Wittgenstein's Pragmatic Turn

 

Author: Ines Lacerda Araujo

Wittgenstein’s pragmatic turn

Abstract

The focus on ordinary language represents a new direction in philosophical problems, in the way they are conceived, in the way they transform philosophical perspectives. There are some aspects to be considered that completely changed our perspective of some important philosophical issues, which take a new, a revolutionary direction. We may considerer for instance the criticism of private language, of mind as a hidden process, of reference as central function of propositions. In this paper we will show that new conceptions of knowledge, language and mind that Wittgenstein developed mostly in Philosophical Investigations (Part I and Part II), are responsible for the pragmatic turn. This pragmatic turn transforms the way tradition views the philosophical problem of the subject and consequently of mind, knowledge and reality. No more a Cartesian subject isolated and source of certainty, nor a Kantian subject, transcendental, formal, a priori and universal, but men in their multiple activities. Many central philosophical concepts such as mind, spirit, being, God, the claims for a unique criterion for knowledge and truth – none of these issues is sustainable or make sense if they are supposed to be out of the ordinary life-forms and without the normal use of language-games always in context.



The pragmatic turn has some important characteristics. It assumes that ordinary language has a central if not unique role in knowledge. This very category “knowledge” is dissolved for the mind, the thought or the ideas are not any more considered as the core processes of a core concept, the one of knowledge. This changes the role of the subject and the classic relation between subject/object. As thought is not an abstraction, it depends on language and as logic and its formal operations make sense in normal and daily activities, then there is no knowledge in itself as a general, unique and necessary condition for the so many activities of human praxis. Instead of considering transcendental forms to give access to reality, the attention goes to language-games, used normally to accomplish tasks, that is, an anthropologic conception is preferable to an ontological one.

Other concepts that are modified in Wittgenstein’s new perspective are: reference is not prominent, it is one way among others to describe, to give attention to, to point or distinguish something to someone; reference is not a privileged function of language. Philosophy does not have to solve problems such as what is truth, what is knowledge, what is the final cause of the universe: it has only to dissolve these problems. These considerations point to a post-metaphysical position, philosophy has not a mission, such as having to arrive at the foundation of knowledge nor getting at the final causes of being. Our grammar permits us to think, to talk, to see, to tell stories, to count, to match colors, and so on in multiple activities that follow rules in the language-games. And language is learned, it is a public device that gives condition to the many ways by means of which we live, we have a culture, we have values, we learn, we communicate ideas, intentions, etc., and ultimately, how we make sense of the world.

How things work? This question makes sense. There must be conditions, for sure. With rules for behaving, in our daily use of language, all this being part of our learned and variable praxis, things do not have form/matter fixed; for us, human beings things work as if they were instruments that we take from a toolbox.

But is not thinking a hidden process? How is it possible that we have ideas, thoughts, that we create images just for us? How is it possible that we can calculate in our mind? Are all these processes interior, do they belong to the subject alone?

Wittgenstein’s answer is that we need language that is a kind of behavior. Language is learned in connection with the activities that belong to our life-forms. We use language-games, he explains that “the term ‘language-game’ is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a life-form” (2001, § 23).

Instead of focusing language in the sentence that states facts, whose function is to name an object and describe state of affairs – Wittgenstein specifies different uses of naming and describing things. It is necessary a language-game to use naming as a preparation for a description. The supposition of the metaphysic tradition is that only if we can attribute being or non-being to an element, we can refer to it, we can name it. An element must exist otherwise it would make any sense naming it. Meaning depends upon being that could be a substance, an idea, a form, an essence. These are no more issues to Wittgenstein. He made a turn, a pragmatic turn toward the use of language, meaning is a matter of use. In the case of naming, we have to see the normal uses in normal situations of speech. It is in these situations that it makes sense calling something by a name or referring to something to clarify a doubt, or distinguish an element of another, and so on. There are situations that require naming or referring, for instance to point to a color and name it as “yellow”. “This is yellow”, the teacher says to a child that is in the process of learning the name of colors. If the teacher asks “give the yellow one” so that a child brings him/her a piece of yellow chalk, this is another language-game, another use of the colors. “Our language-game has various possibilities; there is a variety of cases in which we should say that a sign in the game was the name of a square of such-and-such color” (WITTGENSTEIN, 2001, § 53).

That is to say, Wittgenstein leaves behind the epistemology that presupposes things with their permanent essence and identity in one side, and in the other the idea, the name, the concept to which the things correspond. The gaps between reality and mind, between being and essence, between name and object, between thought and signs, between ideas and the manifold things of reality that are said, referred to, designated, etc, all these gaps disappear. So, epistemology needs no more to be the solution to a puzzle: how do we think? How ideas can be in our mind and at the same time be ideas of something out of our mind?

When someone gives an order or makes a request, these are language-games and not sentences that denote a state of affairs; it makes no sense to look for a state of affairs to which the order or the request corresponds to. They have functions within ordinary language uses.

Even a general form for the proposition that he had searched for language (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus), obtained by means of uniform and universal rules, the key proposition that summarized language and thought – in Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein shows that there is no unique phenomenon to call language. The phenomena of language are related in multiple aspects, there is nothing in the bottom that is common to all language-games. There are similarities and differences, in “a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing” (2001, § 66), like “family resemblances”. For instance: the uses of knowing and saying, the circumstances that suggest one or the other; the grammar of seeing, describing what one sees is different from see something as we interpret it (the duck/rabbit figure); to see aspects and see something all of a sudden, are different processes.

More complicated is the case of thinking that we suppose to be something mysterious. It is not, when we intend to do something, and the intention is not accomplished, is it different when we accomplish it? To play chess and to learn its rules are different language-games, the same with give an order, make a description; they have meaning for us, in our activities, we have to follow rules, we have to behave in such or such way. There is no private language, we understand a foreign language by means of behavior, gestures; but “there is no regular connection between what they say, the sounds they make, and their actions” (WITTGENSTEIN, 2001, § 207), that is, languages depend on rules of a syntax. But people that speak a foreign language, do they give orders like we do in our own language? How do they give colors a name? How they differentiate them?

Signs have a function, in their use there is a justification, others must understand and respond to signs; whatever we do, or thing, or imagine, these are not interior processes of a hidden mind. They are public, they belong to human behavior. A sensation is identified as such or such, by education we have learned to drive the attention to a feeling. A “soul” can be expressed by a look (pain, distress, joy…). “You learned the concept ‘pain’ when you learned a language”, says Wittgenstein (2001, § 384).

So, thinking, certainty, truth, mind/reality relation, all these concepts that are discussed in metaphysics, in ontology and in epistemology, they have to make sense and this is possible only in our uses of language-games, that is, using the learned rules of ordinary language. We do not need a universe of ideas, pure essences, a priori forms, not even the parallelism between proposition and state of affairs to make sense. All we need is language, ordinary language.

Thought is not a mysterious process that accompanies words, as if the words could not be spoken without being thought. The pragmatic turn points in another direction: if you conceive that thinking is wordless, how can you communicate what you are thinking? “Our criterion for someone’s saying something to himself is what he tells us and the rest of his behavior; and we only say that someone speaks to himself if, in the ordinary sense of the words, he can speak. And we do not say of a parrot; nor of a gramophone” (WITTGENSTEIN, 2001, § 344). What matters is the use of a word and what we can deduce of it.

What do you mean? This question makes sense. How can you calculate? You have learned. The distance between consciousness and brain-process is a problem just in some contexts, like an epistemological difficulty. Look into your mind and into your inner consciousness! This makes sense in a context where someone is asking you to give attention to your purposes, for instance.

To sum up, the pragmatic turn is a new and rich way for philosophy, for it considers action and ordinary language responsible for the way human beings behave, give things a meaning, think, learn, not a subject with a mind, not a knower. Philosophical problems that were supposed to be found a solution for are dissolved. Epistemology is put upside down. Language-games, action, behavior and life-forms are the elements to be taken into consideration.

REFERENCE

WITTGENSTEIN, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Translation of G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2001.