T H E W O R L D , T H E E L E P H A N T AND T H E TORTOISE* PATRICIA HANNA
I. Introduction In Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion1, David Hume cautions the reader not to fall victim to the same fallacy as the Indian prince who held that the world was supported by an elephant, the elephant by a giant tortoise, and the tortoise by 'I know not what.' This fallacy is, Hume notes, not confined to reasoning about external reality, but is generalizable to other areas of human inquiry. In this paper, I shall confine my discussion to the world (or reality). Hume's warning is well-taken, and much of the subsequent history of philosophy has concerned itself with providing a satisfactory answer to some form of the question 'How can one establish realism?' With few exceptions, the attempts to address this issue have been unsuccessful, and many have foundered on the 'I know not what' of the prince. Some recent work suggests that these failures are the result of an acceptance, whether explicit or implicit, of foundationalism. In his three books, Linguistic Representation (LR), One Worm and Our Knowledge of It (OWL and The Thinking Self (TS), Jay R o s e n b e r g 2 offers an argument to establish realism without foundationalism. Although he ultimately fails to prove his case, the books repay careful study, and there is a great deal to be learned by seeing where his argument goes wrong. In what follows, I shall argue that the primary reason for the failure of his argument is Rosenberg's misunderstanding of Wittgenstein's private language argument) Beyond this, I shall argue that the failure to establish the world by inference is the result of a more general misunderstanding of the role played by the world (along with our
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position in it) in language and thought. In this respect, Rosenberg's appeals to Wittgenstein are especially off the mark; in both his early and later writings, Wittgenstein shows a keen appreciation of this feature of the world and our position in it. Indeed, it is only through understanding Wittgenstein's reasons for refusing to allow certain questions to count as sensible that we can avoid the Indian prince's fallacy, as well as the skepticism and relativism that have seemed inevitable to some once the fallacy is recognized. In Section II, I summarize and criticize Rosenberg's interpretation of Wittgenstein's private language argument; in section III, I show how and why Rosenberg falls to negotiate the inference to realism.
II. Rosenberg on the Private Language Argument Rosenberg offers his most extensive presentation of the private language argument in OW, Ch. IV (pp. 90-104). He summarizes this presentation as follows So what I have just offered you is the "Private Language Argument" - but with a difference. Contraryto the usual interpretations of that argument it has nothing to do with private objects. It has to do with correctness. My posited world is as public as one could wish. I have allowed you as much and as good access to its objects as I have allowed myself...What I have not allowed, however, is that your judgments bear on questions of correctness. Correctness, not the world, is what I have try (sic) to reserve to myself. But having so reserved it, I lost it - for I cannot fund a distinction between correct and incorrect judgments wholly from my own resources. It follows that the locus of semantic correctness must be found in the community. This is the sense in which a language cannot be private - ...and correctness is a public matter (OW, p. 104).
Later in TS, he writes of the private language argument
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What Wittgenstein was able to demonstrate was that normative correctness can ultimately consist only in a communal consilience of assertional and critical practices (TS, p. 170). This argument underlies Rosenberg's claims in both OW and TS; it is, therefore, important to see how it goes wrong. The first point to be considered is Rosenberg's location of correcmess in the community of speakers. 4 In this, he displays a crucial (and in the end, fatal) misunderstanding of the nature of Wittgenstein's appeal to agreement. 242. If language is to be a means of communication there must be agreement not only in definition but also (queer as this may sound) in judgments. This seems to abolish logic, but does not do so. - It is one thing to describe methods of measurement, and another to obtain and state results of measurement. But what we call "measuring" is partly determined by a certain constancy in results of measurement. This passage can only be understood in the context of the previous section where Wittgenstein explicitly rejects any interpretation of his remarks which would make them equivalent to a claim that what is true is so by convention. Wittgenstein's denial of the claim that he has abolished logic (in 242) echoes this point. 5 It is significant that in TS, Rosenberg quotes only the first sentence of 242; more significantly, he completely omits any reference to 241, where Wittgenstein is even more explicit in his denial that it is simply agreement in judgments that is at issue. 241. "So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?" - It is what human beings say that is true and false; they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form o f life.
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There is a world of difference between agreement in an opinion and agreement in a form of life. The latter is entirely independent of the former; those who share a form of life can argue about opinion without abandoning their shared life form. However, were they to cease to share a form of life, their disputes over opinion would be utterly incomprehensible. A shared form of life is a precondition of agreement and disagreement in opinion. As 241 makes clear, it is agreement in form of life, not opinion, which is central to correctness. In OW and TS, Rosenberg represents Wittgenstein as taking agreement in opinion, not form of life, as central to the concept of correctness. The second thing to note concerning Rosenberg's representation of the private language argument (quoted above, OW, p. 104) is that Rosenberg is mistaken in supposing (as the passage quoted from O W implies) that the argument can be about correctness only if it is not about private objects. He is simply wrong to say that the private language argument 'has nothing to do with private objects;' the argument is in fact about both correctness and private objects. It is important to see that this is so if one is fully to appreciate its force against the skeptic. In Wittgenstein's presentation of this argument, it is clear that it does concern private objects. 258. Let us imagine the following case. I want to keep a diary about the recurrence of a certain sensation. To this end I associate it with the sign "S" and write this sign in a calendar for every day on which I have the sensation. - I will remark first of all that a definition of the sign cannot be formulated. - But still I can give myself a kind of ostensive definition.- - How? Can I point to the sensation? Not in the ordinary sense. But I speak, or write the sign down, and as it were, point to it inwardly. - But what is this ceremony for? for that is all it seems to be! A definition surely serves to establish the meaning of a sign. - Well, that is done precisely by the concentrating of my attention; for in this way I impress on myself the connexion between the sign and the sensation. - But "I impress it on myself' can only mean:
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this process brings it about that I remember the connexion fight in the future: But in the present case I have no criterion of correctness. One would like to say: whatever is going to seem fight to me is fight. And that only means that here we can't talk about 'fight'. Here Wittgenstein talks about the necessity of a criterion of correctness for a symbors having a correct use. Read alone, this might be taken to mean that you and I, perfectly ordinary humans whose sensations of pain (etc.) find an outward expression in natural pain behavior, could not associate the word 'pain' with the sensation we feel when we hit our thumbs with hammers, or stub out toes, or eat too much candy, or ... And that the reason for this is that, of necessity, we lack a criterion of correctness whenever a 'private object' is at issue. However, this is not Wittgenstein's point, as Harrison shows in 'Wittgenstein and Scepticism.' 6 You and I and our pains are in the world; thus we can, as it were, point to our pain and name it. The subject of 258 is not, however, us, it is the child of 257 whose pain is not in the world because it has no outward expression. 257. "What would it be like if human beings shewed no outward signs of pain (did not groan, grimace, etc.)? Then it would be impossible to teach a child the use of the world 'tooth-ache'."... (emphasis added). In 258, Wittgenstein introduces a criterion of correctness to drive home the point that there must be something independent of the speaker which serves to anchor his/her words. Because our pains are in the world, we can be fight or wrong when we say that we have them. But the child of 257 is not like this. It is precisely because the child's pains are not in the world that the child cannot be fight or wrong when talking about having a pain. As a consequence of the situation into which Wittgenstein places the child in 257, the child cannot point to her pain and name it; the child cannot concentrate her attention on her pain; in short, the child cannot establish a connection between the sign 'pain, and the felt
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sensation of pain. This is so because concentrating attention on something, requires that it be possible to say what it is that one is concentrating on; establishing a connection between two things, requires that it be possible to say what counts as the connection and what it does not so count. This means that we must be able to get it wrong as well as right. If we can only get it right, then 'we can't talk about "right".' And the child of 257 can only 'get it right.' In 270, Wittgenstein shows how the child of 257 can come to be like us with respect to being able to concentrate attention on her pain, and being able to establish a connection between the pain and something else. 270. Let us now imagine a use for the entry of the sign "S" in my diary. I discover that whenever I have a particular sensation a manometer shews that my bloodpressure rises. So I shall be able to say that my bloodpressure is rising without using any apparatus. This is a useful resulL.. And what is our reason for calling "S" the name of a sensation here? Perhaps the kind of way this sign is employed in this language-game. - And why a "particular sensation," that is, the same one every time? Well, aren't we supposing that we write "S" every time? The introduction of the manometer gives the child of 257, who began keeping a diary in 258, some connection between her sensation and the world. This allows for the development of a criterion of correctness which puts the sensation in the world. The choice of the manometer for this purpose is but one of any number of possible ways of tying the sensation to something outward; in the cases of you and me, the role played by the manometer is played by our natural expressions of pain. Thus it is apparent that, pace Rosenberg, one concern in the private language argument is private objects. Wittgenstein neither ignores them nor tries to argue them out of existence. Instead he shows how and to what extent it is possible to make use of and to individuate them in the face of the skeptical challenge.
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In addition to directing the private language argument to the skeptic's challenge, Wittgenstein's treatment of private objects also enables us to see the sense in which correctness is public. It is here Rosenberg next goes astray. Rosenberg argues that it is not the privacy of such objects as sensations that prevents correctness from being located in the world; rather, it is because The world does not come labeled. It couldn't. What I took to be a label would be, at best, only another among a thing's encountered characteristics...Were they to come ostensibly labeled, I might know [cats] by their ostensible label - by the design 'CAT' emblazoned.., on their ~furry flanks. It would be another characteristic feature of cats... What it wouldn't be is a label. The point is that labels are semantic beings...The correctness or incorrecmess of a label is not a feature of the label as an ostensible label could be a feature of the thing ostensibly labeled...Correctness does not await discovery in the world like pointy ears and whiskers. Correctness must be located somewhere else (OW, pp. 92-93). So far, so good. By itself, the world is neither correct nor incorrect; these terms apply only to judgments or claims made about the world. Rosenberg then turns his attention to the claim that correctness lies in a relationship between our judgments and the world. He dismisses this as well. ... "This is a cat," I say. What I say is correct or it is incorrect. It is correct if what confronts me is a cat; incorrect if what confronts me is not a c a t . And the thing surely either is or is not a cat. There is no third possibility (the "Law of Excluded Middle"). I want to argue that this line of reasoning is a mistake. In particular, I want to argue that it mistakes something
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to be a relation between words and the world which is, in actuality, a relation between words and words, a relation between representings...(OW, p. 93). In certain respects, this point is well taken. Rosenberg is in general correct in his dismissal of descriptivist theories of meaning, reference and truth on the grounds that word-word relations do not take us outside language to an independent reality which serves to ground the concepts. 7 However, in the present case Rosenberg wants to use the same form of argument to prove that the worm (reality) itself cannot ground meaning, reference or truth; here he fails and his appeal to Wittgenstein as the champion of the view that 'normative correctness can ultimately consist only in a communal consilience of assertional and critical practices' (TS, p. 170) is misguided. In order to prove his point, Rosenberg imagines a case in which he invents a term, 'KLOOP,' and begins applying it to things in the world. If, by himself, he cannot make sense of saying that he is or is not applying 'KLOOP' correctly, Rosenberg concludes that it is not possible to suppose that correct application of a term can be determined by comparing one's judgment 'This is a kloop' to the world. Since the world against which we are supposed to be comparing our judgments is public, Rosenberg concludes that it is not the difference between publicity and privacy that turns saying 'This is a kloop' from mere noise-making into an act of naming. Therefore, since he has already shown that correctness does not reside in the w o r l d , Rosenberg concludes that it can only be found in communal agreement. Since this is the key to his entire argument, it bears closer inspection. One might suppose that something like the following would suffice to place correctness in a relation between one's judgment and the world: My utterance "This is a kloop" is correct if and only if what confronts me is a kloop (OW, p. 94). However, Rosenberg argues, this is mistaken. Since the 'if and only if functions as an identity relation, the statement only tells us
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that whatever counts in favor of/against "l'his is a ldoop"s being true also counts in favor of/against this thing's being a kloop; it tells us absolutely nothing about what would count in favor of the statement's being true or the thing's being a kloop. To support this, he again appeals to Wittgenstein, this time PI, I: 350. 350. "But if I suppose that someone has a pain, then I am simply supposing that he has just the same as I so often had." - That gets us no further. It is as if I were to say . . . . You surely know what 'It is 5 o'clock here' means; so you also know what 'It's 5 o'clock on the sun' means. It means simply that it is just the same time there as it is here when it is 5 o'clock." - The explanation by means of identity does not work here. For I know well enough that one can call 5 o'clock here and 5 o'clock there "the same time", but what I do not know is in what cases one is to speak of its being the same time here and there. In exactly the same way it is no explanation to say: the supposition that he has a pain is simply the supposition that he has the same as I. For that part of the grammar is quite clear to me: that is, that one will say that the stove has the same experience as I, if one says: it is in pain and I am in pain. Unfortunately for Rosenberg, this passage does not have quite the force required for his argument. It is critical to see that Wittgenstein clearly holds that an explanation by means of identity sometimes works; he says T h e explanation by means of identity does not work here (emphasis added).' What makes the case of pain one in which it does not work is that the interlocutor is trying to give us a means of using private objects to secure meaning or correcmess. 8 At 350, Wittgenstein is quite clear in his denim that we can use private objects to secure correctness or meaning; but this has been clear since PI, I: 270 at least. W h y then does he introduce the example of the sun to explain something which at this point in PI should need no
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further explanation? Is it, as Rosenberg would have us believe, because Wittgenstein thinks that there is never a case in which an explanation by means of identity works? If so, then his use of the word 'here' can be understood only as irony or understatement. While Wittgenstein is fully capable of both, I do not think he intends either in the case at hand. Wittgenstein's point can only be understood in context; he is here talking about cases where we think we can attach a sense to an expression, for example, 'The stove is in pain' or T h e parrot is talking to himself,' on the basis of a supposed extrapolation from a familiar case. Sometimes, one can use this method to understand something, but not always. As Wittgenstein remarks at PI, I: 345, to say that '[w]hat sometimes happens might always happen." - ...is like the following: If "F(a)" makes sense "(x).F(x)" makes sense.' This cannot be taken as a general rule. While in some cases that '(x).F(x)' makes sense does follow from 'F(a)"s making sense, it is not always so. To find out whether it is so in a given case, one must examine the details of that case. To return to the example of 350, we now see that Wittgenstein is not saying that explanation by identity is always beside the point. He is saying that it is always beside the point in the case of 'private objects.' The reason for this is that I do not come to understand 'I'm in pain' on the basis of my understanding of or acquaintance with some private object. While I do understand what it means to say that I am in pain (and I am acquainted with my pain), what this means cannot be applied to the stove because the stove lacks any natural expression of pain. Hence, I cannot understand what it means to say that 'I'm in pain, and 'The stove's in pain' mean the same thing. 9 The same reasoning does not, however, apply to 'I'm in pain' and 'You're in pain,' here explanation by identity is perfectly in order. This is so because you and I (but not the stove) share a form of life; we (but again not the stove) have the same natural expressions of pain. However, the case of private objects is not the only case where we run into this difficulty and are misled by a picture. The problem with 5 o'clock on the sun is not that the time on Earth is a private object, it is as public as one could wish. Indeed, the problem has nothing whatsoever to do with the time on Earth; the problem is that we have
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absolutely no idea how to extrapolate from Earth to the Sun. I do know how to compare time in Salt Lake City with time in Cincinnati; that is why I know that when it is 5 o'clock here (SLC) it is not 5 o'clock there (Cincinnati, it is 7 o'clock). This difficulty is not unrelated to Wittgenstein's earlier remarks on the standard meter. 50 . . . . There is one thing of which one can say neither that it is one metre long, nor that it is not one metre long, and that is the standard metre in Paris. - But this is, o f course, not to ascribe any extraordinary property to it, but only to mark its peculiar role in the language-game of measuring with a metre- role... The role the standard meter plays in the language game of measuring is that of serving as something against which other things are laid for comparison. ~~ So too, in the language-game of telling time, the sun plays the role of a standard. It is 5 o'clock when the sun is in thus-and-so position relative to our position on the Earth; but the sun cannot be in such a position relative to itself. 1~ And how does this fit with Rosenberg's position when he says that it is '[c]orrectness, not the world. .. [that] I have tried to reserve to myself. But having so reserved it, I lost it - for I cannot fund a distinction between correct and incorrect judgments' (OW, p. 104)? It does not. What Rosenberg fails to see is that, as it bears on his case, Wittgenstein's point in the private language argument is that correctness depends on the world. The skeptic's attempt to 'reserve the world' to himself and Rosenberg's attempt to reserve correctness to himself fail because neither the world nor correctness can be thus reserved. Rosenberg is right when he says that trying to reserve correctness to oneself results in its loss; he is wrong in his explanation of why this is so. The issue is not whether one cannot be right or wrong while quite alone, for one can. The key to understanding correclness is that one can only be right or wrong in a world; further (and this is where things get interesting) one cannot be right or wrong (i.e., make true or false statements) without a language.
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By its nature a language must be public, but this only means that it must be grounded in the world (which is independent of the speakers) and must be accessible to others in the sense that they could learn it. 12 It need not be public in the sense that others do in fact know and use it. It is interesting that at one point in his discussion of the role played by communal agreement, Rosenberg says, '...The correctness of an individual's representing can only consist in this: that others agree. More precisely, we mean that correctness consists in the fact that others would agree' (OW, p. 105). The shift to the subjunctive is telling. On p. 104 Rosenberg says that we must look to the community (practices, judgments, etc.) to see whether we are correct; here on p. 105, he takes it back, saying that the look we were enjoined to take on p. 104 might not give the right answer. But if it fails to do so, then in what sense can I not 'reserve' correctness to myself in the
world? Rosenberg's attempt to prove that community agreement underlies correctness, and from there reality, is thus seen to be fundamentally mistaken. He both misunderstands Wittgenstein and, in the end, contradicts his own case by moving from actual agreement to subjunctive agreement. In the next section, I argue that this misunderstanding undermines his attempt to prove realism.
IlL Why Rosenberg's Inference to Realism Fails In OW, Chapter IV, Rosenberg argues that correctness can only be secured by community agreement; in Chapter V he argues that this warrants an argument for realism against idealism (as well as relativism, and skepticism). This next move is somewhat unexpected since one would suppose that any notion of correctness based on community agreement would immediately lead to idealism and some form of relativism (even if it is as seemingly benign as some take Kantian Transcendental Idealism to be). Rosenberg holds that we can have a conception ol correctness only if we are Kantian Realists; this means that our language must embody what he calls the 'Realist Core,' This is a conceptual package which (roughly) commits one to an ontology of enduring distinguishable things, located in space- time; these things stand in certain regular
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relations (e.g., causality) to one another and to the observer, who is also in space-time and thus has a perspective or point of view. 13 This position is called 'Constitutive Realism.' It is clear from Section II why Rosenberg takes this tack. If community agreement is the only measure of correcmess, and if such agreement might not in fact occur in every instance (if, even as a group, we can be mistaken), one way to allow for subjunctive agreement is to place the speakers within a Kantian framework. Once there, they can make sense of what they would or should agree to if they were 'seeing things aright;' in short this framework gives the speakers access to an objective point of view.14 Chapter V of OW begins with an attempt on the part of the idealist, whom Rosenberg considers his primary target, to reintroduce his position by arguing that Rosenberg is entitled only to the Kantian Empirical Realism coupled with Transcendental Idealism. By divorcing correctness from correspondence and locating it in communal agreement, Rosenberg has 'divided through by the world' (OW, p. 109). While we must represent things as real and independent, this serves as no guarantee that they am as we represent them. ...looked at "from outside", the esse o f all things - both those which we represent as ontological reals (existing independently) and those which we represent as mere appearances - is to be represented. The distinction between being and seeming with which an apperceptive, temporally discursive intelligence necessarily operates is a distinction drawn wholly within a collection of entities all of which are, however, in themselves , simply represented (OW, p. 109). Rosenberg rejects this line of reasoning because there is no way for the critic to draw the distinction between objects as represented and objects not as represented (i.e., objects 'in themselves'). Therefore, he concludes, We are experiencers. Hence we are necessarily Constitutive Realists. We necessarily represent at least
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some things as existing independently of our representing them...What and how things are (in themselves) is (analytically) what and how they are correctly represented as being. But what and how things are correctly represented as being is just what and how we (collectively) represent them as being...But if what things are is what we represent things as being, and if we necessarily represent at least some things as ontological reals - that is, as existing independently of our representing them - then it follows that at least some things (necessarily) are ontological reals - that is, do exist independently of our representing them. ItfoUows, in other words, that Constitutive Realism is not only inevitable (for us) but also correct - and, indeed, correct because it is inevitable for us (OW, pp. 110111, emphasis added). Rosenberg is right to reject the idealist's attempt to reintroduce Transcendental Idealism. Just as Wittgenstein shows that there is no external standpoint from which the skeptic can launch his attack against sensations, so too there is no such standpoint available for the idealist. B u t Rosenberg's explanation of why the idealist fails turns things upside down. It is not because we speak a language in which we can 'force' agreement out of people who are mistaken (or, more likely, in which we can simply discount their disagreemen0 that we can uncover a reality independent of us and our language. To add that our speaking such a language is inevitable does not help the inference. 15 Perhaps it is inevitable that we do speak such a language, though it is difficult to make sense of such a claim. But, even if it is a fact, this inevitability tells us nothing about the world or its character, just as the fact that people must maintain certain self-images in order to survive tells us nothing about the accuracy of those self-images. Language does not ground the world. It is precisely the other way round. It is the fact that there is an independent world which allows us to speak such a language at all.
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We do not discover that the world is Kantian by examining our language use. Whether the world is Kantian is not the sort of thing that can be discovered. In this sense, ontology must be prior to epistemology, pace Kant and Rosenberg. 16 That there is a world independent of us is something we cannot comment on or talk about or discover or prove; it simply is so, and if it were not, we could not talk at all. And this theme is not new. It has been constant in Wittgenstein's writings since the Tractatus. 3.221 Objects can only be named. Signs are their representatives. I can only speak about them: I cannot put them into words. Propositions can only say how things are, not what they are. 5.6 The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. 5.61 Logic pervades the world: the limits of the world are also its limits. So we cannot say in logic, 'The world has this in it, and this, but not that.' For that would appear to presuppose that we were excluding certain possibilities, and this cannot be the case, since it would require that logic should go beyond the limits of the world; for only in that way could it view those limits from the other side as well. It is still in force in PI (though by this time, he has abandoned his earlier views on the naming of objects) 49. But what does it mean to say that we cannot define (that is describe) these elements, but only name them: This might mean, for instance, that when in a limiting case a complex consists of only one square, its description is simply the name of the coloured square, ...For naming and describing do not stand on the same level: naming is a preparation for description. Naming is so far not a move in a language-game - any more than putting a piece in its place on the board is a move in chess. We may say: nothing has so far been done, when
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a thing has been named. It has not even got a name except in the language-game. 50. What does it mean to say that we can attribute neither being nor non-being to elements? - One might say: if everything that we call "being" and "non-being" consists in the existence and non-existence of connexions between elements, it makes no sense to speak of an element's being (non-being)... We can put it like this: This sample is an instrument of the language used in ascriptions of colour. In this language- game it is not something that is represented, but is a means of representation...What looks as if it had to exist, is part of the language. It is a paradigm in our language-game; something with which comparison is made. And this may be an important observation; but it is none the less an observation concerning our languagegame - our method of representation. Language cannot be used to prove what the world is because language use depends on their being an objective and independent world. To use language to prove realism would be akin to using the standard meter to measure itself. Correctness is not grounded in our linguistic practices; it, like those practices, is grounded in the world. The world is not inferred from the fact of criteria of correctness or practices; to attempt such an inference would be to beg the question. ! can always ask whether we are getting it right, my spade does not turn at the communal practices; what I cannot ask is whether the world (the ground) has it right. In the end, Rosenberg effectively abandons the quest for realism, moving instead to a view which presupposes a rejection of the very conceptions of realism and correctness which give the quest point in the first place. His attempt to ground (what he calls) 'absolute correctness' in some sort of evolutionary communal agreement 17 (whether via justification or not) 18 goes astray because it equates 'correct' with 'what works.'
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As an environment selects from among random genetic mutations those traits conducive to the survival of the organism and the perpetuation of the species, so our representings might be brought into increasing conformity with the world by a process of successive selection, from among the representation continuously and even randomly - produced in us, of those representings which more nearly conform to it than their predecessors (OW, p. 116) This move is hardly unprecedented; whether it is warranted is a subject for further discussion beyond the scope of this paper. However, whatever its ultimate status, it is neither supported by the private language argument nor consistent with it. Throughout that argument, Wittgenstein presupposes reality as the ground of our language, our opinions and our form of life; there is utterly no reason to accept the realism of PI and reject correctness (truth). Moreover, even if we substitute 'what works' for 'correct' throughout Rosenberg's discussion. it does not salvage the argument to realism. If anything, it renders its invalidity more perspicuous. In the end, then, Rosenberg not only fails to establish a realism without foundationalism, but he shows the futility of attempting such an argument, with or without appeal to Wittgenstein. Whatever one might establish without foundationalism, to call it 'realism' runs the very real risk of misunderstanding and confusion. UNIVERSITY OF UTAH SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH 84112 USA
NOTES The ideas in this paper were originally developed during the course of a graduate seminar I taught at the University of Utah during Autumn Quarter 1989; I owe a debt of gratitude to the 10 students who so faithfully followed my philosophical journey through Rosenberg's books. I owe a special debt to my colleague. Virgil Aldrich, who
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attended every session, and made each one better than it otherwise would have been. The paper would never have taken its final form had it not been for the influence of Bernard Harrison's insightful work on Wittgenstein, both Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations. His interpretation of the private language argument gave me the means to make my final argument against Rosenberg. (Although I got my "Harrison" from conversations, his views appear in 'Wittgenstein and Scepticism,' Meaning-Scepticism, Dr. }Claus Puhl, ed., Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990). I would also like to thank William Whisner and L. Rex Sears for their helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper. Edited and with commentary by Nelson Pike, New York: BobbsMerrill, 1970. Linguistic Representation, Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1974 ; One World and Our Knowledge of It, Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1980; The Thinking Self, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986. Philosophical Investigations, Third Edition, G.E.M. Anscombe, trs., New York: McMillan, 1968. (Hereafter, PI.) Wittgenstein's discussions of propositions, thought and judgment in the Tractatus (D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuinness, trs, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961) are also to the point here. Wittgenstein writes at 4.001, 'The totality of propositions is language.' Given his treatment of propositions as 'articulated' (3.141) and his identity of thoughts with propositions ('A thought is a proposition with sense' (4)), it seems only fair to infer that the Cartesian mind's judgments, would on Wittgenstein's view, require a full-fledged language for their expression; but language is precisely what no disembodied !spirit' can have. As I shall argue, this inability does not stem from the Cartesian mind's absence of fellows, but from its lack of a world external to and independent of it. The word 'judgment' is notoriously ambiguous, Rosenberg seems to focus on the sense in which it is roughly equivalent to 'wisest decision or guess in view of the evidence at hand;' Wittgenstein, by contrast, would seem to have something more like 'proposition assigned value T' in mind. Harrison, op. cit. LR, Ch. II, especially pp. 22-24. This, of course, cuts against Rosenberg's earlier claim that the private language argument is not concemed with private objects.
THE WORLD, THE ELEPHANT AND THE TORTOISE
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Unless I say that they mean exactly and literally the same thing; in which case, the stove's pain would just be my pain, and have nothing to do with the stove. As in the Tractatus the world serves as the measure of truth. 4.05 Reality is compared with propositions. 2.1512 It [a picture/proposition] is laid against reality like a measure. From this it follows that with some extrapolation we could (though even now, 20 years after a man's walking there, we do not do so) make sense of the expression 'It's 5 o'clock on the Moon;' and then we could meaningfully ask whether when it's 5 o'clock here (on Earth) whether it's 5 o'clock on the Moon. This all strikes me both as reasonable and as consistent with Wittgenstein's remarks in PI. See Richard Rorty, 'World Well Lost,' Journal o f Philosophy, 69, 1972, for a related discussion. The full description of this Core is in OW, pp. 33-34; the summary offered in the text is sufficient for my purposes. Put this way, one begins to suspect a circular argument. When one talks about an objective standpoint, one generally means a standpoint which gives the correct answer; however, since Rosenberg is trying to ground correctness in community agreement, he cannot presuppose correctness in order to define the subjunctive agreement his- argument requires. At best, it turns one invalid argument ( We believe p; therefore, p is true) into another, equally invalid, argument (We necessarily believe p; therefore, p is necessarily true). In O W, p. 113, Rosenberg describes his defense of realism as ... nothing but Kant's 'Copernican revolution' in contemporary dress. E p i s t e m o l o g y is prior to ontology. That is the moral. But epistemology is prior to ontology not only in the straightforward sense that the answerability of ontological questions presupposes the existence of epistemic procedures for answering, but in the deeper sense that the content of ontological questions is epistemological. Questions of existence ... just are questions of correctness. OW, p. 115. See OW, pp. 117-128.
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