Putnam, Hilary - Wittgenstein: A Reappraisal

08/03/2012

Philosophy in an Age of Science, Harvard University Press, 2012

Author beings the chapter by mentioning some of the lessons author inherited from Wittgenstein that he believes are right; but the one that author takes as "quite wrong" is the notion that metaphysics is value-less, and should be cured by a type of therapy (pg483). Author first introduces the idea of what it is for things to not "make sense". For something to not make sense, author argues that it must be from the perspective of a philosophical argument or theory, not from an understanding of language or grammar (pg484). The idea here is to repudiate that the moniker "nonsense" can come about without using another (different) philosophical theory to justify its usage.

Author introduces two different interpretations of Wittgenstein, The New one embodied by Conant & Diamond, and the Orthodox, enumerated by Baker & Hacker. Both have different accounts of what a philosopher is doing when speaking nonsense, but both agree that philosophers speak nonsense most of the time, and both agree that this is a linguistic error. Author disagrees:  these philosophers are making sense, though their metaphysics might lack "full intelligibility" since it may fail to show how something may be true (pg486).

There is a brief interlude about another way to answer skepticism, without claiming that skepticism is "nonsense" because it gets the grammar of the words "to know" or "to prove" wrong. Author believes that the skeptic can be answered by constructing an argument from premises that he must accept. That the skeptic does not accept them is not a concern; the premises are reasonable and therefore a suitable answer to the skeptic (pg488-9).

Author argues that Wittgenstein himself established the sort-of middle ground of "lacking full intelligibility" when it came to religious language; author suggests that had Wittgenstein taken an equally charitable approach toward philosophy he would allow metaphysics to be sensical though not fully intelligible (pg490).  Author closes by giving a case of so-called scientists labeling a certain native tribe to be "soulless", though clearly there is no evidence for this. The question: are they making sense? Yes. But do they have a worldview that is alien (not fully intelligible) to us.