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There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Hamlet, Act II, scene V.
At some point in the history of the universe, minds emerged that gradually came to form a picture of the reality that they found themselves in. That picture evolved, not only with the perceptual capacities available to those minds, but also with their intellectual abilities. Most importantly, the understanding we humans have gained of the universe has depended on our ability to use language: to formulate and share new ideas, to reflect on them and test them against the world. As new and better scientific theories are proposed, our picture of reality continues to evolve. But perhaps what is most striking about the increasingly rapid advance of human knowledge is just how little we comprehend. The task we have set ourselves seems endless, and a complete understanding of the universe continues to evade our limited minds. We are but a tiny fragment of the cosmos, and we struggle to understand.
When one begins to reflect philosophically on these platitudes, however, it is natural to form a conception of reality and its relation to mind that, while the most obvious, is not beyond questioning. That conception is this. Reality is essentially independent of our minds and our capacity to think about it. However sophisticated our picture of the universe becomes, a true and complete picture may always remain beyond the reach of our concepts. This is not only because of the limited abilities of us as thinkers, with our limited memories and attention spans, but because of the kind of concepts that are or could be available to us. Reality may outstrip our ability to think about it because the kind of creatures we are does not allow the correct concepts to be formed. There may be other creatures that have a fundamentally different conceptual scheme to ours. That other conceptual scheme may be more suitable for correctly characterising the world.
The idea that reality is independent of our conception of it I shall call �conceptual realism�. It is the most natural starting point to philosophical reflection on the world, and is popular enough to be called the traditional view. It finds expression in doctrines as diverse as Platonism, Empiricism and the Cartesian view of the mind. But it is not the only view.
One reason for questioning the assumptions of conceptual realism is that it leads to intolerably strong forms of scepticism about our grasp of the world. If the world is independent of our ways of thinking about it, then how do we know that our conception of it is, or ever will be, adequate? The best we can say is that our scientific world picture has served us well to date. It is �true for us�. But what about reality as it really is? How can we say anything about the way things really are, rather than the way they seem to us, from our small epistemological corner of the universe? In short, how is it possible to do metaphysics?
There is a Kantian answer to this question that, through a variety of modifications and adjustments, has become very popular. The answer is to reject the natural picture of the universe as independent of our concepts. This position I will call �conceptual idealism�. It should not be confused with what Kant called �empirical� or �material� idealism. It does not maintain that minds somehow create the world we live in, or that material objects are reducible to mere ideas. It simply rejects the picture of a reality that is independent of our concepts. It is essential to things that they can be made sense of.
Conceptual idealism is an heir to Kant�s �Copernican revolution� in philosophy, but it is not transcendental idealism. Kant employed the notion of �the given� in his philosophy, that which is independent of the conceptual scheme imposed by the understanding. Conceptual idealism, on the other hand, maintains that we cannot consider anything as not having conceptual shape. This line of thought can best be understood as a reaction to the empiricist philosophy of mind that can seem so natural given the picture of our place in the universe sketched at the start of this introduction. For it is clear that we can misunderstand the world and that we can fail to apply the correct concepts to that which experience presents to us. It also seems clear that experience must be the final arbitrator in our judgements about the world. These two facts suggest that a non-conceptual world impinges on a conceptual scheme, and that the upshot of this interaction is thought about the world. But as Wilfred Sellars has argued at length[1], this picture will not work. In order to justify or provide warrant for our lowest level conceptualisations, the impinging world must be thought of as already having conceptual shape. Only something that has conceptual shape can stand in a rational relation. The picture of the mind as a small part of the universe has its place, but perhaps it is misused by this form of conceptual realism, in that it commits a �naturalistic fallacy�[2]. For it assumes that the connection between mind and world can be captured simply in terms of a causal relationship, and this is insufficient. When we think of the mind as a rational agency, we cannot separate it from a rational world � a world that we cannot help but describe under conceptual constraints.
A further reason for accepting conceptual idealism is that it can support certain �na�ve� realist intuitions. The picture of reality painted by the conceptual realist has the frightening consequence that the things one normally takes to be the very paradigms of reality � people, tables, chairs and other medium sized objects � may turn out not to be �real� at all. Our ordinary concepts may fail to pick out the real furniture of the universe. We can only hope that further paradigm shifts bring us closer to the truth. It has been argued, for instance, that since the ordinary conception of a table is of a solid object, and science has now shown that tables are not solid[3], tables as they are ordinarily conceived do not exist. Whatever is wrong with this reasoning (and I think there is a great deal wrong with it) the very idea that the most ordinary elements of our vocabulary may be empty terms may strike one as nothing short of ludicrous. If the roots of our language are rotten, what help can the new branches of science be? Conceptual realism seems to put reality forever beyond our reach. Conceptual idealism attempts to give the term �reality� a humbler meaning, one that can be properly understood and that is useful for philosophy. It claims that the world is not independent of the way we ordinarily conceive it to be. While each of our concepts may be corrigible to experience and accountable to scientific investigation, our ordinary use of words underwrites that investigation. On this view it is nonsense to suppose that we may be wrong en mass about the concepts we use and the judgments we make with them.
A concise definition of conceptual idealism would be that things (properties, objects and facts) are not independent of the concepts that are used to pick them out. This is to be taken in such a way that it follows that it is essential to all things that they can be correctly described, in that they can be brought under a concept. By the term �concept� I mean that which is employed in a (potentially) shared linguistic practice. I employ the concept table when I refer to tables or to a particular table. I take it that the concept �table� is also involved in any propositional attitude that has a table or tables as its object.
It is tempting to describe a concept as a linguistic entity. Such a description can mislead in at least two ways, however. The first is that the term �entity� suggests something that can come into and pass out of existence. This would make the doctrine of conceptual idealism, that things are not independent of our concepts, into an absurd form of empirical idealism. Concepts are not here understood as temporal entities. Hence conceptual idealism is not committed to the absurd assertion that, should all our concepts be removed from the world, the world would cease to be or become void of objects. The conceptual idealist is free to hold that it makes no sense to talk about concepts being �removed from the world.� But this clarification can invite a second misconception: that concepts are somehow akin to Platonic forms. The latter are mind independent entities, and the problem of how the mind grasps them is just the problem of how the mind can grasp a mind independent reality. Concepts, as they are here understood, are not grasped or �perceived� by some mental sense, but employed. Platonism is one form of conceptual realism.
Conceptual Realism holds that the concepts that correctly describe the world are (like Platonic forms) mind-independent. Conceptual Idealism holds that they are in some way mind-dependent. The question �In what way?� is one of the questions to be investigated here. A third position, quietism, denies that there is any possible justification of there being a more �correct� way of describing the world.
Conceptual idealism can also be crudely characterised as maintaining that what there is must potentially be conceivable by us. This view is based on an argument to the effect that �the notion of what cannot be thought about by us or those like us makes no sense.�[4] The kind of argument in question claims that if we try to make sense of the notion of �what we could never conceive�, we must use some general notion of something being true (or being the case, or existing etc.), where we could not in principle apply any further concept. The conceptual idealist objects that to conceive of something in such vague terms is not to conceive of it adequately at all. Hence, where we thought we could conceive of a notion that we could not understand, we discover we understand nothing by this empty conception. Put simply, the claim is that we have no conception of something of which we could not conceive. Any attempt to speculate about what exists beyond our understanding should be rejected as nonsense. Conceptual idealism maintains that everything there is can be described and understood, on the basis that our concept of what can exist is bound up with the concept of what can be described and understood. The strength of this position can be summed up with the following truism: It makes no sense to speak of that which cannot be spoken of.
This still leaves a number of questions concerning the nature and implications of conceptual idealism. Some of the most important of these issues will be addressed in the first part of the thesis, and I think many objections can be countered or accommodated. But however one deals with the problems that are faced by this approach to philosophy, conceptual idealism remains subject to a powerful and intuitive objection. It is based upon the assumption that there is nothing (at least nothing that we can speak of) that cannot be conceptualised and hence described using publicly sharable concepts. But there does seem to be something that we can speak about in general terms that resists analysis and description in particular cases. For it is most natural to assume that our experience itself is made up of elements that are not captured fully by the public domain of discourse. While we are able to talk in general about the way things seem to us as individuals, the first-personal nature of experience seems to preclude any justified public agreement on what it is actually like. For that we need to be acquainted with our own experience; we have no access to anyone else�s. One of the aims of my thesis will be to assess the credibility of conceptual idealism by investigating how it can be defended against what seems to be the most important objection to it. Namely, that however fully I describe the world, there will always be something missed out of that description: the way it seems to me.
It is important to realise that however we assess conceptual idealism, it is to be assessed as an answer to the question, �How is metaphysics possible?� If one assumes that conceptual realism cannot answer this question[5], then the fate of metaphysics itself will hang on the answer. If we conclude that conceptual idealism cannot provide a satisfactory answer to the Kantian question, though we may not thereby provide a knock down argument against the tendency to do metaphysics, we may throw some light on the history of post-Kantian philosophy and the twentieth century disenchantment with metaphysics. It will also serve as a caution to the current resurgence in metaphysical theories that use some form of conceptual idealism as their justification.
Now, I must confess that all these question concerning the nature of idealism and the reasons for holding it, though interesting and important in themselves, are raised here with additional motives in mind. I am also interested in Wittgenstein�s alleged commitment to this philosophical tradition. It has become fashionable to argue that Wittgenstein, even in his later work, held some kind of idealism, somehow related to transcendental idealism. The issues of conceptual idealism are raised as a way of motivating and clarifying this claim. For it seems that if the later Wittgenstein held any form of idealism at all, he held something akin to conceptual idealism. In particular, Wittgenstein�s views on meaning seem to amount to a rejection of conceptual realism, and he presented arguments directed at the notion of privacy that could be construed as being motivated in a way analogous to the conceptual idealist rejection of the dualism of scheme and content. In any case the conceptual idealist may be tempted to argue that Wittgenstein�s �private language argument� saves his own doctrine from embarrassment with respect to the possibility of inherently private objects.
Despite these prima facie reasons for associating Wittgenstein�s mature thought with idealism, I will eventually argue that Wittgenstein�s work is not best understood as a continuation of that tradition. On the contrary, Wittgenstein is better understood as rejecting the dichotomy of conceptual realism and conceptual idealism. While these are both general answers to the Kantian question �How is metaphysics possible?�, Wittgenstein�s central concern was to show that it is not.
Although this exegesis is the focus of this thesis, it is
achieved in three separate stages. In part one the
scene is set by describing the history of conceptual idealism � including
Wittgenstein�s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus � as a dissident
heir to Kant�s transcendental idealism.
Part two deals with Wittgenstein�s mature thought proper, and concludes
that Wittgenstein held a kind of quietism.
Part three endeavours to illustrate such quietism by arguing that it
provides the best approach to an area of philosophy to which Wittgenstein gave
a great deal of attention: the philosophical problems of the self and
subjectivity. The following section
describes each of these parts in more detail.
Conceptual idealism can be seen as developing in the post-Kantian tradition of the first half of this century: it is characterised by an acceptance of a certain role of philosophy as delineating the limits of language, but it rejects the role of the given in this task. Indeed, it is tempting to view a great deal of analytic philosophy as an adoption of the Kantian project where the philosophy and analysis of language has replaced the epistemology of the original. Such a history includes Wittgenstein�s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the Vienna Circle, the rejection of the given by such thinkers as Wilfred Sellars, as well as a great deal of current work in analytic philosophy[6]. Whether or not the later Wittgenstein can be properly understood to be a part of that tradition is to be addressed in the second part of this thesis. But if it is to be examined properly we must first settle the question as to which ideas constitute this post-Kantian tradition. This is the aim of the first part of my thesis.
The whole history of conceptual idealism is too wide a subject for this work, but some investigation of its origins will prove useful to clarify it, and to relate it to and distinguish it from other forms of idealism. This is especially desirable since �idealism� is more often than not used as a term of abuse. It is associated with the errors of Berkeley and with Humean phenomenology. It is used to describe any attempt to reduce the external world to an internal one. But the position I want to explore attempts no such reduction. Indeed, according to conceptual idealism, such reduction is evident nonsense. Our ordinary public concepts, which are the focus of conceptual idealism�s realist claims, primarily pick out external objects, and only secondarily an inner realm. It is the inner, not the outer, that is problematic on this view. Why then use the term �idealism� at all? One reason is that the real assumption at the bottom of idealism can be maintained when one rejects Berkeley�s mistakes. Or so I argue in chapter 1. For even though the idea that �everything is mind and mental content� is woefully wrong, it seems that the temptation to think in such far fetched ways may have some truth lying behind it. Thus in developing and defending the position of conceptual idealism, one of the questions that I will be addressing is, �what is right about idealism?�
The purpose of the first chapter is to explore the history of idealism in order to develop a characterisation of idealistic philosophy that is both general and informative. This characterisation should be general enough to cover a variety of doctrines that nevertheless have an important core element in common, while being precise enough to avoid the charge of being empty or too vague. The exploration should emphasise both the important similarities between diverse doctrines, and the ideas that set them apart. Most importantly, we should mark those ideas that have been of greatest influence to more recent philosophy. With this final point in mind, the emphasis is placed firmly with Kant, arguably the most influential of all modern philosophers. As we shall see, conceptual idealism was preceded by, and developed from, Kant�s transcendental idealism. The final aim here is to sketch the connections between the notion of idealism in general, transcendental idealism and conceptual idealism. In this way we may arrive at an understanding of conceptual idealism that puts it in an historical context. It should be noted from the start, however, that a detailed exposition of this history is not the aim of this somewhat introductory chapter, nor could it be. The presentation of Kant�s ideas will be brief, and will therefore constitute little more than a rough caricature of a subtle and complex philosophy. Furthermore, I am aware that there exists a wide range of views on how Kant should be interpreted. For the purposes of this first chapter, however, such exegetical debates have been ignored. I have simply presented an interpretation that is conducive to my aim of throwing light on certain twentieth century views in analytic philosophy. These views were influenced, one-way or another, by Kant�s Critique of Pure Reason. Or rather, because of the difficult and sometimes downright obscure nature of Kant�s work, it would be better to say that they were influenced by a certain reading of Kant�s work. It is this reading that I have tried to capture.
The second chapter looks at a work that was subject to that influence: Wittgenstein�s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The main aim here is to present a relatively detailed exposition of the �transcendental idealism� of the Tractatus; thus illustrating its relation to conceptual idealism. One of the most salient differences between the early Wittgenstein and Kant is that the former�s views are openly mystical: transcendental idealism (or something akin to it) is not a doctrine that can be expressed, according to Wittgenstein, but something that makes itself manifest.
The idealism of the Tractatus is still not conceptual idealism: the category of that which �shows itself but cannot be said� is not compatible with the insistence that everything is in principle describable (though the non-factual and mystical status of this category places Wittgenstein close to this maxim). And under this category fall the simple objects that Wittgenstein argued can be named but not described. They play a role in Wittgenstein early philosophy that is in some way parallel to the role of the given in Kant�s transcendental philosophy. The final phase in the development of conceptual idealism is the twentieth century rejection of the given, including Davidson�s rejection of the dualism of scheme and content. Part 1 will be concluded with a discussion of conceptual idealism proper and the arguments that have been brought against it. Those objections that are based on misunderstandings can be quickly cleared away. More important objections arise when one considers the clash of intuitions between the conceptual idealist and the conceptual realist. Unfortunately this debate has the problem shared by so many questions at the foundations of philosophy: how one interprets the various relevant examples depends on the very question at issue. So it seems that the debate is irresolvable. It cannot be settled in favour of one or the other camp without assuming a stance on the issue in question.
There is one objection, however, that cannot so easily be accommodated by the conceptual idealist: the problem of subjectivity. Conceptual idealism, with its emphasis on objectivity, goes hand in hand with a third person point of view of the mind, and this can strike one as deeply unsatisfactory. It seems that however fully I describe the world, including all my mental states � insofar as these can be described � there will always be something missed out of that description: the way things seems to me. Thus Davidson�s rejection of the distinction between conceptual scheme and content is put into question by the temptation to think that there is something that is excluded from, or that precedes, our conceptualisation of the world.
Even if the early Wittgenstein can be said to be a transcendental idealist, it remains to be seen to what extent Wittgenstein�s later views can be also be characterised as idealist. Chapters 4 and 5 explore the parts of Wittgenstein�s later work that are relevant to the development of conceptual idealism. Chapter 4 looks at his views on meaning, and chapter 5 looks at the consequences of these views for any account of subjectivity. Wittgenstein�s work in this area was influential in the development of conceptual idealism because of its rejection of the given, of the ineffable elements of experience. His views on meaning also seem to involve a rejection of conceptual realism. However, this does not mean that the later Wittgenstein was indeed a conceptual idealist, though it has seemed to many commentators that Wittgenstein did hold a kind of post-Kantian idealism[7]. In chapter 6 the rather vexed question of whether Wittgenstein was a �transcendental idealist�, given so much attention in the recent literature, is replaced by the less ambiguous question of whether Wittgenstein can be described as a conceptual idealist. The discussion concentrates on the way in which the later Wittgenstein wanted to outline the limits of language. The continuity with the overall project of the Tractatus is emphasised, since Wittgenstein�s aims remained essentially the same in the most salient respect: both works try to point out the limits of language, and in particular try to show that much of philosophy is a transgression of those limits. Thus if the later Wittgenstein held some kind of idealism, it is not distinguishable from Wittgenstein�s anti-explanatory views with respect to philosophy. His views on meaning are also discussed as an instance of his anti-theoretical stance. These views also provide further basis for a comparison with conceptual idealism, in particular with the idea that the natures of things are not independent of our concepts of them. However, it is argued that Wittgenstein cannot be characterised as a conceptual idealist, since he does not hold the thesis that reality is constrained by our conception of it. What our concepts pick out is, of course, determined by our concepts, but Wittgenstein is keen to demonstrate that there is nothing special about our way of looking at the world. His meta-philosophy can be summed up with the slogan that the philosopher has no special insight into the nature of reality.
The primary purpose of this part of the thesis is to throw light on Wittgenstein�s philosophy. In accordance with this aim, I have been selective in sampling from, and responding to, the huge body of secondary literature on Wittgenstein. Those commentators that are discussed, such as Kripke and McDowell, fill the role of foils for the purpose of exposition. Even answering the question of whether Wittgenstein was an idealist is secondary to that aim. The question strikes me as suitable for directing our attention to the real heart of Wittgenstein�s thought: his quietism.
Quietism is a way of rejecting conceptual idealism without accepting the ultra-realism that stands in opposition to it. It accepts the intuition behind conceptual idealism that philosophy is a conceptual or linguistic investigation, but rejects the idea that this investigation provides us with a general or special understanding of reality. In part three I argue that only quietism can provide a satisfying response to the problem of subjectivity faced by conceptual idealism, or more generally the perplexities one faces when one considers the limits of language. Conceptual idealism seems to deny something undeniable, while the conceptual realist postulates something incoherent. I want to urge that the correct response to such antinomies should be silence. While the mind that has a natural bent for philosophy often finds this call for humility somewhat frustrating, demanding more in the way of explanation, I argue that this frustration will only be quelled by a change in attitude.
Arguments for general quietism in philosophy will inevitably arouse suspicion. To argue that we can never provide theories in philosophy will always risk the charge of being self-contradictory. In order to express any quietist doctrine, one must always specify and restrict the domain for which the claim holds. The domain of discourse to which I would like to argue for quietism concerns certain philosophical problems of subjectivity and the self.
In the final chapter I endeavour to draw together the various philosophical problem of the self and subjectivity that I otherwise deal with separately. I argue that various lines of thought that result in philosophical doctrines concerning the self, the tendency to idealism and solipsism (both material and transcendental), and the postulation of qualia or sense data, are all based on a common mistake. They each try erroneously to point beyond our concepts to something we cannot articulate. The important thing, when treating this mistake, is to understand the strength of the temptation to reason in these erroneous ways. It is not enough to point out the inconsistencies in the theories in question, and then suggest dispensing with them in a Quine-like fashion. Proper understanding of these philosophical problems can only be achieved when one pays careful attention to the idea of nonsense, and what it means to claim that a certain utterance is nonsensical. It must be remembered that to deny a nonsensical proposition is merely to utter more nonsense. It is not to assert that such-and-such a thing cannot exist. All we can do is examine where we go wrong in philosophy, and bring our investigations back to where we can say something. And in doing this we must have sufficient respect for the temptation to utter nonsense.
The quietist response to the temptation to posit an ineffable element of experience (such as qualia) is to suggest that both the assertion of the disputed entity, and therefore its denial, are not significant propositions. The task of philosophy at such an impasse is to accept that no further explanation is available through philosophical investigation. The discovery that �nothing more can be said here� is one of the most important discoveries in philosophy. In general, any intuition that suggests that there is something beyond our capacity to conceptualise can never be specified, and the only correct response is to offer no theory or explanation at all. The problematic concepts that such intuitions give rise to should not be rejected out of hand, however. They serve an important role in philosophy. They are markers at the bounds of sense.
It is the emphasis placed of these markers that distinguishes the quietist from the conceptual idealist. In his eager dismissal of all things beyond the limits of our conceptual scheme, Conceptual idealism actually crosses that boundary. By setting a limit to what there can be (rather than what can be said), the conceptual idealist implicitly denies that there can be anything else. He denies, that is, the claims of the conceptual realist. But if the conceptual realist�s claims are nonsense, so is their negation. I conclude that neither conceptual idealism nor conceptual realism can adequately articulate the limits of meaning and metaphysics. At least sometimes when doing philosophy, we must accept that we have reached the limits of language, and admit that �nothing more can be said here.� Beyond the limits of language, we cannot assert or deny anything. Where our concepts and explanations end, there should be silence.
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