Tag: wittgenstein

Crina Prida – Forms of life (2017)

The term form of life (lebensform) emerges from continental philosophy but is mostly tied up in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein–specifically, his later work: Philosophical Investigations and, to a lesser degree, On Certainty.

It’s not at all a straightforward endeavor to explain what Wittgenstein means when he employs this term. Not because the concept itself is difficult to grasp–it’s not, it’s actually disarmingly simple; instead: it’s just that were in such a habit of thinking about things in a very proscribed way that seeing the point that Wittgenstein is making is unbelievably difficult. Probably the best way to think about it is: there is no conclusion that you’re being led toward, Wittgenstein is merely reminding us that when we philosophize we frequently mistake process for product–and that causes all kinds of difficulties.

So, in a nut shell: Wittgenstein takes aim at René Descartes–specifically Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy.

That’s the one where Descartes famously pronounces cogito ergo sum, or I think, therefore I am.

There’s no arguing that Descartes was brilliant. (And it should be noted that even though Wittgenstein is disproving Descartes, the former clearly still respects the latter’s rigor as a titan of philosophy.)

Anyway, the way Descartes arrives at his monumental pronouncement is he asks himself–how do I know, I mean really know, anything?

He proceeds to test what he can doubt–and proceeds to make a ridiculously compelling argument that everything can be doubted. He does run into a little bit of a hitch, though–he cannot doubt that he’s doubting. He takes this as the bed rock upon which he builds a world view.

In extremely broad strokes, the resulting world view solidifies the centrality of the mind-body problem in western philosophical tradition.

Descartes was so convincing in his argument that this notion of two discrete worlds–the physical and the mental has become known as Cartesian dualism.

Wittgenstein’s response is implicitly focused on blowing all of Cartesian dualism out of the water but he focuses on one point in particular. In Meditations of First Philosophy, Descartes famously asks how we can know for sure that some evil genius isn’t fooling us, i.e. just because other people move like me, act like me, etc., I can’t know what’s going on in their mind so they could be automatons for all I know.

Wittgenstein calls bullshit. But he does so in a very interesting way–by encouraging his reader to think about a quote from Augustine’s Confessions:

When  they  (my  elders)   named  some  object,  and  accordingly moved towards  something, I  saw this  and I  grasped that the thing was called  by  the  sound  they  uttered  when  they  meant  to  point  it  out.Their intention was  shewn  by  their  bodily  movements,  as  it  were  the natural language  of all  peoples:  the expression  of the face,  the play  of the eyes, the movement of other parts of the body, and the tone of voice which  expresses  our  state  of  mind  in  seeking,  having,  rejecting,  or avoiding  something.   Thus,  as  I  heard  words  repeatedly used in  their proper  places  in  various  sentences,  I  gradually  learnt  to  understand what objects they signified;  and after I had trained my mouth to form these  signs,  I  used  them  to  express  my  own  desires.

Wittgenstein takes Augustine at his words but encourages his reader to consider that if this is–in fact–how we acquire language, how might that proceed.

Thus, what Augustine has in mind is something not unlike the mythological naming of the animals in the Garden of Eden–as if names are labels for things. But then what about verbs and other more difficult parts of speech. Labeling doesn’t work so well for those.

To combat this it’s easy to say we point to indicate what we mean. In other words, the big lumbering animal with the rough skin and the long nose is an elephant and we know it’s the elephant we mean because we point at the elephant to our right as opposed to the large cat with the beard sitting around looking board to our left. We mean elephant and not lion.

Right now I’m sitting in my living room. There’s a coffee table. I can point to it and say: coffee table. But unless you already know something about what a coffee table is, how do you know that I’m pointing to the table and not to it’s color (brown), or it’s shape (rectangular), or what it’s constructed from (press board).

So what seemed fairly straightforward, isn’t. What we really mean by pointing out at something, we must modify if this approach is to work: by pointing I am not so much indicating the object for which the word I speak serves as a label but I’m pointing to some sort of internal experience. Some essentially mental essence that conveys coffee-table-ness.

How does that work? Are words like keys on a piano and by mashing a certain combination we summon the meaning we want?

That seems hell of problematic. I mean: what if I’m really color blind and I see the grass as red and the sky as green but because I’m taught that the sky is blue and the grass is green, I call them that without any way of knowing if what I see matches what everyone else sees?

That question makes a huge mistake by overlooking the fact that when I am speaking I don’t stop to question whether or not the grass is actually green. I accept that it’s green because green has meaning due to the fact that humanity has come to a consensus that a cloudless sky in a non-polluted environment appears to be the color we know as blue.

This is the idea that meaning isn’t labeling or pointing (externally or internally) it is instead words used in a particular context and the use in that given context is what bestows meaning upon the word(s).

I’ve glossed over one important point because it doesn’t really fit in the progression of this explanation but it is important so I’m going to jump tracks here for just a minute.

Initially Wittgenstein compares learning language to learning to play a game–specifically: chess. This is actually one of the more ingenious metaphors he uses.

I’ve taught dozens of people to play chess. And you usually start out with an empty board and you show the other person how each piece moves, i.e. the pawn can move two spaces off the line and then every other move it can move one space forward; it attacks diagonally. Whereas, the rook moves in a straight line left and right or forward and back; it can move as far in any one direction as their are open squares. The knight moves in an L-shape, etc., et al.

You can explain the objective–what check and check mate entail. But as check mate is something that is no one single set of moves (it’s contextual), you eventually have to play the game. (And whoever you are teaching is going to do very poorly their first couple of games…)

Language is like this but it’s also not like this. In chess a bishop can’t move like a rook, but in language a word can function in two different capacities simultaneously–think of puns, double entendres, etc.

Thus, the notion of a form of life. It’s a stunning metaphor because it emphasizes an anthropological perspective–what is the environment like, what are the cultural customs that inform the use of particular words, etc. But there’s also no form of life that doesn’t intersect with other forms of life–think about rabbits being introduced into Australia. Language–unlike rules to a game like chess–changes as it is used (similar to how life evolves).

So Wittgenstein’s trip is basically that when we think about how we do something as opposed to doing it in the stream of things, we are likely to over-complicate things in a way that we don’t when we’re speaking. (Consider the zen proverb that admonishes against putting a second head on top of the one you already have. That’s the other fascinating thing when you really dig into Wittgenstein is that you slowly begin to suspect he was actually a Zen master.)

It’s like Borges map that is so detailed it becomes bigger than the area it’s designed to survey. (It ends up moldering in the desert, as I recall.) We know how language means when we speak, it’s when we stop to think about how language means that we make mistakes like believing that I can doubt everything but that I’m doubting seems profoundly empirical but is, in actuality, something that tells us nothing about metaphysics or minds and instead merely reminds us that the if you’re doubting of course you can’t doubt that you’re doubting because that’s inherent in the concept already.

Source: crinaprida

The Misnomer/Fallacy of Artist Intentionality in Criticism

1.     If a friend says oh, look at how green the grass is today, I have no doubt what she meant—I look about and see its punchy emerald hue. (If she were to say the grass was red, it would be quite another matter.)

I am often misunderstood. Despite this I rarely catch myself wondering mid-conversation how it is my words have meaning.

It is in quiet moments when I question how words mean.

At first I want to say: a word has meaning because it names something. This works for tables and chairs and the names of colors but not so well for shapes and numbers.

What if the meaning of a word functions not unlike pointing to indicate that instead of this?  Okay, but point to an object’s shape as opposed to its color or number. How did you manage it?

Pointing seems to be a solid addition to this model. Let’s say that I was just wrong about pointing to something in the external world. Instead, words refer to some inner mental sense of meaning.

If I accept this then it would be as if my friend who wants me to notice the color of the grass has some big book in her head. Inside are lines and lines filled with every word she knows, beside each word is a mental sample or picture of the words meaning. Thus the words look, green, grass and the rest are essentially placeholders pointing back to the meaning housed in this index in her mind.

Ah, but then how do I know that her sample of green is the same as mine since I can’t very well lay my book alongside hers to check?

If this is true—and of all the models this seems the most functional—I can only know with certainty what green means in my own case.

2.     It doesn’t matter if I can compare my friend’s sample of green to mine. It could be fire engine red for all it matters as long as we both identify grass as being green in color.

Words have meaning because they refer to what is in the world around us, by how they are used and the context in which they are used.

3.     That is but process, one side of the coin. The obverse is occupied by the question: how are words understood?

I want to explain understanding in terms of a mental process. I hear a word and then a picture of it flashes before my mind’s eye. Is the flash or the picture the understanding?

Right off, I want to make understanding a mental process. I hear a word and it triggers some internal experience: whether it is a picture flashing before my mind’s eye, a feeling of a light bulb going off over my head or some effortless associative connection.

Are these experiences what understanding entails?

Well, if I see the quadratic equation all written out on a sheet of college-ruled notebook paper every time I solve a formula requiring the quadratic equation, the picture is not the understanding. Only, solving the problem is indicative that I understand. What every inner process can happen or not happen without consequence. For as long as I can comprehend the given information at the same time as knowing what to do what that information, I can be said to understand.

4.     Although these are processes are a function of the other; it is a colossal mistake to conflate them..

5.     All this has a bearing on a matter that aggravates the piss out of me: critics who go on and on about the intentions of the artist.

First off, there is the very practical consideration of what the fuck does ‘artistic intention’ even fucking mean. There are at least six different schools of thought—the majority deems matters of authorial intention to be irrelevant or unknowable.  

What I understand ‘artistic intent’ to indicate is what an artist intended their work to mean. And this framing comes perilously close to the demonstrably erroneous view that a word has meaning by pointing to some mental conceptual index.

Like a word, a work of art means and is understood because it is tied not to anything inner but to a common place use in the world through which we move.

6.     As best as I can tell the term ‘artistic intention’ indicate something closer to what might be termed ‘artistic pretense’. The artist has an idea or no idea whatsoever. They weigh medium, experiment with form and take into account any number of conceptual considerations.

The work comes out fully formed in one go; or, it takes them three thousand attempts. The artist edits, obsesses or doesn’t. Yet at a certain point the work reaches a point where it is ready to stand on its own two feet, to return to the wild.

In my own work, I find that if the work is especially well-executed, it eclipses my original vision for it. To speak of ‘artistic intention’ here is baffling to me.

(This reminds me of a scene in Anna Karenina where Anna and Vronsky visit a famous Russian painter-in-exile during the travels in Italy. It is my favorite scene in one of my two all-time favorite novels. Anna comments at length on a painting. The artist doesn’t completely agree with her but on one point, he is absolutely blown away by how much better her notion is than anything he had ever considered. After the couple departs, he makes several minor changes to the painting to more clearly suggest Anna’s interpretation.)

7.     At the point when work enters the world with whatever facts are known, additional multi-valences and contexts, the audience is left to interpret it. Interpreting is not unlike understanding a word; it is no one thing. It can spark a memory, suggest some technical insight, and engender a purely aesthetic reaction.

Such responses do not necessarily get at the meaning of the work as much as revel the psyche of the audience.  (Remember your AP English: never assume the narrator is interchangeable with the author.)

8.     What if my friend does comment on the redness of the grass?

My first instinct is not to question whether she intended to say green. No, it is to question whether I understood her correctly. In other words, I am operating on the side of the meaning understanding coin that is appropriate considering who uttered the word and who heard the word uttered. For example, I might ask: did you really just say the grass was red?

If she maintains the grass is, in fact, red, I might wonder if she were color blind? Perhaps, she is pulling some elaborate prank reminiscent of Margritte. Or, suspect her of having taken some hallucinogen without offering any to me.

At this point, I am rather quite a ways into the scenario and I am still working at understanding what she meant, not questioning her intentions—and what would the point of that be as she has made it clear that she does emphatically intend red.

I might ask her to identify the color of a fire alarm box. Her answer her would implicate whatever was at issue as well as suggesting the subsequent actions to be taken.

9.     ‘Artistic intention’ is a misnomer at best and at worst a fallacy. In effect, and inference with regard to intention arises from interpretation of/response to the work and not the work itself.

Similar to the way I can only know what my friend means by her words, I can only know what the artist means through their work. Trying to access the intention of the work is not an available option given that as a member of the audience my role is to understand.