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Timestamp: 2019-04-20 06:33:47+00:00

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be a lot. I will describe what I think is the crucial one in ours.
such is life. If I thought the action were elsewhere, I would be there.
Stuart Hampshire, “In Memoriam J. L. Austin 1911-1960”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, N. S. Vol. 60, 1959-1960, pp. I-ii.
it must be possible for someone who does not know what that way is to come to know it—what it is for things to be that way—by applying specified means to given areas of privileged fact. The core of empiricism. second. (I assume here that facts of happiness themselves are not among the privileged. in large part. for example. for example. Answerability is. Some of my colleagues may think that the real important revolution in the twentieth century happened somewhat earlier than mine. topic-neutrally). Some. there is such a thing as a person’s being happy only if someone who did not know what it was for someone to be happy could (in principle) come to know this by extrapolating from the privileged facts by the specified means. in advance of inquiry in any given field (that is. Now. there is a privileged class of facts. the idea that for any genuine way we might think of things as being. and its consequences. 1. I agree that those figures were at the center of an important revolution. as I see things. To repeat. They would be apt to mention Russell. So either what it is for something to be that way is for the privileged facts to be arranged in such and such way. A given empiricism claims to be able to identify those facts. But. or of not the facts we thought there were. and those means. It is a rejection of empiricism.CHARLES TRAVIS I face one serious worry. in the present sense. and Wittgenstein before his change of approach. of course. So. au fond. My twentieth century revolution is. engendered by the Fregean revolution mentioned above). so it consists either of no real facts at all. is a two pronged thesis: first. that century’s most important one—begun by Frege in 1879. or ‘all 4 . EMPIRICISM The twentieth century revolution has two main parts. that was a nineteenth century revolution—indeed. ‘all we can really observe about others is their behavior’. procedures or methods. But I want to touch on the anti-empiricism. privileged facts are usually meant to be those we actually confront in experience—those it is open to us just to observe. will find that reaction unfounded. there is a determinate topic neutral set of knowledge-yielding means: principles. The key idea is that any fact is answerable to the privileged ones via the specified means. as at its center.) To be slightly less abstract. or does not answer as we thought it did. since it is crucial for philosophical method. the empiricist thinks these are a definite class of fact. and it is a rejection of a certain form of Platonism (as we shall see. That is a controversy into which I plan to enter in what follows. or at least the only real grounds there could be for taking things to be the way in question is that the privileged facts are arranged in such and such ways. He might tell us. a reaction against just the features of this earlier one that most exercised Russell and early Wittgenstein. An empiricist will usually tell us that some significant domain of what we thought fact fails to answer. and he can say (in advance of confronting experience) which ones they are. though not just. I will be more concerned in this lecture with the anti-Platonism.
PHILOSOPHY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: A REVOLUTIONARY PATH we can really observe is the way things appear to us. all you really observe about Pia are (at most) flutterings and beamings. If we hear your insults and see your leers. though produced utterly cynically and with a bitter heart. or both. for example. and is bad enough in its own right. The argument turns on this thought. can we say ‘The lawn is green’. the argument concludes. they are that way. As that rejection works out in particular cases. there could be a highly trained actress whose performance was indistinguishable from Pia’s joy. The rest is inference. the revolutionary will reject either the empiricist’s conception of the privileged facts (usually the very idea that there is any such class of facts) or empiricist limitations on our knowledge-yielding means and capacities. So. were you in it. in fact. In Philosophical Investigations §136. If we stick to it. But. If you behaved badly last night. PLATONISM How do we manage to think. we need a proprietary notion of behavior. that contrasts with making conversation. Or so you think. or intend for them to mediate. That is our ordinary concept of behavior. and of the twentieth century revolution. or fact-stating: its requirement of answerability. we discern them. and its idea of what they must work on. Somehow we get in touch with the right mediators—how. Wittgenstein rejects the idea that there can be any such requirement. or to speak. Then all you can really observe. Pia is exuding happiness. then the idea that what you observe about others is their behavior does not threaten our ability to see that Pia is happy.’ An empiricist’s idea of the observable usually rests on some version of what is called a ‘highest common factor argument’. that consisted in your insulting Pia. Empiricism purports to place an a priori and substantive requirement on genuine facts. or mean them. So. or leering or whatever it is you did. You see her beaming and fluttering with it. is what is in common to both. As it may be. need not concern us here. The highest common factor argument promises to supply just that. It is a foundation of Austin’s attacks on particular empiricisms. or making overly suggestive remarks. However put in place. If your behavior consisted in merely making noises. in principle. those mediators do their job quite 5 . and. Her performance could look as much like Pia’s happiness as you like. and such that. exactly. in either situation. That is a cornerstone of his later philosophy. 2. Now suppose there is a possible situation in which things are not that way. and to whatever it is that we think about. Suppose as far as you can tell things are a given way. and thus say what is so precisely and only if the lawn is green? An ancient form of answer has it that this is accomplished through mediation by something external both to us. everything would seem just the same to you—you could not notice any deviation from the situation you in fact are in. for example. about the world at all—either truly or falsely? How can our thinking be about things? How. what bars us from seeing happiness? To threaten that.
for the humanities. we might call the mediators universals. it is its way of being colored—its look—that makes that so. To use an old term. or so we think. It is no proper business of the semanticist how the predicate came by that property. As we know. The above idea of mediators—and the idea that there is any way for us to get connected to them—has carried the odor of myth to more than just professional philosophers. by definition. an ongoing conversation. when what I said would be true. As for the universal. we might say the lawn partakes of the universal—or fails to. relates in its own way to that universal. perhaps. so. and what ones will not.) But to succumb to that idea is just to beat the wrong retreat. who. The lawn. The important thing is that it has it. The revolution I am describing knows a better way. or said. has nothing better to do. It is to remain with a mythological view of what objectivity would be like. (Empiricism’s role here shows in Richard Rorty’s reliance on Quine in arguing for that reaction. Retreating from it hastily. I call the lawn green. That general form of answer—that sort of reference to something external to us for setting the standards for things being as we thought. There are all sorts of ways of thinking of external mediators between us and the world which—thanks only to the mediation—makes our particular thoughts about it true or false.CHARLES TRAVIS independent of us: they sort possible arrangements of the world into those that are just what we thought. disastrous. as it is sometimes put. that we are best prepared to do that. My words connect to a certain universal: greenness. To name that way. a philosopher. To think of such a property just is to think of it as one that sorts out possible conditions of a thing into those that would make ‘is green’ a true description of it. it decides. or said—is what I am here calling Platonism. just by being the universal it is. cares—except. 6 . Since it is connected to my words as it is. how this property does its work—what sorting out it does—has nothing to do with us. It is just. But philosophers only worry about problems people naturally worry about. If it does partake. Is Platonism true? Who. which (some would say) might as well be about nothing at all. whether the lawn partakes. and others—just the job universals were meant to do. Or so I will suggest. many today have fallen for that. or equally. it decides how things must be for what I said to be true. one might think. That has proven. notably. But vocabulary is not important. what looks will constitute partaking in it. And the way it does its work has nothing to do with us. thereby. or nothing other than itself. just. As with universals. To take a thoroughly modern version. The term ‘universal’ is unfashionable. one may fall into the idea that there is really no objective talk about the world at all. and others. one might think that an English predicate—something like ‘is green’—has a certain property which we can specify this way: it is true of something just in case that thing is green. for its part.
. Thus we cannot say in logic: Such and such there is in the world.PHILOSOPHY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: A REVOLUTIONARY PATH Frege began his revolution with the injunction “always to separate the 2 psychological from the logical. Introduction. For that would apparently presuppose that we exclude certain possibilities. p. But it has also been an understandable impetus to a form of Platonism. Austin. that such things as relations of entailment between thoughts. L. J. one as a central figure in the nineteenth century revolution (then spilled over into the twentieth). To see how that encapsulates the revolution. it also determines how what we think may be. x. things there are to think—has an intrinsic physiognomy. so. in Frege’s hands. the subjective from the objective. The ideal. or fail to be. as we think of it. What is external to us here is a structure linking items in a domain—thoughts—reflected in structures intrinsic to the thoughts themselves. the second a later comment on the first: Logic fills the world: the limits of the world are its limits. and this cannot be the case. You can never get outside it. But.61. You must always turn back. that there is not. 3 Tractatus Logico-philosophicus. or in his terms. 5.” As a research strategy. the laws of truth. §103. The change in ways of thinking from the Platonism that went along with the early development of logic to the anti-Platonism of the later Wittgenstein is captured in these two remarks by Wittgenstein. it encourages the idea that thoughts—the things we think—may be studied in splendid isolation from their thinkers. It never occurs to us to take them 4 off. we need to understand both remarks. There is no outside at all. or facts. in doing that. 7 . trans. This structure determines in the first instance what follows from what. The Foundations of Arithmetic. 1950. Basil Blackwell. as if it could also consider these limits from the other side. that idea has undeniably borne quite a lot of fruit: mathematical logic. are determined by laws that do whatever they do entirely independent of us. through which we see whatever we look at. We get an inkling of the point of the second if we note that it occurs just after an extended attack on Platonism occupying the first 92 paragraphs of the Investigations (where such famous notions as language game. since otherwise logic would have to get outside the limits of the 3 world. Fregean Platonism depends on a particular picture of how logic.—Where does this idea come from? It is just like a pair of glasses on our nose. and ————— 2 Gottlob Frege. that the domain of thoughts—that is. Oxford. outside there is no air to breathe. applies to particular thoughts (and on treating ‘thought’ most seriously as a count-noun). 4 Philosophical Investigations. The anti-Platonism in the twentieth century revolution is largely a reaction against this tendency in Fregean thought (where ‘Fregean’ covers much more here than Frege’s thought itself). is unshakably fixed. For. no thanks to us.
Suppose we creditors have just attached all of Jones’ furnishings. Someone remarks. But first a brief digression. some definite set of rules. We are pessimistic about the worth of her somewhat over-used futon. What drives the wheels here is that there are many strands in what we would take ‘desk’ to mean. we think. what being a desk is permits either way of seeing things. and another on which it is not. Neither understanding is incompatible merely with what it is to be a desk. A note: when I say there is an understanding of being a desk on which what she had is one. In philosophy we often compare the use of words with games and calculi which have fixed rules. We will not get much for that. I mean we who are competent in that area of language if anyone is. Being a desk. Our destination requires one more piece. I am not thinking of an understanding of being a desk as something else from which that result derives. she had a desk. or at least many of them. either corresponds to a permissible way of looking at the question of something’s being a desk. and always deriving from. One would normally expect of a desk that it is an artifact. and have sent the sheriff for them. she has a desk in her study. is what she had a desk? A reasonable answer would be: it depends on what you count as a desk. I chose this first example because it illustrates one salient feature of the meanings of the words we use. may require some particular way of understanding being a desk. or of content—notably facts as to when things would be as we said—as governed by. on a particular occasion. as such. but only if. that it 8 . But a particular deployment of that notion. We are speculating as to what we might get for her furniture at the brocante market. there is still hope. As put in §81. to describe. admits of understandings. are first introduced). We can begin to appreciate the point of all that if we see just what the anti-Platonist picture of content is as it is developed in those 92 paragraphs. it would be reasonable to take a number of things as central to that notion.CHARLES TRAVIS family resemblance. over the last twenty five years or so. Is what was said true? A natural answer might be: it is if.) If we were to reflect on what a desk is. say. Suppose someone says. the way things are with Jones. In the room she uses for a study she has a door lain atop stacked milk crates. We will return to this second piece. ‘Jones has a desk in her study. (By ‘we’. all I mean is that counting what she had as a desk just is a permissible way of understanding what being a desk is. Rather. but we cannot say that someone who is using language must be playing such a game. I will try to convey that here by laying out the picture as I have developed it myself. All there is is a door and some milk crates. But. what we expect from it.’ But wrongly. But the question is. Which is to say: there is an understanding of what it is for something to be a desk (henceforth an understanding of being a desk) on which what she had is a desk. and exclude other such ways. One main idea there is that we should not see facts of meaning. ‘Well. or from a description of something as a desk.’ Jones is a poor student.
Another example presents another way of viewing the phenomenon. or green. What is in Jones’ study respects some of these strands. or in words on a given use of them) as putting tools at our disposal. of course. there is a certain look and form that it would have (though. In one sense. That core fits into an indefinitely diverse array of ways of classifying objects. or neither. in a certain respect. or whatever. given its place in a certain tradition of furniture manufacture. If asked which color a given color is. or said on the other. Nor is the result the standard image of a desk. we expect no strict account of the similarities that make for the right look and form). Both are permissible as such. (We do not know the circumstances of my speaking. as one might think of it. It is blue in the absence of oxygen.PHILOSOPHY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: A REVOLUTIONARY PATH is made for writing on (and related activities). that. I may have said what is so if the ink is blue on that understanding). And it is packaged in air-tight bottles. Those ways of distinguishing between colors form. we have various techniques. by the way they are colored. But that is certainly not standard furniture making. The color blue contrasts with the color red. We may have a perfectly secure idea of how to draw those distinctions. then the point becomes that there is no uniquely right way of answering all these questions. That is why Jones assembled those bits in those ways.) Here another aspect of meaning is to the fore. It is what makes them all understandings of being blue. for most purposes with the color green. Now is what I said true? We can rehearse all the points made in the last case. to be combined more or less ad lib with other tools for generat- 9 . So we may think of meaning (as opposed to what is said in using words. and so on. or capacities.).’ Suppose that ink has been designed to behave. inter alia. it was made for writing on. a core of techniques that may be used in classifying objects—as we would say. like blood.) So it contrasts with ink that looks blue in the bottle and writes blue as well. that it is used for writing on (and etc. or said on neither. or falsehood. Suppose I point at the ink in a certain bottle and say. a different understanding of being colored a given color. (The accountant’s secret weapon. So I might have stated truth. but not if you look at things in another. There is an understanding of what it is (for ink) to be blue on which the ink is blue. that allow us to give an answer. but turns red instantly on contact with it. and being colored blue. So we face these questions: what relative importance should we attach to the strands that are honored here vis-a-vis the ones that are not? Just how insistent should we be that our normal expectations be satisfied before we count something as a desk? And where a strand is honored if you look at things in one way (if Jones’ assembly of bits counts as manufacturing). and another on which it is not. The core—our ways of distinguishing between colors—remains constant across all of these. What I said may have been said on the one understanding (that is. just how should we look at things? If we put the facts of meaning in this way. We can see it if we note a distinction between the color blue. It is used for writing on. ‘This ink is blue. Each of these constitutes.
What Platonism must now suppose is that the universals with which our words connect are much more arcane than first seemed. for most purposes. that we know how to name each one: their names are found in the ordinary vocabulary of English. the understanding of being a desk on which he did that just is that which is most reasonable. At this point human beings re-enter the picture. The anti-Platonist point now becomes: what we humans are prepared to recognize as to what is reasonable in particular 10 . we now see that that just is not so. Put us normal humans (with a tolerable degree of linguistic competence) in a normal situation. it is still. or being a desk. Is that a desk? Here we find new varieties of understandings of being one. in the circumstances of his so describing her. and spoke truth. just for a moment. I said ‘Jones has a desk’. There is a long story as to how. With what right do we assume that there are such arcane mediators? Trivially. and flurgness really does sort out cases in a unique way into ones of the world being as described in descriptions that connect with it and ones that are otherwise. for example.CHARLES TRAVIS ing ways of describing the way things are. others as entirely unreasonable. When Max described Jones as having a desk. those universals mediate between us and the world we describe: with no help from us. Now back to the main theme. Suppose we think of our words as connecting to universals (in whatever guise). Suppose. and some ways of understanding a description—of understanding being a desk. That is just what I illustrated in making the second needed point. by human lights. Putnam and I—get off the boat. What if I suspend two strings of milk crates from the ceiling and tie a door to the bottom of each string. Austin. a desk. As Platonism has it. and no time to tell it here. we can say what it is for something to be flurg in a way that leaves no two distinct and permissible understandings of what being that would be. there is. But if I take a standard manufactured desk and suspend it upside down from the ceiling. Perhaps desks may be made out of milk crates and doors. with some scholastic nominalizations—blueness. Well. for example. some particular universal—let us call it flurgness—such that what I said is true just in case some item in Jones’ room partakes of that. And it does now seem that we have started on a process of discovery that may continue ad inf. there would be if there were specifiable ways of understanding being blue. and others on which she does not. we revolutionary anti-Platonists—Wittgenstein.) Just here. But we have no reason to believe that. say—will strike us as reasonable. that do not themselves admit of understandings—if. As it may be. but doing nothing in particular purely on their own. we must suppose. But here is the gist. For there are both understandings of being a desk on which Jones has one. Where I said ‘Jones has a desk’. (One might think of being flurg as being a desk on such and such understanding of being one. they sort out cases where the world would be as we described from cases where it would not be. But that does not follow from anything the universal deskness might accomplish on its own. So much for the digression.
for any concept we might use. equipped the way we are. supposing that it does. say. for example. The world might show. I am committed to those threats being only apparent. So there are facts as to. not just what fits the concept. of others’ thoughts and feelings. in part. or the mind. The price of this one is an apparent threat of idealism. It’s motto might be Freud’s. or none that decides. Giving the world its proper say here. I wish I could prove that here (or anywhere). what concepts they are to be). Our present appreciation of that point is Hilary Putnam’s main contribution to the revolution. Another important one deserves mention as well. in fact. for example. any notion we can form of a way for things to be consists of many strands. Merely thinking about it differently won’t help. is the view that we. our thinking about the world. to at least some extent. no matter how the need for that might arise. but what it would be for something to fit. The world can make these strands conflict. Anti-empiricism carries its own idealist menace. IDEALISM Every revolution has its price. or our capacity for it. “we are not masters in our own house. Since I see myself as standing with the revolutionaries. for example. in brief. makes the world we think about (in part) the way it is. or at least not independent of a way of viewing it. We speak. make up the world. given the way the world proves to be. But I will hint at one main idea. How the concept then applies depends on what it would be. or items in it. when you are on the interstate and your tank is showing empty. if you prefer. how it is to be done. it is clear enough when the descriptions we thus deal in are rightly given. Our talk makes sense if. that we can make no sense of a path in space doing all one would have thought a straight line ought to do. Condensing drastically. It is a feature of that sort of discourse that sometimes one can see that someone is happy. I have been emphasizing one variety of current anti-Platonism. Rather. If it does make sense. there must be room for the world to help decide. to give each strand its proper due. a matter of what is reasonable by human standards. then in engaging in it we really do describe the way things are (or are not). or unreasonable) is not reducible to the work that any specifiable universal might unequivocally do. And once that room is left. or our minds. So. Idealism. several different threats here. to be. It would thus make problems as to what would count as a straight line. There are. That is certainly the wrong way to think about things. that is the 11 . a concept cannot be conjured into a platonic entity. how that concept then would apply. 3. A concept can contain no recipe for thus assigning due. who is happy and who is not. if it is of a way for the world.PHILOSOPHY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: A REVOLUTIONARY PATH situations (what we are prepared to see those situations as making reasonable.” Here the point is that it is not up to us to decide how our concepts will apply (or. So how due is properly assigned must always be. we cannot suppose such questions settled by some platonic intermediary.
. suppose we had been designed differently? Well. The mere fact that we might have been designed differently does not show that the facts we can in fact discern would not have been facts but for our discerning them. in principle.341 12 . Notably. Let us imagine a white surface with irregular black spots. on reflection. Another design would have placed a different net. though no human being will ever be capable of seeing that it is. prepared to recognize. One might still feel unease. an image our mind casts on things? The latter seems idealism. We can see some facts as to who is happy. because I could have applied with equal success a net with a triangular or hexagonal mesh. provided a fitting image for this idea. if I cover the surface with a sufficiently fine square network and now say of every square that it is white or black. Specifically. And it is hard to see how the moral facts could extend farther than. It is part of the anti-empiricist idea. But then. would there still be such facts? Or are such ‘facts’ just what our mind-design projects onto the world. To the dif5 ferent networks correspond different systems of describing the world. The way we are designed to think places a certain net against the world—the network of concepts we are equipped to use. But that there might be different nets does not jeopardize the claim of a given one to fit. 6.CHARLES TRAVIS sort of thing we are sometimes able to see. that the way we are designed to think opens our eyes to certain domains of fact. our eyes might be closed to those areas of reality. then. Suppose it really is wrong (other things equal) to step on babies.) In the end. This form is arbitrary. equally available to a thinker who did not know what happiness was. because we are equipped to think of the world in terms of happiness.. . Suppose we had been differently ————— 5 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. tying your left shoe before your right one is really wrong. what we are in the end. (It is hard to assign sense to the idea that. Wittgenstein. The question naturally arises. That a given organism is unable to discern some facts that another can is no reason to think the other is not really discerning facts. while part of the nineteenth century revolution. or to throw them in front of moving trains. That is the anti-empiricist idea. We are equipped. for example. say. to see what they are. For all this to be so. He would then just not see that feature in things (people) at all. external. or differ from. the facts about happiness need not follow from other facts. requirement. our ability to detect happiness turns on a domain-specific capacity not necessarily shared by all thinkers. We would not find any such facts.. A rational Martian. We now say: Whatever kind of picture these make I can always get as near as I like to its description.. might not be so equipped. we find the idea compelling that it is wrong to tread on babies. talk about happiness (say) need not satisfy any other. Different organisms might be sensitive to different facts. by principles available to just any thinker at all. So there are moral facts. To take a pointed case consider ethics. This threat may be disarmed..
the blood is blue on one understanding. what is blue.) Blood that counted as blue might not have done so. they will not have applied different nets. If the net is a system of concepts. no matter how we think—so even where we would not call that blood 13 . of course. but falsely. irreducibly on the reactions it would be natural for reasonable people to have in that situation—on some judgements as that. the difference lies in our ways of thinking of how descriptions need to fit the circumstances of their giving. again. depends on our ways of thinking. Would it still have been. either of which is a way of capturing them. Wittgenstein’s image does not show how to make sense of that. say. (It is no anodyne view. each will have applied the same net differently. second. described some blood as blue—truly. in giving that description she would not have described it truly. say). the other what is untrue given its looks when oxygen is present. but not on another. in intelligible ways. or applied different concepts. Max. But to say that Max spoke truth and Pia falsehood is not to say that there is something—that blood—that is both blue and not. The reverse side of that is that it cannot follow merely from the fact that Jones. Pia described that same blood as blue. Or so the anti-Platonist maintains. Apart from understandings. first. as blue—would fit the way things are depends. no matter how it looks when in the bottle. That. Max did what counted. so as to find nothing compelling in that idea. some ink. the one saying what is true given its present condition in the vein. would be idealism. the question is how either could be right. and what not. The anti-Platonist idea is that whether a given description one might give of things—say. you ought not to call ink blue unless it will write blue. she thus described it truly. simply cannot arise. on the occasion of. wrong to tread? The hard part is that the facts here are blatantly ones as to what one is to do. On the anti-Platonist idea. It is an easy slide from that to the view that what is blue and what not depends on our reactions. Had our ways of thinking been different. for all that. did not that each gave a different description of things. and occasions for having them. say. then the blood must be the way he said it was. It is hard to see how two such forms of mindedness could simply place different nets against such facts. Given human ways of thinking. So the misreading puts an answer in his mouth to a question which. on his view. Anti-Platonism brings human beings—expressers and thinkers of thoughts—back ineliminably into the picture. in such and such circumstances (selling ink to students. If our minds do not create the world. described things truly. On that idea misread. of what it is for blood to be blue. there is no answer to the question what is blue and what is not. and Pia. Rather.PHILOSOPHY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: A REVOLUTIONARY PATH designed. anti-Platonism deprives us of this simple line of response. as describing blood as blue. or. a description of some blood. Each might. where it counted. and. giving it. say. for example. That is just what anti-Platonism comes to. If there are two such nets. Pia described some blood as blue. Rather. have described the same blood as blue. In any event. or for.
) Still. He was doing what he purported to do—what he presented himself as ————— 6 Outlines of Pyrrhonism. say. §59 (trans. and of situations. That response seems fair. had we been designed differently.. cit. and that satisfies our standards of good description. The one just amounts to the other. Paraphrase is crucial to our notion of a way for blood to be. Here one might cite Sextus Empiricus. Being green leaves cows out of the picture. we also would not say that Max described it as what we would then understand by being blue. 7 Op. (And paraphrase does not demand synonymy. and we are free to do likewise. §61 14 . [I]f the same objects appear dissimilar depending on the variations among animals. The lawn looks green to us.’ One might say: we do not converse with cows. Sextus suggests that different animals have different perceptions of color. Why should our own perceptions of describing. when by other possible perceptions it would not be? Idealism could just as well have been taken to be the view that judgement is not objective as the view that the way the world is depends on the way our minds are. our descriptions are not meant for them. One might respond to Sextus this way: ‘What are we talking about when we talk about something being green? What is it for something to be green? However you understand that question. but 6 as to what it is like in its nature we shall suspend judgement. Max would not have described truly. But where we would not say that of the blood. it seems. We might have been such different thinkers. We then have other ways of saying what he said—that it looked blue without oxygen. Put it that way and the blood is—still counts as—the way he said it was.CHARLES TRAVIS blue. we would say. He then says. Max calls the ink blue. chapter 14. Now let us turn to human and Martian thinkers. not something such that whether something is green or not is at all a question of how it looks to cows. and it is impossible to decide between them. appearances become different depending on the variations among animals. or for. For unfathomable reasons. Max described something as blue—correctly. it fails to satisfy Martian standards. it is necessary to suspend 7 judgement about external existing objects. count for more than the perceptions of such other thinkers? How can our perceptions make a judgement correct. By Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes). What now seems in jeopardy is the objectivity of judgement. Different thinkers might find what he did not true describing. but who knows how it looks to a cow? So it would be rash to judge that it is green. Martians. In which case. Further. Book I. then we shall be able to say what the existing object is like as observed by us. But Max wasn’t speaking to. If. therefore. though.
One would assign them content they do not have in expecting more of them. This appears to abolish logic. by our standards) expect of them. If they are true. In the first remark. that cannot always be put by saying: ‘That ink (really) is blue’). For. Martian perceptions have no role in deciding whether Max described correctly. one on which we humans can rely (which give us no cause for complaint). by returning to the contrasting quotes I used to encapsulate the shift from the nineteenth century revolution to the twentieth century one. for example. but (as odd as this may sound) in judgements. These thoughts. So human reactions make logic. and so on—are thus its subject matter. Which is to say that. And if he did. And it was just entailments that logic was meant to map. Wittgenstein thinks of logic as mapping the limits of thought. on this view. but does not. abolish it—the most profound and disturbing idealism imaginable. By that idea. Against that background. It is a feature of them that certain relations between the organizing forms they put at our disposal are not up for grabs. gives us another way of thinking of logic’s appointed task. simply because that is how they are designed. CODA In Investigations §242 (for cognoscenti. then so too is entailment. 15 . what it is a science of. Thoughts—the things there are to think. it puts at our disposal a set of powerful tools we can use. not just in definitions. The tools are rigid. just as bovine perceptions play no role in deciding the correctness of our descriptions of things as green.PHILOSOPHY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: A REVOLUTIONARY PATH doing—if his words fit into human life as true words ought—if they have the uses for human beings that humans might (reasonably. as needed. indeed. as the later Wittgenstein might put it—a determinant of what the logical facts are. though. the paragraph immediately before the notion of private language is introduced). anti-Platonism will seem to make human ways of thinking—natural human reactions. and to systematize. to organize. and why should the appearance be false? We can understand his remark. if content is irreducibly a matter of how we human thinkers would see things. I think. 4. then things are the way he said (a point. then they are a guide to certain sorts of human conduct. it is supposed. suppose. we have learned. logic is not (directly) the science of thoughts. The second quote. Why should there be so much as a false appearance of abolishing logic. Rather. which would. and thus of the world. form a totality with a definite structure: for each thought there is such a thing as the way it relates to all the others. Ink descriptions may be useful in activities of check signing. Wittgenstein says. Logic’s task is to describe that structure at a suitable level of generality. Communicating in language presupposes agreement. thought. Here Wittgenstein expresses sensitivity to the idealist fears his anti-Platonism might awaken.
Charles Travis Dep. to be dissolved rather than solved. So there is more work to do. and which even have a traditional cast. in just this sense: to imagine them not holding (if such were possible at all) would be to step outside the system. more broadly. and thus. All that is metaphor. in a sense. If that is how the twentieth century panned out. the upshot is the dawn of ‘post-philosophy’.CHARLES TRAVIS That those relations hold depends on nothing. are to be thought of as mere pseudo-problems (even if sometimes deep for all that). philosophy is dead. we have arrived at a batch of problems which certainly seem genuine. which are deep. That is just the point I would like to leave you with. whatever that may be. But by working through the changed view that it.ac. of Philosophy Stirling University Stirling. I sympathize with anyone who finds these images disturbing. unsatisfactory for that reason and for others. Such problems. and where they can get purchase at all. UK ct2@stir. with philosophy itself. Perhaps Wittgenstein encouraged this view of his later work. There is a reading of Wittgenstein on which his later philosophy does away with philosophical problems. to abandon that tool. we might abandon them and construct new ones. and. If given tools should prove unsatisfactory for given purposes. But how these tools grip onto the thoughts we wish to organize.uk 16 . FK9 4LA. on this reading. depends on the phenomenon of our thinking—on the material there is for them to work on. the twentieth century revolution represents.

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