The previous chapter covered Wittgenstein’s reasons for holding a general quietism with respect to all philosophical problems.  It might be argued, however, that Wittgenstein still made some substantial assumptions, at least about the nature of language, if not about the nature of philosophy.  Wittgenstein worked hard over many years on developing what he considered a perspicuous representation of language.  If this representation is correct, then I think his views on philosophy follow.  But the very fact that developing this understanding took so much of his time shows the enormity of the task, and therein lies the difficulty.  For language is a large and complex phenomenon, and it is difficult to represent it with one metaphor that is not as subtle and ambiguous as language itself.  The endless possibilities suggested by the idea of a ‘language-game’ are evidence of that – a point that Wittgenstein made use of to discourage over-generalising in philosophy[1].  So the difficulty in accepting Wittgenstein’s views with respect to philosophy come to this: that it is hard to see that language always works in a way so as to exclude the possibility of drawing substantial philosophical theories from it.  It is hard to accept that quietism holds in general.

Despite Wittgenstein’s high-handed pronouncements on philosophy, it is evident that he was clearly aware of this problem.  He treated each piece of philosophical nonsense individually and thoroughly.  Not that he completed this task.  Certain areas of discourse were barely covered by his work, most notably ethics and aesthetics.  Even if quietism were the only correct approach to philosophy in general, it would be an endless task to show it.  But that is no reason to reject quietism, applied in a piecemeal fashion, as a general methodology.  The limits of this methodology will be shown by the extent of its success.  By way of illustration, I want to demonstrate that quietism is correct for at least one particular area of discourse.  And the first step in this direction will be to show that neither conceptual realism nor conceptual idealism can provide satisfying accounts of that area.  Such a demonstration would at least illustrate the conflict between conceptual realism and conceptual idealism, and show how quietism can provide a cogent alternative.

I have in mind three related lines of thought that tempt us, as philosophers, to utter nonsense.  In the course of this thesis I have touched on, in varying contexts, a number of more or less related themes in the philosophy of mind and metaphysics.  In particular we have touched several times upon the nature of subjectivity and its relation to language and objectivity.  It is the connection between these lines of thought that I want to stress in the present chapter.  If I am right in thinking that the connection between them is significant, then the philosophical treatment of one should provide insight into the correct treatment of the other two.  And this connection can best be made, I believe, by considering these philosophical problems in the context of the debate between conceptual idealism and conceptual realism.

7.1 Philosophy and Subjectivity

The first line of thought is simple, but perplexing.  It is the argument, discussed in chapter 1, that has been used to propound a doctrine of idealism.  The argument takes the form of an exercise in conceivability.  We are asked to imagine a world (or some part of it) that is presented to no subject whatsoever.  But one necessarily finds oneself as subject in or of that world.  Hence, the argument concludes, a world without a subject is impossible.

We noted in chapter one that it is a mistake to take this argument to prove that minds are a necessary part of the world.  When I imagine anything, I, as imagining subject, am not necessarily part of what is imagined.  Indeed, it seems that in a certain sense of ‘me’, it is difficult to see that I could be part of what is imagined.  For nothing in my imagination corresponds to me.  Of course, I can imagine being one of the characters in the scene that I imagine.  Usually (though not necessarily) this will take the form of conjuring up conscious states that bear some similarity to the states I suppose I would be in if I were in the imagined situation.  These states will typically be in some way visual in nature (I imagine how thing would appear to me visually) but may include other sense modalities and perhaps the emotions that the images invoke in me.  Although the situation is simulated, if ones imaginative powers are strong enough, the simulation can be extremely vivid.  The emotions one evokes in oneself may be very real.  However distinct the act of imagining is from the act of perceiving one will always be in some set of mental states that are very real.  One does not imagine that one imagines.  Likewise, one would like to say something similar about the subject.  Though I imagine myself in a foreign place, I do not imagine myself.  Every part of what I can imagine I can imagine otherwise.  The content of my imaginative act can always be changed.  But that it is I who imagines remains constant.  Even if I imagine being someone other than M. D., it remains true that I imagine that I am someone other than M. D.  Throughout the imaginative act, I am myself.

This last point may form part of the realist’s reply to the idealist[2].  If the content of my imaginative act is given by what is imagined, then I form no part of that content.  Hence, while I cannot abstract myself from my imagination (since it is I who does the imagining), I can subtract myself.  Even if, as Peacocke would have it[3], to imagine a tree is to imagine being in some conscious state that would normally be caused by the presence of a tree, it does not follow that what one is imagining is a tree being perceived.  The perceiver is not part of what is imagined.

Nevertheless, even if this point is conceded, the argument for idealism still has some power.  It still seems to contain some philosophical truth, even if that truth is not the doctrine of material idealism.  Part of this ‘truth’ is contained in the thought that a subject, if not present in my imaginative act, is somehow presupposed by any imaginative act.  The world as it is imagined, perceived or known, is a world for a subject.  The world as it is conceived is the world for a subject.  The concept of world and the concept of subject are interwoven.  But what is this subject that is presupposed?  Two answers suggest themselves.  But these two answers, while both are tempting to the point of being self-evident, also seem mutually exclusive to the modern philosopher.

The first answer has already been suggested by the discussion so far.  It is that whatever the subject that is presupposed by the ‘world’ is, it is not part of that world.  Whatever world I imagine, the subject that is necessarily ineliminable from the act of imagination is never part of what is imagined.  The point could be made in a Humean spirit: whatever part of my imagination or experience I assess, none of it turns out to be the subject.  But Kant thought of the matter differently.  It is not that a thorough phenomenological search comes up empty, but rather that we know in advance that the subject will not be found in experience[4].  Kant thought of the subject as the synthetic unity of apperception.  It is the ‘I think’ that can accompany all my thoughts and intuitions.  Such a transcendental subject cannot usefully be described as a substance, for (to put the matter in Kantian terms) the category of substance applies only within experience[5].  But then what is left of this concept of a subject?  The sober minded philosopher – especially the conceptual idealist – might argue that it is merely an idea, one that is ripe for elimination.  On this view the subject is a construct, corresponding to an idea that has no real referent[6].  Just as the ‘I’ is no part of the imagination or experience, so it is no part of the world.

The second answer is that, quite clearly and obviously, I am the subject.  This is worrying enough for the proponent of the argument for idealism.  As we saw in chapter 1, that argument, if it works, proves not idealism but solipsism, for I cannot imagine something that is not imagined or perceived by me.  But suppose now that we reject the argument for (material) idealism on the basis outlined above.  We granted that a subject is presupposed, but argued that such a subject is merely a presupposition to the idea of imagining anything.  It is not part of the world, but an idea that is related to the idea of a world.  But am I merely an idea?  Does the idea of a subject in the context of the imaginative act not refer to me?  It is easy to feel sympathy with Descartes’ thought that if anything is certain it is that I exist as a thinking substance.  (We really do feel this sympathy).

This brings us to the second line of thought that I would like to discuss.  As we noted previously, the argument, rather than taking us neatly to the doctrine of idealism as intended by Schopenhauer and Berkley, has driven us to the unhappy position of solipsism.  But what kind of solipsism have we arrived at?  It is not the obviously nonsensical solipsism that has it that all substance is dependent on my ego.  For my ego is, if it exists at all, a substance.  A substance is a part of the world, and very much a contingent part of it[7].  I can easily imagine a world without substances.  Yet in doing so I do not disappear.  The subject that was presupposed in my idea of a world, we must conclude, is not part of the world.

We are immediately reminded of the solipsism of the Tractatus, which I labelled ‘Transcendental’ in chapter 2.  By ‘transcendental’ I mean precisely that which is presupposed by the idea of experience and the world.  Wittgenstein himself excluded that which is presupposed from being part of the world, for that which is part of the world is contingent, and could be otherwise (Tractatus 5.634).  Hence the ‘metaphysical subject’ is a ‘limit – not a part of the world’ (5.641).

The problem with this, as we saw in chapter 2, is that it leaves completely mysterious what this metaphysical or transcendental subject is.  For Wittgenstein it is part of that which makes itself manifest, but cannot be said.  And the subject enjoys this ineffable status because it is presupposed by the notions of language and possibility.  Put another way, we cannot give content to the notion of the transcendental subject, since it is that which is presupposed by the idea of content.  But this just seems to be nonsense.  How can we use a concept to which we cannot give content?

We have reached the idea of transcendental solipsism by considering the argument from imagination for idealism.  The early Wittgenstein did not put these thoughts in terms of imaginative acts.  For him, a possibility was given by representability.  The link is easy to make, however, since for Wittgenstein to think (use language) is to picture a state of affairs.  We can thus understand Wittgenstein’s reasons for introducing the metaphysical subject in §5.6 by considering the way our current line of thinking has led us to solipsism.  I cannot imagine any proposition that is not a proposition in my language.  So the limits of my language are the limits of the world (that which can be described in language).

I argued in chapter 2 that Wittgenstein does not argue from the privacy of language and experience to his transcendental solipsism.  But it does not follow that Wittgenstein did not hold some view akin to the privacy of language view at the time of the Tractatus.  As we noted in chapter 4, he held that we learn to use words by a kind of private examination of the phenomena referred to.  (The very view that he later attacked so rigorously in his remarks on private language.  See chapter 5.)  And even if one does not argue from privacy to solipsism, one could well argue the other way.  Whatever the differences between ‘empirical’ and ‘transcendental’ solipsism, it is the essence of solipsism that the subject (in whatever sense the ‘subject’ is understood) has a unique relation to the world.  One can describe this uniqueness in terms of the objects that the subject’s language is supposed to refer to.  The subject is taken to have direct contact with those objects in a way that is beyond the descriptive powers of language.  Objects can be named but not described.  (And since this naming relation is presupposed by language, it cannot be further analysed within language).  The link between privacy and the notion of a simple object is this: a simple object can only be named, not described.  The object does not fall under any public concept, since it has no structure to distinguish it from any other object.  The concept it falls under can only be understood by the user of its name, who is in direct contact with its self-intimating nature.

The third idea that I wish to discuss is the concept of essentially private experience.  It is easy to sympathise with the view that the later Wittgenstein goes to so much effort to attack: that only I can know what my experience is like.  It is likewise easy to sympathise with the view (though apparently easier for some philosophers than for others) that experience is made up (at least in part) of private, ineffable elements that correspond to the subjective qualitative feel of experience.  Our ordinary descriptive language describes what our experience is of, not the experience itself.  Even experiential terms, such as ‘dizziness’, do not seem to capture what it is like to feel dizzy in their public use.  That knowledge, it would seem, is pre-linguistic, and can only be gained by having the experience.  But could there be something that is pre-conceptual?  If we can speak of it at all, then surely we can articulate what it is that we are speaking of.  And then we have described that which was earlier supposed to be ineffable.

7.2 Subjectivity and the ‘Irresolvable Debate’

Like so many philosophical disputes, the problems discussed here concerning the subject and its relation to the world have been characterised by diametrically opposed views.  Let us take some of the wide-ranging literature on ‘qualia’ and ‘sense-data’.  The referents of these terms (that is to say, which entities are at issue in the first place) are, of course, the subject of much contention.  The term ‘qualia’, as used by some philosophers, need not imply the disputed entities have (or are) private or ineffable properties.  This is particularly true if the proponent of qualia holds that they are properties of things (objects) rather than minds.  Nevertheless, much of the traditional dispute over qualia or sense data can be considered to be relevant to the issues at hand.  For a great deal of the debate about whether qualia exist (and what follows from this) hangs on whether or not qualia are describable in ordinary public language (whether they can be given physical or functional descriptions)[8].  To simplify matters I will henceforth use the term ‘qualia’ to refer to private, ineffable qualities.  The question is whether such a concept is coherent enough to have any application.

The debate about the existence of qualia is an example of the form of dispute where one camp asserts the existence of some disputed entity, while the other position denies its existence.  In such disputes, it is typical for some overarching doctrine to be at stake.  In the case of qualia and the subject, the general philosophical thesis most generally taken to be at issue is physicalism.  The anti-physicalist argues that some entity, such as qualia, ‘evidently’ exists, or can be shown to exist by simple reasoning, and that its description cannot be reduced to a physical level of discourse.  The physicalist has the option of either arguing that the existence of the disputed entity is compatible with physicalism[9], or (more often the case) that the disputed entity is not coherently defined and should thus be eliminated.

This seems to be the underlying form of most arguments about qualia, even when they are not explicitly put in these terms.  By this I mean that this way of putting the matter best reflects the opposing intuitions that prevent the debate from being resolved.  Let us take, for example, Jackson’s Knowledge Argument[10].  This does not obviously have the usual form of an argument about ineffable qualities or entities, but I think that it is driven by (and driving at) the same intuitions.

Mary is brought up in a completely black-and-white environment, learning all her knowledge from textbooks and a black-and-white television set.  She is a most diligent and gifted student, and she finally absorbs all the knowledge that can be taught in this way.  She gains, that is, all the propositional knowledge there is to gain.  In particular she demonstrates a remarkable grasp of neurophysiology, especially in the area of colour perception.  According to Jackson, she thereby gains all the knowledge that the physical sciences afford on these matters.  So what happens when she leaves the room and experiences red for the first time?  Does she learn something new?  The anti-physicalist claims that she obviously does.  She learns the what-it’s-like to experience red.  But, by hypothesis, she already knew all that the physical sciences had to teach.  So there are more facts to be known than those covered by the physical sciences, and physicalism is false.

There are two standard responses to this line of argument.  Firstly, it has been argued that what Mary gains when she leaves captivity and sees a ripe tomato for the first time is not some piece of knowledge but a recognitional capacity.  She gains the ability to recognise (the experience of seeing) red.  The second response is to flat refuse to acknowledge that it is clear that Mary would gain any knowledge or even ability by her new experience.  Seeing red for the first time, she will instantly recognise it as the experience of perceiving a red object, because it will be just as her studies and research had predicted.  We do not know what it is like to have all the physical knowledge, so we are wrong to assume that it would not include the what-it’s-like of experiencing red.

But I do not think that the pro-qualia philosopher need blush at these objections.  Neither of them will do much to undermine the intuitions that are fostered by someone who already takes qualia seriously.  And by qualia I mean precisely that which is private to the individual, for it is privacy that makes the concept of a particular quale resistant to description by the physical sciences.  Since there is no (complete) public description of the experience of seeing red, Mary could not have learned what it is like to see red without actually seeing red for herself.

On the other hand, the proponent of qualia is not going to make much headway in converting the opposition to his cause.  The physicalist will continue to miss the anti-physicalist point so long as she does not share the same intuitions about private objects.  Indeed, her best response can be put like this: either the entity you are talking about can be adequately described and defined, in which case there is no a priori reason to suggest that it cannot be incorporated into a completed physics, or your concept is confused, and should be disregarded.  Time and again however, this second horn is going to be rejected by the anti-physicalist.  For it is exactly his point that there is something that resists complete and adequate description.  Something that is beyond the reach of the net that language casts.  And if it is beyond the net of language, if there is something that cannot be described, then there cannot be a theory that reduces such phenomena to physical entities.  If we cannot specify what is to be reduced or explained, we cannot articulate a theory that reduces or explains it.

Arguments about qualia and subjectivity are not always put in these terms, but I think that this issue underlies a great deal of the debate.  If I am right about this then we can view this debate as a subclass of the conceptual realist – conceptual idealist debate.  It is no coincidence that the guardians of an irreducible subjectivity (such as Nagel) are also the strongest proponents of conceptual realism[11].  The philosophers that argue for the elimination of qualia are not always so forthright in their corresponding support for conceptual idealism[12], but implicit in their arguments is the assumption that if a supposed entity cannot be adequately defined then the concept one is attempting to use is empty.  To be a general a priori defence of physicalism this response must hold that there could be no entity that is beyond physical description (a fortiori, there is no entity beyond all description).  To assume a completed physics is possible, and that it would amount to a correct theory of everything, implies that conceptual idealism is correct[13].  Whether or not the eliminators and ‘quiners’[14] of qualia could be pushed to these strongly conceptual idealist standpoints, they do have a problem in common with the conceptual idealist.  They seem to be denying something that really does seem undeniable, even if we cannot say what that undeniable thing is.

I reflect on my experience of looking at a ripe lemon.  I notice the unmistakable lemon shape, and recognise its colour immediately as yellow.  Not that it is uniform in colour, or even all yellow.  At each end there is evidence of an unripe green, and all over it is covered with dimples that are for the most part darker in colour than the general appearance of vibrant yellow.  The lemon is illuminated with white light from the window, casting a range of hues.  Towards the light it is speckled with white flicks that outline the dimples on its surface.  On the upper side the same effect is produced in a more diffuse manner by the light reflected from the cream walls.  Underneath and to the right it is shrouded in grey.

What have I described?  My experience of seeing a lemon?  Certainly.  I have described the way the lemon appears to me.  And in doing so I have used concepts with which you are familiar: lemon, yellow, ripeness, light, and so on.  But what of the way it appears to me?  Have I described that, or merely gestured at it?  What of this particular patch of yellow here (just above the point of maximal intensity of the illuminating light)?  Well, I could present you with a yellow sample, and tell you under which conditions to view that sample.  But I do not want to describe the patch on the lemon, but the patch in my image of the lemon; the way it looks to me alone.  How can I know that it looks the same to you, even if you were seated in the same place, looking at the same lemon in the same light?

This line of thought makes it easy to sympathise with the realist’s contention that there is something there that evades description.  But where?  The only ‘there’ to point at is on the surface of the lemon.  And surely we can match that with a colour chart.  If there is some other patch, then we should say what it is.  For the very fact that we are picking something out shows that we have a concept in mind.  We do the following to find the mental patch of yellow: first we find the real patch on the lemon, and then we abstract.  (A kind of transcendental reflection on experience after Husserl, perhaps?)  We always start with the patch that we can talk about, and then try to absorb the pure form of the experience.  As if we could relax our mind and see ‘it’ without thinking – without the interference of conceptualisation.  But if there is no thought, how can I know that the experiment has succeeded?  How can I pull the non-conceptual experience back into my thoughts and draw conclusions from it?  As the conceptual idealist is fond of reminding us, drawing conclusions is a matter of seeing rational relationships.  To affect a judgement, something must already have conceptual form.  But the conceptual realist is already crying foul.  Surely you cannot mean to deny that there is something indescribable in experience!

This is where I think quietism can best be illustrated.  Quietism is a philosophical approach that can arise from the rejection of the kind of philosophical dispute in question.  It arises as a response to philosophical disputes that take the form of an opposition of doctrines that can be neither reconciled nor independently resolved in favour of one or the other.  As we saw in chapter 3, this is the form of the general debate between the conceptual realist and the conceptual idealist.  The conceptual realist insisted that there could be concepts to which we could have no cognitive access, and the conceptual idealist points out that we cannot make sense of a concept that we cannot make sense of.  The problem is that nothing can count as an example to resolve the dispute one way or the other without using the very point at issue to interpret the alleged example.  There seems no independent way of resolving the issue.

The quietist insight is that where questions cannot be independently resolved, this indicates that the question itself maybe misconstrued[15].  Both arguments for and against qualia seem to be based on sound intuitions.  The conceptual realist feels no qualms about talking about something that he cannot describe.  After all, it seems so evidently there, part of the fabric of his experience.  But the conceptual idealist feels just as justified in demanding a more complete articulation of the supposed entity.  And this is precisely what the conceptual realist claims cannot be given.

We can only resolve these conflicting intuitions if we give up an assumption that both the conceptual idealist and the conceptual realist share.  Both assume that the nature of our concepts reflect the nature of Reality in a metaphysically significant sense.    For the conceptual idealist there is a necessary correspondence between concept and object, for the conceptual realist there is a contingent correspondence.  But for both what is at stake is the true nature of Reality.  And this is what makes our intuitions about qualia seem so inviolable.  To deny qualia seems to deny something really there.  But to talk of something that has no conceptual shape seems to depart from any coherent conception of reality.

The quietist can release this tension by questioning the concept of reality that is supposed to be at stake.  Not that we want to question the ultimate reality of anything.  But we can question whether the kind of philosophical considerations in question can provide us with any special insight into reality.  The difficulty disappears if we reassess both intuitions with more moderate expectations of what they can show us.

The common assumption shared by conceptual idealism and conceptual realism is that there is some fundamental description of reality that somehow underlies or explains our ordinary conception of reality.  There is a way things ‘really are’ in the sense of an ontologically more fundamental level.  In questioning this assumption, the quietist is not being antirealist: he is not in the business of denying the reality of anything.  But quietism denies that we can identify some way of conceptualising the world that is fundamental in the sense of having some language independent justification.  Ultimately, all conceptual schemes stand without justification.  In order to justify anything, we must already assume some conceptual scheme, for a justification must have conceptual form.

With the conceptual idealist the quietist agrees that we must respect the bounds of sense, and not try to point helplessly beyond them.  Talk of qualia is nonsense.  If there is some coherent entity that we can refer to at all, we can articulate it.  There must be a grammar for the use of the term that refers to it.

But the quietist also has some points of agreement with the conceptual realist.  While we cannot talk about entities that we do not have coherent concepts for (or even point to them – pointing, too, requires a concept), this does not mean that we have the only conceptual scheme available.  Our concepts are limited by our interests and abilities.  A creature with other interests and abilities would have different concepts, and perhaps they would not be accessible to us.  If a lion could speak, we would not understand him[16].  The difficulty is to prevent ourselves from taking this thought too far and to imagine that we can make sense (even partly) of some particular concept beyond our grasp, or some particular entity that we cannot fully conceptualise. And we cannot point to the reality beyond our interests and abilities.  We can only talk about what we can talk about, and anything else cannot form part of our explanations or theories.

The conceptual idealist tells us that we have reached the limits of language.  But what does that mean?  The temptation is to believe that in seeing the limits, we have made some deep philosophical ‘discovery’.  As if by excluding qualia from the world, we have seen the limits of the world, and thus learnt something of its true nature.  But all we have done is found the point at which language breaks down.  We have merely uncovered the fact that the term ‘qualia’ cannot have the use we imagined it to have: that we had a misconceived picture of its use in mind.  Consequently, the concept of qualia cannot play the role in our explanations that we may have hoped it could.  But we have not denied anything: the concept was not coherent enough to pick out anything to deny.  To put the point in Wittgensteinian terms, we have merely rejected the grammar that tries to force itself upon us.

In excluding the term ‘qualia’ from sensible talk, we feel as if we had come up against a boundary on Reality itself, and thus discovered something of its essence.  But reality has no boundaries.  It is not a land of possibilities surrounded by impossibilities.  (A round square is not an impossible entity.  We should rather say that the expression ‘round square’ has no real use – unless, of course, we give it one.  The expression is nonsensical, and there are no entities that correspond to nonsensical expressions).  It is simply a mistake to apply the concept of a limit to the world, as if there were some things that fell within the concept, and some things that were excluded.  Reality is not an object.  And examining the limits of language tells us nothing about the world.  We can only ask, does this expression have real application, or is it useless?  And if it is useless, this should merely return us to that which we can talk about.

Is there something that we cannot talk about?  The matter is best put this way: something that we cannot talk about is as good as a nothing to us.  And we can draw no conclusions from that which we cannot articulate.  Something that has no conceptual form cannot enter into rational relations.

So is there nothing that we cannot talk about? The question could be taken to be a question about the use of the word ‘nothing’ and its relation to the concept of (our) language.  Whatever the word ‘nothing’ means, it is also a part of our language.  We can understand its meaning better by examining the way it is used – in what circumstances it is used.  (“There is nothing in this box”; “Nothing can be done here”) I think once we gain a better understanding of this word, we will feel less confident of using it to make grandiose philosophical pronouncements.  We return each time to ordinary language.

Now, how does all this relate to the debate about qualia?  Recall that the problem arises from conflicting intuitions.  The suggestion is that we treat those intuitions with a little more temperance.  We have the feeling when contemplating our experience that there is something more than can be expressed.  We even feel as if we can point to it inwardly.  But the pointing will be meaningless unless we have some concept in mind, and then we have failed to point at something ineffable.  The result is that we cannot talk about that which is beyond language – we cannot even assert or deny its existence.  (We are reduced to the inarticulate sound).  We are trying to grasp at that which is beyond grasping.  So it should not surprise us that we are not satisfied.  By the very nature of the task, we cannot succeed.  And this fact releases us from the problem without denying anything – we have found nothing to deny.  We return to where we started, confined within language, but the tension between the different intuitions has lost its power.  For though we must admit that we can only speak and think about that which has conceptual form, in doing so we do not deny anything else.

Of course, we are left with a different kind of tension: the dissatisfaction that something requires more explanation.  After all, this desire for explanation is often what motivates us to philosophise in the first place.  But I think that once one has seen that a problem has no resolution (and we may need to remind ourselves of this fact) we will find the response that ‘nothing more can be said here’ more satisfying.  It does not solve the problem, but brings it to rest.

This, of course, is the method that Wittgenstein used against the philosophical problems of meaning in Philosophical Investigations.  Recall Wittgenstein’s treatment of meaning scepticism discussed in chapter 4.  Once we raise certain philosophical worries about the concept of meaning, we become entangled in irresolvable problems and disputes.  The problems can only be dealt with when we question the assumptions that bring them about in the first place.  Wittgenstein’s answer to meaning scepticism is that we are looking for justification where there can be none.  The nature of quietism is this: that our explanations must come to an end.  There is no justification of our conceptual scheme, for to provide one we would have to point to some facts outside our conceptual scheme.  But this we cannot do.  Explanations must proceed within our conceptual resources.[17]

7.3 Silence and the Subject

The quietist point about the postulation of ineffable qualia was that it is as pointless as it is nonsensical.  But so is the denial of qualia.  Let us return to the problems of the subject discussed at the beginning of this chapter, and see if the same considerations can help there, too.

First, considerations from imagination brought us both to the conclusion that there is an idea of a subject presupposed by the idea of a world, and that I am that subject.  This is problematic since the idea of a subject that is presupposed cannot be part of the world, but I most certainly am.  At least, if I am not, I do not know what I am.

Recall the predicament of transcendental solipsism.  The transcendental subject is the idea that is presupposed by the idea of content.  The idea of language or conceptual scheme always seems to be a language or conceptual scheme for a subject.  Correspondingly, the ideas of content and the world presuppose the subject.  But what is this subject?  It remains inherently mysterious.  It is presupposed by the conceptual scheme, but not included within it.  It is the very possibility of language and the world.  And this makes it strangely ineffable.  Not within language, but presupposed by it.

Like the debate about qualia, this issue can be seen as an instance of the debate between conceptual idealism and conceptual realism.  The conceptual idealist, finding that nothing corresponds to the idea of a subject, is quick to exclude it from his ontology.  But the conceptual realist objects that to do so is to deny the thing that Descartes found to be so indubitable: the thinking subject.  Just because we find ourselves as subjects beyond our own full comprehension, there is no need to deny our own existence!

If we are to re-apply the same method as we did for qualia, we need to first identify some underlying assumption that was misconceived.  While Wittgenstein derived his solipsism from considerations of language, we came to it from considerations of imaginability.  We dissolved the problems of qualia by questioning our assumptions about the connection between language and the nature of reality.  So perhaps we can apply the same scrutiny to the connection between imagination and the nature of reality implied in our reasoning to solipsism and the ineffability of the self.  We assumed that if something is inconceivable, it is impossible.  And by ‘impossible’ we meant that it is against the essence of the world itself.  But we should have been more cautious.  Perhaps it is better to say that if something is inconceivable in a particular conceptual scheme, it does not correspond to a concept in that conceptual scheme.  And if it is beyond any conceptual scheme we can use then it is not a valid concept for us at all.  But what we find imaginable depends, like our conceptual scheme, on our interests and abilities.  Quietism holds that our conceptual scheme – and what we find to be imaginable – is not justified by the true nature of reality (would such a justification be imaginable?).  Such a justification would not be available to us.  And if this is so, we should not draw conclusions about the underlying nature of reality from what we find to be imaginable.  Imagination does show us something: properly understood, it shows us the limits of our conceptual scheme.  And the fact that such considerations end up in contradictions and nonsense when we bring them to bear on the subject shows that our natural inclinations take us beyond sensible explanation.  But note that this does not mean that we say that the subject is something beyond explanation.  Putting the matter that way pretends to talk about that which cannot be spoken of.  It points beyond language to that which we cannot point at.  Rather we should say that this ‘concept’, though natural enough, is ultimately incoherent.  (And we may quiet our feelings of unease, and bring our thoughts back into sensible discourse, if we examine the way we actually use language in a Wittgensteinian spirit – how is the word ‘I’ actually used?  In what contexts, and to achieve what ends?  Such an investigation would reveal the limits of the concept of the subject.)

Again we strike the balance.  On the one hand we do not speak of the subject as ‘something beyond explanation’.  That philosophical line of reasoning is based on the misconception that there is a true conception of reality that underlies and justifies our conceptual scheme.  We cannot point outside of our conceptual scheme at some particular (the subject) and say ‘that cannot be conceptualised’.  But neither do we deny anything.  We do not deny our intuitions about the subject, but confess that they are not well enough conceived to assert or deny.  Any rendering of the feeling of solipsism – that I have a unique relation to the world – is bound to fail the intuition that inspires it.  An intuition is just a feeling.  As a feeling per se that we can talk about at all, it must, of course, have conceptual form.  But that does not mean that there lies behind it some coherent insight into the nature of reality.  When we are doing philosophy, we must always return to that which we can talk about.  And we remind ourselves that our explanations and justification must come to an end.  Beyond those explanations, we deny nothing and assert nothing.  Beyond language, there is only nonsense.