use together is sustained by nothing more than our interpersonal recognition of certain judgements or ways of judging as exemplary. (It is our judgements which exemplify the implementation of the schematism of our criteria).

V. Criteria, Convention and Accommodation.

The idea that it is our judgements alone which exemplify the implementation of the schematism of our criteria has radical implications. It suggests not only that our language is second-personal through and through, but that our very intelligibility to one another—even our rationality itself—has an intrinsically second-personal basis; and is thus more fragile than we would (often) like to suppose. As Cavell puts it:

“The philosophical appeal to what we say, and the search for our criteria on the basis of which we say what we say, are claims to community. And the claim to community is always a search for the basis upon which it can or has been established. I have nothing more to go on than my conviction, my sense that I make

54 Social standards of human beauty plausibly provide a prevalent (and prevalently ‘internalized’) example of just such a case. Though I would not wish to prejudge the question of whether a judgement of beauty (in Kant’s sense) could be made about the physical appearance of a human being.

74

sense. It may prove the case that I am wrong, that my conviction isolates me, from all others, from myself. That will not be the same as a discovery that I am dogmatic or egomaniacal. The wish and search for community are the wish and search for reason.” (Cavell, 1979: 20)

The claim that human reason is itself only ever realised second-personally—that it is something essentially negotiated from a participant’s perspective—is bound to be controversial. It represents a significant break, not just from the broadly rationalist approach of those philosophers who would claim some impersonal (metaphysical or transcendental) a priori basis for human reason, but equally from the broadly empiricist approach of those philosophers who would characterise human reason as having its basis in an impersonal conception of custom, or habit, or nature. For Cavell, and Wittgenstein, human reason is itself to be understood on the model of human language; and human language—interrogated always from the perspective of its use—is conceived to be second personally constituted through and through.

The idea that human reason could be irreducibly personal in this way may seem like a kind of retreat—a forsaking of the promise and authority of reason, or logic, or philosophy. But both Cavell and Wittgenstein maintain that nothing is really being surrendered in this re-conception of reason and language; their picture is one, rather, of rehabilitation. Wittgenstein expresses this idea in (§107) asking:

“But what becomes of logic now? Its rigour seems to be giving way here.—But in that case doesn’t logic altogether disappear?—For how can logic lose its rigour?

Then, in an answering voice:

‘Of course not by our bargaining any of its rigour out of it.

Wittgenstein then recalls (§106) where he had said:

“the crystalline purity of logic was, of course, not something I had discovered: it was a requirement.”

And continues:

“the preconception of crystalline purity can only be removed by turning our whole inquiry around (One might say: the inquiry must be turned around, but on the pivot of our real need.)”

Perhaps the most obvious objection that one could raise to the idea that human reason itself ought to be understood on the model of human language, is that human language is an artefact; it is something made (or at least formed) by us—by what we do. Thus one might feel compelled to object that human language is merely conventional whereas reason is eternal, immutable, universal; that perhaps our access to reason is merely human—but surely not reason itself? Wittgenstein’s response to such worries is not one of mere dismissal or any kind of accusation of ‘nonsense’, but an appeal for his reader to look and see. Wittgenstein invites his readers to look and see that no such conception of ‘crystalline purity’ is needed. His appeals to our criteria and to the complexity of agreement that such appeals uncover, are designed to remind us of what Cavell (1979: 111) calls the “depth of convention in human life”

Cavell (1979: 110-11) summarizes Wittgenstein’s insight here in saying:

“The conventions which control the application of grammatical criteria are fixed not by customs or some particular concord or agreement which might, without disrupting the texture of our lives, be changed where convenience suggests a change…They are, rather, fixed by the nature of human life itself, the human fix

75

itself, by those ‘very general facts of nature’ which are ‘unnoticed only because so obvious’, and, I take it, in particular, very general facts of human nature…Here the array of ‘conventions’ are not patterns of life which differentiate human beings from one another, but those exigencies of conduct and feeling which all human beings share.”

It is important to note that, on Cavell’s reading, Wittgenstein does not have any ‘master argument’ for his claims about the centrality of language to human life, to human understanding, or even to logic and rationality.55 Instead his methodology depends upon the piecemeal identification of the workings of our actual language through grammatical investigation and the elicitation of criteria.56 In his later work Cavell (1994b: 117) identifies this avoidance of adopting general or ‘master’ arguments, with what he calls the “unassertiveness” of the Investigations.57 And it is important to note that this ‘unassertive’ interpretation of the later Wittgenstein’s philosophy (radically) separates Cavell’s Wittgenstein, not just from the vast majority of the analytic philosophical tradition, but also from the work of a great many ‘Wittgensteinian’ philosophers. We will return to this observation. In the face of the ideas we have just been canvasing we might now ask again: why (as was noted earlier) are we sometimes inclined to find amusement in mundane breakdowns of our agreement in language? And it may then be pertinent to observe that while our agreement in language pervades our sense of mutual intelligibility there is no reason to think that other factors—say our agreement in amusement—may not also (sometimes) shield dissension in this domain. Our language articulates our being-in-the-world; but that does not mean that the spoken or written word represent exhaustive modes of being-in-the-world for us. We walk and run and skip and jump and laugh and cry and dance too. We are as mutually attuned in (and through) countless further practices as we are in (and through) the practice of our language.

This fact can help us to see why describing our agreement in language as ‘merely conventional’ (as philosophers have often been tempted to do) can be seriously misleading. It is true to say that our language is ‘merely conventional’, if one means to imply just that such practices as, for example, our calling domestic canines ‘dogs’ and not, say, ‘woofers’ is an essentially arbitrary practice. Which is to say, that the fact that we call dogs ‘dogs’ is arbitrary when considered in isolation from the (otherwise obviously significant) fact that it is our established practice. We might always have used different words from those that we do. But saying that language is ‘merely conventional’ can also seem to suggest that the descriptor ‘conventional’ is being deployed in contradistinction to terms like ‘natural’ or ‘necessary’. The idea that language is ‘merely conventional’ can also seem to require the idea of some explicit or explicable act or process—either of the adoption or continuation of certain specifiable conventions.

55 C.f. Wittgenstein’s assertion at (§128) of the impossibility of advancing ‘theses’ in his own method of philosophy. 56C.f. Wittgenstein at (§129): “The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something — because it is always before one’s eyes.) The real foundations of their inquiry do not strike people at all. Unless that fact has at some time struck them. —And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful.” 57 David Macarthur (2017: 253) points out (and discusses) the significance of this Cavellian description in his “Wittgenstein’s Un-Ruley Solution to the Problem of Philosophy”.

76

Both of those ideas, on Cavell’s view, hold the potential to be deeply misleading. As Cavell (1979: 31) puts it:

“…no current idea of "convention" could seem to do the work that words do — there would have to be, we could say, too many conventions in play, one for each shade of each word in each context. We cannot have agreed beforehand to all that would be necessary.”

And he goes on to distinguish his own view even more explicitly, from any kind of ‘conventionalism’ (or any kind of converse ‘essentialism’), by saying:

‘The idea of [our being in] agreement [in language] is not that of coming to or arriving at an agreement on a given occasion, but of being in agreement throughout, being in harmony… That a group of human beings stimmen in their language überein says, so to speak, that they are mutually voiced with respect to it, mutually attuned top to bottom… So I should emphasise that while I regard it as empty to call this idea of mutual attunement ‘merely metaphorical’, I also do not take it to explain anything. On the contrary, it is meant to question whether a philosophical explanation is needed, or wanted, for the fact of agreement in the language human beings use together, an explanation, say, in terms of meanings, or conventions or basic terms, or propositions which are to provide the foundation of our agreements. For nothing is deeper than the fact, or the extent, of agreement itself.” (Cavell, 1979: 32)

The interpretation of this famous passage is a difficult matter. And it is difficult precisely because Cavell seems here again to be running together two distinct ideas. The first is the idea that our elicitations of criteria, or even our talking together more generally, involve an appeal to a community of agreement (a community which we presume to, and often, though not always, do successfully speak for). The second idea is that for such appeals to be so much as possible we must be attuned in a manner that reaches beyond our linguistic capacity for same-saying (which is to say our agreements in language); we must, as Cavell will put it a little later in the same chapter, be attuned in our ‘form of life’.58

Throughout The Claim of Reason Cavell uses the phrase ‘mutual attunement’ to describe both our agreement in language and our attunement in form of life. This way of speaking is not unmotivated, for as has already been said our agreement in language is essential to any illumination of our attunement in form of life; and no claim about the conditions of our mutual intelligibility (our form of life) could be invulnerable to a (potential) failure of our agreement in language. Which is to say, any claim about our attunement in form of life can only ever be entered from the perspective of a problematic ‘we’. So some degree of agreement in language is a condition for the articulation of our attunement in form of life.59 But our attunement in form of life can also be illuminated by failures of our agreement in language. Indeed it is precisely the depth of our attunement in form of life—as Cavell puts it in “The Availability of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy”: “…our sharing routes of interest, and feeling, modes of response, senses of humour, and of significance and of fulfillment…&c.”—which allows us to tolerate disagreements in our uses of language. Hence disagreement in language can equally illuminate the conditions of our mutual intelligibility. And this is the crucial point. As Cavell puts it more clearly, though perhaps still not entirely happily, a few pages later:

58 See for example (Cavell, 1979: 34, 168). The first relevant citation is discussed in more detail below. 59 Though even here ‘agreement in language’ must be very broadly construed, for we should not discount the possibility that what we might call a ‘language of gesture’ could illuminate an attunement in form of life.

77

“Appealing to criteria is not a way of explaining or proving the fact of our attunement in words (hence in forms of life). It is only another description of the same fact; or rather, it is an appeal we make when the attunement is threatened or lost.”

Cavell encapsulates this idea most clearly later on the same page, saying:

“what interests [Wittgenstein] about criteria is both that there should be such things on the basis of which we lay down our words, and that they can be forgone.”

I will have something more to say about the possibility of our foregoing criteria in a moment. But first I must say something more about Cavell’s famous ‘attunement’ passage and the distinction that I have been trying to draw in interpreting it.

The distinction between our agreement in language and the conditions of that agreement (our mutual attunement in form of life) is an important one because if we do not make this distinction then it can appear as if Cavell is (at least in some sense) offering an explanation of our agreement in language—in terms of our ‘mutual attunement’—and then going on to suggest that no such explanation is possible (or necessary). The idea that elicitations of criteria do not provide any explanation or proof of our mutual attunement is a crucial one for Cavell. But if agreement in language and attunement in form of life are taken to be entirely co-extensive (as Cavell’s talk of our being “mutually attuned top to bottom” might suggest) then the possibility of disagreement would seem to drop out of our understanding of our life in language entirely. Then the desire for explanation really would be abated because our agreement would seem to be somehow guaranteed by the practice of our language use itself.60

That, I take it, is not Cavell’s picture of our mutual intelligibility to one another, or, of our life in language. And here we would do well to remember Cavell’s assertion, in his earlier essay, that Wittgenstein’s vision of language is “as simple as it is difficult, and as difficult as it is (and because it is) terrifying.” Cavell’s vision of our agreement in language and our attunement in form of life is not one in which our desire for explanation is abated, but one in which we are urged to recognise that no explanation or justification could reinforce or bolster our mutual intelligibility (our mutual attunement in form of life as revealed by—but not coextensive with—our agreement in language). On Cavell’s account this vision is terrifying precisely because it reveals that our agreement in language is entirely without foundation. Our language and the normativity of our language has no foundation—regardless of whether the idea of ‘foundation’ is conceived in terms of unshakeable grounds or as some kind of edifice that is practically unshakeable (in its magnitude or complexity). Our agreement in language, as an expression of our mutual attunement more generally—what we might call the attunement of our being-with-others-in-the-world; or, our attunement in form of life—is, on Cavell’s vision, more fragile than we would (often) like to admit.

We can begin to see why this is the case by focusing not just on our agreements in language, but also on the potential for our disagreement in language (and hence the potential for our disagreeing in our understandings and/or our applications of criteria). In the early chapters of The Claim of Reason Cavell’s discussions of the potential for disagreement in language focus almost exclusively upon the possibility of specifically philosophical language disagreeing

60 This would seem to have to rely on some kind of transcendental claim about the content of our language.

78

with what is ordinarily said (particularly in the case of various skeptical surmises). But our disagreements in language need not necessarily be distinctly philosophical.61

We can illustrate this idea by recalling our earlier example of a disagreement about the possibility of a saxophone being made out of wood. We said earlier that such a disagreement could occasion a breakdown in our criteria. If I insist that it is perfectly possible that a saxophone be made out of wood, and my interlocutor insists that any such instrument (no matter how much it may look or sound like a saxophone) could never be a saxophone—that it is part of what we call being a saxophone that such an instrument be made out of brass—then we may find ourselves at an impasse. And yet, while a dissonance here (between us two) may be perplexing (and perhaps even infuriating) it does not seem likely that such a disagreement could threaten our mutual intelligibility to one another in any wide-ranging manner; let alone mark either of us as entirely unintelligible to the other.

Most likely, faced with such a disagreement, I will just satisfy myself with some explanation of his (to my mind) odd behaviour and accommodate myself to it accordingly: ‘He has always felt aggrieved that his skill as a saxophonist was shunned by the new ‘experimentalist’ crowd; I suspect that something of his pride has become tied up with his traditionalism—merely being opposed to change has become a mark of honour for him in this domain.’ I should stress, it is not the content of any such explanation that is important here, merely the fact that one can be given (or made) and that on the basis of such an explanation the disagreement between us can be accommodated. A much simpler explanation might do just as well: ‘I don’t know… he’s weird about saxophones… just let him talk that way!’ (A point I may either have to remind myself of or impress upon another).

The idea of accommodation is crucially important here because it helps to show what is wrong with reading Cavell’s discussions of our ‘mutual attunement in language’ as offering any kind of foundation or explanation of our agreement in language in the manner discussed above. We do not just agree in language and hence in criteria. We also disagree in language, and hence in both our understandings and applications of criteria. So criteria are in each case mine until such time as they are found to be ours (and even when our attunement in words is established in given cases, there is nothing beyond our continuing to talk and act together which guarantees that this attunement will endure). What is more the dissension that any claim about criteria will tolerate is itself determined second personally—it is determined by the extent to which others are willing and able to accommodate a breakdown or anomaly in the schematism of our criteria. And that equally means that any of Wittgenstein’s appeals to criteria and even Wittgenstein’s invocations of ‘very general facts of nature’ or ‘forms of life’ are themselves always open to the possibility of second-personal contestation (or repudiation).

61 Cavell’s (1979: 111-18) discussions of accommodation, teaching, and learning in Chapter V of The Claim of Reason interrogate the possibility of non-skeptical disagreement in language. The possibility of such disagreements or dissonances is also a major theme of Cavell’s (1990a) discussion of Wittgenstein’s ‘scene of instruction’ in his later essay, “The Argument of the Ordinary”.

79

VI. Criteria and the Natural.

It is important to note, once again, that the fact that dissension that any claim about criteria will tolerate is itself determined second personally does not mean that criteria and our capacity to accommodate breakdowns of, or anomalies in, criteria are determined ‘merely conventionally’—as if it were entirely ‘up to us’ what we can and will accommodate. Though we may find ourselves willing and able to accommodate certain dissonances in our criteria, there are also criterial agreements whose transgression we may refuse, and perhaps also criterial agreements whose transgression we do not as yet know how to accommodate. But this does not mean that we could never accommodate the transgression of certain of our criteria (in any metaphysical sense). And yet certain of our criterial agreements seem to demonstrate what might be thought of as the “conventionality of human nature itself”; they describe the criteria of something’s being so, which, we are tempted to think of as being ‘in the nature of things’ in so far as we cannot (as yet) imagine accommodating their transgression (except perhaps by excluding a transgressor from full participation in the ‘ordinary’ human community).

So Cavell stresses that elicitations of criteria never operate exclusively along what we called in the last chapter the horizontal dimension of our life in language—they are never ‘mere conventions’ in the sense of being entirely arbitrary; entirely unrelated to any empirical (or natural) considerations. But nor do criteria ever operate in the purely vertical dimension. As we might say, criteria are never entirely (say metaphysically) dictated by what is ‘natural’.

That fact can itself be illustrated by our observing that in any case in which we call something ‘natural’ we can also elicit criteria for our so calling it. Wittgenstein gives the following example in the Brown Book:

When we hear the diatonic scale we are inclined to say that after every seven notes the same note recurs, and, asked why we call it the same note again one might answer ‘well it’s a c again’. But this isn’t the explanation I want, for I should ask ‘What made one call it a c again?’ and the answer to this would seem to be ‘Well, don’t you hear that it’s the same note only an octave higher.’

If anything is a ‘natural reaction’, surely recognising the recurrence of an initial note (say a, ‘c’) played up one octave is. And yet, Wittgenstein continues:

If we made this experiment with two people A and B, and A had applied the expression ‘the same note’ to the octave only, B to the dominant and the octave, should we have a right to say that the two hear different things when we play to them the diatonic scale? —If we say they do, let us be clear whether we wish to assert that there must be some other difference between the two cases besides the one we have observed, or whether we wish to make no such statement.

As Cavell notes, if we say here that A and B ‘hear different things’ we may mean that what B hears is entirely unintelligible to us, that what he hears is wrong both by our lights and by any lights we can imagine. But more likely we will be inclined to think that there is something right in what B hears, his reaction is itself quite natural (though it is not ours). As Cavell puts it, we might think that B is recognising the fact that:

“the dominant, as doubling interval say in plain song, is ‘closer’ to the octave than any other interval…we may even think [B’s] response is historically more primitive, and that ours has lost something in its sophistication; we might try hearing it his way.”

80

Wittgenstein utilises this and similar examples to remind us that there is nothing in ‘the nature of things’ in any metaphysical sense which dictates what we will find (call) ‘natural’. That does not mean that we could find anything whatsoever natural. Only that there is no clear distinction between what is natural and what is conventional (what ‘vertical’ and what ‘horizontal’) about our agreement in criteria.

VII. Criteria and Responsibility.

The fact that nothing beyond our acceptance of criteria guarantees or underwrites our mutual attunement in speaking and acting together highlights the fragility of these activities; and that fragility exposes us in important ways. As has already been said, it exposes us to the possibility of irresolvable disagreement and hence to the possibility of a particular kind of isolation. But it also exposes us in our responsibility for our agreement (and thus also for its potential losses or failures). Cavell encapsulates this second idea in saying:

“It seems safe to suppose that if you can describe any behaviour which I can recognize as that of human beings, I can give you an explanation which will make that behaviour coherent, i.e. show it to be imaginable in terms of natural responses and practicalities. Though those natural responses may not be mine, and those practices not practical for me, in my environment, as I interpret it. And if I say ‘They are crazy’ or ‘incomprehensible’ then that is not a fact but my fate for them. I have gone as far as my imagination, magnanimity, or anxiety will allow; or as my honor, or my standing, cares and commitments can accommodate.”

Cavell does not mean to imply that it is entirely ‘up to me’ (or any one of us) what will count as ‘intelligible behaviour’ or ‘sensible speech’. Rather, he means only to point out that to declare another’s behaviour or speech ‘unintelligible’—to refuse to try to ascertain the criteria which she is going on in any given case; to refuse to recognise her behaviour as having the coherence of an intelligible form of life—is not just to say that she fails to meet some entirely external standard (some impersonal rule or authority beyond my control, as it were). To say that another is ‘unintelligible’ or ‘speaking nonsense’—to refuse to try to ascertain the criteria that she is (or appears to be) going on—is to refuse her. And, the responsibility of such a refusal cannot be abrogated to any external standard or authority. That is not because an appeal to an external standard or authority is somehow impossible here, but rather because if one makes such an appeal, one must bear the responsibility of that. Abrogation is itself a kind of refusal. My capacity to speak in agreement with others, allows me to speak for others; it allows me to voice our commitments in reciting our criteria. But the same capacity (and necessity) also implicates me in those commitments—as responsible not just to, but also for them. For Cavell, Wittgenstein’s appeals to criteria highlight, above all else, the fact that we alone are responsible for both the maintenance and extent of our mutual attunement. If I determine, that she is unintelligible to me, then there will be no ‘we’ to speak of—no recognition between us two. But if I choose thus to refuse her, then I must still bear the responsibility of that.

In our discussions thus far I have focused primarily upon appeals to criteria made in the context of a disagreement or dissonance arising between two or more interlocutors. But a recitation of criteria, or the undertaking of a grammatical investigation need not be precipitated by a disagreement with others (or another). Criteria may also be recited (and thus a grammatical investigation undertaken) in the face of confusion in one’s own thinking. I may bethink myself of criteria when “I don’t know my way about” in my language as Wittgenstein (§123) puts it, or as Cavell (1969b: 21) says in “Must We Mean What We Say”,

81

when “[I] have more facts than [I] know what to make of, or when [I] do not know what new facts would show. When…[I] need a clear view of what [I] already know.”

And yet even in such personal cases criteria play an intrinsically second-personal role. Even in an attempt to remedy my own confusion, to get clearer about my own commitments within a certain domain, I must bethink myself of our criteria. I must recount those criteria that I accept and measure the extent to which they are intelligibly related to those I expect others to accept. I must convene and account for the commitments of mine that I take to be exemplary of ours and also take the measure of (and bear my responsibility for) those commitments which I know to reveal my idiosyncrasies. This highlights the fact that my finding my own position – my finding my own voice - is something that can be done only insofar as I understand (or accept) my own voice to be one amongst others.

We might now recall our initial discussions (at the beginning of chapter 1) of Cavell’s characterisation of the relationship between philosophy and autobiography—that, as Cavell put it ‘each is a dimension of the other.’ We should now be able to see something of the complex conception of the relationship between the elicitation of criteria and the project of coming to know oneself (an inflection of what autobiography is—or could be), which Cavell intends that provocative statement to recall. Finding my voice involves not only taking up the responsibility of taking myself to be able to speak for others—of taking on the burden of presuming to articulate our commitments and to bear the burden of their failing if and when they do; but also involves taking up the responsibility of allowing that others can be recognised to speak for me—that I am responsible to others. As Cavell (1979: 28) puts it:

If I am to have a native tongue, I have to accept what ‘my elders’62 say and do as consequential; and they have to accept, even have to applaud, what I say and do as what we say and do. We do not know in advance what the content of our mutual acceptance is, how far we may be in agreement. I do not know in advance how deep my agreement with myself is, how far the responsibilities of language may run. But if I am to have my own voice in it, I must be speaking for others and allow others to speak for me. The alternative to speaking for myself representatively (for someone else’s consent) is not: speaking for myself privately. The alternative is having nothing to say, being voiceless, not even mute.

Cavell sometimes characterises the recognition of my responsibility to and for others in language in terms of my exercising and expecting a certain kind of consent; so that certain obstacles to, or breakdowns of, our attunement in language may be characterised as engendering a kind of crisis of consent. As our investigation progresses we will have to return to this crucial idea. But before we can do that we will need to say something about Cavell’s conception of what he later comes to call ‘the argument of the ordinary’. That will mean that we have to say something about Cavell’s notion of ‘the ordinary’ itself and his idea that ‘the ordinary’ is not something that is given but something to be achieved. Finally since Cavell is committed to the idea that ‘the ordinary’ becomes available to philosophy only in the face of its skeptical denial, we will not be able to hold off our discussion of Cavell’s relationship to skepticism and his reinterpretation of what he calls ‘skepticism’s self-understanding’ much longer.

62 Cavell’s reference to ‘my elders’ here is an allusion to Augustine’s allegory of language learning (the allegory with which Wittgenstein opens his Investigations). The reference to ‘elders’ should therefore be understood as an allegorical representation of all those ‘others’ with whom I am identified in our attunement.

82

VIII. Conclusion.

We observed earlier that Wittgenstein’s appeals to criteria might appear to arise as the result of (or else as the basis for) a kind of transcendental claim about language. We said that Wittgenstein’s implied claim might seem to be something like: for language to operate in the way that it does (at all) there must be certain background agreements (of the kind that our recitations of criteria articulate). And further, that anything that could (ever) be recognised as a language must possess just such a background. We can now see why—though that idea is not exactly wrong—it is, in Wittgenstein’s presentation, radically different from more traditional claims about the logical basis of our language. Wittgenstein’s appeals to criteria are distinguished from traditional conceptions of the ‘logic of language’ because they are both inherently personal and inherently inter-personal—indeed they reveal that being a person (having a voice) is itself a fundamentally interpersonal matter. What is more, Wittgenstein’s appeals to criteria uncover (in calling upon) our interpersonal responsibility for our language, and for our agreement in language, in a way that the tradition has almost entirely overlooked. Thus we might say that, to the extent that Wittgenstein’s appeals to criteria rely upon (or else form the basis of) any kind of transcendental claim about language, that claim must itself be a claim about the inherently second-personal character of our life in language.

As Cavell puts it in a later essay:

“When in the Investigations Wittgenstein calls his investigation ‘a grammatical one’… this may be taken as saying that what he means by grammar, or a grammatical investigation, plays the role of a transcendental deduction of human concepts. The difference… [from Kant’s employment of that notion] is that in Wittgenstein’s practice every word in our ordinary language requires deduction, where this means that each is to be tracked, in its application to the world, in terms of what he calls criteria that govern it; and our agreement is to be understood as in some sense a priori. (It is the sense in which human beings are ‘in agreement’ in their judgements).”

It is important to note here that Cavell’s talk of ‘every word in our ordinary language’ requiring deduction, refers to much more than a possibility of cataloguing the various word ‘forms’ that appear in our language (so that one might catalogue the various meanings of, say, the word ‘red’). Rather what Cavell is characterising Wittgenstein’s philosophy as illuminating is the possibility of a constant deduction—of every use of every word in each context of its use in our speaking (and writing) of our language—an endless task, commensurate with the endless task of our talking together. In this sense a grammatical investigation does not reveal any fixed or secure background against which disagreements might be adjudicated. Instead all that such investigations can do is recall us to the dynamic and contestable sphere, of what Cavell comes to describe as ‘the ordinary’, and as a place in which we always already reside. It is to a consideration of Cavell’s idea of ‘the ordinary’ as the home of our life in language that we must now turn if we are to understand the philosophical potential that Cavell sees in the notions of attunement and responsibility that his investigations of our inherently (inter-)personal capacity to voice criteria have so far uncovered.

83

CHAPTER THREE

Achieving the Ordinary.

“I must empty out my contribution to words, so that language itself, as if beyond me, exclusively takes over the responsibility for meaning. I say this struggle with skepticism is endless; I mean to say that it is human, it is the human drive to transcend itself, make itself inhuman, which should not end until, as in Nietzsche, the human is over.”

(Cavell, 2013: 57)

I. Introduction.

In concluding chapter two, I said that the task of grammatical investigation, on Cavell’s conception, is an endless one—in the same sense that, and indeed because, our talking and acting together is an endless task. I have also been claiming throughout this thesis that Cavell’s philosophical aim should not be understood as one of diagnosing certain philosophical problems as straightforwardly illusory or spurious. I argued in (chapter one) that this fact distinguishes Cavell’s conception of the value of traditional ordinary language philosophy from a traditional understanding of that methodology (and indeed from the understanding of traditional practitioners of that methodology—like Austin and Ryle). In chapter two, I argued that focusing on Cavell’s inheritance of Wittgenstein, and particularly Wittgenstein’s notions of ‘criteria’ and of ‘grammatical investigation’, serves to reveal our lives in language as inextricably second-personally constituted and that this fact means that our talking and acting together implicates us in our responsibility both to and for our language and to and for (both the maintenance and extent of) our linguistic and even our rational communities. I argued that this responsibility is itself inextricably second-personal and that it pervades every aspect of our lives; in particular that it even pervades our very personhood. Having my own voice in my language involves recognising my voice as one among others to whom I am (and must be) responsive. That is a responsibility I cannot but bear—because within this second personal space a failure or refusal of response is itself a kind of response.

And yet, in concluding chapter one I asked why we should (and how we might) think that any practice based upon inherently contestable claims—like those put forward by the ordinary language philosopher—could provide a basis for something that might still merit the name of philosophy. I argued that on Cavell’s view a measure of the value of traditional ordinary language philosophy ought to be the extent to which such practices serve to expand our philosophical imaginations. Given the extent and significance of the responsibility that I have argued Wittgenstein’s grammatical investigations reveal us as implicated in, on that criterion alone, the practice of ordinary language philosophy (and of grammatical investigation) would appear to be a resounding success. But the uncovering of our second-personal responsibility both for and to our shared life in language might also seem to compromise the stability of such ordinary language or grammatical claims even further. If, as I have argued, the wish and search for community are, on this vision revealed to be, the wish and search for reason (as Cavell puts it) what task might be left for philosophy—say, for philosophical writing—to

84

accomplish? If human-reason is itself an irreducibly interpersonally negotiated practice, then what becomes of the aspirations of a priori enquiry?

These questions are not exactly new ones for those who read and take seriously Wittgenstein’s later philosophy—though the way in which one reads Wittgenstein will colour the way in which one formulates such questions. In this chapter I want to argue that Cavell’s answer to the question of what philosophy might be (and do) in the face of Wittgenstein’s insights, is radically different from that of a great many contemporary readers of Wittgenstein. In particular, I will argue that Cavell’s vision of the positive role of philosophy after Wittgenstein is entirely distinct from and indeed incompatible with what has come to be called the ‘Orthodox Wittgensteinian’ conception of philosophy—and particularly of grammatical investigation—as an activity concerned with identifying and policing the bounds of sensible language use. On the other hand, I also intend to express and explain my reluctance to identify Cavell’s vision of philosophy (or at least to fully identify that vision) with the project of those philosophers who champion the interpretive line identified with the so called ‘New Wittgenstein’.

In advancing these claim I intend also to begin to explicate Cavell’s conception of what he has come to call ‘the argument of the ordinary’. Cavell explicitly introduces the notion of ‘the argument of the ordinary’ in his 1988 Carus lecture of the same name. Yet as with so many of Cavell’s most important ideas, the notion of the ‘ the ordinary’ as involved in a kind of interminable argument (with itself) both reflects and encompasses a great deal of his earlier thought. Investigating Cavell’s conception of the ‘argument of the ordinary’ will thus help us to cast further light on a number of the ideas we have already discussed. But it will also require us to introduce some ideas that we have not yet canvassed. In particular it will eventually require us to engage the central Cavellian idea that we have heretofore been holding off; namely, Cavell’s conception of philosophical skepticism and its relationship both to ordinary language philosophy and to Wittgenstein’s grammatical investigations.

In the publication of his Carus lectures Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome, Cavell (1990a: 92-93) defines ‘the argument of the ordinary’ as follows:

“The human capacity—and the drive—both to affirm and to deny our criteria constitutes the argument of the ordinary. And to trace the disappointment with criteria is to trace the aspiration to the sublime—the image of the skeptic's progress. I am the instrument of this argument, I mean no one occupies its positions if each of us does not. So it is nowhere more than in each of us, as we stand, poor things, that the power of the ordinary will or will not manifest itself.”

To this we might add two further assertions from the same lecture. Cavell says:

“…what I am calling the argument of the ordinary…[is] an argument neither side should win.”

(Cavell, 1990a: 69)

And,

“Skepticism appears… as one of the voices locked in this argument, not as a solution or conclusion.” (Cavell, 1990a: 83)

Since these passages include ideas we have not yet canvassed and also incorporate some ideas that we have discussed, though in unfamiliar ways, it will be helpful to isolate those ideas that we will need to understand if we are to understand these passages in their entirety.

85

Cavell begins by invoking (1) our human capacity to ‘affirm’ or to ‘deny’ criteria—and though we are by now familiar with the notion of ‘criteria’, the idea of ‘denial’ that Cavell is employing here appears to refer to something beyond our ordinary ability to accommodate certain divergences or dissonances in our criteria. Perhaps this capacity to ‘deny criteria’ is more closely related to our capacity to refuse others in refusing the criteria (or refusing to try to ascertain the criteria) that they are (or appear to be) going on. But that is not yet clear. (2) The idea that criteria are something that we either affirm or deny is then linked to the idea that criteria are somehow ‘disappointing’. That is a very important idea within The Claim of Reason; but not one that we have yet accounted for. (3) Cavell then describes ‘skepticism’ as an ‘aspiration to the sublime’. And in the second of the further assertions that I have noted he also characterizes ‘skepticism’ as one of the voices locked in ‘the argument of the ordinary’ and thus as not providing a solution or conclusion to that argument. (4) All of these claims are said to be importantly indexed to the self—to me (each and every one of us) and my (our) position amongst-others in language. So we might say that the ‘argument of the ordinary’ is clearly linked to Cavell’s unique conception of self-knowledge. (5) Something called ‘the ordinary’ is then identified as possessing a certain ‘power’, and is also implicitly identified as the countering (though not as any kind of refuting) voice to skepticism locked in ‘the argument of the ordinary’. Finally (6) the argument of the ordinary is characterized as one which ‘neither side should win’. (And here we might wonder what the force of this ‘ought’ claim is supposed to be; is it moral? Or, instrumental? Or, something else?)

So in explicating Cavell’s idea of ‘the argument of the ordinary’ we will have to say something about (1&2) criteria as affirmed or denied by us and thus as disappointing; (3) we will also have to say something about Cavell’s unique conception of philosophical skepticism; (5) as well as Cavell’s conception of ‘the ordinary’; (6) and the idea that the ‘argument of the ordinary’ should not be won—an idea I will wish to connect with what Cavell calls ‘the truth of skepticism’ or ‘the moral of skepticism’ in The Claim of Reason. Finally, (4) we will have to explain how all of this is connected with Cavell’s unique conception of self-knowledge and the idea of ‘bringing the human voice back into philosophy’.

I should note, before proceeding any further that we ought not to let Cavell’s use of the definite article in talking of ‘the ordinary’ mislead us into thinking that ‘the ordinary’ is any kind of special entity or distinct metaphysical idea (or space). What Cavell calls ‘the ordinary’ in his later work he calls ‘the everyday’ in The Claim of Reason, and we might equally substitute Wittgenstein’s talk of the ‘flow’ or ‘stream of life’, or what we have been calling our ‘life in language’ for these expressions. However, having said that ‘the ordinary’ is not any kind of specialized or metaphysicalised notion for Cavell, we must also note that in The Claim of Reason, Cavell (1979: 463) comes to speak of “the discovery that the everyday is an exceptional achievement.” That idea should be puzzling, because it is important to note that in invoking the notion of ‘the ordinary’ as an achievement Cavell does not mean to distort what we might call the ordinariness of ‘the ordinary’ in any way. And yet, the idea that ‘the ordinary’ could be an achievement does seem to suggest (at the very least) the possibility of a transformation of some kind. Accounting for the idea that we might ‘achieve the ordinary’ and accounting for the significance of that idea to Cavell’s positive vision of philosophy will be a further task of the current chapter.

86

In order to begin to explicate these ideas, I intend argue that Cavell’s conception of ‘the ordinary’ and particularly our responsibility for ‘the ordinary’ is fundamentally incompatible with an orthodox Wittgensteinian conception of philosophy as concerned with determining and policing the ‘bounds of sense’ by determining and policing the limits of competent language use.

Stephen Mulhall, in his monograph Stanley Cavell: Philosophy’s Recounting of the Ordinary, has explicitly attempted to connect a kind of orthodox Wittgensteinian account based on the notion of language as a ‘rule-governed practice’ to Cavell’s interpretation of Wittgenstein’s work within the Investigations. In chapter one, I claimed that despite significant differences in both their motivations and approaches, Mulhall and Fodor and Katz could be said to share something in their mistaken understandings of Cavell’s conception of the value of traditional ordinary language philosophy. We saw in chapter 1 that Cavell’s conception of the value of traditional ordinary language philosophy is rooted in his conception of the ordinary language philosopher’s—and hence also any native speaker’s—mode of access to her native language. We saw in chapter 2 that that mode of access, and the inherently second-personal conditions underlying our capacity to communicate in language at all, could themselves be interrogated through the elicitation of criteria and the subsequent investigation of the extent of our attunement in language. But we also saw that since our agreement in criteria (and hence our attunement in language) is itself never complete agreement (never perfect attunement), our talking-together implicates us not only as responsible both to and for our attunement in language, but also as responsible to and for our accommodations (or else our refusals) of dissonances within that attunement.

In Stanley Cavell: Philosophy’s Recounting of the Ordinary, Mulhall explicates Cavell’s understanding and employment of ‘criteria’ in terms of a framework of rules (or norms) implicit in (or ‘internal’ to) our linguistic practices. But such a view entirely overlooks the dynamism and fragility of our mutual attunement in language, and thus leaves no room for an adequate understanding of the extent of our individual responsibilities both to and for our agreement in criteria. In fact conceiving of criteria in terms of ‘rules’ (or norms) seems to throw us back upon a conception of ordinary language philosophy which would understand that practice as ultimately involving the identification of the content of ordinary language (though conceived in terms of ‘internal’ rules of practice, rather than—as in Fodor and Katz’s case—empirically identifiable regularities of practice). It is in this way that Mulhall’s account of criteria as a ‘framework of rules’ seems to commit a similar error to that of Fodor and Katz’s interpretation; namely, the error of overlooking the central importance of the ordinary language philosopher’s—and hence any native speaker’s—mode of access to her own native language, as well as the responsibility that that mode of access implicates her in, within Cavell’s conception of the value of the practice of ordinary language philosophy (and subsequently also of Wittgenstein’s work in the Investigations).

In sections II and III of this chapter I argue that an orthodox Wittgensteinian conception of language as a rule-governed practice is fundamentally incompatible with Cavell’s vision of ‘the ordinary’ (hence of our life in language) and thus ultimately with his subsequent post-Wittgensteinian vision of what philosophy might be and do. In doing so I examine (in section II) Mulhall’s conception of criteria as a framework of rules, as well as (in sections III and briefly again in section V) the prominent orthodox Wittgensteinian interpretation of the Investigations put forward by Gordon Baker and Peter Hacker (philosophers with whom

87

Mulhall explicitly connects his project in, Stanley Cavell: Philosophy’s Recounting of the Ordinary).63 This investigation leads me to another, in which I examine Cavell’s relationship to certain interpretive debates surrounding Wittgenstein’s so called ‘rule-following’ considerations within the Investigations. In interrogating Wittgenstein’s ‘rule-following’ considerations (in section IV) I take up, as a kind of case study, the neo-pragmatist philosopher Robert Brandom’s adoption and explication of a supposedly Wittgensteinian argument regarding the need for a substantial philosophical explanation of the normativity of our life in language. In contesting this argument from a Cavellian perspective I begin to articulate (in section V), with reference to the work of both John McDowell and Brandom, what I would like to call (adapting a phrase from Cora Diamond) Cavell’s conception of the ‘difficulty of the ordinary’. Finally (in section VI) I connect this idea with Cavell’s notion of the ‘threat of skepticism’; and (in section VII) discuss the implications of all of these ideas with regard to Cavell’s conception of the ‘argument of the ordinary’ and his subsequent vision of what a post-Wittgensteinian philosophy might be and do.

II. Criteria and Rules.

Let us begin then, by turning to Mulhall’s work on Cavell. Mulhall’s Stanley Cavell: Philosophy’s Recounting of the Ordinary, sets out a wide ranging account of Cavell’s work throughout his philosophical career—encompassing discussions of Cavell’s relation to ordinary language philosophy; to Wittgenstein; and to philosophical skepticism. Mulhall’s book also deals with Cavell’s work on film and literature; and on the writings of Thoreau and Emerson; and on psychoanalysis; and on art; and politics; and morality; and more. It is in short an ambitious and a valuable project. I wish to focus, however, primarily on the early chapters of Mulhall’s work in which he attempts to amalgamate Cavell’s interpretation of the value of ordinary language philosophy and Cavell’s inheritance of Wittgenstein with aspects of so called orthodox Wittgensteinian readings of the Investigations. Although Mulhall does not make his aim of amalgamation explicit in the book itself; he has acknowledged, in response to various criticisms of his book, that such an amalgamation is a guiding idea within at least the early chapters of the work.64 As Mulhall (1998: 33) puts it in a later article,

“I wrote the early parts of my book on the implicit assumption that a kind of convergence between, or hybrid version of Cavell and [the orthodox Wittgensteinian philosophers] Baker and Hacker was not an obviously misbegotten project. It was not clear to me then as it is now just how controversial that assumption is; if it had been, I could not have allowed it to remain implicit and my readers might have benefited greatly as a result.”

63 Gordon Baker and Peter Hacker co-authored a number of works on Wittgenstein’s philosophy in the 1980’s. In his later life Gordon Baker advocated a quite different view of Wittgenstein’s philosophy and repudiated a number of his earlier views. To complicate matters further Peter Hacker significantly revised the initial two volumes of the Analytic Commentary in 2008 and 2009 respectively. However the revised editions are still published with the original authorial attribution (to both Baker and Hacker). In this thesis I am working from the revised editions of the Analytic Commentary. Thus in referring to ‘Baker and Hacker’ in the current work I am referring to the views of those philosophers as expressed in their co-authored works Language, Sense and Nonsense, and Skepticism, Rules and Language as well as to the views expressed in the revised editions of the Analytic Commentary. 64 The detailed work uncovering and criticising this unspoken supposition in Mulhall’s work was first undertaken by Steven Affeldt (1998) in his “The Ground of Mutuality: Criteria, Judgement and, Intelligibility in Stephen Mulhall and Stanley Cavell”

88

Nonetheless, Mulhall continues to defend the viability of that aspect of his initial project.65

The unstated idea underlying the early parts of Mulhall’s book is that Cavell’s inheritance of Wittgenstein and particularly Cavell’s understanding and employment of the notions of ‘criteria’ and ‘grammar’ can be profitably explicated with reference to the orthodox Wittgensteinian idea of grammatical investigations as uncovering an implicit framework of rules which underlie all of our linguistic interactions.

As Mulhall (1994: 104) has it, recitations of criteria uncover “the framework within which alone human speech is possible”. Criteria are “standards governing the application of concepts” (80). They are “a set of rules governing [a terms] use.” (152) Criteria not only “determine what it is for anything to fall under a given concept” but also “guarantee… the applicability of…concept[s]” (84). Finally, Mulhall (1994: 104) asserts both that “agreement in criteria [is] the presupposition of mutual intelligibility”; and that criteria represent “the grammatical framework of language [which] is the fulcrum upon which the whole of our experience of the world turns.” (171)

So for Mulhall criteria uncover a grammatical framework of rules (implicit within our language) which govern, determine and subsequently guarantee the applicability of our concepts in particular contexts. What is more this framework of rules is essential to the functioning of language and is thus always operative; indeed it is (again) the ‘fulcrum upon which the whole of our experience of the world turns’.

This account, as an account of both Cavell and Wittgenstein on ‘criteria’ and ‘grammar’, generates a number of significant difficulties. The most important of these problems is that the notion of criteria as a framework (or as revealing a framework) of implicit rules, appears to override Cavell’s (and Wittgenstein’s) idea of our agreement in judgements (our agreement with regard to the content and application of our criteria) as articulated (and hence realized) only in our talking and acting together in particular cases. It seems, on this kind of account, that it is not particular cases of judgement (of our talking and acting together) which constitute and reveal the possibility of our mutual intelligibility but instead a framework that exists independently of any given judgement (any particular case of our talking and acting together)—though perhaps not independent of the fact that such judgements occur at all (which is to say not independent of the fact that we do talk and act together).

On such a view, it seems—despite his claims to the contrary—that Cavell is being understood to offer an explanation of our agreement in language; because our agreement in language is explained as governed by a ‘framework of rules’ implicit within our language. What is more, these rules seem to somehow supersede actual cases of our agreement or disagreement in language. It is significant that in this regard Mulhall appears to read Cavell in exactly the problematic way that we discussed in the last chapter. Mulhall appears to assume that our capacity to speak together requires absolute agreement in criteria.66 But as was

65 See for example: (Mulhall, 1998), (Mulhall, 2003), (Mulhall, 2014). 66 Just after citing Cavell’s well known ‘attunement’ passage Mulhall (1994: 82) acknowledges that appeals to agreement in criteria “are not always successful; and when they fail, what is revealed is the fact that human beings are not, in this respect, in agreement; that one person's words are not in attunement with those of others.” But Mulhall does not mention this (commonly realized) possibility again; nor does he provide an account of what the possibility of an ordinary (non-skeptical) failure of ‘attunement in words’ might come to. (It is also significant here that Mulhall speaks of a failure of attunement with ‘others’ in

89

argued in the previous chapter our agreement in language is never complete agreement. Rather we accommodate dissonances and divergences in criteria all the time. It is important to remember that criteria are in each case mine until such time as they are established to be ours (and even when we do find ourselves in agreement with regard to our criteria—as we very often do—the continuation of that agreement is in no way guaranteed).

But if our mutual intelligibility requires absolute agreement in our criteria, then the possibility of our talking in different ways—employing different criteria—without becoming entirely unintelligible to one another, would seem to be ruled out. Which is to say without the possibility of accommodating dissonances and divergences in criteria the possibility of ordinary disagreement in language (divergences in the way we talk about certain things) would seem to be impossible. That consequence would be absurd. And yet, Mulhall does appear to read Cavell in this problematic way; and this fact is highlighted by his assertion that “agreement in criteria [is] the presupposition of mutual intelligibility.” Again as was argued in the previous chapter, our capacity to elicit and find agreement in criteria is better thought of as a product of our mutual intelligibility than as providing any kind of ‘basis’ or ‘ground’ for our life in language. Indeed it is because our agreements in criteria are a product of our mutual intelligibility that the elicitation of criteria provides a mode of access for the investigation of both our agreement in language and our broader intelligibility to one another (our shared form of life).

In responding to criticisms of the idea that criteria provide an implicit framework which somehow grounds our mutual intelligibility, Mulhall (1998: 35) has asserted that his claims about criteria, “concern… the order of justification, not that of perception or judgement.” This claim, unlike the claim that a framework of rules somehow ground our judgements, is not obviously incompatible with an account of our agreement in criteria as something to be tested and sought in actual instances of judging rather than something that is presumed to somehow implicitly hold of our language in isolation from actual instances of our talking and acting together. According to this way of putting things the idea would be that when challenged about one’s particular use of a concept one might reasonably justify one’s judgement by appealing to a (necessarily defeasible) presumption of communal assent. Which is to say a problematic ‘we’. But, though this claim would appear to mitigate the difficulties that Mulhall’s account generates, it is, as a claim, difficult to square with a great deal of what Mulhall says about criteria elsewhere. For one, it is difficult to square with his talk of criteria as ‘the presupposition of mutual intelligibility.’ It is also difficult to square with his talk of criteria as ‘governing’ and ‘determining’ applications of concepts—and with the notion of criteria as rules more generally (given that the ordinary grammar of ‘rule-talk’ is related to ideas of ‘governance’, ‘authority’ and ‘determination’). Indeed in the same article that Mulhall (1998: 36) asserts that his claims about criteria concern the order of justifications and not that of perceptions or judgements, he also talks about Wittgensteinian

general rather than with any specific other or group of others). In addition, Mulhall (1994: 83) goes on to paraphrases Cavell in saying: “For Wittgenstein, criteria are interesting not just because of the depth of agreement which they reveal, but also because they can be forgone.” And yet, he provides no explanation of what this might mean on his reading. Indeed given that Mulhall (1994: 104) also characterizes criteria as: ‘the framework within which alone human speech is possible’ it is difficult to see what he could mean. (Presumably Mulhall has only the possibility of a skeptical denial of criteria in mind here—but as I will come to argue this fact itself distorts Mulhall’s conception of why, on Cavell’s view, criteria are always open to the threat of skeptical denial.)

90

criteria as “ground[ing] judgement[s]”; and it is difficult to see how that could be a claim about the ‘order of justification’ rather than a claim about the basis upon which our judgements in language are made.

Finally Mulhall’s talk of criteria as ‘guaranteeing’ the applicability of concepts seems (again) to rule out the possibility of ordinary disagreements about criteria. But as has been argued, our capacity to accommodate disagreements in criteria is as central a capacity in our life with language as is our ability to agree in our uses of criteria. Any adequate description of our capacity to ‘follow along’ with one another in language must recognise the fact the we do not follow each other everywhere in this domain. In language we muddle along—together for the most part and keeping within reach; but just as we do not agree in everything that we say, we also do not agree in every application and understanding of the criteria that we go on in talking as we do. That we muddle along in this way is crucial to what Cavell (following Wittgenstein) calls ‘the humdrum perfection’ of the ordinary.

As I have already said, the most significant of these criticisms of Mulhall’s view is the first. For conceiving of criteria as a framework of rules seems (necessarily) to supersede Cavell’s (and Wittgenstein’s) conception of our agreement in criteria as depending upon nothing more than our agreements in judgement. And that also suggests that Mulhall’s conception will totally fail to bring into focus our radical responsibility both to and for our language and thus for the maintenance and extent of our intelligibility to one another. Such a view seems instead to mis-locate that responsibility by identifying our accountability in language only as something that each of us bears to a ‘framework’ that is somehow implicitly contained within our language itself. If this criticism can be effectively countered then we may forget all of the rest; because all of the further objections that I have raised follow in one way or another from this initial problematic idea.

In defending his view from similar criticisms, Mulhall has argued that it is just not the case that conceiving of criteria as a framework of grammatical rules necessarily dislocates our agreement in (and therefore our responsibility for) criteria from our agreement in judgements. Mulhall consistently appeals to the orthodox Wittgensteinian idea that criteria as rules of language are ‘internally related’ to their applications (in judgements) to justify this claim.67 He argues that if that orthodox Wittgensteinian idea is properly understood then no worry should arise about an apparent disconnect between our agreement in criteria (as articulating a framework of rules) and our agreements (and disagreements) in judgement in particular cases (our successfully talking and acting together). And yet, Mulhall says very little about why we ought to accept the idea that there exists an ‘internal relation’ between something called the ‘rules of grammar’ and their supposed applications in language; he says even less about how such an ‘internal relation’ is supposed to work. As such, in order to evaluate Mulhall’s claim about the ‘internal relation’ between grammatical rules and their applications in our talking and acting together we will have to turn to the work of the orthodox Wittgensteinian philosophers Baker and Hacker—the work from which, as Mulhall makes clear, that idea was originally adopted. Doing so will also help us to articulate more clearly why the orthodox Wittgensteinian idea of language as an essentially rule-governed practice is fundamentally incompatible with both Cavell’s interpretation of Wittgenstein’s work within the

67 See for example: (Mulhall, 1998: 37, 39), (Mulhall, 2014: 296-97)

91

Investigations and his subsequent conception of what a post-Wittgensteinian philosophy might be and do.

III. Rules and the Ordinary.

Baker and Hacker lay out their ‘orthodox’ interpretation of Wittgenstein’s Investigations in an extensive body of work. That work includes two volumes of detailed section by section analysis of the first 242 sections of the Investigations, as well as a number of exegetical essays on the primary themes of those sections (published within the same volumes). 68 During the same period Baker and Hacker also published two separate books, one of which collects a number of papers written in response to Saul Kripke’s reading of Wittgenstein in his, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language—an interpretation that Baker and Hacker vehemently oppose.

Within this corpus the idea that rules are ‘internally related’ to their applications in language is discussed extensively. And yet, throughout almost all of Baker and Hacker’s work the motivation for the underlying assumption that language must be a rule-governed practice—that there must so much as be rules underlying our uses of language of the kind that might then be ‘internally related’ to their applications in practice—remains surprisingly elusive. Of course one obvious reason that Baker and Hacker adopt the idea that language must be a rule-governed activity is that they believe this to have been Wittgenstein’s view and they conceive of their work, at least within the commentaries, as primarily exegetical.69 But Baker and Hacker’s project is clearly more than just an exegetical one. As with most interpreters of significant philosophers, they are interested in what Wittgenstein thought because they obviously think that Wittgenstein was (at least for the most part) right. And this is most clearly shown in Baker and Hacker’s (1984b) attempts to apply what they take to have been Wittgenstein’s program for future-philosophy to various issues in modern linguistics (and particularly generative linguistics) in their book, Language, Sense, and Nonsense.

I would like to begin in this section by offering something of a reconstruction of Baker and Hacker’s motivations for supposing that our use of language must be an essentially rule-governed practice. I will ultimately wish to argue that these motivations drive an implausible and unhelpful conception of Wittgenstein’s views of the relationship between rules and language use.

68 Peter Hacker went on to independently complete two further volumes of section by section analysis and exegetical essays on the remainder of the Investigations. 69 Baker and Hacker (1984a: 121-22) assert for example that, “[Wittgenstein] conceived of the relation between explanation and use of a word as a special case of the relation between a rule and its applications. Hence the clarification of the internal relations between explanations of meaning and uses of words.” And in another text, “Wittgenstein never doubted that a language is rule-governed.” (2009: 152). But even in these cases little explanation is given as to why Wittgenstein (supposedly) thought this.

92

(a) Rules and Nonsense.

Baker and Hacker are motivated by two distinguishable (though not entirely distinct) ideas in supposing that our use of language must be a rule-governed practice. I will call these two ideas ‘the corrective-motivation’ and ‘the normative-motivation’ respectively.

The corrective motivation is most clearly related to Baker and Hacker’s conception of what philosophy might be (and do), after Wittgenstein. Their vision of what post-Wittgensteinian philosophy should be and do is a vision of philosophy as an activity of conceptual clarification. And it is perhaps easiest to see what the idea of philosophy as an activity of conceptual clarification comes to, on Baker and Hacker’s understanding, by turning to an example of that method being put into practice. In a passage intended to exemplify their idea of philosophy as an activity of conceptual clarification Baker and Hacker (2009: 52) assert,

“If someone claims that colours as we apprehend them are sensations in the mind (as Descartes did) or in the brain (as contemporary psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists do), one should point out that he is misusing the words ‘sensation’ and ‘colour’. Sensations in the brain, one should remind one’s readers, are – if anything – headaches, and colours are not headaches; one can have (i.e. it makes sense to speak of ) sensations in the knee or in the back, but not in the mind. It is extended things that are coloured. But this is not a factual claim about the world (an opinion which the scientist might intelligibly gainsay). It is a grammatical observation, namely, that the grammar of colour licenses predicating ‘is coloured’ of things of which one may also predicate ‘is extended’.”

In the last chapter we saw that Wittgenstein’s grammatical investigations uncover criteria for our uses of words and that, as Cavell put it, such “criteria do not relate a name to an object but… various concepts to the concept of that object.” So grammatical investigations undoubtedly are activities of conceptual clarification in some sense. It is also true to say that the elicitation of criteria provides, at least one way, in which our conceptual commitments can be articulated and thus made clear to us. But we also said that criteria are inherently unstable and contestable—both because it is not always clear (in any particular use) whether something is being treated as a criterion or as a symptom, and because criteria are in each case mine until such time as they are found to be ours. (Again) grammatical investigations are always entered from the perspective of a problematic ‘we’. What is more we said that divergences and dissonances in criteria—as well as our capacity to accommodate such divergences and dissonances—are as fundamental an aspect of our life with language as is our capacity to agree in grammar.

And yet, on Baker and Hacker’s account, grammatical investigations are understood to uncover much more than conceptual commitments and clarifications of conceptual uses as they appear, piecemeal, in particular cases of our talking and acting together. They are instead understood to uncover rules of meaningful language use—and hence ultimately to determine the ‘bounds of sense’. As Baker and Hacker put it, “Grammar determines concepts”. And in so ‘determining concepts’ Baker and Hacker conceive of grammatical investigations as providing a remedy for philosophical confusions which arise from our tendency to attempt to transgress the ‘bounds of sensible language use’. Again, in Baker and Hacker’s (2009: 57) words,

“Philosophical questions commonly concern the bounds of sense, and these are determined by the rules for the use of words, by what it makes sense to say in a language. This is the source of philosophy’s concern with grammatical rules. For by their clarification and arrangement, philosophical questions can be resolved, and philosophical confusions and paradoxes dissolved.” (emph. added.)

93

If grammatical investigations are to do the corrective work of determining (and policing) the bounds of sense that Baker and Hacker envision, it would seem that criteria would have to be much more stable than they are (a least on the account that we have been pursuing). Indeed as Baker and Hacker make clear, on their conception of the task of grammatical investigation, criteria must be understood to constitute more or less fixed rules for determining the bounds of sense. And yet if criteria are supposed to be fixed rules which authoritatively determine the bounds of intelligible language use two questions should immediately arise. 1) How do we identify these rules? And 2) When divergences or dissonances in our applications of criteria inevitably arise, who is to determine what the ‘legitimate’ criteria are? And on the basis of what authority?

Even in the supposedly exemplary case (quoted above) that Baker and Hacker use to illustrate their conception of the task of conceptual clarification undertaken by the post-Wittgensteinian philosopher, these difficulties appear liable to arise.

Let us take Baker and Hacker’s discussion of colour terms for example. Baker and Hacker assert that “the grammar of colour licenses predicating ‘is coloured’ of things of which one may also predicate ‘is extended’.” And they use this observation to argue that any talk of colours ‘being sensations’ is necessarily nonsensical. As they put it “sensations are not extended, i.e. it makes no sense to say ‘This pain is 5 cm long’ or ‘This itch is 2 cm shorter than that’. But we might ask whether the distinctions in criteria that Baker and Hacker attempt to draw here are as clear or as rigid as they suppose. Let us consider the grammar of colour-terms in a little more detail and turn to an example once put forward by G.E. Moore. Moore (1993: 151) writes,

Consider, for instance, the following description of one set of circumstances under which what some psychologists have called a 'negative afterimage' and others a 'negative after-sensation' can be obtained. 'If, after looking steadfastly at a white patch on a black ground, the eye be turned to a white ground, a grey patch is seen for some little time' (Foster's Text-book of Physiology,1 rv, iii, 3, p.1266; quoted in Stout's Manual of Psychology,2 3rd edition, p.280).

Moore goes on to report having successfully conducted this experiment upon himself. Similarly if one looks directly at a very bright light and then looks away one will experience a kind of bright after-image (which remains and often even intensifies if one closes one’s eyes). The after image in such cases (at least in my limited experience) is usually of a bright fluorescent colour (again in my experience: greeny/yellow, orange, or a kind of purply/white).

The important thing to note in either of these cases is that it makes perfect sense to describe these after-images as ‘coloured’; and indeed it is difficult to see how one might convey the quality of such experiences without the use of colour-terms. But are these experiences extended? We might say ‘yes and no’. An after-image takes up (and in the case of the after-image generated by a bright light even interferes with) an extended portion of one’s visual field, but one could not measure an after-image in the same way that one measures ordinary objects. Perhaps some test could be conducted whereby one reports what portion of the visual field can and what portion of the visual field cannot be seen as affected by an after-image—say, by looking closely at a numbered grid. But no such test is required for us to make perfectly good sense of someone’s describing an after-image as an extended grey patch, or, say, an extended luminescent green pattern within her vision.

94

Are after-images not sensations then? They are very different from sensations like pain and itching, but a pleasant aroma is not much like a pain or an itch either. It makes sense to describe an after-image as a visual sensation; in part because it would not make any clear sense to describe such an image as an object. But can we say that a visual sensation is coloured? The real difficulty here—as also with the question of whether an after-image is a sensation at all—is precisely that we do not have any hard and fast rules for individuating sensations in our language. Nonetheless it makes pretty good sense to speak of an after-image as, say, ‘a visual sensation of bright luminescent greenness’.

Baker and Hacker appear to be taken with the (rather philosophical) observation that it is not our visual sensations themselves which are coloured but only ever an element within our visual field that might be described as coloured. But it is not entirely clear that that observation itself makes much sense (is the visual sensation itself not green because the entire visual field is not taken up with greenness?) except in the context of a very particular confusion generated by a very specific philosophical theory about so called ‘sense-data’. In any case, it seems highly implausible to suggest that that observation uncovers a ‘grammatical-rule’ that everybody must follow in order to talk sensibly. If a person reports, for example, that she is having a ‘red visual sensation’ we will most likely take her to mean the same thing that she would mean if she had said that she had had a ‘visual sensation of redness’. So what she says need not be nonsense to us or transcend the bounds of sense. And yet, Baker and Hacker assert that “sensations are not even candidates for being coloured (there is no such thing as a red sensation)”. Surely this is a stipulation on their part as to how we ought to individuate our talk of sensations rather than a rule one must follow in order to speak intelligibly. (Again, I do not say that there might not be very good reasons for making such stipulations in certain contexts.)

We might now ask whether the case of an after-image is an exceptional or unique case of a sensation that could be sensibly described as ‘extended’. In doing so we might turn to one of statements that Baker and Hacker offered as obviously non-sensical. Imagine a child with a mosquito bite on each arm coming to me and saying “this itch is 2cm shorter than that”. Does this assertion make sense? It is true that I might not (yet) know what its sense is supposed to be. But what if the child has conducted an experiment (not entirely unlike the grid experiment we imagined above) with a ruler and pen, methodically marking her skin at the points where scratching relieves her itch and then measuring the area covered by the marks with her ruler—and doing so for each arm in turn? Of course I may well think that skin irritation is not very well measured in that fashion—that for one thing itches have a tendency to fluctuate or ‘move’. But does that mean that the child’s assertion is nonsense? After all (having been told this rather simple story) I can see precisely what she means by it.

Let us return briefly to the after-image case. We might still ask: is it ever sensible to say that an after-image is a sensation in the mind? That will clearly depend upon what one means by ‘in the mind’. At least one plausible thing that could be conveyed by saying ‘an after-image is a sensation in the mind’, would be that any measurement of ‘the after-image itself’ (say, made with the kind of grid we imagined earlier) should be a measurement indexed to the experience of the after-image within the visual field, rather than a merely objectual measurement (say of the reaction of the retina). It is important to note that this would be a clarification of what was meant by the phrase ‘the after-image itself’ and not an invocation or identification of any kind of special entity. But that does not mean that such a clarification

95

need identify ‘a rule of language’ that everybody must accept. It might instead merely clarify one fairly idiosyncratic but understandable, way of communicating, an idea that might, for certain specific purposes, prove useful. (For example if one was concerned that a particular test-subject was not in a position to provide reliable reports of her own experience for one reason or another).

It is true that Wittgenstein is concerned with helping us to overcome a kind of ‘mental cramp’ that we are liable to encounter in our attempts to articulate and investigate certain concepts. And it is also true that concepts in certain domains—such as that of our talk of ‘perception’, ‘experience’ and ‘mind’—seem to more commonly generate this kind of ‘mental cramp’ than do our attempts to articulate our concepts in other domains (say, in the domain of our talk about tables and lamps). Finally it is true that Wittgenstein thinks that these confusions are often caused by ambiguities and misleading analogies and connections that our uses of language suggest to us. But the idea that our uses of language must proceed according to ‘rules’ does not seem to bear any necessary connection to the possibility of our clarifying such conceptual confusions in given cases.

Indeed focusing on given—or imagined—cases, as I have just been doing, seems to reveal that the idea of ‘making sense’ is itself something that comes in degrees. Thus I was able to say that it made ‘good sense’ to call an after-image ‘a visual sensation’ if one meant to differentiate it from any kind of ordinary object, and thus ‘pretty good’ sense to describe an after-image as ‘a visual sensation of bright luminescent greenness’; but also to wonder about whether I ought to characterise the child’s ‘itch-measurements’ as making much sense at all. —I should certainly be able to accommodate the child’s behaviour; and I might even be quite impressed with the sophistication of her inquiry, but I am not likely to begin to talk that way myself amongst other grown-ups.

Of course Descartes did intend to invoke a kind of ‘special entity’ in speaking of sensations being ‘in the mind’. And so it might appear that I am being unfair to Baker and Hacker in imagining fairly benign understandings of various locutions that might arise (as so benign) only in quite specific circumstances. It is true that the possible understandings of various locutions that I have been considering could arise only on very specific occasions, but that is true of any statement made in any situation—and that includes those undoubtedly metaphysical statements made by Descartes about the constitution of something called ‘the mind’.

Indeed the idea that statements cannot be understood (or should not be expected to be understandable) in isolation from the context of their meaningful use is as central an idea of the later Wittgenstein’s as any other. But if we are to take that idea seriously, then we cannot expect to be able to impugn Descartes’ talk of ‘colours’ or ‘the mind’ or anything else, without closely examining the context within which those locutions are being employed. Which is to say, we cannot expect to get a grip on what terms like ‘sensations within the mind’ mean as used by Descartes without examining in close detail the works within which those terms are to be found. That will not involve judging Descartes’ use of certain terms in accord with independent ‘rules of grammar’ somehow derived from ‘our ordinary language’ but will instead involve trying to determine the grammar of those terms as he is using them. In short it will involve trying to understand (and perhaps subsequently assess) not what his words mean (somehow independently of his using them) but what he means.

96

It is important to note that none of this means that we cannot ultimately conclude that although Descartes chose to talk in certain ways (about ‘the mind’), we (for the most part) do not (and should not) talk like that. There are good reasons for thinking that it is inadvisable (for us) to adopt Descartes’ way of talking about, and thus conceiving, of ‘the mind’. But we should not expect that those reasons will be so easily won as by declaring that by the lights of ‘the rules of our grammar’ (whatever that might mean) Descartes is talking ‘nonsense’.

Baker and Hacker are of course aware of the possibility of using concepts—and hence employing criteria—in divergent ways. But driven by what I have been calling their ‘corrective motivation’ they draw a conclusion from that observation which is almost diametrically opposed to the conclusion just adduced. As Baker and Hacker put it, if someone uses a word “and justifies his use by citing a rule (giving an explanation) which another person does not recognise as correct then the former expresses a different concept by that word.” And as Baker and Hacker argue, the post-Wittgensteinian philosopher is not (and should not) be in the business of investigating the utility of adopting new concepts. The philosopher’s work is only that of investigating the grammar of our language as it stands.70

But if Baker and Hacker wish to claim that certain divergent uses of concepts (and hence applications of criteria) in fact amount to the use of entirely different concepts, then they owe us some account of how concepts are to be differentiated on this view. And it is important to note that an appeal to the differentiation of concepts in ‘our ordinary language use’ will not suffice here because concepts (and hence criteria) are just not definitively and rigidly differentiated in our ordinary talking and acting together in the way that Baker and Hacker’s argument suggests that they must be.

As Cavell points out in his discussions of Wittgenstein’s vision of language, our capacity to project criteria into novel and unfamiliar contexts is an integral part of our life in language; and such projections are not arbitrary. I may not know what it could be for an ‘itch’ to have extension, but tell me a simple story, like the one we recently discussed, and I will soon come to understand what is meant by saying that ‘this itch is 2cm shorter than that’. What is more the reason that I can understand what our imagined child means by that locution (with the addition of so little extra explanation; which is to say after such a brief ‘story’) is that, although her use of the term ‘itch’ is divergent from my ordinary use of that term, it is also obviously related to my use of that term.

If an amputee says ‘my missing leg is itchy today; but of course the itch is in my mind’ we understand perfectly well what is meant—though she is breaking almost every grammatical rule about ‘sensations’ that Baker and Hacker have set down. And we understand what is meant not because she is following some other rules, but because the criteria she is employing are projectively related to more familiar applications of the criteria for calling something, for instance, ‘an itch’; and they are projectively related in ways that we are perfectly capable of following. Our capacity to project criteria is essential to our talking and acting together because it allows us to recognise and articulate both similarities and differences in situations with a complexity and sensitivity that could never be matched by a language demarcated by fixed rules. As Cavell (1979: 178) puts it,

“…having learned to use the phrase "turn down the light" [one] will accept the phrase "turn down the phonograph" to mean what it means, recognizing that the factor "turn down" is the same, or almost the

70 See for example: (Baker and Hacker, 2008: 295)

97

same, in both; and then accept the phrases "turn down the bed" and "turn down the awning" and "turn down the offer" to mean what they mean, while recognizing that the common factor has less, if any, relation to its former occurrences.”

And again,

We learn the use of "feed the kitty", "feed the lion", "feed the swans", and one day one of us says "feed the meter", or "feed in the film", or "feed the machine", or "feed his pride", or "feed wire", and we understand, we are not troubled. Of course we could, in most of these cases, use a different word, not attempt to project or transfer "feed" from contexts like "feed the monkey" into contexts like "feed the machine". But what should be gained if we did? And what would be lost? (Cavell, 1979: 181)

As Cavell goes on to point out we would lose a great deal of the sensitivity that our language possesses, and allows us to articulate if we insisted on substituting the projected term ‘feed’ in such instances for some different term—say, ‘put’. If we were to do that we would no longer be discriminating between, for example, putting a dollar on the table and putting a dollar in the meter—no longer registering in our way of talking that while you can pick the dollar back up off of the table the dollar put into the meter has been ‘used up’ (consumed). Cavell points out that limiting our criterial projections in this way would also begin to deprive us of important aspects of our concepts of the emotions—our ability to register for example that pride can be ‘fed’ and thus grow in certain circumstances (for better or for worse). Or, that human beings will take nourishment from more than bread—that one can feed or starve the hopes of another. Finally, as Cavell points out, even attempts to make our language more precise (by using apparently less ‘loaded’ or ‘figurative’ terms)—say by substituting ‘put’ for ‘feed’—could not serve to eliminate the projective potential of our language. And that is because the projective potential of our language is not just limited to some particular subset of our words (say, some particularly ‘figurative’ or ‘metaphorical’ subset of terms). As Cavell (1979: 181) reminds us, one may perfectly sensibly be told to:

“‘Put the cup on the saucer’, ‘Put your hands over your head’, ‘Put out the cat’, ‘Put on your best armor’, ‘Put on your best manner’, ‘Put out the light and then put out the light’.”

Baker and Hacker’s account of grammatical investigation as uncovering the internal rules of language use appears entirely incapable of accounting for the projective capacity of our language. Which is to say their account appears entirely incapable of accounting for our capacity to recognise and produce acts of what Cavell calls “projective imagination”. What is more, properly recognising the projective power of our language means that the kind of account that Baker and Hacker owe—of how we are to differentiate and delineate ‘new’ uses of concepts; where that is to be taken to mean uses of essentially different concepts—looks to be a much more complicated task than Baker and Hacker even begin to recognise. And yet without such an account Baker and Hacker’s claim that if someone uses a word: “and justifies his use by citing a rule (giving an explanation) which another person does not recognise as correct then the former expresses a different concept by that word”—appears to amount to little more than a dogmatic assertion that the grammatical claims of the orthodox Wittgensteinian philosopher are essentially immune to contestation. If someone disagrees with the philosopher’s characterisation of the grammar of a term, his protests will be essentially irrelevant because he will be determined (or at least determinable) either to be invoking an entirely different concept or else to be talking nonsense.

The extreme implication of the corrective motivation then—which at least partly drives a conception of grammar as a set of ‘rules’ of ordinary language use—is that grammar becomes

98

something that one is required to agree with; it essentially functions not as a tool for exploring the conceptual commitments of individuals (and communities) in actual cases but as an authoritative conversation stopper. And yet Baker and Hacker provide no explanation as to how (or from where) the Wittgensteinian philosopher supposedly draws his authority in such matters.71 As Hilary Putnam has pointed out, far from moving against the kind of logical positivism that Wittgenstein always sought to oppose—and which Baker and Hacker recognise Wittgenstein’s work as everywhere resisting—such a view would appear to inherit many of the worst excesses of positivism.72

So the corrective motivation—and the support it provides for a conception of grammar as a set of identifiable ‘rules’ of language—is seriously problematic. It is entirely unable to account for the instability and adaptability of our agreements in criteria; and hence seems to fundamentally mischaracterise our life in language—presenting an unhelpfully rigid (arguably even philosophically authoritarian) conception of what Cavell later comes to call our relationship to ‘the ordinary’.

What is more, I think that it is fair to say that the corrective motivation encourages the perception of a kind of unhelpful arrogance in the later Wittgenstein’s work. Cavell himself openly acknowledges the fact that Wittgenstein’s work can appear at once arrogant and illuminating. Indeed he is interested in investigating exactly this fact about the text of the Investigations. Which is to say, Cavell is interested in investigating why and how Wittgenstein’s work can seem to encourage just such a perception. And yet, on the vision that Baker and Hacker put forward of Wittgenstein as a kind of self-appointed ‘non-sense policeman’, what Cavell calls Wittgenstein’s (and indeed also, Austin’s) “arrogation[s] of voice, in all [their] ungrounded and in a sense ungroundable arrogance” are imagined to stand in isolation from the inherently defeasible status by which such claims are, for Cavell, always characterised. Which is to say, Baker and Hacker isolate Wittgenstein’s grammatical claims from the very thing—their status as attempts to speak for us—which make those claims so interesting and valuable on Cavell’s account.

Nonetheless, the corrective motivation is not the only motivation driving Baker and Hacker’s conception of our language use as an inherently rule-governed practice. Indeed Stephen Mulhall, in defending what he finds useful in Baker and Hacker’s interpretation of the later Wittgenstein, has attempted to distance the notion of language as a ‘rule-following’ practice (which he wishes to inherit) from what we might call Baker and Hacker’s view of philosophy as a task of ‘nonsense policing’ (which he claims he does not wish to inherit).73 The second, and perhaps more interesting, motivation driving Baker and Hacker’s idea that language must be an essentially rule governed practice is what I will call ‘the normative motivation’. Though as I will eventually come to argue, it is not clear, at least within the context of Baker

71 Baker and Hacker (2008: 273-76) place a great deal of weight on the idea that Wittgenstein’s method allows (in a unique way) for the possibility of a new kind of ‘skilful philosopher’. But it is not at all clear who is to designate such philosophers ‘skilful’ and why. Given that our second personal responsibility of responsiveness in language seems to drop out of Baker and Hacker’s account entirely it is not clear that such ‘skilful philosophers’ could be much more than self-appointed authorities. 72 As Putnam (2012b: 415) puts it, “…if we insist on regarding scientific revolutions as disguised redefinitions of words, or on saying that whenever we 'go on' in a way that forces us to modify or abandon previous criteria, we are really changing the meaning of words', we would in fact, have gone back to exactly the Carnapian view that I and others spent our efforts attacking in the 1960's.” 73 See for example: (Mulhall, 2014: 299, 309)

99

and Hacker’s project, that the ‘normative motivation’ can be coherently separated from the ‘corrective motivation’ in the way that Mulhall envisions.

100

(b) Rules and Normativity.

Baker and Hacker’s ‘normative motivation’ in conceiving of our language use as an essentially rule-governed practice is perhaps best demonstrated by their propensity to simply identify the fact that language use is a normative practice with the idea that language is a rule-governed practice—without further argument or comment. As Baker and Hacker put it:

“The realization that a language is, in some sense, a matter of rules, that linguistic activities are normative or rule-governed, is no novelty” (emph. added) (Baker and Hacker, 1984b: 243)

“In general, normative explanations render acts intelligible not by subsumption under causal laws, but by elucidations of their normative meaning, and the goals and purposes that may be pursued, given the possibility of the act having such-and-such a meaning.

A normative explanation, therefore, explains a normative act, a normative situation, or a normative consequence by reference to some relevant rule or aspect of a rule” (emph. added) (Baker and Hacker, 1984b: 257-58)

“…internal relations are the fruits of a normative practice – a rule-governed regularity of action. And, against the backdrop of the stream of human life, it is they that determine what is to be called, for example, describing, calculating, inferring, and so forth.” (emph. added) (Baker and Hacker, 2009: xiv)

And perhaps most boldly, in improvising upon a remark of Wittgenstein’s (1969: §204) from On Certainty:

“It is acting according to a rule, a practice of normative behaviour, regularities perceived as uniformities that lie at the bottom of our language-games.” (orig. emph.; underline added) (Baker and Hacker, 2009: 155)

Baker and Hacker’s assertions here appear to be underwritten by an unstated theoretical commitment to the idea that the normativity of our language use must be explainable in terms of our uses of language being ‘rule-governed’ practices. Indeed the connection between ‘normativity’ and ‘rule-following’ is taken to be so incontrovertible or obvious that the idea of being a ‘normative practice’ is simply identified with the idea of being a ‘rule-governed practice’ throughout Baker and Hacker’s work. Having said that, we might then say that Baker and Hacker’s extensive discussions of rules as ‘internally related’ to their applications in practice are themselves set forth to defend this theoretical assumption from various objections—particularly from objections deriving from observations about the relationship between a rule and it’s interpretation. But Baker and Hacker certainly do not conceive of themselves as putting forward any theory of the normativity of our language use. As we have already discussed their conception of what post-Wittgensteinian philosophy is (or could be) is not one that allows for philosophical theory construction of any kind. Philosophy is, for Baker and Hacker, an activity of (a very particular kind of) conceptual clarification only.

Having said this little about what I am calling Baker and Hacker’s ‘normative motivation’ I should like to set their work to one side for the time being. For although Baker and Hacker are, I believe, undoubtedly motivated by the idea that there is an intrinsic connection between ‘normativity’ and ‘rules’ they do not explore the basis of that (largely implicit) commitment in any real detail. In section V I will have something more to say about how and why Baker and Hacker come to incorporate into their exposition the tacit theoretical assumption that the normativity of our language use must be explainable in terms of our language being an essentially rule-governed practice. But for the time being, I am more interested in exploring the merits of that theoretical assumption on its own terms. And that is, in part, because I do not think that we should impugn theoretical commitments merely on the basis of their being

101

theoretical. To do so would amount to adopting a kind of dogmatic ‘theoretical quietism’ which we would do well to avoid. And while it is worth noting that Wittgenstein harbours serious reservations about the construction of philosophical theories (and the advancement of philosophical ‘theses’—as he puts it), those reservations should guide us only in so far as they can be shown to be well-founded in given cases. Indeed that is a view that, at least as I understand them, both Wittgenstein and Cavell themselves endorse.

So Baker and Hacker could not be expected to characterise their own assumption that the normativity of our language use must be explainable in terms of our language being an essentially rule-governed practice, as amounting to any kind of theory—given their other (orthodox) Wittgensteinian commitments. But there are a number of prominent interpreters of Wittgenstein who do not hold, what is often called, Wittgenstein’s commitment to ‘theoretical quietism’; and who therefore either attribute to Wittgenstein, or else claim to construct out of his writings, various theories of the normativity of our language use in terms of our rule-following capacities. I do not think that we should assume that we have a clear understanding of what Wittgenstein’s so called ‘quietism’ really amounts to; but as I have already said, I do not think that Wittgenstein (or Cavell) should be understood to endorse a dogmatic view whereby philosophical theories can be impugned merely on the basis of their being theories. So, if we are to understand why Wittgenstein and Cavell are not best understood as offering any kind of theory explaining the normative character of our language use, we will have to say something about where (and how) such theories go wrong.

In order to do that I propose to take as a kind of case study the neo-pragmatist philosopher Robert Brandom’s (Wittgenstein inspired) arguments regarding the need for, as well as his subsequent explication of, a theory of the normativity of our uses of language. Brandom’s theory provides a good case study because it incorporates (or else references) the ideas of a number of other prominent interpreters of Wittgenstein who have conceived of Wittgenstein’s so called ‘rule-following considerations’ as providing (or at least suggesting the possibility of) a theoretical account of the normative character of our life in language. Among these prominent interpreters are Crispin Wright, Saul Kripke and John McDowell.74

Brandom argues that we need an account of norms as implicit rules of (linguistic) practice, in order to theoretically differentiate our normative uses of language from other kinds of non-normative regularities of practice (e.g. our breathing, or blinking, or flinching, &c.; what Brandom calls mere responsive dispositions). Brandom constructs this argument in part from a reading of Wittgenstein that is itself inspired by John McDowell’s paper, “Wittgenstein on Following a Rule”. However, Brandom’s arguments and aims are not the same as those of McDowell. Brandom wants to show that in order to properly explain the normativity of our life in language we must recognise that our behaviour is not just governed by causal laws but by norms—what Brandom calls ‘normative rules’, or ‘proprieties of practice’. This, for Brandom, requires that we make the theoretical assumption that there are such rules (or proprieties) ‘implicit’ in our normative practices—which is to say, our practices of talking and acting together. In order to justify this theoretical assumption Brandom then proposes to make those rules ‘explicit’—to theoretically articulate them and in so doing to show that an

74 As I will go on to explain, in so far as McDowell could be described as offering a ‘theory’ of the normativity of our language use, that ‘theory’ might best be described as a kind of ‘quietest theory’—and hence perhaps not a ‘theory’ in the traditional sense at all. McDowell’s view is thus importantly distinct from the views promoted by Wright, Kripke, and Brandom.

102

appreciation of those rules (or norms) is able to render the ground of our complex normative practices intelligible to us. Though as Brandom is quick to point out, his project does not involve any attempt to reductively characterise our normative practices in terms of non-normative capacities (i.e. what Brandom calls mere responsive dispositions). In this way Brandom (1998: xx) characterizes his project as: “eat[ing] its own tail…[in that it supposedly] lifts itself up by its own bootstraps—presenting an explanation of what it is to say something that is powerful enough to explain what it itself is saying.”

In order to do this Brandom describes a kind of complicated ‘language-game’ of what he calls ‘deontic scorekeeping’ practices through which we track each other’s inferential commitments and entitlements as they are implicitly communicated via our talking and acting together. What is more, these commitments and entitlements themselves license what Brandom (1998: 166) calls: “practical deontic attitude[s] of taking or treating someone as committed or entitled”. So on Brandom’s (1998: 166) view we “keep score [of] deontic statuses by attributing those statuses to others and undertaking them [ourselves].” And, as he goes on to explain: “The significance of a performance [an assertion or action] is the difference it makes in the deontic score—that is, the way in which it changes what commitments and entitlements the practitioners, including the performer, attribute to each other and acquire, acknowledge or undertake themselves.”

It is important to note that Brandom does not invoke this complicated scorekeeping ‘language-game’ in the sense that Wittgenstein invokes his ‘language games’ within the Investigations. In the Investigations Wittgenstein (§130) tells us that for him, ‘language games’ are: “objects of comparison which, through similarities and dissimilarities, are meant to throw light on features of our language.”(orig. emph.) But for Brandom the complicated ‘language-game’ of ‘deontic scorekeeping’ is to be understood as an explicit articulation of something that we are already doing anyway (and somehow implicitly recognising) when we talk and act together. Thus although Brandom seeks to employ what he sees as a Wittgensteinian insight regarding a problem with overly-intellectualised accounts of normative practice within the philosophical tradition, the scope of the implicit (and seemingly quasi-intellectual) activity that he envisions us as undertaking in our everyday ‘deontic scorekeeping practices’ is very extensive indeed.75

Nonetheless, we may leave that observation to one side for the time being, because as I intend to now argue, in the sections of the Investigations with which Brandom engages, Wittgenstein is not trying to make us see that we lack (and thus need) an explanation for the normativity of our life in language at all. Indeed Wittgenstein’s method is not to try to explain anything. What he thinks we lack is an adequate description (a perspicuous presentation)76 of the character of our life in language in given cases. His suggestion is that

75 Interestingly, in Making it Explicit Brandom explains the motivation for moving from an account of language as an explicitly, to an implicitly, rule governed enterprise exclusively in terms of regress arguments. (More on these arguments below). Which is to say he never makes the much simpler observation that, regress argument or no, we just do not use explicit rules to understand our own language—our relationship to our native language is (say phenomenologically) just not like that. 76 C.f. (§122.) “A main source of our failure to understand is that we don’t have an overview of the use of our words. – Our grammar is deficient in surveyability. A surveyable representation [perspicuous presentation] produces precisely that kind of understanding which consists in ‘seeing connections’. Hence the importance of finding and inventing intermediate links.

103

once we have an adequate description of certain aspects of, or activities within, our life in language (in all of their normative richness) any sense of distinctly philosophical difficulty that we experience in this domain can be effectively dissolved—though, perhaps only in given situations and on a case by case basis. This claim is closely related to McDowell’s argument in “Wittgenstein on Following a Rule” as well as portions of his paper “Rule Following and Non-Cognitivism.” The argument that McDowell puts forward in those papers largely aligns with (and even invokes) Cavell’s broader interpretation of Wittgenstein—though there are also some interesting divergences between McDowell’s and Cavell’s views.

In examining Brandom’s account then, I intend first to contrast McDowell’s understanding of Wittgenstein’s so called ‘rule-following considerations’ with Brandom’s interpretation of the same. In doing so I intend to argue that Wittgenstein is not concerned with identifying a need for an explanation of the normativity of our life in language at all. I will then briefly contrast Cavell’s account of our life in language as revealed through the elicitation of criteria with Brandom’s inferentialist deontic scorekeeping model. In doing so I aim in, the first instance, to highlight the ways in which Brandom’s model falsifies important aspects of our life in language; but I also intend to use this comparison to bring out an interesting difference in Cavell’s and McDowell’s understanding of Wittgenstein’s vision of our life in language (hence of ‘the ordinary’) which also has interesting implications for each thinker’s understanding of Wittgenstein’s so called ‘quietism’. I ultimately argue that these differences help to bring out something that I would like to call, (adapting a phrase from Cora Diamond) Cavell’s conception of ‘the difficulty of the ordinary’. Finally, in section V, armed with a clearer account of Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations, we will return to discuss Baker and Hacker’s tacit assumption that the normativity of our life in language must be explainable in terms of our language being an essentially rule-governed practice.

IV. The Difficulty of Philosophy: Wittgenstein on Following a Rule.

Brandom acknowledges from the outset that Wittgenstein is not interested in constructing a theory of the normativity of our language use of the kind that he himself aims to put forward.77 Nonetheless, Brandom (1998: 30) claims that certain arguments formulated by Wittgenstein—particularly arguments centring around the so called ‘rule-following paradox’ of (§198) and (§201)—can be understood as setting out “criteria of adequacy” for any satisfactory theory of the normativity of our language use.

A driving idea throughout Brandom’s work is that we require a substantial philosophical explanation of the difference between merely causal regularities (as well as the causal forces they reveal), and the fundamentally different ‘normative forces’ which regulate our everyday practices. Which is to say, for Brandom, we require a philosophical account that can differentiate regularities, which simply hold or do not hold, from practices (in the broadest sense—including, for example, ways of conceiving things) which can be assessed as correct

The concept of a surveyable representation is of fundamental significance for us. It characterizes the way we represent things, how we look at matters. (Is this a ‘Weltanschauung’?)” 77 As Brandom (1998: 29) puts it: “Wittgenstein, the principled theoretical quietist, does not attempt to provide a theory of practices, nor would he endorse the project of doing so. The last thing he thinks we need is more philosophical theories.” Though Brandom provides no account of Wittgenstein’s motivations or arguments for this supposedly ‘principled’ quietism.

104

or incorrect. As Brandom (1998: 17) puts it, we require a philosophical explanation of the difference between causal forces and laws (like gravity and inertia) and the fundamentally different “force of the better reason”.

Brandom claims that the philosophical identification of this distinction, while having many partial precedents (reaching back through the rationalist tradition all the way to the Ancients), is made fully perspicuous in the history of philosophy only when Kant replaces the descriptive Cartesian conception of mind with a prescriptive conception of mind.78 As Brandom (1998: 9) puts it: “The key to the conceptual is to be found not by investigating a special sort of mental substance that must be manipulated in applying concepts but by investigating the special sort of authority one becomes subject to in applying concepts.” On Brandom’s account this authority is itself characterised in Kant—as well as being taken up and investigated further (though along very different lines) in Frege—in terms of abstractly identifiable and isolable rules of thought.79 Thus according to Brandom the idea of authority invoked in philosophical explanations of the normativity of our intentional practices (in the first instance of our ‘thinking’) retains a kind of intellectualist or Platonist character in both Kant and Frege—and this intellectualism or Platonism about rules only comes to be amended in the work of the later Wittgenstein.80

Whether or not one finds the historical story that Brandom has to tell here convincing is not particularly important. (Though we might note, without further comment, that Brandom himself admits this story to be quite radically revisionary.)81 What is important is that Brandom interprets Wittgenstein to be responding to a general philosophical problem. And, although Brandom’s account of the intellectual history of that problem is (arguably) unique, his conception of the character of the problem is not. Indeed it is essentially the same perception of a general philosophical problem that both Wright and Kripke identify in their respective interpretations of the Investigations. As Kripke (1982: 37) puts it, Wittgenstein is concerned to explain the insight that: “the relation of meaning and intention to future action is normative, not descriptive.” And the same idea is central to Wright’s interpretation of Wittgenstein. (Particularly his interpretation of (§258)).82

Brandom claims that Wittgenstein has two ‘master arguments’, which (when combined) supposedly demonstrate that the normativity of our intentional practices must be explained in

78 Brandom himself admits that this distinction is overly simplified; that for example, it does not do justice to Descartes’ rationalism—and if this story does not even do justice to Descartes we might wonder about the justice it does to the broader history of the tradition. See for example: (Brandom, 1998: 10 n.2). 79 It is worth noting that Brandom’s reading of Frege is quite radically revisionary. In recounting the story that Brandom has to tell here I do not mean to endorse his reading of Frege—nor indeed his characterisation of the relationship between Kant and Frege. 80 Again this characterisation is problematically simplified and thus potentially misleading. Brandom entirely overlooks Kant’s transcendental apriorism, asserting that: “One need not buy the metaphysics that Kant uses to ground and explain his norms…in order to appreciate the transformation of perspective made possible by his emphasis on the normativeness of the conceptual”. And yet it is not clear that Kant can be coherently accused of the kind of intellectualism about rules that Brandom ascribes to him except upon the basis of a kind of revisionism that entirely disregards his transcendental apriorism; nor is it clear that the relationship between Kant and Frege can be at all profitably illuminated by overlooking Kant’s transcendental apriorism entirely. 81 See for example: (Brandom, 1998: xi-xii) 82(§258) “…One would like to say: whatever is going to seem correct to me is correct. And that only means that here we can’t talk about ‘correct’.” See for example: (Wright, 1980: 216-20)

105

terms of our following rules that are implicit in our practices of talking and acting together. Borrowing terminology from Wilfrid Sellars, Brandom characterises these arguments as Wittgenstein’s ‘regress of rules argument’ against what he calls intellectualist or Platonist ‘regulism’, and what he characterises as Wittgenstein’s ‘gerrymandering argument’ against what he calls ‘regularism’. Both of these arguments are supposed to be found in Wittgenstein’s formulation of and response to the so called ‘rule-following paradox’ explicitly framed in (§198) and (§201).

At (§198) Wittgenstein writes:

“But how can a rule teach me what I have to do at this point? After all, whatever I do can, on some interpretation, be made compatible with the rule… every interpretation hangs in the air together with what it interprets, and cannot give it any support.”

Brandom takes Wittgenstein in this section to be proposing a fairly straightforward regress problem (familiar from Ancient Pyrrhonean skepticism). The idea behind such regress problems is that explanations in terms of rules (or interpretations) are inherently unstable because one can always ask on what basis a rule itself is being applied (i.e. what is the rule for the first rules application?; or if we talk of interpretations: upon what basis did one come to this interpretation?). That observation then generates an apparently vicious regress because one may always ask for the basis upon which the rule for applying the first rule is itself applied, or for the basis upon which one’s interpretation of the first interpretation is itself interpreted &c. According to Brandom this regress problem provides an insurmountable challenge to any kind of intellectualist or Platonist conception of normativity as explainable in terms of (at least ideally) explicit rules—like the accounts that Brandom attributes to Kant and Frege.83

On Brandom’s account Wittgenstein then provides the solution to this regress problem in (§201). In the second paragraph of (§201) Wittgenstein writes:

“That there is a misunderstanding here is shown by the mere fact that in this chain of reasoning we place one interpretation behind another, as if each one contented us at least for a moment, until we thought of yet another lying behind it. For what we thereby show is that there is a way of grasping [eine Auffassung] a rule which is not an interpretation, but which, from case to case of application, is exhibited in what we call “following the rule” and “going against it”.”

Brandom (1998: 21) understands this remark to reveal what he calls a ‘pragmatist’ commitment on Wittgenstein’s part to the idea that there must be: “primitive correctnesses of performance implicit in practice that precede and are presupposed by their explicit formulation in rules and principles.” (orig. emph.) These implicit proprieties of practice, as Brandom sees it, underwrite rules but are not themselves explicit rules, and hence are not open to interpretation. They thus act as practical regress stoppers on Brandom’s account. Again Brandom (1998: 22) notes that Wittgenstein is not concerned to give any kind of theoretical account of these supposed regress stoppers, but he claims that the argument he

83 Kant was himself aware of such regress problems. As Brandom notes Kant explicitly (though only briefly) discusses a potential regress of rules in The Critique of Pure Reason (A133/B172). Indeed, it is not clear that the regress problem is much of a problem for Kant (at least within the First Critique) except on Brandom’s rather abruptly de-transcendentalised reading. However, Kant’s later identification of what he calls the ‘reflective’ and ‘determinative’ powers of judgement in the Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgement, does complicate matters significantly. For an interesting discussion of these issues see: (Margolis, 2013).

106

attributes to Wittgenstein shows that there must at least be such regress stoppers if we are to: “understand how rules can codify the correctnesses that they do.” Brandom also takes the idea of implicit proprieties of practice to be what Wittgenstein is invoking at (§289) when he writes: “to use a word without a justification does not mean to use it wrongfully.” I should make clear that I do not wish to accept either of these interpretations (of (§201) or (§289))—but we will return to this issue.

So on Brandom’s account Wittgenstein’s ‘master argument’ against an intellectualist or Platonist conception of normativity as a rule-governed practice is essentially a simple regress argument. And the apparent difficulty that such a regress raises is understood to be resolvable (and apparently only resolvable) by what Brandom calls a ‘pragmatist’ commitment to the existence of implicit correctnesses of performance themselves somehow embedded in our normative practices. The second ‘master argument’ that Brandom attributes to Wittgenstein is essentially supposed to show why these ‘primitive correctnesses’ embedded within our practices cannot be explained in terms of non-normative regularities of practice (for example, in terms of mere responsive dispositions). Brandom identifies any account that would attempt such a reductive analysis as a form of what he calls, ‘regularism’.

The ‘master argument’ that Brandom attributes to Wittgenstein in opposition to ‘regularism’ is essentially constructed from Kripke’s reading of (§201) and the so called ‘rule-skeptical’ argument that Kripke derives from that reading. However, Brandom does not share Kripke’s view of the general skeptical implications of the so called ‘rule-skeptical’ argument. As such Brandom essentially re-interprets the significance of Kripke’s argument—and in so doing he also renames it. On Brandom’s account the newly coined, ‘gerrymandering’ argument, is not conceived to have an entirely general (hence skeptical) application but is instead understood to cause difficulties only for reductive ‘regularist’ accounts of our rule-following practices.84

Nonetheless for both Kripke and Brandom this, supposedly Wittgensteinian, argument is to be extracted from a reading of the first paragraph of (§201). In the first paragraph of (§201) Wittgenstein writes:

“This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule, because every course of action can be brought into accord with the rule. The answer was: if every course of action can be brought into accord with the rule, then it can also be brought into conflict with it. And so there would be neither accord nor conflict here.”

Kripke explicates this passage by constructing a skeptical problem about the mathematical function of addition, which is (ultimately) supposed to reflect what he takes to be Wittgenstein’s ‘central problem’ within the Investigations.85 Kripke (1982: 8) asserts that the: “whole point of the notion that in learning to [perform calculations of addition] I grasp a rule” can be summarized (or defined) as follows: “my past intentions regarding addition determine a unique answer for indefinitely many new cases in the future.” According to Kripke, Wittgenstein’s concern in (§201) is to show that an individual’s past intentions cannot determine any such thing. And so, if Kripke (1982: 8) is right—that: “the whole point of the notion…[of] grasp[ing] a rule [is that] my past intentions… [can] determine a unique answer

84 Brandom explicitly acknowledges the relationship of his ‘gerrymandering argument’ to Kripke’s rule skepticism at: (Brandom, 1998: 28) 85 See for example: (Kripke, 1982: 7, 81)

107

for indefinitely many new cases in the future”—then the ‘whole point’ of talking about ‘rules’ in this domain would appear to collapse. What is more, Kripke believes that the problem he has identified ramifies beyond the mathematical case. Indeed Kripke believes that his problem, can be applied to any case in which one might wish to invoke a ‘rule’ as part of the explanation of a practice or an instance of behaviour. So the problem amounts to a new kind of skepticism about ‘rules’ in general.

Kripke’s argument depends upon the idea that any particular person has only ever performed a finite number of calculations using the addition function.86 As such there must always exist some addition-problem that any given person has not calculated before. Allowing ‘57 + 68’ to stand for such a problem (that is a problem that an individual has never before calculated) Kripke argues that nothing in an individual’s past usage (by which he means nothing in the regularity of dispositions to respond that might be observed from an individual’s behaviour—either ‘internally’ or ‘externally’, as it were) can determine the unique answer that that individual must (i.e. will) provide in a novel case. Kripke claims, that we cannot determine any such unique answer because we can always imagine some new function consistent with every calculation that an individual has ever performed, but inconsistent with the normal addition function.87 Kripke (1982: 9) famously offers the example of a function which he calls the ‘quus-function’ and which he symbolizes by ⊕:

x⊕y = x+y, if x, y < 57

= 5 otherwise.

Kripke’s idea is that if an individual has never calculated using numbers larger than 57 (remembering that 57 is a placeholder here—in this case presumably for a much larger number) nothing in an individual’s past behaviour can determine that that individual, in apparently conforming to the normal ‘plus-function’, has not in fact been calculating according to the ‘quus-function’ (or some other equally divergent function) all along. As such even when an individual comes out with the seemingly bizarre answer ‘5’ in response to an addition-problem involving sufficiently large numbers, we cannot definitively say that they are not ‘going on in the same way’ as they always have. As has already been said Kripke takes this problem to ramify beyond the case of mathematical functions, and ultimately to apply to any case of apparent ‘rule-following’ behaviour. (One need only imagine divergent rules complicated enough that their divergence should previously have gone undetected in any given case). The important point for Kripke is that although such cases seem wildly implausible it is (at least apparently) impossible to identify anything in an individual’s past behaviour which would show the rule-skeptical argument to be unsound.

Where Kripke begins with a mathematical case, in order to construct a problem which he eventually proposes can (and must) be generalized to any case of our conceiving of behaviour or practices in terms of ‘rules’, Brandom (1998: 28) instead begins with a general formulation of the supposed problem. As he puts it:

86 Kripke (1982: 32-37) later extends this idea with reference to Wittgenstein’s (§194) talk of an “ideally-rigid machine”—so that it is finitude itself rather than just human finitude that is seen to give rise to a problem here; but we may leave that idea to one side for present purposes. 87 For simplicities sake we may put aside the fact that any individual’s past responses to addition problems are likely to include various mistaken applications of the ‘normal plus function’—on Kripke’s view, that fact would itself appear only to provide more grist for the argument’s mill.

108

“Any particular performance exhibits many regularities…A performance can be denominated ‘irregular’ only with respect to a specific regularity, not tout court. Any further performance will count as regular with respect to some of the patterns exhibited in the original set and irregular with respect to others. For anything one might go on to do, there is some regularity with respect to which it counts as ‘going on in the same way’, continuing the previous pattern.”

As such, on Brandom’s view, any attempt to explain a given set of regularities in terms of a rule will appear essentially arbitrary, because there will always be any number of other rules (even if often only of the ‘quus’ variety) that could also be used to explain that set of regularities. A further consequence of this claim is that one may always ‘gerrymander’ the rule explaining any given set of regularities so that any new occurrence whatsoever (any candidate regularity) will fit with at least one (appropriately gerrymandered) rule characterizing the new set. (Hence Brandom’s renaming the argument Wittgenstein’s master ‘gerrymandering argument’).

Unlike Kripke however, Brandom does not see this problem as having any general skeptical consequence. And that is because Brandom does not share Kripke’s apparent assumption that any rule-following practice must be explainable in strictly non-normative terms.88 As such for Brandom, the problem that Kripke has identified is only really a problem if one wishes to construct a reductive ‘regularist’ account of rule-following practices. As Brandom (Brandom, 1998: 28) puts it:

“There simply is no such thing as the pattern or regularity exhibited by a stretch of past behaviour, which can be appealed to in judging some candidate bit of future behaviour as regular or irregular, and hence, on this line, as correct or incorrect…To say this is to say that some regularities must be picked out as the ones that ought to be conformed to, some patterns the ones that ought to be continued…[What is needed therefore is an account of] how to understand the normative distinction between what is done and what ought to be done.”

So on Brandom’s view the ‘regularist’, in denying himself the ability to appeal to what ought to be done—which is to say in insisting that only non-normative regularities may be appealed to in attempting to resolve the rule-skeptical problem—deprives himself of the only means by which that puzzle ever could be resolved. As such Brandom argues that it is the commitment to ‘regularism’ itself which generates the ‘gerrymandering’ (or ‘rule-skeptical’) problem. On Brandom’s view this shows that what is needed is an account that explains why we do not have to accept ‘regularism’. In fact, what is needed is exactly the kind of account that Brandom proposes to offer—an account of our normative practices which makes intelligible

88 On Kripke’s account Wittgenstein’s supposed ‘skeptical solution’ to the rule-skeptical argument can be understood as an attempt to derive a form of normativity from a non-normative starting point by invoking a notion of group (or communal) dispositions to endorse certain practices. Brandom rejects this solution both as an interpretation of Wittgenstein and as a viable solution to the ‘regularist’ problem. He is surely right to do so. As Brandom points out, if one cannot derive a notion of normativity from individual responsive dispositions it is difficult to see how moving to a notion of group responsive dispositions could make any substantial difference. Brandom also points out that such ‘communitarian’ accounts often appear to merely tacitly re-introduce normative notions by treating the community itself as a kind of collective agent. But of course ‘agency’ and its enactment (in, say, endorsing, accepting, or refusing various practices) are normative capacities and so normativity is not so much derived from non-normative capacities on such accounts but is merely reinserted at the higher (community or group) level. See for example: (Brandom, 1998: 38) McDowell runs a similar argument against Kripke and Wright in his “Wittgenstein on Following a Rule” See for example: (McDowell, 1984: 328, 30, 36 )

109

the ground of those practices without attempting to reductively explain them in terms of non-normative capacities; which is to say, without attempting to explain our normative practices in terms of the kinds of non-normative responsive dispositions, which the ‘regularist’ limits himself to.

In summarizing his claims about ‘regulism’ and ‘regularism’ Brandom invokes an idea of McDowell’s from “Wittgenstein on Following a Rule”. As Brandom approvingly quotes McDowell (1984: 341-42):89

“Wittgenstein’s problem is to steer a course between Scylla and Charybdis… Scylla is the idea that understanding is always interpretation. We can avoid Scylla by stressing that, say, calling something ‘green’ can be like crying ‘help’ when one is drowning—simply how one has learnt to react to this situation. But then we risk steering on to Charybdis—the picture of a level at which there are no norms.”

As Brandom (1998: 29) glosses this idea in his own terms:

“The Scylla of regulism is shown to be unacceptable by the regress of rules argument. The Charybdis of regularism is shown to be unacceptable by the gerrymandering-of-regularities argument.”

Hence for Brandom Wittgenstein’s dilemma sets forth the ‘conditions of adequacy’ for any substantial philosophical account of the normativity of our life in language. As Brandom has it, any such account must find a way to sail betwixt Scylla and Charybdis while succumbing to the perils of neither.

However, it is crucial to note that McDowell could not accept this characterization of his formulation of what he calls ‘Wittgenstein’s problem’ or ‘dilemma’.90 Brandom himself notes that McDowell formulates the second horn of Wittgenstein’s dilemma (Charybdis) in a slightly different manner than he does.91 But there is a much more significant difference between Brandom and McDowell’s characterizations of Wittgenstein’s problem. And that is that on McDowell’s account the dilemma that Wittgenstein puts forward is presented, not as one that we must inevitably face or overcome, but as itself based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of our life in language. On McDowell’s account Wittgenstein’s dilemma arises only upon the basis of an entirely unhelpful fantasy about the grounds of our normative uses of language—and indeed, the dilemma is supposed to help us to see why that fantasy is entirely unhelpful.

For McDowell the misunderstanding that brings about the dilemma, stems from a confused attempt to underwrite or ground the normative notion of ‘understanding’ itself. And this gives rise to the problematic idea that any normative situation must be explainable in terms of something else—either some more basic non-normative capacity (as on Kripke’s, and also on Wright’s, accounts) or else on some more basic though still normative capacity (as on

89 quoted in: (Brandom, 1998: 29) 90 Indeed McDowell has expressed serious reservations about Brandom’s use of Wittgenstein (thus presumably also Brandom’s employment of his own interpretation of Wittgenstein). See for example: (McDowell, 2009: 370-71) 91As Brandom acknowledges McDowell does not formulate the second horn of the dilemma in terms of a ‘regularist’ problem. McDowell instead conceives of the second horn of the dilemma in terms of the invocation of one or another kind of (broadly Platonistic) interpretation that is itself uninterpretable (or perhaps self-interpreting)—and hence stands as the last interpretation. See for example: (Brandom, 1998: 29 n.39, 38 n.47)

110

Brandom’s account). McDowell, however, contends that the attempt to provide a more basic explanation of the normativity of our life in language is itself a fundamental mistake.

What is more, McDowell aims to show that it is precisely this mistake which Wittgenstein is attempting to unmask in contesting the idea that ‘understanding’ is always (or can always be) related to the notion of ‘interpretation’—where ‘interpretation’ is understood to be the function of a more basic capacity than, or else as somehow logically presupposed by the possibility of, ‘understanding’. This conception of Wittgenstein’s concern with the relationship between ‘understanding’ and ‘interpretation’ is fundamentally different from that put forward by Brandom. As we have seen, Brandom conceives of Wittgenstein’s discussions of the relationship between ‘understanding’ and ‘interpretation’ as highlighting a regress problem that is (and Brandom thinks can only ever be) resolved through a commitment to what he calls the ‘pragmatist’ idea that the normativity of our life in language can be explained in terms of primitive norms implicit in our practices. McDowell on the other hand conceives of Wittgenstein’s discussion of the relationship between ‘understanding’ and ‘interpretation’ as showing that the ‘rule-following’ dilemma—upon which Brandom bases his entire project of explaining normativity—is no real dilemma at all. To borrow a phrase from Cavell (1969d: 75), on McDowell’s understanding Wittgenstein’s aim is to show us that his own dilemma “has the gait of a false issue—[which does not] mean it will be easy to straighten out”.

In “Wittgenstein on Following a Rule” McDowell explicitly states that what he presents as Wittgenstein’s dilemma, arising from the so called ‘rule following paradox’, is itself based upon a misunderstanding.92 Thus for McDowell, Wittgenstein’s dilemma clearly does not necessitate the adoption of any notion of rules as underwritten by implicit proprieties of practice. Indeed I would now like to argue that Wittgenstein’s dilemma is supposed to help us to break free of a picture of ‘understanding’ as necessarily ‘rule-governed’ at all—to help us break free of a picture whereby ‘understanding’ must be governed (hence justifiable) or else explainable in terms of anything outside of the practices within which that concept is itself made manifest for us. Which is to say, Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations are supposed to show us that our ‘understanding’ something (say a concept) need not be justifiable or explainable in terms of anything beyond what we call ‘understanding’. And yet, to repeat an idea that I have been pursuing throughout this thesis, that does not mean that what we will call (or count as) ‘understanding’ in any given case is at all arbitrary.93

In order to explicate these ideas, I would like to connect McDowell’s argument regarding Wittgenstein’s rule following paradox to Cavell’s conception of the role of ‘criteria’ and thus of ‘grammatical investigation’ in Wittgenstein’s thought. And in order to do that it will be helpful to say something more about McDowell’s account of Wittgenstein’s dilemma as he presents it within his paper ‘Non-Cognitivism and Rule Following”. In that paper McDowell explicitly connects his own thoughts on Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations with Cavell’s ‘whirl of organism’ passage from “The Availability of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy”.

McDowell (1998: 203) characterizes the idea from which Wittgenstein’s rule-following dilemma initially arises as follows:

92 See for example: (McDowell, 1984: 331-32, 38) 93 C.f. (§289) "…To use a word without a justification does not mean to use it wrongfully.”

111

“A succession of judgements or utterances, to be intelligible as applications of a single concept to different objects, must belong to a practice of going on doing the same thing.”

McDowell does not mean to suggest that there is anything problematic about this idea as it stands. But he does claim that this mundane idea can quickly give rise to all kinds of philosophical difficulty if we are not careful to resist a certain tendency to mythologize or sublimize its significance in our thinking about our life in language. One familiar mythologization of this idea begins with the, at least initially benign (and again mundane), idea that what counts as ‘doing the same thing’ in a given practice is itself often articulable in terms of the rules or norms of that practice. This idea presents itself as particularly intuitive in cases in which the rules or norms of a practice are fairly well specified (or specifiable) and more or less rigidly defined. Our mathematical practices form a particularly clear class of cases of just this kind.

Focusing upon rules of this kind encourages us, according to McDowell (1998: 203), to think of the rules of a practice as marking out: “rails along which correct activity within the practice must run”. As Wittgenstein (§218) puts it, we arrive at: “the idea that the beginning of a series is a visible section of rails invisibly laid to infinity… And infinitely long rails correspond to the unlimited application of a rule.” What is more, as McDowell (1998: 203) explains, we are liable to assume, in accord with the picture, that: “[these] rails are there anyway, independently of the responses and reactions a propensity to which one acquires when one learns the practice itself.” Again, cases like that of mathematics make this aspect of the picture appear particularly attractive. Finally, McDowell suggests that this picture encourages another. McDowell (1998: 203) explains that, according to this further picture (or further development of the initial picture): “Acquiring mastery of [a] practice [involves] something like engaging mental wheels with these objectively existing rails.”

McDowell’s talk of ‘pictures’ and ‘temptations’ here may seem suspicious to some; but McDowell is really only trying to articulate the kind of thinking that motivates a claim like Kripke’s, when Kripke (1982: 8) says. : “the whole point of the notion…[of] grasp[ing] a rule [is that] my past intentions… determine a unique answer for indefinitely many new cases in the future.” Indeed Kripke’s assertion here seems to invoke exactly the kind of picture that McDowell (following Wittgenstein) is characterising: mathematical functions as rails to infinity. 94

McDowell’s claim, however, is that once we accept such a picture of what it is to apply a concept within a normative practice, we will find that nothing can count as acquiring ‘mastery of that practice’ in the way that the picture demands. And so nothing can count as ‘going on doing the same thing’ according to a practice in the sense that the idea of applying a single concept in different circumstances requires. That in turn is because nothing can guarantee a continuous connection between an individual’s ‘mental wheels’ and the ‘objectively existing rails’, that the picture encourages us to imagine must guide us in following any practice (and indeed must also somehow guide our practices themselves).

94 Kripke is plausibly emulating Wittgenstein in this formulation (given that it comes in a book, at least in part, about the Investigations) and this might be thought to explain the particular aptness of Wittgenstein’s metaphor to this case. But then it is worth noting that Kripke’s rule-skepticism has inspired a tremendous amount of further philosophical debate. And within these debates Kripke’s problem is very often treated on its own terms—with little or no recourse to the Investigations. It is more than a little plausible therefore to suggest that the picture that Wittgenstein and McDowell describe is both a pervasive and captivating one.

112

Kripke’s rule skepticism is, on McDowell’s view, just one articulation of the kind of problem this picture generates. On Kripke’s rule skeptical reading the problem is that there are any number of objectively existing ‘rails to infinity’ (any number of rules) set forth by any given individual’s practice and there is no way of knowing which rails (rules) an individual is travelling along (following) at any given time—for there might always be some future occurrence which shows that that individual was, for example, following ‘quus rails’ (as it were) rather than the ‘plus rails’ we previously took her to be tracking.

So Kripke’s rule-skeptical problem is, on McDowell’s view, a product of this particular picture of what ‘going on in the same way’ within a practice must amount to. But Kripke’s problem is not the only form of difficulty that this picture generates. McDowell associates the idea of understanding a, ‘universal’ with the same picture.

On that view when one recognises, for example, a red rose as ‘red’, one is really recognizing a ‘universal’—the universal ‘red’—and that ‘universal’ is itself pictured as taking on the character of a kind of objectively existing rail to infinity—determining correct (and incorrect) applications of the concept in every possible instance. To grasp a universal (and hence to apply, for example, the concept ‘red’ correctly) is then pictured as somehow keying one’s mind to this rail. And yet it is not clear what could ever count as ‘keying one’s mind to the rail’ in the relevant sense. Once again, as McDowell puts it “the pictured state [of understanding as guided by determinate and infinitely extending rails] always transcends any grounds there may be for postulating it.”

It is important to note that in either of these cases, the impossibility of guaranteeing continuous connection with the imagined rails governing a practice is not limited to cases of observing the behaviour (or practices) of others. The case of ‘universals’ perhaps makes this more immediately apparent, but it is equally true of Kripke-style ‘rule-skeptical’ cases. An appeal to some (perhaps phenomenologically available) psychological state or mechanism—say, for example, a feeling of confident inclination—will not help (even in one’s own case) to remedy the problem. For the reliable occurrence of a confident inclination could only serve to add a further set of finite evidential observations to one’s bases for a claim about a (supposedly) infinite correlation.

But as McDowell argues we do apply the same concepts in different situations and we do not worry about Kripke style cases nor our ability to reliably recognise, say, red things within our everyday practices. What is more, according to McDowell, Wittgenstein’s arguments are supposed to help us to see (or remember) this fact. But McDowell also argues that Wittgenstein’s arguments are not supposed to merely encourage us to disregard (out-of-hand, as it were) the kinds of possibilities that Kripke raises. After all Kripke himself knows that the rule-skeptical argument has deeply unintuitive consequences. As Kripke (1982: 9) puts it: “…if the [rule] skeptic proposes his hypothesis sincerely, he is crazy…the proposal that I always meant quus is absolutely wild…no doubt it is false.” But as Kripke continues: “if it is false, there must be some fact about my past usage that can be cited to refute it.”

Indeed in this sense Kripke’s argument shares a form common to skeptical arguments in general. Cavell characterises essentially the same fact about skeptical arguments with respect to the confrontation between the traditional ordinary language philosopher and the traditional (skeptical) epistemologist in The Claim of Reason. There Cavell (1979: 145) writes:

113

“The traditional [skeptical] philosopher can be said to know everything the ordinary language philosopher wishes to teach him (e.g… that his conclusion denies the plainest facts of common sense and language) and to have himself sought and found concessions and explanations for these problems (e.g., that his investigation is ‘theoretical’, that our common view and capacity of certainty is all right ‘for practical purposes’)…”

Cavell’s point here is that if there is something wrong with the external world skeptic’s reasoning, it is not something which can be revealed by an appeal to common sense alone. And the same point holds for Kripke’s rule-skeptical argument.

But McDowell’s claim should not be understood as a mere appeal to common sense. McDowell does argue that we ultimately ought to abandon the picture that gives rise to the kinds of problems described in Kripke’s rule-skeptical considerations. And yet, McDowell does not propose to counter this problematic ‘picture’—the picture that he thinks tempts us when we contemplate our ability to go on ‘doing the same’ within a practice—by impugning it as simply false or contrary to common sense. Wittgenstein invokes the notion of ‘pictures’ and the way in which they influence our thinking throughout the Investigations, but he never characterises pictures as ‘true’ or ‘false’. Pictures are, for Wittgenstein, useful or not useful for particular purposes, enlightening or obscuring in certain situations.95 And the way to break the hold of a captivating but unhelpful picture is not to impugn it as false, but to replace it with a better picture. That is precisely what McDowell proposes to do. And in so doing he invokes Cavell’s ‘whirl of organism passage’ from “The Availability of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy”. As we will recall Cavell writes:

“We learn and teach words in certain contexts, and then we are expected, and expect others, to be able to project them into further contexts. Nothing insures this projection will take place (in particular, not the grasping of universals nor the grasping of books of rules), just as nothing insures that we will make, and understand, the same projections. That on the whole we do is a matter of our sharing routes of interest and feeling, senses of humour and of significance and of fulfillment, of what is outrageous, of what is similar to what else, what a rebuke, what forgiveness, of when an utterance is an assertion, when an appeal, when an explanation—all the whirl of organism Wittgenstein calls ‘forms of life.’ Human speech and activity, sanity and community, rest upon nothing more, but nothing less, than this. It is a vision as simple as it is difficult, and as difficult as it is (and because it is) terrifying.”

When I invoked this passage in chapter 1, I connected it with the idea that Cavell conceives of our uses of language as much more than the exercises of a mere representational capacity. Our uses of language involve much more than our ability to label objects, as it were. I said that in this passage Cavell was instead articulating the fact that our language use has a kind of existential significance for us; that it reveals something like what the phenomenologists call our being-in-the-world. In chapter 2, I connected Cavell’s description of Wittgenstein’s vision of language as ‘terrifying’ with the idea that our uses of language are without foundation—either in the sense of unshakeable grounds; or in the sense of forming an edifice unshakeable in its magnitude or complexity. As I put it there, this vision of language is ‘terrifying’ because it reveals our shared life in language to be more fragile than we would (often) like to suppose. And in section III(a) of the current chapter, we saw that our capacity for what Cavell calls ‘projective imagination’—our capacity to project and to follow

95 At (§136) Wittgenstein describes the picture that captivated him in formulating the ‘general form of the proposition’ within the Tractatus as a ‘bad picture’—but even here Wittgenstein is clearly referring to the manner in which he had allowed an otherwise harmless picture to mislead him in a particular context.

114

projections of words (hence of concepts) into new contexts—is even more dynamic than the above passage might be taken to suggest.

As McDowell argues, all of this should help us to see, not just what is wrong with the picture upon which ‘Kripke style’ cases are constructed, but also why such a picture might appear so attractive to us in the first place. As McDowell characterises it, Cavell’s (and Wittgenstein’s) vision of our shared life in language as something more fragile than we would often like to admit, and (as I have been arguing) something to and for which we are ultimately responsible, can induce a kind of ‘vertigo’ in us. As McDowell (1998: 207) puts it, “It is natural to recoil from the vertigo into the picture of rules as rails. But the picture is only a consoling myth elicited from us by our inability to endure the vertigo.” McDowell argues that this is what Wittgenstein is trying to get us to see in the passages from which Kripke constructs his rule-skeptical problem and from which Brandom also extracts his regress of rules argument. The mythological picture of rules as rails to infinity—and the merely illusory security that that picture provides—is thus the first horn of Wittgenstein’s dilemma as McDowell sees it.

The second horn of Wittgenstein’s dilemma as McDowell characterises it involves a kind of ‘Platonism’ that he thinks our ‘vertigo’ also drives us towards96 Nonetheless according to McDowell this picture is also underwritten by a consoling but ultimately illusory myth. As McDowell has it, the picture that underwrites the second horn of Wittgenstein’s dilemma is one that depends upon the idea that we can (or can aspire to) contemplate our practices, not just from within the midst of the dynamism and fragility of our life in language, but from a kind of external perspective as well. As McDowell (1998: 207) puts it we are inclined to imagine that we can contemplate certain of our practices (primarily perhaps our mathematical and scientific practices):“from sideways on—from a standpoint independent of all human activities and reactions that locate those practices in our ‘whirl of organism’”.

McDowell explains that this second consoling myth is attractive because the ‘vertigo’, that Cavell’s (and Wittgenstein’s) vision of our life in language induces, can lead us to worry that certain necessities—say, for example, the independent truths of arithmetic—have been reduced to mere contingencies of human history. Driven, perhaps by legitimate worries about a problematic kind of psychologism, we feel as if we need to be able say (and say truthfully) that the facts of arithmetic would be what they are even if there had never been any human beings. And we imagine that if we are to say that truthfully we must find (and perhaps have found) a way to speak outside of the constraints of our own human practices (our life in language). We imagine that the truth of such a statement must escape the ‘whirl of organism’ that our practices (including our mathematical practices) rest within. But as McDowell argues the consoling picture is not required to insure the truth that we want to communicate with such a statement; and in fact it could not be required because, as McDowell argues, the consoling picture is ultimately without content. We can make perfectly good sense of the idea (and the truth of the idea) that the facts of arithmetic are not in any sense arbitrary, but in order to do so we must understand that that statement—and the truth that it communicates—arises within and depends upon the context of our human life in language.

96 In “Wittgenstein on Following a Rule” McDowell expands his characterisation of the second horn of the dilemma to also incorporate Kripke and Wright’s ‘communitarian’ responses to Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations. Though this is because he ultimately argues that Kripke and Wright’s views rely upon a similarly suspect notion of non-interpretable interpretations (not platonically guaranteed but still somehow guaranteed by the dispositions of ‘the community’).

115

The mistake, as McDowell (1998: 208) explains it, is to think that unless we can escape the context of our life in language (and the whole ‘whirl of organism’ within which our practices rest) we must concede that, for example: “in mathematics anything goes: that we are free to make mathematics up as we go along.” But McDowell points out that that is not the case at all. Necessity does not lose its character as necessity merely because it cannot be separated from the conditions within which the possibility of its articulation arises. In fact it is only on the Platonistic picture—requiring the impossible possibility of an articulation of necessity from a standpoint outside of our language (and thus outside of the ‘whirl’ of contingencies in the midst of which our life in language stands)—that the idea of necessity itself is lost. As McDowell (1998: 208) puts it, on the Platonistic picture it is as if we imagine that: “by a special emphasis, one could somehow manage to speak otherwise than out of one’s own mouth.” So resisting this illusory picture does not amount to denying the necessity or the possibility of, say, proof in mathematics, it requires only that we recognise the ineliminability of the human perspective from which such necessities and their proofs are discernible.97

Cora Diamond provides a helpful clarification of and development upon this idea in her collection The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy and the Mind. As Diamond (1991d: 195) puts it:

“Wittgenstein’s philosophy, throughout his life, is directed against certain ways of imagining necessity. Throughout his life, his treatment of logic aims at letting us see necessity where it does lie, in the use of ordinary sentences.”

A great deal of Diamond’s writing is concerned with showing that, despite its significant transformation in his later work, Wittgenstein’s concern with combatting problematic pictures of what ‘necessity’ must come to, can be found as much (and as centrally) in the early work of the Tractatus as in the Philosophical Investigations. That idea has itself been both extremely influential and rather controversial. However, for the time being I wish to put the issue of the relationship between the Tractatus and Wittgenstein’s later work to one side. Instead I intend, at least initially, to focus upon Diamond’s characterisation of Wittgenstein’s attempt to help us to see ‘necessity where it does lie’ within the context of his work in the Investigations.98

I said that Diamond’s work provides a helpful clarification of and development upon the idea that resisting certain illusory pictures of ‘necessity’ (in for example mathematics) does not

97 Of course it might turn out that there is another (possible), say extra-terrestrial, perspective upon our world and practices—but such a perspective would not be a perspective outside of the contingencies of human life—or perhaps better, it would not be a perspective outside of the contingencies of its own standpoint. The intelligibility of the idea of ‘the way things are anyway’ does not (and could not) require the empty idea of a ‘view from nowhere’. 98 A driving idea behind a great deal of Diamond’s writing is that the work of the Investigations cannot be properly understood in isolation from the Tractatus—precisely because the Investigations’ critique of the Tractatus (and a proper understanding of that critique) is essential to the character of the later work itself. I do not mean to deny that claim. In fact, I will turn to the issue of the relationship between the Tractatus and the Investigations (albeit rather briefly) toward the end of the following section. Nonetheless, it is curious to note that throughout his work Cavell discusses the Tractatus on only a handful of occasions—and even then, only briefly. I say that such an observation is curious because (as I will go on to argue) Cavell’s interpretation of Wittgenstein’s later work is in many respects commensurate with Diamond’s. What is more, Cavell’s interpretation of the Investigations is commensurate with Diamond’s in precisely those respects, which, Diamond argues, are most clearly illuminated by a proper understanding of the Tractatus (as well as the Investigations’ subsequent critique of that work).

116

amount to denying necessity altogether (say by denying the necessity or possibility of proof in mathematics). In an early work, “The Face of Necessity”, Diamond articulates precisely this point in opposing Michael Dummett’s (1959: 329) attribution to Wittgenstein of what Dummett calls a “full-blooded conventionalism” about mathematics—a view according to which, contra McDowell’s interpretation (1998: 208), we really are “free to make mathematics up as we go along.”

I am not so much interested in tracing the particularities of this debate as I am in highlighting the extent to which Diamond’s response to Dummett reflects a more general insight into Wittgenstein’s philosophical method. Indeed this early paper of Diamond’s stands as an important illustration of what Diamond eventually comes to call the ‘realistic spirit’ of Wittgenstein’s work, as well as what Diamond characterises as the distortion of that ‘realistic spirit’ in philosophy. These ideas themselves take shape in Diamond’s opposition to a broader (and influential) misreading of Wittgenstein also originally put forward by Dummett (though also developed by Wright and others). Namely the view that Wittgenstein’s later philosophy constitutes a radical rejection of his earlier ‘realism’ (as advocated within the Tractatus) in favour of a radical kind of ‘anti-realism’ (as advocated within the Investigations).

What Diamond calls ‘the realistic spirit’ of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is not any version of the kind of philosophical realism that Dummett sees the later Wittgenstein as vehemently opposing. Rather the ‘realistic spirit’ is, for Diamond, a counter-vision of what ‘realism’ in philosophy (and particularly in Wittgenstein’s philosophy) might be understood to entail. That counter-vision is most clearly revealed in two interrelated, though at least provisionally distinguishable, characteristics of Wittgenstein’s work. The first being Wittgenstein’s response to philosophical illusions and misleading pictures within the Investigations. The second being Wittgenstein’s appeal to our use of language and his constant reminders of the need to resist the (self-)imposition of philosophical requirements upon our thinking—as well as his recommendation that we instead merely look and see.99 Diamond’s work is particularly important in that she provides a positive vocabulary for the articulation of these (otherwise often negatively characterised)100 ideas of Wittgenstein.

In so doing, Diamond also provides an important clarification of these central ideas. Diamond’s articulation of the ‘realistic spirit’ of Wittgenstein’s philosophising helps to show not just what is wrong with Dummett’s interpretation of Wittgenstein on mathematics but what is wrong with any interpretation of Wittgenstein’s work of the kind suggested by Dummett. Which is to say, Diamond’s work helps to show what is wrong with any interpretation that would characterise Wittgenstein as advocating a kind of ‘conventionalism’ or ‘anti-realism’, or indeed as engaging in any debate within the vicinity of the distinction between so called ‘realist’ and ‘anti-realist’ or ‘conventionalist’ philosophies.

As I have already noted, Dummett’s interpretation of Wittgenstein in his, (1959) “Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Mathematics” provides a paradigm example of a prevalent kind of misinterpretation of Wittgenstein’s work.101 Dummett argues that what I have been

99 See for example: (§66, §116) 100 See for example: (Dummett, 1978a: esp. 452-53), (Brandom, 1998: 29) 101 As Cora Diamond argues in her critical notice, “Wright’s Wittgenstein”, Crispin Wright’s Wittgenstein on the Foundations of Mathematics stands as another influential example of this kind of misreading.

117

calling Wittgenstein’s ‘rule-following considerations’—and particularly the idea of a regress of interpretations, shows that a traditional (positivist, or what Dummett calls ‘modified-’) conventionalist account of mathematics is untenable. The idea here is essentially the same as that which we have already encountered in the work of Brandom, Kripke and McDowell: no rule, in and of itself, can determine the scope of its own correct application in any and every circumstance, because the application of a rule is always open to interpretation (or on McDowell’s account, inseparable from the human practice of its application). The idea then is that since a traditional conventionalist account of mathematics appeals to mathematical conventions, or processes of proceeding from axioms (in effect rules), in order to explain mathematical necessity, such an account owes an explanation of what it is to ‘go on in the same way’ within mathematical practice (or indeed within any practice), and that explanation must not itself devolve into a regress of further rules or interpretations.

Dummett reads Wittgenstein as employing this argument to reject a traditional (or ‘modified-’) conventionalist explanation of mathematical necessity. And, since Dummett rightly observes that Wittgenstein is not interested in giving any kind of Platonistic explanation of mathematical necessity, he concludes that Wittgenstein must endorse some other explanation. It is this line of thinking which leads Dummett to suggest that Wittgenstein endorses a ‘full-blooded conventionalism’ about mathematics. According to this view, as Dummett explains it, the necessity of any mathematical statement is not determined by its relationship to any other conventions (say certain accepted axioms or inference rules) but is instead determined only by our deciding (and presumably also continuing to decide) to treat that very statement, as unassailable within our mathematical practices. On this account, no regress of rules or interpretations arises because there are no rules or consistencies of interpretation to be accounted for, but as a result (and as I have already indicated) such an account also seems to leave us essentially ‘free to make mathematics up as we go along.’ As Dummett himself notes this is an incredibly high price to pay to avoid a regress of rules, and thus the account that Dummet attributes to Wittgenstein is, in Dummett’s (1959: 332) words, “extremely hard to swallow”. The majority of Dummett’s paper is thus devoted to arguing that the position he attributes to Wittgenstein is unacceptable.

Dummett argues further that Wittgenstein’s supposed conclusion about mathematical necessity is itself derived from Wittgenstein’s conclusions about ‘meaning’ in general. So, on the broader view that Dummett attributes to Wittgenstein, any statement (including, for example, any statement standing as the conclusion of an inference) which we take to be necessary is really necessary only in so far as we decide to treat that statement as unassailable in given cases (and, again presumably, only so long as we continue to do so).

As Diamond (1991b: 244) quite rightly point out, any such “infer-as-you-like account…would be a joke, would not come near being an account of anything we could recognize as inference at all.”(orig. emph.). So, Diamond’s (1991b: 245) aim in “The Face of Necessity” is not to defend such an account nor to propose an alternative explanation of mathematical or logical necessity, but instead to:

“show how Dummett’s attempt to defend something that Wittgenstein does not deny is a result of what Wittgenstein called being misled by a picture, in this case the picture involved in talk of necessary truth.”

Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language also fits Diamond’s characterisation (discussed below) of this kind of misreading—as, arguably, does Brandom’s (again, more on this below).

118

Dummett’s interpretation of Wittgenstein on mathematics is built upon the idea that Wittgenstein rejects a Platonistic account of necessity and also rejects the traditional conventionalist response to such Platonistic accounts. It is this idea that leads to the further contention that Wittgenstein is endorsing some much more radical conventionalism—holding onto the driving conventionalist intuition that Platonism is false, while jettisoning (as untenable) the traditional anti-Platonist idea that ‘necessity by convention’ is necessity nonetheless (or, all the necessity that we need). In opposing Dummett’s characterisation of Wittgenstein’s argument, Diamond (1991b: 244) rightly points out that, “Wittgenstein is not [any kind of] conventionalist, in Dummett’s sense, because Wittgenstein does not deny what conventionalists deny.”

I shall begin to explicate this crucial idea shortly, but first it will be helpful to highlight the similarity between this idea and another.

Wittgenstein is also (and also following Dummett) often characterised as a kind of ‘radical anti-realist’ because—at the very least in the realm of mathematics, and also with respect to statements about ‘inner sensations’; though plausibly in many further domains—Wittgenstein is thought to hold, with the antirealist, that

“the meanings of… statements are tied directly to what we count as evidence for them, in such a way that a statement of the disputed class [say a mathematical statement or psychological ascription], if true at all, can be true only in virtue of something of which we could know and which we should count as evidence for its truth.” (Dummett, 1978c: 146)

The antirealism that Dummett (1978c: 146) attributes to Wittgenstein in relation to mathematics (and indeed also in relation to statements about ‘inner-sensations’) is then ‘radical’ because he takes Wittgenstein not only to deny the ‘realist’ claim that “statements of the disputed class possess an objective truth value independently of our means of knowing it”, but also to deny that the understanding of such statements is to be modelled upon the grasping of truth conditions at all.102 For Dummett this is what Wittgenstein’s appeals to our uses of language come to; the claim that it is in every case ‘assertion conditions’ and never ‘truth conditions’ which govern our life in language.103

102 See for example: (Dummett, 1978a: 446-48). It is also important to note that Dummett does not attribute to Wittgenstein any systematic (or even in theory systematizable) conception of the role that ‘assertion conditions’ (as replacing truth-conditions) play within our language. 103 To be clear, on Dummett’s account, Wittgenstein endorses the idea that any question about the truth-conditions of a statement can only ever return a trivial answer. Or to put the same idea another way, on Dummett’s view, Wittgenstein thinks that any question about the truth-conditions of a statement just is a question about the assertion-conditions of that statement. Dummett employs different vocabulary to attribute this view to Wittgenstein throughout his work. He most often refers to this idea as Wittgenstein’s accepting a “redundancy theory of truth”. See for example: (Dummett, 1978b: xxxiv, 1993a: 238). Though in later work Dummett (1993b: 452) also characterizes this commitment as Wittgenstein’s endorsing a kind of “internalism with a vengeance”. It is also important to note that Dummett does not (himself) think that the idea of treating ‘truth conditions’ as essentially inseparable (or indistinguishable) from ‘assertion conditions’ is in every case a bad idea. Indeed Dummett thinks that such a conclusion is the upshot of Wittgenstein’s so called ‘private language argument’. Dummett does however think that the view he attributes to Wittgenstein: that questions about ‘truth-conditions’ are always redundant is both radical and mistaken. Indeed, Dummett thinks that, in particular, such a view is revealed to be entirely untenable when applied to statements about mathematical necessity.

119

And yet, as Diamond argues in her later work, this kind of characterisation involves a misinterpretation of exactly the same form as the first.104 Which is to say, Wittgenstein is not any kind of anti-realist because Wittgenstein does not deny what anti-realists deny.

The Platonist about mathematical necessity is motivated by the idea that at least some (and perhaps all) mathematical truths must be justified by something independent of our ordinary mathematical practices if they are to be truly ‘necessary’. Thus, as I have already put it, the mathematical Platonist feels compelled to provide an account that would allow us to truthfully say (as if from outside of our own life in language) that ‘mathematical facts would be what they are even if there had never been any human beings.’ The conventionalist about mathematics denies that any such justification can be given. In effect the conventionalist says that it is false to say that things must be like that (if mathematical truths are to be truly necessary). The conventionalist about mathematical necessity then goes on to say instead that things must be some other way (they must be like this—conventionally constituted &c.) if mathematical truths are to truly possess the necessity that they do. So the conventionalist gives an alternative account of mathematical necessity in order to fulfil (or perhaps better: in order to reimagine) the Platonist’s felt-need for an explanation of mathematical necessity in terms of something else—something beyond the context of our ordinary mathematical practices.

Now the conventionalist might reasonably dispute this characterisation, pointing out that on her account nothing beyond the content of our mathematical practices confers the necessity that they possess upon them. But, as Diamond explains it, on Wittgenstein’s view any such conventionalist contention still remains beholden to a misleading picture of what necessity must amount to. And that is because the conventionalist continues to imagine that there must be something (say, some conventional regularity, rule or force) that stands behind (or somehow stands at the heart) of every instance of our proceeding in our mathematical practices in the way that we do. The conventionalist rejects the Platonistic claim that that required something stands outside of our practices and in that way gives them the necessity that they possess, but she continues to posit the need for such a something (a hidden regularity, rule, or force) only now that something is imagined to be found (or at least to be discoverable) within our practices themselves.

Wittgenstein on the other hand does not deny that the there is a hidden something outside of our practices, he does not claim that Platonism is false. Instead Wittgenstein merely reminds us to look to our actual practices and to recognise that in them ‘nothing is hidden’ (§435). Of course, it is easy to suppose that such a reminder must itself be taken as a denial; that Wittgenstein is to be taken as saying ‘nothing is hidden, so Platonism is false’. (And, if we do so take Wittgenstein, then it is easy to understand why, seeing that he is also not advocating a traditional conventionalist account, we will be led to suppose that he is also rejecting that kind of account; and so, to suppose further, that he must be advocating some other kind of account). And yet, the difficult but crucial point, according to Diamond (like McDowell) is to understand that Wittgenstein is not trying to answer the Platonist, nor the traditional conventionalist, at all. Instead Wittgenstein’s aim is to show us that there is a way to avoid the confusion that each is mired in—to see the picture that is leading both the Platonist and

104 See for example: (Diamond, 1991e: 15-17)

120

the conventionalist astray for what it is: a picture (and thus not as something that we must answer, nor yet even adopt).105

If we are to understand what Wittgenstein is trying to show us in such instances, then we need to understand the spirit in which his reminders to (§66) “look and see”, or to ask: (§116) “is the word ever actually used in this way in the language in which it is at home?”, are put forward. It is the spirit in which such remarks are entered by Wittgenstein that Diamond (eventually) comes to identify with what she calls the ‘realistic spirit’ of Wittgenstein’s philosophising. Diamond compares this realistic spirit not to the construction of further philosophical theories but to the maintenance of what we call ‘realism’ in literature—say, for example the realism of an attentive literary portrayal of a particular man who has a weakness for cards as over against the portrayal of a ‘literary type’ (say, of the ‘reckless-’ or ‘pitiful gambler’).106 The key point, as Diamond explains it, is that we should not (as Dummett does) understand Wittgenstein’s appeals to our uses of language as appeals to an alternative philosophical theory (say, as Dummett at one point characterises it, toward a kind of theory of ‘radical particularism’)107. Instead we should recognise Wittgenstein’s appeals as pointing towards a realistic alternative to further philosophical theorising.108

This idea can perhaps be made clearer by returning to the case of mathematical necessity, and to an example that Dummett uses to argue against the view that he attributes to Wittgenstein. Dummett points out that on the view that he attributes to Wittgenstein our intuition that certain mathematical necessities are ‘connected’ to one another is relinquished entirely. Take Dummett’s example of the relationship between what we might call ‘ordinary additive counting’ and simple sums of addition. Dummett’s idea is that on the account he attributes to Wittgenstein there is no necessary connection between our counting, say, the number of children in a room (one child at a time) to reach a conclusion (say: = 12 children) and our accepting basic sums of addition regarding the number of children in the same room. Again to use Dummett’s example: ‘5 boys + 7 girls = 12 children’.

According to the view that Dummett attributes to Wittgenstein, nothing other than our deciding to accept each of the independent criteria of correctness that we do accept with regard to ‘ordinary additive counting’ and (entirely separately) with regard simple sums of addition connects (in any way) our coming to the same result in each of the above cases. In principle then, Dummett argues, that (on the view that he attributes to Wittgenstein) there is no reason that we might not have accepted that our criterion of correctness in ‘ordinary additive counting return the result: ‘= 12’ ,with regard to the number of children in a room; while at the same time we might accept a different (imagined) criterion of correctness for

105 C.f. (§133) “… For the clarity that we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear. The real discovery is the one that enables me to break off philosophizing when I want to. - The one that gives philosophy peace…”; (§309) “What is your aim in philosophy? - To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.” 106 See: (Diamond, 1991c: 40). On more than one occasion Diamond offers the example of Charles Dickens, as an author who at times achieves a thoroughgoing realism (in the sense she has in mind) but at other times succumbs to its opposite (and here following George Orwell—and of course Wittgenstein—Diamond suggests the term ‘fantasy’ for the opposite of this kind of realism). See for example: (Diamond, 1991c: 46, 1991a: 292-94) 107 See for example: (Dummett, 1978a: 443-52) 108 C.f. (§108) “…(One might say: the inquiry must be turned around, but on the pivot of our real need.)”

121

calculating the simple sum of ‘5 boys + 7 girls’ from the one we actually do accept—a criterion whereby that sum returned the result ‘= 13 children’. According to Dummett on Wittgenstein’s view there is no reason that someone operating according to this new (imagined) criterion should be forced to conclude that he had made a mistake (either in his ‘ordinary additive counting’ or in his calculation of addition) when in counting (one by one) the number of children in a room, and then adding the number of boys counted in the same room to the number of girls, he came to two different conclusions.

In trying to articulate where (and why) the view that Dummett attributes to Wittgenstein differs from the readings of Wittgenstein put forward by Cavell and Diamond, it will be helpful to note that Dummett does not have the same (or anything like the) conception of ‘criteria’ elucidated by Cavell in mind when he appeals to various ‘mathematical criteria of correctness’’. That is to say, that while Dummett does speak of our ‘mathematical criteria’, he does not think of the ‘criteria’ of our mathematical practices as revealing the grammar of those practices in Wittgenstein’s sense. Rather for Dummett criteria of mathematical correctness are thought to somehow underwrite our practices—and Wittgenstein, in supposedly denying that anything does or could so underwrite our mathematical practices, seems on Dummett’s view to be denying that anything should count as criterial in the mathematical domain at all. Or else, on Dummett’s view, we might say that Wittgenstein’s claim is that we are free to make criteria up as we go along—a conclusion which on any view of criteria would amount to denying that our mathematical practices possess the character of necessity that they do.109 But Wittgenstein does not deny that we can elicit criteria in the mathematical domain (nor, in fact, in any other domain). And Wittgenstein certainly never endorses the idea that we are free to make criteria up as we go along. Rather, as was argued in chapter 2, and as I have been arguing in the earlier sections of this chapter, Wittgenstein conceives of our ‘criteria’, not as underwriting or determining our practices (as if hidden within or beneath them), but as revealing something about the character of our practices as they stand. Criteria do not determine the necessities of our practices, but they do help us to articulate and thus to see those necessities ‘where they do lie’.

Within “the Face of Necessity” Diamond does not herself utilise the notion of criteria to make this point.110 Instead, Diamond characterises the spirit of Wittgenstein’s appeals for us to look and see, or to turn our attention to our actual uses of language, in terms of Wittgenstein’s recommending that we take seriously, what she calls, ‘the physiognomy of our actual practices’. In doing so she offers an illuminating analogy, which helps to demonstrate how a proper understanding of Wittgenstein’s appeals to ‘criteria’ or to the ‘physiognomy of our practices’ serve to dispel the idea that Wittgenstein is attempting to deny anything—and thus also to dispel the idea that Wittgenstein’s claims have the implications (either mathematical or otherwise) that Dummett attributes to them.

109 As for example when Dummett declares “If we say that he (an imagined person as yet unfamiliar with the practice of addition) counted five boys, seven girls and thirteen children then there must have been something which, if he had noticed it, he would have regarded as a criterion for having miscounted, then the effect of introducing him to the concept of addition is not simply described as having persuaded him to have adopted a new criterion for having miscounted; rather, he has been induced to recognise getting additively discordant results as a symptom of the presence of something he already accepted as a criterion for having miscounted.” 110 Though she does employ the notion of ‘grammar’ to make essentially the same point in ‘Wright’s Wittgenstein”. (Diamond, 1991f: 216)

122

Diamond asks us to think of the (necessary) relationship between our practices of ordinary addition and our practices of counting (one by one) as analogous to our ability to recognise the expressions upon different picture-faces. We see, for example, a clear smile in one picture-face, the hint of smile in another, perhaps a smile only in the eyes of a further picture-face (the expression of which is otherwise decidedly neutral). If we encounter another person who is unable to recognise what we recognise as a smile on a picture-face—or who perhaps even identifies what we would call a ‘frown’ or ‘a terse expression’ as a ‘smile’—then we will find that we do not share criteria in this respect (at least with this person) after all; we (us and he) do not see the same sense in these picture-faces. (As I have been arguing throughout this thesis, that will itself occasion an opportunity—perhaps for accommodation, perhaps for refusal, perhaps merely for further engagement—but that is not the point that I wish to emphasise here). The point that I wish to emphasise here, and which Diamond emphasises in opposition to Dummett, is that we do not think that the expression on a particular picture-face need be explainable in terms of anything outside of the kinds of justifications that we ordinarily give for our judgements about picture-faces—the kinds of judgements that the elicitation of our criteria about what we call, for example, ‘a smile’ or ‘a grin’ or ‘a smirk’ articulate. We do not think that our realisation that another might not go on (and perhaps is not going on) in the same way as us, with regard to judging-picture faces, requires explanation in terms of anything other than the way in which we each actually do go on in making such judgements.

Diamond’s claim then, is that throughout the Investigations, and particularly throughout the so called ‘rule-following considerations’, Wittgenstein is trying to get us to see that—to put things in terms of Diamond’s analogy—we are able to recognise that certain picture-faces have ‘the same expression’ in exactly the same way that we can recognise that certain of our other practises—say our practices of ordinary addition and our practices of counting (one by one)—have the same sense. Which is to say, our ordinary practices of going on in the same way (both mathematical and otherwise) are determined by nothing other than the content and course of those practices themselves. Furthermore, as Diamond explains it, Wittgenstein’s aim in the so called ‘rule-following considerations’ is to show us that any appeal to a mysterious something either existing outside of our practices or underlying our practices from within (say, in the form of some underlying rule or regularity) could not serve to elucidate the necessity that those practices do possess. Rather the search for such a ‘something’ could only serve to distort our conception of what the necessity of our practices must come to.

In properly appreciating this point it is crucial to note that—to say that our practices are not underwritten by anything other than the content and course of those practices themselves, is not to offer some further psychological (or any other kind of) explanation of those practices. It is precisely to say that our practices (or capacities) possess a kind of necessity that is not explainable in terms of anything other than their being the practices (or capacities) that they are. Which is to say, that our practices are not determined by arbitrary decisions any more than they are determined by external or underlying rules.

Another way to put the same idea is to say that our practices (or capacities) would not be the practices (or capacities) that they are if they did not possess the character that they do. It is always possible that we might encounter someone who appears to count (one by one) as we do, but who is also unwavering and unshakeable in his acceptance of the statement ‘5 boys + 7 girls = 13 children’. And yet, faced with such an individual, we could not say that he was

123

doing anything that we might recognise either as counting or calculating—we should have to say that we do not understand the sense that either of these activities has for him (‘we cannot find our feet with him’).111 And here we can see the force that a mathematical proof has for us: a proof articulates (and thus makes perspicuous) a necessity in our practice. Of course one can always refuse to accept a proof—but unless one can then show that the proof is mistaken (which is to say, that unless one can show that the proof does not really articulate the necessity in our practice that it purports to), one will not have called the proof into question (as a proof).

An individual who rejects a mathematical proof without adequate justification demonstrates his incompetency in mathematical practice. To say that such an individual is merely employing ‘a different rule’ could then only be to suggest that he is following a different practice. (And perhaps he is). But unless that practice can itself be made intelligible to us, and indeed made intelligible to us in its relation to our mathematical practices, we will not suppose him to be doing mathematics (only differently). We may not know what the sense of his activity is, but that could not threaten the necessity of our mathematical practices in any way. As Diamond (1991b: 249) puts it:

“To go on to ask, ‘If a difference in sense is not a matter of different rules, what is it?’ is like asking ‘If a description of the expression on a picture-face is not just a complicated method of describing lines and dots, what is being described?’ It is not a shortcoming of philosophy that it should not be able to produce a something in reply, should not indeed have a reply beyond ‘Don’t you know?’ (a nudge, not an answer; it does not mean “We all know, of course, what it is, only it is impossible to say’).”

So Wittgenstein is not any kind of conventionalist because he does not deny what conventionalists deny. He does not deny that there is a something beyond our ordinary mathematical practices that gives them their necessity. And yet, nor does Wittgenstein ask us (as the conventionalist does) to reimagine what that something might be, and thus to redirect our search for the underpinnings of necessity within our practices. Instead Wittgenstein attempts to get us to see that the search that the Platonist and the conventionalist are both engaged in is itself misguided—it is a search that we need not undertake because we do not need the kind of explanation that we imagine (or hope) that such a search might provide.

Here then we can see that Diamond’s and McDowell’s interpretations and arguments about mathematical necessity essentially come to the same point. But as I have already noted, Diamond’s characterisation of this idea is particularly helpful because understanding Diamond’s (later) positive articulation of the ‘realistic spirit’ of Wittgenstein’s philosophising merely requires that we come to see that the same point has a much broader application in Wittgenstein’s later work. Throughout her work Diamond expresses the broader aim of Wittgenstein’s philosophy not just in terms of his attempts to disarm misleading pictures, but also in terms of his trying to get us to see the distorting effects of the ‘metaphysical’ or ‘philosophical’ requirements that we impose upon phenomena. As Diamond explains, the ‘metaphysical’ character of such requirements is not only to be understood as manifest in the Platonistic fantasy of an external justification of our life in language, but as also and equally

111C.f. (§ 325). Nonetheless, given enough context (enough familiarity) we might come to see the sense that such statements have for this individual. In that case we should once more find ourselves occasioned with the second-personal responsibilities of acceptance, or accommodation, or refusal. (C.f. Cavell’s (1979: 115-17) discussion of Wittgenstein’s ‘wood-sellers’ example).

124

present in any account which would purport to answer to (or else lay down) a preconceived notion of the way things must be.

For Wittgenstein it is always in turning to the actual character of our life in language that such metaphysical requirements are shown to be essentially empty—and empty because unneeded. In Diamond’s (1991e: 20) words:

“The criticism of the metaphysical demand by Wittgenstein is never that what is demanded is not there, that there are no facts of the kind which is necessary if the demand is to be met. Our needs are met, but how they are met we can see only by what Wittgenstein calls the ‘rotation of the axis of reference of our examination about the fixed point of our real need’ (PI §108).””

Coming to see that our needs are met, requires what Diamond calls our “open-eyedly” giving up the quest for explanations which would fulfil the kinds of metaphysical requirements that we imagine must be met in our philosophising. As Diamond puts it: “Open-eyedly, that is not just stopping, but with an understanding of the quest as dependent on fantasy.” But that does not mean that Wittgenstein is interested merely in disputing the sense of various philosophical theories—he is, as Diamond, explains it, interested in recalling us to a kind of realism in philosophy which is itself difficult (“the hardest thing” as Wittgenstein says) but also immensely valuable.

Cavell (1969c: 61) expresses essentially the same sentiment as early as in “The Availability of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy” when he writes:

“For Wittgenstein, philosophy comes to grief not in denying what we all know to be true, but in its effort to escape those human forms of life which alone provide the coherence of our expression. He wishes an acknowledgement of human limitation which does not leave us chafed by our own skin, by a sense of powerlessness to penetrate beyond the human conditions of knowledge.”

We should by now be in a very good position to see that Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations within the Investigations, do not stand as an argument (or pair of arguments) about the conditions of adequacy for a theory of the normativity of our life in language. Rather each horn of what McDowell characterised as ‘Wittgenstein’s dilemma’ represents a misleading (though tempting) picture that can lead us to suppose that we need a substantial philosophical explanation as to why (or how) something that we do as a matter of course—our successfully applying concepts to different objects in different situations—is not utterly (perhaps even metaphysically) impossible. Wittgenstein is, as Diamond’s work makes clear, not interested in denying that certain philosophical explanations (say, those of the Platonist or the conventionalist; the regulist or the regularist) meet the ‘adequacy conditions’ of a theory of normativity—indeed he is not interested in denying anything. So on the readings of Wittgenstein put forward by Cavell, McDowell and Diamond that I have been discussing, Wittgenstein could not be expected to accept Brandom’s claim that we need a substantial philosophical explanation of the normativity of our life in language. And yet, as I have already noted, Brandom himself acknowledges that Wittgenstein would ‘not approve’ of his project. Nonetheless, it should by now be clear that Brandom’s further claim: that such ‘adequacy conditions’ can still be extracted from Wittgenstein’s work, is itself the symptom of a deep misunderstanding of the significance of that work and of Wittgenstein’s philosophical method.

If Brandom is to successfully maintain that we require a substantial philosophical explanation of the difference between our normative activities and mere causal regularities, he cannot

125

draw his justification or explanation of that requirement from Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations. And yet, I should note that I do not mean to suggest that there is no difference between our normative practices and ‘mere causal regularities’ or ‘responsive dispositions’—there is, as we might say, all the difference in the world between my life in language and (to speak somewhat metaphorically) the life of a rock, or a bird, or a tree. But if Wittgenstein, Cavell, Diamond, and McDowell are successful in their attempts to help us to break free of the picture—to use McDowell’s characterisation—of rules as rails, and from the alternative (often Platonistic) picture that would encourage us to imagine that we require a ‘sideways on’ view of our life in language, then it is not clear what should drive us to look for the difference between, say, me and a brick (or a daisy, or a parrot).112 Again I do mean not to say that there are not any number of differences between normative practices and non-normative occurrences nor to downplay the significance of those differences. There are, of course, countless differences between people, objects, plants and animals as well as countless differences between the things that they each do—and, of course, those differences matter. I mean only to question the idea that once we have dispelled the illusions that lead us to imagine that our capacity to ‘go on in the same way’ within our normative practices must be based upon something else (something beyond the content and course of those practices themselves—in all their richness), we require a further answer to a question about the ground of that capacity anyway—an answer of the kind that would identify some specific difference between normative activities and non-normative occurrences in general.113

Brandom clearly thinks that we do. And, as he himself notes, his strategy in providing such an account is informed by a desire to avoid the potential mis-steps that he believes Wittgenstein’s dilemma exposes. So Brandom’s complex ‘deontic score-keeping’ model cannot be accused of succumbing to either of the illusions identified (on McDowell account) by Wittgenstein’s dilemma. The question then must be whether Brandom’s account of norms as implicit rules of practice (made explicit via the deontic scorekeeping model) provides a realistic illumination of our life in language (in Diamond’s sense) or represents a further consoling (but ultimately illusory) kind of myth. In the next section I will argue that Brandom’s ‘deontic scorekeeping model’ of our normative life in language does represent a different though equally problematic kind of consoling fantasy. But before I do that, I would like to turn to consider what I perceive to be an important difference in the emphasis that McDowell and Cavell (respectively) place upon certain ideas within their works. I will argue that an appreciation of this difference can help us to articulate something that I would like to

112 C.f. Cora Diamond’s excellent article “Eating Meat and Eating People: (Diamond, 1978: esp. 470). C.f. Wittgenstein’s remark at (§25):

“It is sometimes said: animals do not talk because they lack the mental abilities. And this means: “They do not think, and that is why they do not talk.” But – they simply do not talk... Giving orders, asking questions, telling stories, having a chat, are as much a part of our natural history as walking, eating, drinking, playing. 113 McDowell himself (arguably) reintroduces something like the need for this kind of explanation in Mind and World by introducing the idea that there is a philosophically useful distinction between the ‘spontaneity’ and ‘receptivity’ of our thought—and a subsequent need to account (philosophically) for the difference between the ‘space of reasons’ and the ‘realm of (natural) law’. See for example: (McDowell, 1994: 4-5, 7-13). I think that by McDowell’s own lights the apparent re-introduction of this problem gives us good reason to be suspicious of the supposed philosophical utility of the spontaneity/receptivity distinction (even if that distinction is ultimately supposed to be ‘Platonically Naturalised’ on McDowell’s account).

126

call (adapting a late phrase of Diamond’s) Cavell’s conception of the ‘difficulty of the ordinary’. I will ultimately wish to argue that it is this—what Cavell perceives as the ‘difficulty of the ordinary’—that Brandom’s deontic scorekeeping model of our life in language distorts in a problematic way.

V. The Difficulty of the Ordinary.

I have so far been emphasising the commensurability of Cavell’s, McDowell’s, and Diamond’s accounts of Wittgenstein’s vision of our life in language; and also of each thinker’s conception of the philosophical significance of that vision. In this section, I should make clear, that I do not mean to underestimate the importance or the extent of the agreement between these three interpretations (and interpreters) of Wittgenstein. And yet I perceive an important difference, in particular, between McDowell’s and Cavell’s conception of Wittgenstein’s proposed philosophical settlement—what Cavell calls the possibility of ‘an acknowledgement of human limitation’. I believe that this point of difference has important consequences with regard to the conception of the significance of the individual human voice in the work of McDowell and Cavell respectively. Indeed I intend to argue that the significance of voice is almost entirely obscured on McDowell’s account. And, I will claim that it is McDowell’s focus upon the pervasive character of our agreement in language; at the expense of the acknowledgement of both the reality and possibility of our disagreeing in language, which leads to this apparent oversight. I should note, however, that I do not mean to suggest that McDowell falls into the error of postulating anything like a ‘framework of grammatical rules’ governing our life in language. The difference that I wish to call attention to, is in effect one of emphasis. As such it is not a difference that is open to any kind of simple demonstration.

As I have just being saying, the divergence which I wish to highlight between McDowell and Cavell is a subtle one, and so, I will for the time being limit myself to a discussion of those two thinkers. But of course there is a further question that must arise in this context, and that is whether my criticisms of McDowell might also be applied to Diamond’s interpretation of Wittgenstein. That is itself an interesting but complicated question. I shall have a little (though only a little) to say on that matter once we have the distinction that I wish to highlight between McDowell and Cavell in clearer view.

McDowell claims that:

“the point of PI §198, and part of the point of §§201-202, is that the key to finding the indispensable middle course [between Scylla and Charybdis] is the idea of a custom or practice”

But McDowell also emphasises that we should not think of this idea of a ‘custom’ or ‘practice’ as something that could ever be understood in reductive terms. Nor does he think that our customs or practices need to be backed up or revealed by a constructive philosophical enterprise (like that which Brandom proposes). Rather McDowell (1998: 207, 1984: 351) suggests that we should think of our normative linguistic practices as involving something like: “a congruence of subjectivities”, or: “a capacity for a meeting of minds”. In Mind and World, McDowell comes to characterise the same idea by speaking of our life in language as the product of our inheritance of (and initiation into) what he calls a ‘Bildung’. And, as McDowell (1994: 84) explains it, this Bildung or “initiation into conceptual

127

capacities” is itself understood to facilitate a kind of ‘second-nature’—an idea that McDowell ultimately identifies with what he calls a kind of “Naturalised Platonism”.114

But importantly within all of these discussions McDowell focuses almost exclusively upon the extent of our agreement in language. And so the possibility of disagreement—and perhaps most importantly, the possibility of irresolvable and yet still rational disagreement—is almost entirely overlooked.115 Hilary Putnam has pointed to a similar distinction between McDowell and Cavell’s work in the moral domain. As Putnam (2012a: 48) puts it, on McDowell’s view of ethical judgements: “moral disagreement is far in the background. But what is most distinctive about Cavell’s description of morality… is precisely the centrality of disagreement.” Unfortunately I do not have the space to explore the significance of this idea in the moral domain. But I believe that Putnam’s observation here is astute, and further that it has its roots in McDowell’s and Cavell’s conceptions of our life in language more generally.

One place that I believe this distinction of emphasis—and its consequences—can be profitably illuminated is in McDowell’s and Cavell’s respective interpretations of Wittgenstein’s metaphorical gesture at (§217). At (§217) Wittgenstein writes:

“Once I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: “This is simply what I do.”

In “Non-Cognitivism and Rule Following” McDowell (1998: 211) argues that:

“…we would be protected against the vertigo [induced by the perceived problem of the foundationlessness of our life in language] if we could stop supposing the relation to reality of some area of our thought and language needs to be contemplated from a standpoint independent of that anchoring in our human life that makes the thoughts what they are for us.”

And in “Wittgenstein on Following a Rule” McDowell offers an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s ‘turned spade’ metaphor which largely fits with the same idea. As McDowell (1984: 348) puts it:

“Wittgenstein warns us not to try to dig below ‘bedrock’. But it is difficult, in reading him, to avoid acquiring a sense of what, as it were, lies down there: a web of facts about behaviour and ‘inner’ episodes describable without using the notion of meaning.”

McDowell (1984: 349) then goes on to claim that:

“It is true that a certain disorderliness below ‘bedrock’ would undermine the applicability of the notion of rule following. So the underlying contingencies bear an intimate relation to the notion of rule-following… But realizing the intimate relation must not be allowed to obscure the difference between levels.”

Finally, McDowell associates this idea with what he calls ‘the limits of empiricism’.116

So on McDowell’s view Wittgenstein’s metaphor of ‘bedrock’ and the experience of finding one’s ‘spade turned’ is a warning about a potential philosophical failure to differentiate between two levels at which inquiry might proceed. The level ‘below bedrock’ is imagined as the level at which empirical (say natural scientific) investigation aims while the level ‘above bedrock’ is the level at which inquiry into meaning must be aimed—and Wittgenstein’s point,

114 See for example: (McDowell, 1994: 87, 91-92, 95, 125) 115 McDowell’s discussion of what he calls ‘hard cases’ in “Non-cognitivism and Rule Following” provides an important exception. See: (McDowell, 1998: 208-11). That idea is discussed in more detail below. 116 See: (McDowell, 1984: 349 n.42)

128

on McDowell’s account, is that we must not confuse these two ‘levels’. The implication seems to be that everything will be alright (investigation will proceed smoothly enough) so long as we do not make the mistake of supposing that we can investigate the notion of ‘meaning’ itself in ‘sub-bedrock’ terms. That is, so long as we do not assume that when we understand what a person means, what we are really doing is constructing a kind of prediction—based upon mere regularities describable in non-normative terms—of what he will go on to do or say in the future. The idea here is roughly that we understand what another person means, when he says, for example, ‘did you dress that way voluntarily?’ because we understand what we would mean if we said ‘did you dress that way voluntarily?’; and further that this understanding is not reducible to any ‘level’ that would discount the significance of ‘what we say when…’.

I do not mean to suggest that this idea is antithetical to Cavell’s concerns in any way. But it should be apparent that the emphasis here is entirely upon the possibility of our agreeing in language. Indeed that is what allows McDowell to suggest that so long as we resist the temptation to underwrite what we say (and mean, and understand) in terms of something outside of the conditions of our human capacities for sharing meaning in our language, things will go smoothly enough—we can as he puts it, ‘avoid the vertigo’.

But Cavell’s vision of ‘the ordinary’ (which is to say, of our shared life in language) is not one of harmonious and unproblematic agreement (through-and-through). And this is reflected in his very different interpretation of Wittgenstein’s metaphor at (§217). Where McDowell considers Wittgenstein’s metaphor as conveying a fairly isolated (though no doubt important) point about the limits of empiricism, and the dangers of trying to give a reductively naturalistic account of ‘meaning’; Cavell very deliberately seeks to locate Wittgenstein’s metaphor within what we might call its broader ‘narrative’ setting in the Investigations.

The idea that Wittgenstein’s philosophy cannot be separated from the mode of writing employed within the Investigations—that the manner in which Wittgenstein gives voice to his work is inseparable from the teaching that he hopes to offer—is one that Cavell always seeks to impress upon his readers. And in this case Cavell’s attention to the broader setting of Wittgenstein’s metaphor brings out the undeniable sense of a kind of tension or confrontation in (§217) in a way that McDowell’s account seems to overlook entirely. Indeed even taken in isolation, the claim (or inclination to claim) that “this is simply what I do” is clearly supposed to be jarring (in the context of a philosophical text) in a way that McDowell’s interpretation fails to capture.117

Cavell seeks to illuminate and interrogate the sense of, what he identifies as, a ‘crisis’ at (§217) by connecting Wittgenstein’s ‘bedrock’ metaphor with what Cavell calls Wittgenstein’s ‘scene of instruction’—beginning at (§143) and continuing through Wittgenstein’s subsequent discussions of ‘reading’; but coming to the point of Cavell’s interest most clearly in (§185). In (§185) we are brought to imagine a pupil who has been taught to write the series of natural numbers by continuing the series according to the order (or instruction) add one (+1) at each interval. Wittgenstein (§185) then writes:

“Let’s suppose we have done exercises, and tested his understanding up to 1000. Then we get the pupil to continue one series (say “+ 2”) beyond 1000 – and he writes 1000, 1004, 1008, 1012. We say to him,

117 C.f. also Wittgenstein’s (§1) (almost comically) abrupt assertion that “Explanations come to an end somewhere” in the opening section of the Investigations.

129

“Look what you’re doing!” – He doesn’t understand. We say, “You should have added two: look how you began the series!” – He answers, “Yes, isn’t it right? I thought that was how I had to do it.” —– Or suppose he pointed to the series and said, “But I did go on in the same way”. – It would now be no use to say, “But can’t you see . . . ?” – and go over the old explanations and examples for him again.”

It is in response to this kind of case that Cavell understands Wittgenstein’s metaphorical assertion of (§217) to arise. Thus it is, on Cavell’s reading, the teacher who finds himself with justifications exhausted—his spade turned—unable to continue in the fashion that he had thought to; unable to go on ‘as a matter of course’. But the experience of resistance, hence the hardness of bedrock, is not imagined on Cavell’s reading, to indicate a difference of levels—say, as on McDowell’s account, between the natural or empirical and the normative. Rather the experience of striking ‘bedrock’, on Cavell’s reading, is identified with the experience of being confronted with the activity of another. And it is important on Cavell’s reading that this other is recognisable as intelligible. As Wittgenstein continues in (§185):

“In such a case, we might perhaps say: this person finds it natural, once given our explanations, to understand our order as we would understand the order “Add 2 up to 1000, 4 up to 2000, 6 up to 3000, and so on”.

This case would have similarities to that in which it comes naturally to a person to react to the gesture of pointing with the hand by looking in the direction from fingertip to wrist, rather than from wrist to fingertip.”

Cavell emphasises that in either the case of continuing the series or responding to the gesture of pointing in the odd way that Wittgenstein describes, the interlocutor (or pupil) undoubtedly acts strangely; but his behaviour is by no means outside of the realm of what Wittgenstein calls our ‘natural reactions’ – it is not entirely unintelligible. What is more the interlocutor or pupil’s behaviour is clearly related (intelligibly enough) to our ‘normal’ practices. As Cavell (1990a: 88) improvises upon Wittgenstein’s final remark at (§185):

“There is decisively good reason (justification, explanation) for the direction in which we normal ones look—it allows me to point for you in the direction I am looking in, so that ease and accuracy are incomparably better assured than in the alternative possibility. But I can imagine that someone just may not get it, or perhaps find what we call pointing horrifyingly rude, or for some reason feel the need to sight along my arm as along a rifle, which is easier done from the finger end. Reasons are not likely to be more use now than pointing also with the other hand and perhaps making repeated punching gestures with both arms.”

There is a crucial point to be made here about our capacity to share our criteria; and it is perhaps because McDowell does not employ the Wittgensteinian notion of criteria that he underplays the significance of this idea. Sharing criteria is a way we make things matter to one another—sharing criteria involves drawing another’s attention to those things which, for example, I count as significant within a situation; of making such things count for us. As Cavell notes this idea of counting is related to that of accounting and the manifold ways in which we undertake activities of accounting in our human life together – telling, tallying, recognising, recording, re-ordering, coding, exposing &c. Thus the sharing of our criteria is not limited to our explicitly linguistic interactions. Counting things as significant, accounting by providing account in and of our world in the manner that makes possible the recounting of criteria—making things matter (by saying, or showing – gesturing, or avoiding, venerating or ignoring &c.) are not activities that necessarily presuppose agreement—but they are activities that seek agreement (or acknowledgement).

130

Making things matter to one another is also not something that we do with reasons alone. In intelligibly communicating with one another we need neither appeal, nor have implicit recourse, to underlying reasons. The human being that Cavell imagines ‘making repeated punching gestures with both arms’ does not reason that the forward movement of his arms will convey what mere pointing could not—as if constructing a hypothesis that his interlocutor will finally infer his meaning from the addition of gesticulation (and perhaps also exasperation) to his gesture. The pertinent object (whatever he is attempting to call attention to) is there, the interlocutor will see it or he won’t; reasons come to an end somewhere.

And yet, it is essential to recognise that what Cavell is recommending here is not an acquiescence into a picture of our practices as, at base, irrational—unjustified and unjustifiable. Nor should he be taken as suggesting that when reasons run out mere inclinations (say, reactive dispositions) must take over. What Cavell is recommending is instead a more fully human recognition of what the failure of reasons in the face of another (human being) comes to—hence Cavell is suggesting neither that our life in language has an ‘irrational’, nor a ‘merely conventional’, basis; but instead that our life in language has a human basis.

Here Cavell notes that it is crucial that Wittgenstein does not say that when justifications come to an end ‘I am licenced to say: ‘This is simply what I am inclined to do’.118 That, as Cavell notes, would be to acquiesce in the kind of reductive dispositional account that, as both Cavell and McDowell argue, Wittgenstein is everywhere resisting. But nor does Cavell seek to downplay the possibility of irresolvable disagreement in language. As Cavell argues, the pupil of Wittgenstein’s scene of instruction, and his divergence from our ordinary ways of going on ‘doing the same’, is not supposed to present a problem that might only arise in particular mathematical cases, but a problem that can occur anywhere in our ordinary life in language. The possibility identified in Wittgenstein’s ‘scene of instruction’ is just the same as that in which another might go on (at any time), using or projecting a concept in a way that we struggle to understand; or the possibility that I might (at any time) go on, in a way that I take to be natural enough, and yet find that others do not understand me. Cavell (2013: 54) argues that this idea is of central importance to Wittgenstein; as he puts it:

“…the griefs to which language comes are not disorders, if that means they hinder its workings; but are essential to what we know as learning or sharing language, to our attachment to our language; they are functions of its order… One may perhaps speak of language and its form of life – the human – as a standing opportunity for the grief (as if we are spoiling for grief) for which language is the relief”

We can begin to see the significance of this idea by returning to Cavell’s interpretation of Wittgenstein’s scene of instruction. Cavell stresses that the actual words that Wittgenstein accords to the figure of the teacher (or speaks in the voice of tuition) are “I am inclined to say: ‘this is simply what I do’.” But as Cavell notes, what I am inclined to say is not necessarily what I go on to say.119 As Cavell argues the teacher’s inclination might convey a sense of exasperation—but the good teacher will not say ‘this is simply what I do’ as an authoritative instruction – a refusal of further engagement or explanation. It is equally possible that the teacher’s expression of inclination will precipitate (or perhaps itself already articulates) restraint, patience, maybe even hesitance and perhaps most importantly need not involve any kind of denial of what Cavell (1990a: 72) calls: “readiness—(unconditional)

118 See: (Cavell, 1990a: 70) 119 See: (Cavell, 1990a: 71)

131

willingness—to continue presenting himself as an example, as the representative of the community into which the child [pupil] is being… invited or initiated.”

For Cavell then it is crucial that we do not abstract Wittgenstein’s metaphor from the (imagined) human situation in which it arises in order to attempt to obtain a philosophical (one-and-for-all) conclusion about what it means (or philosophically implies). On Cavell’s reading it follows that the ‘bedrock’ of our understandings and justifications is not something given or set by the limits of our practice (either once-and-for-all or ‘in practice’ – where that is still taken to mean in some sense definitively). Rather for Cavell (1990a: 72): “‘Reaching bedrock’ is disputable”. Among persons, at times, we may of course lose patience. But, at other times we may find patience or else discover new as yet unrecognised ways (or ways to attempt) to go on. An impasse is only ever something that is encountered here and now; unless or until we refuse to allow that a settlement (a way forward) might be found.

Again the issue of accommodation is of central importance here because the question of whether and to what extent we will accommodate the dissonances and divergences in criteria that we encounter in the face of others is something that we must bear responsibility for. Again, as Cavell stresses in his explication of Wittgenstein’s ‘scene of instruction’ this is never a once-and-for-all matter. We may find that we can accommodate the pupil’s proceeding with his odd criteria (say in counting or in reacting to gestures) up to a point, but we may also find at another time (or times) that we cannot—his behaviour is too mad; we cannot live with him always proceeding like that; so we refuse to; he is not one of us.

It is noteworthy in this regard that Cavell, in reflecting upon his own ‘whirl of organism’ passage in relation to Kripke’s rule-skeptical argument, characterises that passage not just as offering an alternative picture to the one that Kripke is proceeding with (though it surely does that also) but as reflecting what he calls: “Wittgenstein’s insight into the collapse of a picture of authority.” It is the possibility of our disagreement (as well as our agreement) in language—of our capacity not just to affirm our shared criteria; but also to deny criteria as so shared—that allows for the complete collapse of an illusory picture of what authority in language (or philosophy) must come to, and thus for the recognition of the alternative vision of responsibility that Cavell advocates.

As Cavell writes in a further essay, our responsibility for criteria—our ability not only to affirm but to deny their status as shared—is essential to what makes criteria ours.120 If we could not forgo our agreement in criteria, we would not be responsible for them in the way that we are, and they could not express our interests and thereby express us as completely as they do. To focus on this aspect of criteria however is to focus upon the fact that criteria are not fully stable. We have reason to be anxious about the loss of our agreement—because that is and must remain a standing possibility for our relation to our criteria.

So McDowell’s declaration that we could be ‘protected from the vertigo’ that Wittgenstein’s vision of our life in language is liable to induce if we could only disavow the idea that our life in language requires justification from an imagined ‘outside point’, seems, on Cavell’s account, to underdiagnose the difficulty that Wittgenstein’s vision of our life in language locates us within. But what of Diamond’s account of Wittgenstein’s realism? Does the realism of the ‘realistic spirit’ that Diamond both identifies, and advocates similarly overemphasise the extent of our agreement in language at the expense of a more complete

120 See: (Cavell, 1994a: 5)

132

acknowledgement of the potential for our disagreement in language?—and hence fail to fully acknowledge the instability of our agreement in criteria?

That, as I have already said, is an interesting but complicated question. In part it is a complicated question because Diamond’s writings on Wittgenstein and on the ‘realistic spirit’ of Wittgenstein’s work are far more extensive than the handful of articles in which McDowell explicitly concerns himself with elucidating Wittgenstein’s philosophy. It is also a complicated question because there are a number of different ‘threads’ of interest and argument that Diamond pursues in her various writings on Wittgenstein.121

I have already said something about the similarities between Cavell’s and Diamond’s respective interpretations of Wittgenstein. Unfortunately, I do not have the space to investigate the (possible) divergences between Cavell’s and Diamond’s Wittgenstein inspired visions of philosophical methodology in anything like the detail that such an investigation deserves. However, I will highlight some key points of comparison that I believe any such investigation should need to examine. I will also register some preliminary observations regarding each of these points and their relation to the criticism of McDowell that I have been putting forward. I hope that doing so will both highlight the need for a more thoroughgoing investigation of the relationship between Cavell’s and Diamond’s respective works, and at the same time help me to further clarify the significance of the criticism of McDowell that I have been developing thus far.

As I have already noted, in “The Face of Necessity” Diamond makes the important point that Wittgenstein (in his later work) does not merely wish to expunge pictures that he deems to be ‘false’, or even inherently misleading, from our thinking. Wittgenstein’s aim is not to remove ‘false pictures’ but to help us to see those places at which we are liable to extend the application of otherwise useful pictures into domains where they become distorting. As Diamond puts it,

“[to say that a picture is] misleading is not to say that we should really give up using the picture, stop talking that way. It is no accident that we do; no mischievous demon has been at work in our language putting in misleading analogies which the philosopher can simply discard when he has seen through them… To give up altogether the pictures that mislead us when we talk as philosophers about proof and reasoning would be to give up—not Platonist mathematics—but mathematics, reasoning, inference, what we recognise as making sense, as human thinking. The picture of necessity behind what we do is not then to be rejected, but its application looked at.”

Nonetheless, I think it is fair to say that (at least) in her early papers, Diamond is not as interested as Cavell is in identifying the source (or sources) of our tendency to be misled by certain pictures in our thinking—a tendency that Cavell eventually comes to identify with our desire to transcend ‘the ordinary’ or, as we might put it, to go beyond the realism of the ‘realistic spirit’. And, as I will go on to argue in the following section, I believe that Cavell’s interest in identifying and understanding the sources of the potential for ‘philosophical’ or ‘metaphysical’ distortions in our thinking is inherently tied to his interest in the possibility of our disagreeing in language, as well as his interest in the second-personal responsibilities that that potential for disagreement implicates us within.

121 This point is well illustrated by the fact that Diamond’s, The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy and the Mind, contains two separate (though interconnected) introductions, suggesting two distinguishable ‘threads’ of argument according to which that collection might itself be read.

133

To be clear, I do not mean to suggest that either Diamond or McDowell deny the possibility of our disagreeing in language.122 Only that that possibility is not at the forefront of either these thinker’s investigations (as it is for Cavell). Nonetheless, while I see this fact as presenting something of a distortion in McDowell’s account of our life in language the issue is more complicated in Diamond’s case.

Diamond’s interest in the continuity between Wittgenstein’s early work in the Tractatus and his later work in the Investigations –what has come to be called her ‘resolute reading’ of the Tractatus – need not in itself be understood to emphasise our agreement in language over and above the inherent instability of our criteria. In fact, as I will argue later in the current section, Diamond’s reading of the Tractatus, as well as her emphasis upon the importance of understanding Wittgenstein’s criticisms of his own earlier Tractatus views within the the later work, provides an important argument against the kinds of views put forward by both Brandom and Baker and Hacker. And, as I will also argue, that argument can itself help to articulate the benefits of Cavell’s much more realistic vision of criteria.

However, in The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy and the Mind, Diamond also emphasises the continuity between the anti-psychologism of Frege’s project in devising his Begriffsschrift—and particularly Frege’s conception of what Diamond calls ‘the mind’—and Wittgenstein’s work (both early and late). Diamond’s emphasis upon and conception of the strength of that continuity might be taken to involve a focus upon the possibility of our agreeing in language (hence the possibility of our coming to a non-psychologistic account of the content of ‘the mind’) at the expense of a proper recognition of the possibility of irresolvable disagreement in language (and hence about the content of ‘the mind’ or even ‘the ordinary’).

And yet in Diamond’s actual application of this idea I do not find any tendency to dictate what will (or must) count as thinkable—what it could be for thought or logic to be “in agreement with itself”, as Diamond, following Kant, puts it. In fact, in Diamond’s moral philosophical work she is consistently concerned, not with dictating the limits of moral thought, but with suggesting the expansion or re-conception of those limits. To put things in Cavell’s terms, in her more explicitly moral work Diamond never seeks to dictate what will count as ordinary (or moral) for us, but only to make her own voice heard in the contestation of that space – to articulate where she stands and hopes that we might stand.

Nonetheless, Diamond’s resolute reading of the Tractatus and particularly her discussions of the notion of ‘nonsense’ in Frege and Wittgenstein, have also been connected to a ‘therapeutic’ reading of Wittgenstein’s work sometimes referred to as the ‘New Wittgenstein’. I shall have more to say about such ‘therapeutic’ readings and the relation of such readings to Cavell’s work in the closing section of this thesis. For the time being it wil suffice to say that I do not think such readings can be fully defended against the charge of over-emphasising our agreement in language and thus providing a somewhat distorted vision of our actual life in language.

Finally, in more recent work Diamond has addressed exactly the issue that I have noted was not a major focus within her earlier papers—the issue of the source of our tendency to be

122 Indeed, in closing “The Face of Necessity” Diamond (1991b: 261) emphasizes that nothing she has said could serve to guarantee our language, or our life in language, against the possibility of ‘breakdown’. See below for further discussion of McDowell’s related invocation of ‘hard cases’.

134

misled by certain pictures in our thinking, or, as I otherwise put it, the source of our wish to transcend the ordinary; to speak outside of language; or to somehow go beyond the realism of the realistic spirit.

In her (2003) paper “The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy”, Diamond identifies our desire to transcend or ‘deflect’ concerns about the instability of our life in language in terms of what she calls ‘the difficulty of reality’. There is a great deal that might be said about this complicated and important idea. It is an idea that is ripe for further investigation and clarification (as I believe all of the possibilities for comparison between Cavell’s and Diamond’s works that I have just been highlighting are). Yet for the time being I would like to note only that Diamond’s notion of ‘the difficulty of reality’ seems to me to identify a particular (and no doubt particularly interesting) instance of a broader kind of second-personal difficulty that has concerned Cavell throughout his work.

Diamond (2009: 45-46) characterises ‘a difficulty of reality’ as an experience:

“in which we take something in reality to be resistant to our thinking it, or possibly to be painful in its inexplicability, difficult in that way, or perhaps awesome and astonishing in its inexplicability. We take things so. And the things we take so may simply not, to others, present the kind of difficulty, of being hard or impossible or agonizing to get one’s mind around.”

Diamond’s first example of such a ‘difficulty of reality’ is the knowledge of the possibility (and indeed the reality) of abrupt and violent death; in particular the knowledge of the deaths of a group of young men in World War I as contrasted with the appearance of the same young men (smiling and full of life) in a 1914 photograph—itself the subject of a Ted Hughes poem. Her second example is the knowledge of our industrial slaughter of animals for food and the effect that that knowledge has upon Elizabeth Costello in J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals. While Diamond’s final example of a ‘difficulty of reality’ is communicated in Holocaust survivor Ruth Klüger’s account of her experience of ‘incomparable and inexplicable’ goodness in the altruistic (and personally endangering) act of a fellow prisoner at Auschwitz.

Without wishing to detract from these rich and difficult examples, or from Diamond’s important notion of the ‘difficulty of reality’, I would like to suggest that the kinds of difficulties that Diamond is here pointing to are themselves (again particularly important and interesting) instances of a broader kind of difficulty. Namely, the second personal difficulty of our sharing criteria—of making things matter to one another in and through language. Of course, the second-personal difficulties that arise in the kinds of cases that Diamond focuses upon are significantly heightened (in some cases perhaps even immeasurably so) when compared to most everyday acts of linguistic communication. As Diamond herself notes the kinds of cases that she is focused upon involve aspects of reality that are difficult, or painful, or mind-boggling—they are, as we might say, too much to bear. But the kind of difficulties that Diamond is interested in arise, at least in part, as difficulties precisely in the fact that we feel the need to share these experiences—these perceptions of reality—to make these things matter to others as they do (or might) matter to us. In arising from our need to share—from what Cavell calls our being ‘the creatures who talk’—what Diamond calls ‘difficulties of reality’, at least in part, exemplify a kind of difficulty that is (while perhaps different in force) no different in kind, from the everyday difficulties of our talking and acting together—the possibilities of our finding or failing to find agreement in our criteria.

135

Following Diamond, I would like to characterise this kind of broader second personal difficulty as “the difficulty of the ordinary”. And, leaving Diamond’s more particular discussions of ‘difficulties of reality’ to one side, I would like to say something more about the centrality of what I am calling ‘the difficulty of the ordinary’ to Cavell’s work.

What I am suggesting might be called ‘the difficulty of the ordinary’, Cavell himself describes in terms of what he calls the ‘threat of skepticism’—and he sees a link between this general condition of our life in language and more familiar epistemological forms of skepticism (primarily external world skepticism). I do not mean to deny that important link. But I believe that characterising this issue in terms of the ‘threat of skepticism’ can suggest (and has been taken by many to suggest) that this issue must be (or is best) approached through the lens of a particular epistemological difficulty. I do not think that that is the case. In fact I think that that perception has had a significantly distorting effect upon the reception of a great deal of Cavell’s work. (Nor, it must be said, can Cavell be characterised as entirely blameless in this regard.) But I will return to these issues in the following section.

For now I wish only to note that what I am calling the ‘difficulty of the ordinary’ is a pervasive theme throughout Cavell’s work. What is more I wish to suggest that appreciating the ‘difficulty of the ordinary’ is essential to understanding the complexity; the inextricable potential for contestation; and even the latent sense of crisis (or the possibility of crisis) in the picture of our life in language that Cavell puts forward in opposition to certain consoling philosophical myths. The ‘difficulty of the ordinary’ is something I find almost entirely overlooked in McDowell’s portrait of our life in language. And yet an adequate articulation of that difficulty is essential to the power of ‘the ordinary’—what we might call its power as an honest counter-vision of our life in language. It is only in acknowledging the ‘difficulty of the ordinary’ that the philosophical desire for sublimation and mythologization can be effectively countered.

McDowell comes closest to acknowledging what I am calling the ‘difficulty of the ordinary’ in his discussion of the possibility of what he calls ‘hard cases’ in “Non-Cognitivism and Rule Following.” In that paper McDowell (1998: 209) identifies the possibility of cases of: “disagreements, which resist resolution by argument, as to whether or not a concept applies.” And he continues:

“If one is convinced that one is right on a hard case, one will find oneself, saying, as one’s arguments tail off without securing acceptance ‘You simply aren’t seeing it’, or ‘But don’t you see?’. (McDowell, 1998: 209)

McDowell is surely right that such cases do occur. And, in a footnote, McDowell (1998: 209 n.15) makes the further astute observation that:

“Where hard cases do occur, the agreement that constitutes the background against which we can see what happens as, e.g. disputes about genuine questions, cannot be agreement in judgements as to the application of the concepts themselves…What matters is, for instance, agreement about what counts as a reasonable argument; consider how lawyers recognise competence in their fellows, in spite of disagreement over hard cases.”

But McDowell says very little else about these kinds of cases. He seems to think of them as further cases that might induce a kind of ‘vertigo’ in us, but as essentially atypical. Cavell on the other hand stresses that every case holds the potential to reveal itself as what McDowell calls a ‘hard case’. As Cavell puts it, within the Investigations Wittgenstein wants to reveal to

136

us that the positions of the text—the position say of the teacher and the pupil (or child)—are our positions. That at any moment, in the face of the other, I may be called upon to affirm or deny criteria; to affirm my criteria and deny yours, or to accommodate yours—which might well involve denying (relinquishing or reconceiving) my own. And the kind of recognition that this task implicates us in (and as responsible for) is not just recognition of linguistic competence (though it is that too) but recognition of the other’s intelligibility. The question of my negotiating and accommodating criteria is thus a question of my willingness to recognise another as intelligible, reasonable, or even rational, and hence to see (or try to see) and acknowledge the intelligibility in their way of going on. Thus for Cavell the threat of what McDowell call’s ‘vertigo’ is one that we cannot overcome because it is one that might arise at any time.

What McDowell describes as ‘vertigo’ is the fate that our life in language both delivers us from (in our capacity to share criteria) and to (in our responsibility to measure and maintain the extent of that agreement). As Cavell (1990a: 92) puts it:

“We understandably do not like our concepts to be based on what matters to us…;it makes our language unstable and the instability seems to mean what I have expressed as my being responsible for whatever stability our criteria might have, and I do not want this responsibility; it mars my wish for sublimity.”

It is this idea that Cavell identifies with what he calls ‘our disappointment with criteria’. For criteria cannot do, precisely the thing that we wish they could. Criteria do deliver stability—and it is for the most part stability enough (enough for us)—but it is not the stability that (in certain, sometimes philosophical, frames of mind) we would like. Our wish is not for absolute stability—stability for stabilities sake, as it were. (As we have already said the adaptability of criteria through the possibility of projection is part of what gives our language the power that it has). What we really desire is a different kind of stability—an imagined kind of stability that would absolve us of our responsibility for it; something that could somehow stand independent of our being implicated in its maintenance. As Cavell (1990a: 77) puts it:

“What justifies what I do and say is, I feel like saying, me—the fact that I can respond to an indefinite range of responses of the other, and the other, for my spade not to be stopped, must respond to me, in which case my justification may be furthered by keeping still. The requirement of purity imposed by philosophy now looks like a wish to leave me out, I mean each of us, the self, with its arbitrary needs and unruly desires.”

I have been arguing that the ‘difficulty of the ordinary’ shows up most clearly in the confrontation with the other. Which is to say that the ‘difficulty of the ordinary’ is most clearly disclosed when we focus upon the fact, not that we possess a shared language, but that we actively share language—that our sharing language is an inherently second-personal activity. I have also been claiming that McDowell’s focus upon the extent of our agreement in language obscures this fact; hence obscures the possibility of a philosophical recognition of the significance of the individual human voice in language.

These observations might profitably occasion a return to our consideration of Brandom’s constructive philosophical project. Because despite the concerns that I have expressed about whether we need a substantial philosophical explanation of the normativity of our life in language in general; Brandom’s account does appear particularly sensitive to the concerns about the centrality of ‘second personal recognition’ that I have been attempting to articulate.

137

Indeed Brandom provides a helpful summary of a widespread philosophical problem, the perception of which fits well with Cavell’s concerns. Brandom argues that in a great deal of contemporary philosophy, which would (rightly) seek to recognise the social character of our language use, there is nonetheless what Brandom (1998: 39) calls an: “ orienting mistake… of treating I-we relations rather than I-thou relations as the fundamental social structure.”

Brandom claims that his deontic scorekeeping model is designed to remedy this significant oversight. And the central place accorded to the notions of commitment and entitlement within Brandom’s account would, at least initially, appear to fit well with the issue of our responsibility for (and to) language, which I have been stressing. Nonetheless I would now like to suggest that Brandom’s deontic scorekeeping account offers us a different but equally illusory myth about our relation to our language and thus a distorted account of the responsibilities that our life in language implicates us in. I wish to argue that despite his insistence on the primacy of second-personal commitments and entitlements, Brandom’s account of the ‘city of words’ set forth by the norms implicit within our linguistic practices—the metaphorical city which houses our life in language—sets forth a picture of a city that is, in an essential sense, devoid of people. Thus Brandom’s account of our second-personal deontic scorekeeping practices stands as an account of a kind of second-personal practice without persons.

The decisive (distorting) step in Brandom’s account, is one that is entered with very little argument or explanation. As Brandom (1998: 17) puts it in Making it Explicit:

“The leading idea of the account to be presented… is that belief can be modelled on the kind of inferentially articulated commitment that is undertaken or acknowledged by making an assertion”. (second

emph. added)

A conception of the primacy (primordiality and centrality) of ‘assertion conditions’ within our life in language is, in a later essay, proposed by Brandom in direct contrast to Wittgenstein’s vision of language. As Brandom (2009: 120) puts it there, ‘the game of giving and asking for reasons’, which is itself principally conceived as the game of trading in assertions to which one is subsequently committed and for entitlement to which one is answerable:

“…is not just one game among others one can play with language. It is the game in virtue of the playing of which what one has qualifies as language (or thought) at all.”

And Brandom continues:

“I am here disagreeing with Wittgenstein, when he claims that language has no downtown. On my view, it does, and that downtown (the region around which all the rest of discourse is arrayed as dependent suburbs) is the practices of giving and asking for reasons.”

This idea is not so much argued for, as laid down in advance by Brandom. It is a requirement of the kind of account that Brandom wishes to put forward—and we will return to that idea. But for the time being I wish merely to highlight the extent of Brandom’s divergence from Cavell’s (and Wittgenstein’s) vision of language, and to explain why that divergence matters.

On Brandom’s account implicit recognition of proprieties of practice characterizable in terms of inferential commitments and entitlements conferred upon participants (by each other) when they make and recognise assertions is the fundamental (normative) practice which lies at the bottom of our life in language. Though once our language is stripped back to this basic

138

‘downtown’ no explanation as to how other kinds of language use develop out of this supposedly basic and grounding capacity is provided.

Indeed it is very difficult to see how any such account could be provided because on Brandom’s view these basic inferential capacities are conceived to be totally divorceable from the contingencies of our human life in language. The game of giving and asking for reasons as Brandom describes it could be played by Martians, or computers, or disembodied intelligences &c.123 In fact this is presented as an advantage of the account—it represents a kind of rational-cosmopolitanism. But that idea itself depends upon the notion that there must be some specific difference between normative and non-normative behaviour. And that is an idea that, as I have been arguing, Wittgenstein’s vision of our life in language is, at least in part, designed to disabuse us of.

And yet, as I have been arguing Wittgenstein does not wish to disabuse us of the idea that our rational capacities are somehow (say, in principle) isolable from our human capacities merely because of a kind of anti-rationalist sentiment or a vague commitment to something called ‘philosophical quietism’. Wittgenstein aims to disabuse us of the confused idea that our rational capacities could be totally disassociated from our human capacities and interests because that idea serves to distort our understanding of our actual life in language. And most importantly, for our purposes, that idea serves to obscure the significance of the individual human voice in language. As such the idea that our rational capacities are fundamentally isolable from our human capacities as language users serves to distort the actual responsibilities that our life in language implicates each of us in. Brandom’s picture of idealised responsibilities of inferential commitment and entitlement serves in this way to significantly distort the character and extent of our actual responsibilities in talking and acting together.

Brandom does not overlook the principle site in which ‘the difficulty of the ordinary’ reveals itself. Which is to say he provides an account of our linguistic encounters with others and our active sharing of language. But he offers a distorted picture of the difficulty of the ordinary—in fact he offers a picture upon which the difficulty of the ordinary is characterised as no real difficulty at all. And we can see how (and why) this is the case by turning once more to consider Wittgenstein’s ‘scene of instruction’ of (§185).

On Brandom’s account our assertions are to be understood as ‘standings in the space of reasons’ the kinds of acts that implicate us in webs of inferential commitment and entitlement and for which we can be asked (and ask others) for justifications. But a person is not a node of inferential commitments and entitlements. And we can begin to see what is wrong with this picture by noting how poorly it captures Wittgenstein’s parable of the deviant pupil. For how might we possibly interpret the ‘inferential commitments and entitlements’ of Wittgenstein’s deviant pupil – either in the case of his odd way of going on mathematically (so to speak) or in the case of his acting in an odd way in response to a gesture, say an act of pointing? As we have already said the pupil’s behaviour in such a situation is not entirely

123 Given the number of commitments and entitlements as well as various ‘sets of books’ (with regard to who takes who to be committed and entitled to what on any given occasion) which Brandom’s scorekeepers are imagined to keep track of, the scorekeeping practices that Brandom describes would seem rather well suited to beings possessed of digital powers of computation (and recall). How exactly human capacities of cognition ‘keep up’ with this quasi-intellectual activity (to the extent that they must) on Brandom’s account is less than clear.

139

unintelligible (not fully unnatural) though we might have no confidence in ascribing a particular intelligence (a particular coherence) to it here and now. It is certainly difficult to imagine that we could (or should) attribute some definite set of inferential commitments or entitlements to the pupil on the basis of his behaviour; nor does it make much sense to suppose that in encouraging him to see things our way we will proceed merely by offering reasons (moves in a discursive language game of asserting). Indeed Wittgenstein’s (§185) point in the parable is precisely that, as he puts it, in the face of the pupil’s incomprehension of his abnormality: “It would… be no use to say, “But can’t you see . . . ?” – and go over the old explanations and examples for him again.” And yet for all that we do not discount the pupil as acting outside of the sphere of intelligibility. Instead the pupil’s behaviour presents us with a difficulty, and the responsibility of response.

On Brandom’s picture of Wittgenstein’s ‘scene of instruction’ we lose sight entirely of the essential question that that scene sets out for us. Which is to say, we lose sight of what Cavell describes as:

“…the question of how we each, how I, for example, take my representativeness of what is said and done as the source of my authority in speaking for us.”

But that question is the central question that the ‘difficulty of the ordinary’ raises. To avoid it by proposing a notion of implicit rules, even if those rules are understood to be the dynamic products of ‘I-thou’ acts of (assertive) communication (and the attribution and acknowledgement of inferential commitments), is to lose sight of the ‘difficulty of the ordinary’ entirely. And it is the ‘difficulty of the ordinary’ that makes our language (and our criteria) ours. It is the difficulty of the ordinary which allows us to learn, teach and project criteria and thus actively share our language with one another. As we might put it, inference comes too late to explain our capacity for projective imagination. For how might one understand even the most basic of projective uses of language inferentially? What inferential commitment or entitlement could licence the projection of the term put in the move from the instruction to ‘Put on your best clothes’, to the equally intelligible instruction to, ‘Put on your best manners’, and then to the question ‘Who put you up to this?’. Such projections are just not related to each other inferentially and yet they are absolutely essential to our ordinary uses of language.

It is crucial to remember that Wittgenstein’s ‘scene of instruction’ is not supposed to represent some specific act of initiation. Rather Wittgenstein’s scene records (in the form of a kind of parable), and recalls us to the fact, that every use of language is a kind of initiation, or perhaps better an invitation to others to recognise our world and our relation to (and in) it, as we stand, here and now.

On the basis of these reflections we might begin to suspect that Brandom’s inferential deontic scorekeeping model represents a different (highly complex) way of mythologising our life in language. And hence a different way of attempting to repudiate the responsibilities that we are implicated in by our shared life in language. As Cavell puts it in a slightly different connection:

“Driven by philosophy outside of language-games and in this way repudiating our criteria, is a different way to live, but it depends on the same fact of language as do the other lives within it – that it is an endless field of possibility and that it cannot dictate what is said now, can no more assure the sense of what is said, its depth, its helpfulness, its accuracy, its wit, than it can assure its truth to the world. Which is to say that language is not only an acquirement but a bequest…”

140

I said that we would return to the idea that our language is, at base, an activity of assertion, and to consider the fact that this idea was not a discovery of Brandom’s inferential scorekeeping model but a requirement. I would now like to connect that idea with Baker and Hacker’s tacit theoretical assumption that our use of language must be a rule-governed practice. I do not mean to suggest that Brandom’s and Baker and Hacker’s conceptions of the sense in which rules are somehow implicit within our linguistic practices is the same. But I do wish to point out that their accounts share a structural similarity. Which is to say that each sets forth the idea that our use of language must be a rule-governed enterprise as the requirement of a broader project.

If the normativity of our life in language must be explainable in terms of our language-use being a rule governed practice then it seems as if it must also be the case that rule-following behaviour is constitutive of our language use. Which is to say that nothing could be language use if it did not involve the following of certain constitutive rules. That is precisely what Brandom’s claims about assertion being the ‘downtown of language amount to. But the same idea is also reflected (though in a different way) in Baker and Hacker’s characterisations of our use of language as a rule-governed practice. As Baker and Hacker (2008: 297) put it, rules of grammar: ‘determine the senses of expressions in use [and] constitute standards of correctness”.124

But if we are to accept the idea that certain rules are constitutive of our language-use as language-use then we must ask (as we did in the section III(a)) what those constitutive rules are; and how we are to identify them?

I have been claiming, in relation to Wittgenstein’s ‘scene of instruction’ that Brandom’s account of implicit rules as proprieties of normative practice articulable in terms of inferential commitments and entitlements does not offer a satisfactory account of our life in language—and in fact offers a distorted picture of our responsibilities both to and for our criteria. But Backer and Hacker’s answer to the above question is not Brandom’s. Backer and Hacker’s account of rules as ‘internal’ to our practices is supposed to avoid just the kinds of problems that I have been arguing Brandom’s account faces. For Baker and Hacker nothing beyond an individual’s behaving as she does and being willing to demonstrate that she takes herself to be going on ‘in the same way’—by for example, continuing to go on in that way; and offering her continuation itself as an example of what going on ‘in the same way’ comes to—is required to constitute her following a rule.

Nonetheless since Baker and Hacker still require their notion of ‘following a rule’ to possess a kind of general authority they also claim that the constitutive rules of language use are ultimately just the grammatical rules that the Wittgensteinian philosopher uncovers in her investigations of our uses of language. And yet as we have already seen, the kinds of ‘grammatical rules’ identified by Baker and Hacker go beyond merely describing what actual language users do (in given cases). They set down limits or rules to which acceptable uses of language must conform—and in that way constitute the ‘bounds of sense’. As we also saw in section III(a) this gives rise to a problematically stipulative account of what can and cannot be intelligibly said; one that does not appear to correspond with our actual life in language at all. As we noted then, such an account seems entirely ill-equipped to adequately describe our undeniable linguistic capacities of ‘projective imagination’. And as we have since seen the

124 For further examples see: (Baker and Hacker, 2009: 25, 29, 46)

141

ability to project words (and hence to project concepts), as well as to follow such projections, into new contexts is a fundamental characteristic, not only of our life in language, but also of the responsibilities that we are implicated in by our life in language.

We should now be in a position to note that Baker and Hacker’s invocations of grammatical rules do not explain or uncover the normativity of our life in language at all. Because the normativity that Baker and Hacker purport to uncover in terms of the ‘rules’ of language is not derived from a description of language alone; but from the imposition of supposed ‘grammatical rules’ according to the presuppositions of their own philosophical project. (Hence the apparent discovery of a kind of essentially rule-governed normativity). The fact that this idea is imposed upon rather than uncovered by a mere description or clarification of our life in language becomes clear once we realise that the ‘rules’ which Baker and Hacker purport to identify arise as a requirement of their project itself. As we have seen our life in language is much more complex and dynamic than any account of language as a rule-governed practice could ever hope to capture. And as we have also seen such an account necessarily fails to recognise the difficulty of the ordinary—and hence the extent of our responsibility, not only to and for our language, but also for the extent and maintenance of our intelligibility to one another.

The idea that what counts as ‘going on in the same way’ is ‘internal’ to our practices of ‘going on in the same way’ in given cases—which is to say that what counts as ‘going on in the same way’ is ‘internal’ to what we call ‘going on in the same way’ in given cases—is unproblematic. But that idea is unproblematic because it is essentially empty. It cannot provide the basis of any substantial account of (or methodological commitment to) the idea that our language use must be a rule-governed practice. Indeed in so far as the idea of an ‘internal relation’ is useful here, it is useful only as a reminder that we should not attempt to impose any further notion (like that of a ‘rule’ or ‘framework of rules’) upon our understanding of what it is to ‘understand’ something—what it is to manifest criteria for going on ‘doing the same’ in a given situation. Again, this is an idea that Diamond has stressed throughout her work.125

Oskari Kuusela (2008) argues in his, “The Struggle against Dogmatism: Wittgenstein and the Concept of Philosophy”, that in this respect, Baker and Hacker commit an error that bears an important relation to the mistake that Wittgenstein characterises himself as having made within the Tractatus. As Kussela explains it, Baker and Hacker, in assuming that our life in language must be a rule-governed practice, project the requirement of their philosophical investigation (the requirement that there be specifiable grammatical rules of language) onto the object of their investigation (our life in language) in just the way that Wittgenstein identified himself as having projected his assumptions about the necessary structure of the relationship between language and world (what he called ‘the general form of the proposition’) onto his investigations of language within the Tractatus.126

125 Indeed Kuusela’s criticism of Baker and Hacker (discussed below) is clearly indebted to Diamond’s work explicating the importance of properly understanding Wittgenstein’s criticisms of the Tractatus within the Investigations, if one is to appreciate the spirit and significance of the later work at all. 126C.f. Wittgenstein’s assertion at (§104): “ One predicates of the thing what lies in the mode of representation. We take the possibility of comparison, which impresses us, as the perception of a highly

142

In this respect it is noteworthy that Baker and Hacker fail to heed Wittgenstein’s fairly explicit warnings that his invocations of ‘rules’ and ‘language games’ are to be treated as objects of comparison only. As we have already noted, in (§130) Wittgenstein writes that:

“Language games stand there as objects of comparison which, through similarities and dissimilarities, are meant to throw light on features of our language.”

And even more explicitly in (§131):

“…we can avoid unfairness or vacuity in our assertions only by presenting the model as what it is, as an object of comparison—as a sort of yardstick; not as a preconception to which reality must correspond. (The dogmatism into which we fall so easily in doing philosophy.)

We are now also in a position to see that Brandom’s account suffers a similar fate. Searching for a substantial philosophical difference between what he calls ‘mere causal forces’ and the fundamentally different ‘force of the better reason’, Brandom is lead to interpret Wittgenstein as providing conditions of adequacy for any viable philosophical account of the ‘force of the better reason’ and then builds a substantial constructive philosophical account of this ‘force’ as having its basis in implicit normative proprieties of practice. But Cavell offers us a way of reading Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations which allows us not only to question such, apparently illusory goals, but to expose their source in our own desire to absolve ourselves of our actual responsibilities in language. There is no ‘force of the better reason’ that must compel us as rational beings independent of our individual acknowledgements and acceptances of our responsibilities in (and for) our language (and thus in and for our life in language amongst each other). Cavell captures exactly what is illusory about the idea that things could be otherwise when he writes:

“Since in following a rule there are no risks nameable in advance, and my responsibility is forgone beyond reluctance or gladness, and there is no alternative interpretation to be seen, it might strike us that a rule has a power of compulsion beyond anything we know. Then it might further strike us that it is we who are yet more powerful than rules since we can pick and choose among them. But perhaps we are only choosing the length of the chains that hold us… The counter-idea of my spade’s being turned is a ‘symbolical expression’ (§221) of the rules impotence as my impotence in subjecting anyone else to it.”

I would like to close this thesis by saying something about Cavell’s vision for a kind of philosophical activity that resists the temptation to mythologise our life in language in unhelpful ways and thereby attempt to resist falling into a familiar kind of dogmatism. I would also like to say something about the centrality of the notion of ‘voice’ to that vision. But before I can do that I must briefly say something about why Cavell describes what I have been calling ‘the difficulty of the ordinary’ in terms of what he calls the ‘threat of skepticism’. That will require me to say something about the crucial difference between skepticism as an epistemological thesis, and skepticism as a threat. That in turn, is a distinction that, as I will explain, Cavell does not always draw as clearly as he might have done.

general state of affairs.” For Kussela’s detailed and compelling diagnosis of this problem in Baker and Hacker see in particular: (Kuusela, 2008: sec. 2.32, 3.1-3.3)

143

VI. The Threat of Skepticism.

I have said that what I have been calling ‘the difficulty of the ordinary’, Cavell calls ‘the threat of skepticism’ and that Cavell sees this idea as related in an important way to more familiar forms of epistemological skepticism—in the first instance (and perhaps most importantly) to Cartesian skepticism about the external world. I would now like to explain that connection. But I would also like to explain why, though Cavell’s conception of ‘skepticism’ and of the ‘threat of skepticism’ is crucially important to almost all of his work, I believe that it is also the site of a number of prominent and problematic confusions about his work. It has been part of my exegetical strategy in this thesis to hold off the issue of ‘skepticism’ and of the ‘threat of skepticism’ until we were in the best possible position to explicate (and importantly also to distinguish between) these two central Cavellian ideas. But holding off must end somewhere.

Let us begin then by saying something briefly about the historical genesis of Cavell’s interest in the skeptical problematic—and in (broadly) Cartesian external world skepticism in particular. As Cavell tells it in the foreword to The Claim of Reason, while pursuing his graduate studies in philosophy at Harvard, Cavell attended a series of lectures and a graduate seminar given by (the visiting) J.L. Austin. These encounters as, Cavell (1979: xv) recalls: “knocked me off of my horse”, causing him to give up upon a partially completed dissertation and to embark upon serious philosophical study of what I have been describing as the ‘value of ordinary language philosophy’. Cavell (1979: xvi) began teaching at Berkley while still working on his dissertation (The Claim to Rationality) and during that time he reports that:

“The shock for me in Austin’s procedures was doubled by Thompson Clarke’s ability to accept and absorb these procedures, almost completely, within rather than against the procedures of traditional [skeptical] epistemology…Clarke’s work seemed to show, that the dictates of ordinary language…were as supportive as they were destructive of the enterprise of traditional [skeptical] epistemology.”127

In fact it was, as Cavell tells it, ultimately Cavell’s dissatisfaction with Austin’s understanding of the relationship between his own work and the (skeptical) epistemological tradition that drove Cavell to begin ‘serious study’ of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations.128

Thus, as I noted in chapter 2, Cavell’s discussions of the Investigations and of Wittgenstein’s notions of ‘criteria’ and of ‘grammatical investigation’ within The Claim of Reason are entered, everywhere and from the first, in relation to the problem of philosophical skepticism.

And yet, as I also noted in chapter 2 of the current work, Cavell’s discussions of skepticism from at least as early as chapter 2 of The Claim of Reason invoke an expanded conception of ‘skepticism’ that can be difficult for the reader (and even the studied reader) to follow. Recall that, as Cavell (1979: 46)puts it in chapter 2 of the Claim of Reason:

127 Thompson Clarke is a figure whose influence upon 20th century epistemology and the study of skepticism is belied by his relatively sparse published output (Clarke published only two papers in his lifetime: “Seeing Surfaces and Seeing Physical Objects” and “The Legacy of Philosophical Skepticism”). For an excellent discussion of Clarke’s important influence upon Cavell’s thinking about skepticism (particularly in part II of The Claim of Reason) see: (Norris, 2017: esp. 52-70) 128 See: (Cavell, 1979: xvi-xvii)

144

“[I take] the very raising of the question of knowledge in a certain form, or spirit, to constitute skepticism, regardless of whether a philosophy takes itself to have answered the question affirmatively or negatively.

And as Cavell continues:

“[This] is a perspective from which skepticism and (what Kant calls) dogmatism are made in one another’s image, leaving nothing for choice.”

In chapter 2 of the current work I said that it would be profitable, in light of these difficult ideas, to place the issue of skepticism to one side and to see how far we could get in pursuing Wittgenstein’s notions of ‘criteria’ and of ‘grammatical investigation’ independent of Cavell’s particular concern with the relation of those ideas to the issue of skepticism. I believe that we have come very far indeed. In fact from the vantage point that we have achieved upon Cavell’s project, I believe that we are now in a position to provide not only a clear explication of Cavell’s expanded conception of skepticism, but also to draw an important distinction, which Cavell himself draws in various places—and yet does not always adequately emphasise. That is, the distinction between ‘skepticism’ as a thesis and what Cavell calls ‘the threat of skepticism’.

Cavell understands the confrontation between the traditional ordinary language philosopher and the traditional (say, external world) skeptic, as providing a kind of paradigm case of the way in which any of our concepts, at any time, either in philosophical disagreement or in ordinary life, may come to irresolvable grief.

For Cavell the skeptical surmise of the philosopher who comes to doubt the existence of the external world represents a kind of limit case of the contestability of our criteria—because the external world skeptic repudiates criteria in a manner that appears to be entirely self-defeating. In demanding a criterion for existence (that he subsequently cannot find) the external world skeptic repudiates all other criteria. Hence his doubt becomes a kind of world-defeating and even self-annihilating denial of our (and his own) life in language. As Cavell points out, if Cartesian pressure can be applied to our world-involving criteria (and give us cause to repudiate them), then criteria of self-recognition will fair no better.

And yet on Cavell’s understanding, as we have seen, the possibility of repudiating criteria is an essential feature of what makes our criteria ours. Thus for Cavell even though the external world skeptic’s denial of our criteria is a kind of world annihilating self-denial it is not something that criteria can themselves be invoked to refute. Instead, because our capacity to refuse criteria is essential to what makes our criteria ours; their refusal (even in the extreme external world skeptical case) must remain a standing possibility.

That idea allows us to see why Cavell expands his conception of ‘skepticism’ not only to include the possibility of various skeptical doubts but also to include constructive epistemological attempts to refute such doubts. Because constructive epistemology itself does violence to our criteria. It does so by attempting to constrict or galvanise criteria in a way that is intended to protect them from skeptical doubt, but which, at the same time alienates us from them. As I have been stressing our capacities to project, recognise and accept or reject criteria in given cases are essential to the status of those criteria as ours. But it is these capacities that the constructive epistemologist seeks to restrict or deny in attempting to secure our concepts from skeptical doubt.

As David Macarthur (2014: 14) helpfully puts it:

145

“[T]he term ‘skepticism’ [for Cavell] comes to name the violence we do to our everyday criteria for the applications of ordinary concepts whether by way of excessive doubt or constructive epistemological ambitions to quell such doubts.”

And as Macarthur also notes, it is important to recognise that in this context Cavell’s conception of the problem of ‘skepticism’ is not treated in fundamentally epistemic terms. The problem of ‘skepticism’ on Cavell’s enlarged conception is a fundamentally semantic problem.129 ‘Skepticism’ in this sense, for Cavell names not an exclusively epistemic possibility, but a possibility of our life in language—the standing possibility that we may repudiate our criteria (or find our criteria repudiated by others).

Macarthur presents Peter Unger’s discussions of the concept of ‘flatness’ as a helpful example of this standing (semantic) possibility. Unger argues that ‘flat’ is an absolute concept. Thus the criterion for saying that a surface is ‘flat’, on Unger’s view, is that there is no other surface that is flatter. Of course, if we accept this criterion we will soon find that we must forgo calling almost everything that we would ordinarily call ‘flat’, flat: tables, cricket pitches, roads &c.—all are more or less ‘bumpy’ when compared with the absolute ideal. As Macarthur (2014: 13) puts it: “Unger is suffering from what we might call a small bout of skepticism in Cavell’s [enlarged] sense, since he is openly attacking the ordinary criteria for whether some ordinary object, like a table, is flat or not.”

But it is crucial to note, that on Cavell’s view, an appeal to criteria alone cannot give us justification for rejecting Unger’s claims about ‘flatness’. It is necessary to our criteria functioning as they do, and our being responsible to and for them (as we are), that Unger be free to make such a projection of the concept ‘flat’. So the kind of skeptical challenge to our criteria that Unger’s projection of the term ‘flat’ sets forth is not something that an appeal to criteria alone can overcome. Rather it is a standing possibility of any such appeal—if an appeal to criteria were not always contestable then appeals to criteria (hence to the ordinary) would not possess the power that they do.

So the ‘threat of skepticism’ (or what I have been calling the ‘difficulty of the ordinary’) is a standing possibility of our life in language. But we must also make a distinction between what Cavell calls the ‘threat of skepticism’ and ‘skepticism’ (in Cavell’s enlarged sense) itself. As we said above ‘skepticism’ in Cavell’s enlarged sense is the standing possibility that we may find our criteria repudiated (by others, or indeed by ourselves). But Cavell’s considered view is that not just any repudiation of criteria will amount to ‘skepticism’. Instead, Cavell suggests, that the term ‘skepticism’ should be reserved only for those (possible) repudiations of our criteria that we cannot or will not accommodate.130

It is, for example, unlikely that we cannot (or will not) accommodate Unger’s stipulations about talk of ‘flatness’. While we certainly will not look to him if we need a road laid or some surveying done, we need not find his commitment to talking in the strange way he does about ‘flatness’ intolerable. But Cavell is impressed by the observation that there are cases that are not like this (cases that we cannot even imagine accommodating)—and Cavell thinks

129 It should be noted however that Cavell’s enlarged conception of skepticism understood in fundamentally ‘semantic’ terms is not anything like what is often called ‘semantic skepticism’ within the tradition. Which is to say it is not an attack on a particular philosophical conception of meaning (say as captured in a truth-conditional semantic theory); but rather an attack on our life in language in its full existential significance. 130 See for example: (Cavell, 1990a, 2006: esp. 134-38)

146

that in such cases the inherent fragility of our criteria (hence of our life in language) shows up most starkly for us. The case of the external world skeptic, according to Cavell presents a kind of paradigm of such a case because in the case of external world skepticism it seems as if the skeptic’s attacks upon our ordinary criteria are intolerable. We cannot accommodate the skeptic (or the skeptic in each of us) when his conclusion is, for example, that criteria for seeing or knowing that the world exists are never fulfilled. And yet, Cavell emphasises that there is no clear line (laid out beforehand, as it were) between the dissonances and divergences in criteria we can or will accommodate and those which we cannot or will not. Again, our responsibility to accept, accommodate or refuse criteria is an integral part of what makes our criteria ours.

In The Claim of Reason Cavell comes to describe the standing possibility of the repudiation of criteria as the ‘truth of skepticism’. As Cavell famously puts it:

“Our relation to the world as a whole, or to others in general, is not one of knowing, where knowing construes itself as being certain.”

Later, elaborating on the same theme, Cavell declares that the ‘moral of skepticism’, on his view, is:

“that the human creature's basis in the world as a whole, its relation to the world as such, is not that of knowing, anyway not what we think of as knowing.”

But these broadly epistemological formulations, as Cavell sets them out in The Claim of Reason, may be misleading. The ‘truth of skepticism’ is, for Cavell, not any kind of epistemological thesis. Indeed he does not mean what he calls ‘the truth of skepticism’ to stand as a thesis at all, but as a kind of reminder. It is in the first instance a reminder that, for example, our life in language is not built upon the certain application of definite and rigid concepts (somehow known independently to apply), but upon the negotiation and acceptance of criteria. Our relation to ‘the ordinary’, and thus our life in language, is not one of knowing or failing to know, but of accepting—or else accommodating or refusing—and in so doing, taking responsibility for criteria

It is also crucial to note that this move to the ‘level’ of criteria is in no way meant to suggest that our life in language is unproblematic. Criteria are disappointing precisely because they hold (and offer us) no guarantees. Cavell speaks of skepticism as containing a ‘truth’ or ‘moral’ because he thinks that the skeptic sees that the hope for a kind of stability independent of our active acceptance and acknowledgement of criteria is illusory. He sees the hopelessness of our hope for a kind of stability which does not require (and hence absolves us of) our responsibility. But the skeptic draws the wrong conclusion from this observation. Epistemological skepticism interprets our disappointment with knowledge as the discovery of a (negative) fact. And so on Cavell’s account, the skeptic’s interpretation of his own discovery is confused. What the skeptic discovers is not a (negative) fact; but rather, what I have been calling ‘the difficulty of the ordinary’. So skepticism is not ‘true’ but it points the way to an uncomfortable truth about the reality of our life in language—and it is this that Cavell describes as the ‘threat of skepticism’.

We should by now be able to see why I have been suggesting that this distinction, and the terminology that Cavell uses to mark it, is somewhat confusing. As such we might profitably reformulate what Cavell calls ‘the truth of skepticism’ in non-epistemological terms—both in order to stress that the ‘truth of skepticism’ is not supposed to be any kind of solution to

147

external world skepticism for Cavell, and to differentiate the ‘threat of skepticism’ (as a kind of broad existential problem about the fate of criteria) from external world skepticism (as one possible form that that broader problem might take.)

For Cavell then, we might say that the ‘truth of skepticism’ is the realisation that the ‘difficulty of the ordinary’ cannot be overcome in general (once-and-for-all). Cavell characterises his own work as endlessly attempting to remain alive to this fact. As Cavell (1990b: 35) puts it in a later essay, he sees his work as an “attempt to keep philosophy open to the threat or temptation to skepticism.”

Connecting the ‘truth of skepticism’ to what I have been calling ‘the difficulty of the ordinary’ in this way, also allows us to clarify that the conception of knowledge that the constructive epistemologist pursues and that the traditional skeptic denies is just one form of a broader capacity for a kind of fixation that the human desire or drive to transcend the human conditions of knowing, and talking and acting together can impose upon us. Which is to say that a certain picture of knowledge represents one kind of fixation that we impose upon ourselves. In the course of this chapter we have seen that there are other tempting and yet illusory pictures of our life in language that we are also (almost irresistibly) inclined to impose upon ourselves. And on this account those problematic ways of thinking might also be labelled as articulations of ‘skepticism’—or perhaps better, as arising from attempts to deny the ‘threat of skepticism’. (What I have been calling, attempts to deny the difficulty of the ordinary).

Finally, I believe that focusing too closely on epistemological cases—and particularly the case of external world skepticism—can serve to distort or obscure Cavell’s (primarily semantic) notions of both ‘skepticism’ and what Cavell calls the ‘threat of skepticism’. It must be said that Cavell is not entirely blameless with regard to this problem. For Cavell not only constantly returns to his considerations of the traditional epistemological problem of skepticism (and particularly external world skepticism), but he also does not always adequately identify when he is talking about skepticism in the narrowly epistemological sense (say, of external world skepticism), and when he is talking about skepticism in the (more broadly) semantic (or criterial) sense. Of course one reason that Cavell adopts this way of talking, is that he wishes to emphasise the idea that skepticism is something that we are implicated in. Which is to say that we cannot tell in advance, as if by some external standard, when or how the threat of skepticism—the standing possibility of a repudiation of our criteria—might be realised. And if and when the threat of skepticism is realised it is we who are responsible for its realization. For Cavell, that is an important reason not to draw to sharp a distinction between the threat and the realization of skepticism. But I believe that it is also an important reason for separating skepticism (as the twin-face of criteria—hence as an essentially semantic possibility) from skepticism as a purely epistemological problem.

Stephen Mulhall’s account of Cavell’s conception of the ‘truth of skepticism’ offers a helpful example of the distorting effect that focusing too closely upon Cavell’s conception of the case of ‘external world skepticism’ can produce. And in closing this section I would like to say something about the specific aspects of Cavell’s thought that I believe are fundamentally obscured on that reading. But Mulhall is not alone in focusing primarily upon the case of external world skepticism in his explication of Cavell’s views. I think that Mulhall’s focus upon external world skepticism drives him to fundamentally underplay the significance of the notion of accommodation (and hence our responsibility for our capacity to accommodate

148

divergences in criteria). That in turn, I believe leaves him unable to draw a sufficient distinction between epistemological skepticism and the broader (criterial) threat of skepticism in Cavell’s work. Which is to say it leaves his account unable to adequately acknowledge the ‘difficulty of the ordinary’.

In explicating that idea I would also like to articulate my hesitancy to identify Cavell’s project with the ‘therapeutic’ conception of philosophical methodology advocated in some so called ‘new Wittgensteinian’ interpretations of his work. In particular I wish to question whether the centrality of the notions of accommodation and responsibility to Cavell’s account of the significance of the ‘threat of skepticism’ or what I have been calling ‘the difficulty of the ordinary’ can be adequately recognised upon the basis of a methodological commitment to the aim of dispelling or diagnosing philosophical claims and problems as ‘plain nonsense’.

Many of the difficulties in explicating Cavell’s (1979: 220) conception of the philosophical significance of skepticism arise, at least in part, from his declaration in part II of the Claim of Reason that he has presented a: “schema for a potential overthrowing or undercutting of skepticism.”

That schema as Cavell (1979: 220) summarizes it is based upon the idea that:

“The "dilemma" the traditional investigation of knowledge is involved in may… be formulated this way: It must be the investigation of a concrete claim if its procedure is to be coherent; it cannot be the investigation of a concrete claim if its conclusion is to be general. Without that coherence it would not have the obviousness it has seemed to have; without that generality its conclusion would not be skeptical.”

The basic idea behind this claim is that the skeptical epistemologist’s argument depends upon his investigating a perfectly generic case of knowing something (what Cavell calls a ‘best case’ and identifies with what he calls the traditional epistemologist’s directing his inquiry toward a ‘generic object’). The skeptic’s idea is that if a perfectly generic case of knowledge can be shown to fail (which is to say that if it can be shown that one might not know in such a case) then that failure will generalise and knowledge itself will come to appear impossible. But Cavell’s observation is that the initial ‘generic’ knowledge claim that the skeptic enters—for example ‘here is one hand, and here is another’— (and must enter for his procedure to have the consequences it purports to) is not a claim that is being imagined in any actual context. As Cavell puts it the skeptic’s claim is necessarily made in a ‘no-claim context’. Because if such a claim were made in an actual context, then it’s failure (if it were to fail) would not ramify and throw all of our knowledge of the world into doubt. Instead the failure of that actual claim would depend upon the particularities of the situation at hand.

It is in investigating this idea that Cavell comes to articulate some of his most important observations about our responsibilities to and for the language we use together. For example, it is in the context of this investigation that Cavell (1979: 206) comes to articulate the idea that:

“"Because it is true" is not a reason or basis for saying anything, it does not constitute the point of your saying something; and… there must, in grammar, be reasons for what you say, or be point in your saying of something, if what you say is to be comprehensible. We can understand what the words mean apart from understanding why you say them; but apart from understanding the point of your saying them we cannot understand what you mean.”

That idea is one that has application throughout our life in language. And it is an idea that I have been stressing throughout this thesis—in terms of the existential significance of our

149

language use; and of the logical role of criteria; as well as the irreducibly second-personal character of our life in language; and the projectability of, as well as our responsibility for accepting, accommodating and refusing criteria. But the supposed ‘schema’ that Cavell offers for ‘overthrowing or undercutting’ skepticism does not have application throughout our life in language. It is a response to skepticism in the narrow epistemological sense. Indeed it is even more narrow than that. Because there are ways to generate skeptical problems about our knowledge of the world that do not rely on the notion of a ‘best case’ of knowledge. As such, this Cavellian response to Cartesian external world skepticism, is just that—a response to a particular skeptical problem which might confront us here and now. It is not a once-and-for-all response to the threat of skepticism.

Indeed, as I have been arguing, and as Cavell makes clear throughout his work, there is no once-and-for-all response to the threat of skepticism. Nonetheless many interpreters have been lead to suppose that Cavell is offering a once-and-for-all response to skepticism in part II of The Claim of Reason. And, as I have been arguing, Cavell’s sometimes incautious use of the terminology of ‘skepticism’ and of the ‘threat of skepticism’ is, at the very least, less than helpful in this regard.

Stephen Mulhall provides a useful example of a careful reader of Cavell, who nonetheless fails to adequately distinguish Cavell’s conception of epistemological skepticism (as a thesis) from the threat of skepticism (or what I have been calling ‘the difficulty of the ordinary’). This leads Mulhall to describe the threat of skepticism as, for example: “an impulse to repudiate or deny the framework within which alone human speech is possible.” Here we can see that Mulhall’s understanding of criteria as a ‘framework of rules’ reinforces his reading of Cavell as regarding the ‘threat of skepticism’ (or ‘the difficulty of the ordinary’) as the standing possibility of our repudiating the ‘rules of language’ and thus speaking entirely nonsensically. But as I have been arguing throughout this chapter there are no rules of language. And so the threat of skepticism (‘the difficulty of the ordinary’) cannot be the standing threat of our coming to speak nonsensically—as if adjudged from some external or even communally established standpoint.

Indeed on Mulhall’s account it is difficult to see why the ‘threat of skepticism’ should be so threatening; (or the difficulty of the ordinary so difficult). Why, we might ask, if the threat of skepticism is just the threat of our speaking outside the ‘rules of language’, are we tempted to ‘break’ those rules and to speak nonsensically? In trying to explain that idea Mulhall invokes the confused notion that there are propositions ‘at the level of criteria’ which, as he puts it, ‘seem to be true’ but are not the kinds of things we are able to judge (or know) to be true or false. As Mulhall (1994: 105) explains it:

“…the propositions upon which the sceptic concentrates when he goes over familiar situations with his suspicion in mind are not ones which it makes sense to imagine being asserted; in those circumstances, the conditions for making a specific claim to knowledge do not hold. On the other hand, such propositions do seem to be true; and no one would say [for example] that a human being sitting at a desk does not know whether there is a green jar on it. The problem is that this piece of ‘knowledge’ does not function in our lives in the way that pieces of knowledge characteristically do.”

But the idea that there are propositions which might ‘seem true’ and yet not be truth evaluable is confused. If a proposition ‘seems true’ (indeed if something is a proposition) then it is truth evaluable—we can judge it (rightly or wrongly) to be true or false. To suggest

150

otherwise is to flirt with a kind of metaphysicalised (perhaps even mysticised) conception of criteria as setting forth a kind of ‘unspeakable truth’.

And yet the difficulty from which this problem arises for Mulhall is not just that of his conceiving of criteria as a framework of rules. Rather that problem is itself compounded by his focus upon the narrowly epistemological case of external world skepticism. Because focusing upon external world skepticism reinforces the unhelpful picture upon which divergences and dissonances in our criteria are always, as it were, self-annihilating repudiations of criteria. But as I have been arguing the ‘difficulty of the ordinary’, or what Cavell calls the ‘threat of skepticism’ is much more pervasive, and as we might put it, much more ‘ordinary’ than that. It is just the endless difficulty that our criteria fate us too. The endless difficulty of taking responsibility for our acceptances and denials of criteria in actual situations amongst actual others. The extreme case of external world skepticism demonstrates a standing possibility for us arising from the same source as that much more ordinary difficulty. As Cavell puts it, external world skepticism is: “a response which expresses a natural experience of a creature complicated or burdened enough to possess language at all.” But what Cavell calls the truth of skepticism need not (and should not) be restricted to the epistemological case.

Indeed trying to understand what Cavell calls the ‘truth of skepticism’ upon the basis of the external world skeptical case alone is almost inevitably bound to end in confusion. And that is precisely because Cavell has conducted a detailed investigation of the Cartesian skeptic’s projections of language and in so doing found that he has good, articulable, reasons not to accept those projections. But Cavell’s point in speaking of the ‘truth of skepticism’ is that there is no guarantee that we will always find or accept such diagnoses. Indeed there is (and can be) no guarantee that the skeptic (or the skeptic in each of us) will even find Cavell’s diagnosis of the external world skeptic’s error convincing (or quieting). What is more it is perfectly possible that I might accept Cavell’s diagnosis at one time, and yet at another find some further (or even the same), broadly Cartesian considerations utterly gripping—unshakeable, as it were. As Cavell (2002: 241) puts:

“the ordinary language critic is at the mercy of his opposition—…a test of his criticism must be whether those to whom it is directed accept its truth, since they are as authoritative as he in evaluating the data upon which it will be based.”

And we might add that the ordinary language philosopher is equally at the mercy of her own temptations and inclinations to project criteria in ways that may end up alienating her—from herself or from others; that such alienation is a standing possibility for a creature complicated or burdened enough to possess language (and to possess a self in language) at all.

I would like to close this section by saying something about the so called ‘therapeutic’ reading of Wittgenstein put forward, at least principally, by Alice Crary, Rupert Read (2002) in their edited collection The New Wittgenstein. Although The New Wittgenstein contains contributions from several philosophers, including Cora Diamond, James Conant, Hilary Putnam, Juliet Floyd and others, it is quite difficult to ascertain how many (if any) of these philosophers are committed to the ‘therapeutic’ reading of Wittgenstein’s vision of future-philosophy. And that is because, there are two distinct interpretive issues that are often run together under the guise of ‘New Wittgensteinian’ philosophy – a particular ‘therapeutic’ reading of Wittgenstein’s philosophical methodology in both his early and late work; and the entirely distinguishable interpretive commitment to the idea that there is an important

151

continuity between Wittgenstein’s work in the Tractatus and his work in the Philosophical Investigations. While the editors of “The New Wittgenstein” identify their own ‘therapeutic’ reading of Wittgenstein’s philosophy with the kind of ‘resolute reading’ of the Tractatus originally advocated by Diamond, it is not obvious that these two readings need go together at all—or to be more precise it is not clear that being a resolute reader of the Tractatus need commit one to a ‘therapeutic reading’ of Wittgenstein’s work (early or late). As such, I shall here focus merely on the ‘therapeutic’ aspect of the so called ‘new Wittgenstein’ (having already discussed ‘resolute readings’ of the Tractatus briefly in section IV).

The ‘therapeutic reading’ of Wittgenstein’s vision of philosophy does not succumb to the error of postulating criteria as ‘a framework of rules’ or of representing our criteria as constituting any kind of ‘unspeakable truths’. Indeed, a central tenet of the ‘therapeutic reading’ (itself drawn from a ‘resolute reading’ of the Tractatus) is that there is no useful distinction to be drawn between ‘utter nonsense’ and some (illusory) kind of ‘special nonsense’, which would purport to reveal special truths or facts that cannot be articulated. As I have already argued the view of Cavell on criteria and what I have been calling ‘the difficulty of the ordinary’ as well as the view of Cavell on skepticism that I have been presenting in this chapter largely accords with this commitment of so called ‘resolute readings’ of the Tractatus.131 And yet I remain hesitant to identify Cavell’s project with the ‘therapeutic’ commitments of the so called ‘New Wittgensteinians’. That is because I am concerned that Cavell’s conception of the significance of the individual human voice in language—of the responsibilities that our responsiveness to criteria implicates us in—does not seem compatible with a methodological commitment to the idea of exposing certain philosophical locutions as ‘plain nonsense’.

Alice Crary has advocated connecting Cavell’s interpretation of Wittgenstein with McDowell’s notion of ‘Wittgenstein’s dilemma’—as an attempt to free us from an illusory picture of what going on in a practice ‘in the same way’ might come to—in a way that accords well with the argument I have been presenting in this chapter. As Crary (2002a: 8) succinctly put it:

“A recurring theme in Cavell’s writing about Wittgenstein is that, for Wittgenstein, our tendency to become entangled in philosophical confusion is the product of a natural disappointment with the conditions of human knowledge. Cavell sounds this theme… when he suggests that, confronted with Wittgenstein’s “vision of language,” we will be inclined to think that we are being asked to believe our language “rests upon very shaky foundations” and to go in search, once again, of explanations which somehow reach beyond—or outside—our ordinary forms of thought and speech and which can (we imagine) therefore furnish them with “solid foundations.” What Wittgenstein wishes to get us to see, according to Cavell, is that the demand for such foundations is inherently confused and will inevitably lead to frustration.”

But Crary also argues that this idea can be profitably connected with a view whereby the kinds of philosophical assertions that are inspired by what McDowell describes as our ‘vertigo’ can ultimately be impugned as ‘plain nonsense’. Again as Crary (2002b: 139) puts it:

131As I have already noted the idea of the ‘difficulty of the ordinary’ is one that I have adapted from Cora Diamond’s (2009) paper “The Difficulty of Philosophy and the Difficulty of Reality”. That paper represents an invaluable discussion and advancement of Cavell’s difficult investigations of ‘other mind skepticism’ and what Cavell comes to call ‘the problem of the other’.

152

“On this view, a bit of language is rejected as nonsense—not when there is something wrong with (what we are tempted to call) the sense it does have, but—when we have failed to give meaning to it; that is, when we have no notion what (if anything) will count as the fulfillment of it.”

I do not mean to advocate any notion of ‘useful nonsense’ or nonsense that (somehow mystically) points to deeper truths. But I do not see the methodological advantage, and I see definite disadvantages, in adopting the idea of convicting others (or even oneself) of speaking ‘nonsense’ as a helpful form of criticism. As I have been arguing throughout this chapter making sense is something that people do. And making sense comes in degrees. That is part of what Cavell’s emphasis upon our ability to accommodate divergences in criteria is supposed to capture. If someone insists—to take an example of Cavell’s—that I have not eaten the ‘whole apple’ unless I eat the core and the stem (and perhaps even the sticker if there is one)—then I will be inclined to think him rather odd, but that does not mean that I could not make some sense of his claim. Perhaps I will take him to be making a point about wastefulness and our throw-away consumer culture. ‘Apples’ would be an odd thing to fixate upon for that purpose but his assertions might still make some sense to me. Then again, they might not—and if they do not they do not. But then as I have been arguing, on Cavell’s account, that is my fate for him. To say that he is talking nonsense is to refuse him; and that is something I must bear the responsibility of (here and now). On Cavell’s view, as I understand him, that is something that is as true of odd-apple eaters as it is of the external world skeptic.

So one reason that I do not think that a methodological commitment to the notion of diagnosing ‘plain nonsense’ is particularly helpful is that I think that it obscures our responsibility for making sense—not in denying that responsibility exactly, but in failing to fully recognise the subtleties of the possibilities of accommodation; that something or someone can be said to make some sense, or not much sense, or a lot of sense (despite perhaps being wrong) without invoking any notion of ‘special nonsense’.

Another reason that I do not think a methodological commitment to the idea of diagnosing ‘nonsense’ statements is particularly helpful is that I do not think that our human drive or desire to deny our responsibilities to and for language need be (or is) always open to the charge of causing us to speak ‘nonsensically’. In this chapter I have argued that Brandom’s account of ‘the force of the better reason’ as something underwritten by norms implicit in our practices is a kind of illusory myth. It is a kind of myth because it does not capture the extent of our actual responsibilities in language—and that is part of what is attractive about it. But Brandom’s account is not nonsense. Nor indeed is Descartes’ constructive epistemology. The charge of speaking ‘nonsense’ might be successfully applied to the external world skeptic, and Cavell’s arguments may even convince the skeptic (or the skeptic in each of us) that his skeptical suggestions do not really make sense—that in his skeptical surmise he fails to communicate what he wishes to. But even then it is crucial to stress (as admittedly the ‘therapeutic’ New Wittgensteinians do) that that diagnosis is something that we may come to only in given cases here and now. Nonetheless the idea of the post-Wittgensteinian philosopher as setting out to expose nonsense, seems to me, to risk both overlooking other forms of our tendency to mythologise our life in language and also to re-introduce (if only potentially) the idea that the philosopher has some special authority in relation to her capacity to recognise sensible language use.

153

VII. Conclusion.

I said at the beginning of this chapter that I wanted to contrast Cavell’s vision of what a post-Wittgensteinian philosophy might be and do with that of a number of other prominent contemporary interpreters of Wittgenstein—and in so doing to explicate both Cavell’s conception of what he calls ‘the argument of the ordinary’ and of the idea that, as Cavell puts it in The Claim of Reason: “the everyday is an exceptional achievement.” I hope that we are now in a position to better understand these important Cavellian ideas. And so, I would like to recall Cavell’s definition of the ‘argument of the ordinary’ and in so doing to articulate Cavell’s idea that the ordinary might be something that we could achieve. Cavell (1990a: 92-93) writes:

“The human capacity—and the drive—both to affirm and to deny our criteria constitutes the argument of the ordinary. And to trace the disappointment with criteria is to trace the aspiration to the sublime—the skeptic’s progress. I am the instrument of this argument, I mean no one occupies its positions if each of us does not. So it is nowhere more than in each of us, as we stand, poor things, that the power of the ordinary will or will not manifest itself.”

When I quoted this passage at the beginning of the current chapter, I said that we would need to clarify Cavell’s conception of our human capacity to affirm and to deny criteria as well as the subsequent idea that criteria are disappointing. I said then that this was a crucial idea emerging from Cavell’s investigations of skepticism within The Claim of Reason; and we can now state more clearly why that is the case. Criteria are disappointing on Cavell’s account because they cannot do what we wish that they could. Criteria cannot absolve us of our responsibilities in language. They cannot provide us with the kind of stability that we imagine might stand independent of our individual responsibilities to affirm and to deny—and crucially also to accommodate dissonances and divergences in; and in so doing to further affirm or deny—our criteria.

In this chapter I have argued that this crucial Cavellian idea is fundamentally incompatible with an orthodox Wittgensteinian conception of ‘grammar’ as laying down rules for intelligible language use. But I have also argued that our desire to posit such rules can be traced to a desire to overcome something more than skepticism conceived as a merely epistemological thesis. Our desire to posit ‘rules’ of language or ‘structures’ of criteria can be traced to a desire to overcome what I have been calling the ‘difficulty of the ordinary’ (and what Cavell calls the ‘threat of skepticism’). But I have also argued that in attempting to overcome the difficulty of the ordinary we are liable to falsify the actual responsibilities of recognition, affirmation and denial that our life in language implicates us in. This is what Cavell describes as our aspiration to the sublime—and subsequently identifies with an enlarged (and primarily semantic) conception of skepticism; our drive to do violence to our everyday criteria in subjecting them either to constructive or to skeptical demands that they cannot (and should not) meet.

When I say that our everyday criteria ‘should not’ meet such demands I mean that we should not wish them to. Because in wishing our criteria to do more or less than they do, we would deny the power of the ordinary—and thus also deny our powers of affirmation, accommodation and refusal within the ordinary. And yet, Cavell sees great significance in the fact that such a denial is everywhere a possibility for us. The denial of the difficulty of the ordinary—the threat of skepticism—is a standing possibility of our life in language. Again, as I have been arguing, the fact that such a denial is possible is essential to the ordinary

154

possessing the power that it does. That we be able to repudiate our criteria is essential to their being ours in the way that they are. But this also means that remaining responsive to the power of the ordinary is a task. Remaining open to the power of the ordinary involves not simply affirming the philosophical significance of what is ‘ordinarily’ said or done, but instead involves remaining open to the possibility that things might be said or done otherwise—and that it is we who bear the responsibility both for what is said and done and for what might be. Thus Cavell (1994a: 5) writes that on his vision of a post-Wittgensteinian philosophy the task of philosophy is:

“…not so much to defeat the skeptical argument as to preserve it, as though the philosophical profit of the argument would be to show not how it might end but why it must begin and why it must have no end.”

In another lecture, Cavell (1990b: 35) writes that it is:

“work for an ambitious philosophy to attempt to keep philosophy open to the threat or temptation to skepticism.”

Which is to say that on Cavell’s account it is the work of a post-Wittgensteinian philosophy not just to maintain ‘touch’ with the difficulty of the ordinary—but equally to maintain touch with the desire or drive to deny that difficulty. That task for Cavell, is the task of keeping ‘the argument of the ordinary’—as an argument that neither side should win—alive and open for us. And that, as Cavell argues must be a highly personal task. It is the task of articulating our own positions within language—our responsibilities to and for language—in given cases. And yet it is also the task of remaining alive to our human desire or drive to repudiate those responsibilities—and in that way to remain open to a kind of constant re-affirmation of our responsibilities in language and our responsiveness to those responsibilities. To do so, is, on Cavell’s view a task of constant articulation—and thus Cavell’s philosophy might be thought of as a kind of philosophy of articulation. A philosophy which demands that we constantly give voice to our own positions in language (and thus to our individual lives in language)—our acceptances, accommodations and refusals of criteria. That vision is, I believe, one that is worthy of being described ‘an attempt to bring the human voice back into philosophy’.

In this thesis I have focused primarily upon what Cavell (1969a: xxxii) calls (in the foreword to his earliest collection of essays, “Must We Mean What We Say?”) his ‘straight philosophical’ essays and engagements. But I believe that the interpretive approach that I have been advocating in this thesis also offers promising insights into Cavell’s interest in and engagements at the intersection of what we might call ‘the philosophical’ and ‘the literary’. The task of philosophical self-articulation that I (following Cavell) have described in terms of an attempt to ‘keep the argument of the ordinary open’ need not be limited to the examination of what we tend to think of as ‘straight philosophical’ texts or arguments.

Thus a task for further research in the vein of the interpretation of Cavell’s notion of ‘bringing the human voice back into philosophy’, which I have been defending in this thesis, would be to connect these ideas with Cavell’s conception of the possibility of a kind of ‘philosophical criticism’; a kind of criticism which is itself as receptive of ‘literary’ and ‘romantic’ responses to the difficulty of the ordinary as it is to those deemed more conventionally ‘philosophical’. Another task for further work would be to connect the idea of ‘bringing the human voice back into philosophy’—and thus conceiving philosophy itself as a kind of endless task of self-articulation—with Cavell’s difficult investigations of the problem of ‘other mind skepticism’ as well as the relation of that (again, epistemological problem)

155

with what Cavell comes to call ‘the problem of the other.’ In each (and indeed every) case the issue of ‘voice’ and the potential of its denial must, I believe, be kept always at the forefront of our philosophical imaginations.

In attempting to constantly draw our attention to this possibility of and for philosophy we might describe the moral of a great deal of Cavell’s work as being identifiable with what Cavell himself describes (in closing his lecture “the Argument of the Ordinary”) as a central moral of Wittgenstein’s Investigations. There Cavell (1990a: 100) writes:

“I am not to give myself explanations that divide me from myself, that take sides against myself, that would exact my consent, not attract it. That would cede my voice to my isolation. Then I might never be found.”

156

'Oxford English Dictionary (Online)'. AFFELDT, S.G. (1998), 'The Ground of Mutuality: Criteria, Judgment and Intelligibility in Stephen

Mulhall and Stanley Cavell', European Journal of Philosophy, 6, 1-31. ALBRITTON, R. (1959), 'On Wittgenstein's use of the Term" Criterion"', The Journal of Philosophy, 56,

845-57. ANSCOMBE, G.E.M. (1975), 'The First Person', Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind. University of

Minnesota Press. AUSTIN, J.L. (1979a), 'Other Minds', in URMSON, J.O. and WARNOCK, G.J. (eds.) Philosophical Papers.

Oxford University Press. AUSTIN, J.L. (1979b), 'A Plea for Excuses', in URMSON, J.O. and WARNOCK, G.J. (eds.) Philosophical

Papers. Oxford University Press. AYER, A.J. (2001), Language Truth and Logic. Penguin Classics. BAKER, G. and HACKER, P. (1984a), Skepticism, Rules and Language. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publisher

Limited. BAKER, G. and HACKER, P. (2009), Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity: Volume 2 of an

Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations, Essays and Exegesis 185-242. John Wiley & Sons.

BAKER, G.P. and HACKER, P.M.S. (1984b), Language, Sense, and Nonsense. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publisher Limited.

BAKER, G.P. and HACKER, P.M.S. (2008), Wittgenstein: Understanding and meaning: Volume 1 of an analytical commentary on the philosophical investigations, part I: Essays. John Wiley & Sons.

BATES, S. and COHEN, T. (1972), 'More on What We Say', Metaphilosophy, 3, 1-24. BRANDOM, R. (1998), Making it explicit: Reasoning, representing, and discursive commitment.

Harvard University Press. BRANDOM, R. (2009), Reason in philosophy: Animating ideas. Harvard University Press. CARNAP, R. (1950), 'Empiricism, semantics, and ontology', Revue internationale de philosophie, 20-

40. CASTAÑEDA, H.-N. (1967), 'On the logic of self-knowledge', Noûs, 1, 9-21. CAVELL, S. (1969a), 'Foreword', Must We Mean What We Say? New York: Cambridge University

Press. CAVELL, S. (1969b), 'Must We Mean What We Say?', Must We Mean What We Say? New York:

Cambridge University Press. CAVELL, S. (1969c), 'The Availability of Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy', Must We Mean What We

Say. Cambridge University Press. CAVELL, S. (1969d), 'Aesthetic Problems of Modern Philosophy', Must We Mean What We Say? New

York: Cambridge University Press. CAVELL, S. (1969e), 'Austin at Criticism', Must We Mean What We Say? New York: Cambridge

University Press. CAVELL, S. (1979), The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy. Oxford:

Oxford University Press. CAVELL, S. (1982), 'Politics as Opposed to What?', Critical Inquiry, 9, 157-78. CAVELL, S. (1990a), 'The Argument of the Ordinary', Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome : the

Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. CAVELL, S. (1990b), 'Aversive Thinking', Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome : the Constitution of

Emersonian Perfectionism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. CAVELL, S. (1990c), Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome : the Constitution of Emersonian

Perfectionism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. CAVELL, S. (1994a), In Quest of the Ordinary: Lines of Skepticism and Romanticism. University of

Chicago Press. CAVELL, S. (1994b), A Pitch of Philosophy: Autobiographical Exercises. Harvard University Press.

157

CAVELL, S. (2002), 'Knowing and Acknowledging', Must We Mean What We Say?: A Book of Essays. Cambridge University Press.

CAVELL, S. (2004), 'Postscript (2002) to “The Investigations’ Everyday Aesthetics of Itself”', in MACARTHUR, D. and DE CARO, M. (eds.) Naturalism in Question. Harvard University Press.

CAVELL, S. (2006), 'What is the Scandal of Skepticism', Philosophy the Day After Tomorrow. Harvard University Press.

CAVELL, S. (2013), 'Declining Decline: Wittgenstein as a Philosopher of Culture', This New Yet Unapproachable America: Lectures After Emerson After Wittgenstein. University of Chicago Press.

CRARY, A. (2002a), 'Introduction', in CRARY, A. and READ, R. (eds.) The New Wittgenstein. Routledge. CRARY, A. (2002b), 'Wittgenstein’s Philosophy in Relation to Political Thought', in CRARY, A. and

READ, R. (eds.) The New Wittgenstein. Routledge. CRARY, A. and READ, R. (2002), The New Wittgenstein. Routledge. DANTO, A.C. (1982), 'Philosophy and/as Film and/as If Philosophy', October, 23, 5-14. DANTO, A.C. (2003), The Abuse of Beauty: Aesthetics and the Concept of Art. Open Court Publishing. DIAMOND, C. (1978), 'Eating Meat and Eating People', Philosophy, 53, 465-79. DIAMOND, C. (1991a), 'Anything but Argument', The Realistic Spirit, 291-308. DIAMOND, C. (1991b), 'The Face of Necessity', The Realistic Spirit, 243-66. DIAMOND, C. (1991c), 'Realism and the Realistic Spirit', The Realistic Spirit, 39-72. DIAMOND, C. (1991d), 'Throwing Away the Ladder', The Realistic Spirit, 179-204. DIAMOND, C. (1991e), 'Wittgenstein and Metaphysics (Introduction II)', The Realistic Spirit. DIAMOND, C. (1991f), 'Wright's Wittgenstein', The Realistic Spirit, 205-23. DIAMOND, C. (2009), 'The Difficulty of Reality and The Difficulty of Philosophy', Philosophy and

Animal Life. Columbia University Press. DUMMETT, M. (1959), 'Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mathematics', The Philosophical Review, 68,

324-48. DUMMETT, M. (1978a), 'Can Analytic Philosophy be Systematic and Ought it to Be?', Truth and Other

Enigmas. Harvard University Press. DUMMETT, M. (1978b), 'Preface', Truth and Other Enigmas. Harvard University Press. DUMMETT, M. (1978c), 'Realism', Truth and Other Enigmas. Harvard University Press. DUMMETT, M. (1993a), 'Realism', The Seas of Language. Oxford University Press. DUMMETT, M. (1993b), 'Wittgenstein on Necessity: Some Reflections', The Seas of Language. Oxford

University Press. FODOR, J. and KATZ, J.J. (1963), 'The Availability of What We Say', The Philosophical Review, 72, 57-

71. GLOUBERMAN, M. (1979), 'Review: Must We Mean What We Say?', Philosophia, 8, 805-13. GOULD, T. (1998), Hearing Things: Voice and Method in the Writing of Stanley Cavell. University of

Chicago Press. HOPE, V. (1981), 'Scepticism as tragedy', Inquiry, 24, 470-80. KANT, I. (1998), Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge University Press. KANT, I. (2000), Critique of the Power of Judgment. Cambridge University Press. KRIPKE, S.A. (1982), Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language:. Harvard University Press. KUUSELA, O. (2008), The Struggle Against Dogatism: Wittgenstein and the Concept of Philosophy.

Harvard University Press. LAUGIER, S. (2006), 'Wittgenstein and Cavell: Anthropology, Skepticism, and Politics', in NORRIS, A.

(ed.) The Claim to Community: Essays on Stanley Cavell and Political Philosophy. Stanford University Press.

LAUGIER, S. (2011), 'Introduction to the French Edition of Must We Mean What We Say?', Critical Inquiry, 37, 627-51.

LAUGIER, S. (2013), Why We Need Ordinary Language Philosophy. University of Chicago Press. LAUGIER, S. (2015), 'Voice as Form of Life and Life Form', Nordic Wittgenstein Review, 63-82.

158

MACARTHUR, D. (2014), 'Cavell on Skepticism and the Importance of Not-Knowing', Conversations, 2, 2-23.

MACARTHUR, D. (2017), 'Wittgenstein’s Un-Ruley Solution to the Problem of Philosophy', in HETHERINGTON, S. (ed.) What Makes Philosophers Great. Routledge.

MALCOLM, N. (1954), 'Wittgenstein's Philosophical investigations', The Philosophical Review, 63, 530-59.

MARGOLIS, J. (2013), 'The Regress Argument in Kant, Wittgenstein, and the Pittsburgh Pragmatists', Washington University Jurisprudence Review, 6, 121.

MATES, B. (1958), 'On the verification of statements about ordinary language', Inquiry, 1, 161-71. MCDOWELL, J. (1984), 'Wittgenstein on following a rule', Synthese, 58, 325-63. MCDOWELL, J. (1994), Mind and World. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. MCDOWELL, J. (2009), 'Wittgensteinian “Quietism”', Common Knowledge, 15, 365-72. MCDOWELL, J.H. (1998), 'Non-Cognitivism and Rule-Following', Mind, Value, and Reality. Harvard

University Press. MOORE, G.E. (1993), 'Proof of an External World', in BALDWIN, T. (ed.) G. E. Moore: Selected

Writings. Oxon: Routledge. MULHALL, S. (1994), Stanley Cavell: Philosophy's Recounting of the Ordinary. Clarendon Press. MULHALL, S. (1998), 'The Givenness of Grammar: A Reply to Steven Affeldt', European Journal of

Philosophy, 6, 32-44. MULHALL, S. (2003), 'Stanley Cavell’s Vision of the Normativity of Language: Grammar, Criteria, and

Rules', in ELDRIDGE, R. (ed.) Stanley Cavell. Cambridge University Press. MULHALL, S. (2014), 'Inner Constancy, Outer Variation: Stanley Cavell on Grammar, Criteria, and

Rules', Varieties of Skepticism: Essays after Kant, Wittgenstein, Cavell. Berlin: De Gruyter. NORRIS, A. (2017), Becoming Who We Are: Politics and Practical Philosophy in the Work of Stanley

Cavell. Oxford University Press. PERRY, J. (1979), 'The problem of the essential indexical', Noûs, 3-21. PUTNAM, H. (2012a), 'The Fact/Value Dichotomy and its Critics', in SAITO, N. and STANDISH, P. (eds.)

Stanley Cavell and the Education of Grownups. Fordham University. PUTNAM, H. (2012b), 'Rules, Attunement, and “Applying Words to the World”: The Struggle to

Understand Wittgenstein’s Vision of Language.', in MACARTHUR, D.D.C., MARIO. (ed.) Philosophy in an Age of Science: Physics, Mathemaics and Skepticism. Harvard University Press.

RORTY, R. (1989), 'The Philosophy of the Oddball', The New Republic, 200, 38-41. RORTY, R. (1992), The Linguistic Turn: Essays in Philosophical Method. University of Chicago Press. RYLE, G. (1949), The Concept of Mind. University of Chicago Press. TRAVIS, C. (1991), 'Critical notice: Annals of analysis', Mind, 100, 237-64. WIGGINS, D. (2001), Sameness and Substance Renewed. Cambridge University Press. WILLIAMS, B. (1981), 'Wittgenstein and idealism', Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973–1980.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. WILLIAMSON, T. (2004), 'Past the Linguistic Turn?', in LEITER, B. (ed.) The Future for Philosophy.

Oxford University Press. WITTGENSTEIN, L. (1953), Philosophical investigations. Oxford: B. Blackwell. WITTGENSTEIN, L. (1958), The Blue and Brown Books. Blackwell. WITTGENSTEIN, L. (1969), On Certainty. Blackwell Oxford. WRIGHT, C. (1980), Wittgenstein on the Foundations of Mathematics. London: Gerald Duckworth &

Co Ltd.