David Egan on Wittlesstein

Was Wittgenstein an utter cretin? There are good reasons to believe so. His philosophy of Maths was shite. Brouwer's wasn't- Turing used choice sequences to great effect. 

Similarly, Wittgenstein's notion of language games was silly compared to actual game theory and 'reverse game theory'- i.e. mechanism design. This is one reason his private language argument fails. We all do devise mechanisms to defeat it. Of course, the argument would fail anyway because it can't itself show that it does not imply that the Nicaraguan horcrux of my neighbor's cat is actually Ugandan. 

David Egan has an article in Aeon which, somewhat perversely, takes up Wittgenstein at his most witless and pretends some profundity is concealed in his misology.

'I am not a religious man,’ the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said to a friend, ‘but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view.’

Unfortunately, from a religious point of view, no problems exist. Thus Wittlesstein was seeing nothing.

These problems that he claims to see from a religious point of view tend to be technical matters of logic and language.

People like Bhratrhari did this because they lived in an age when many people believed that the proper chanting of a Sanskrit or Hebrew or Latin verse could have supernatural effects. Thus there was some point to examining 'technical matters of logic and language' from a religious point of view.

Bhrtarhari's work is actually quite useful. Witlesstein's work is wholly worthless.

Wittgenstein trained as an engineer before he turned to philosophy, and he draws on mundane metaphors of gears, levers and machinery.

 Engineers draw on mathematics, not 'mundane metaphors of gears and levers' such as a retarded mechanics might be supposed to employ. Wittgenstein wasn't particularly good with machines but did have mathematical ability just as he did have a genuine, but frustrated, religious bent. As an Austrian, he shared a distrust of German idealism and its 'totalizing' character with other Viennese intellectuals of a similar socio-economic background. His link to Russell is through Frege who spoke of 'intuition' and a 'third realm' that was timeless and composed of entities that were neither physical nor mental.This did not mean that Frege had any truck with metaphysical shwarmerei. He represented intellectual rigor.

As Egan remarks-

Where you find the word ‘transcendent’ in Wittgenstein’s writings, you’ll likely find ‘misunderstanding’ or ‘nonsense’ nearby.

When he does respond to philosophers who set their sights on higher mysteries, Wittgenstein can be stubbornly dismissive. Consider: ‘The man who said one cannot step into the same river twice was wrong; one can step into the same river twice.’

This is silly. Heraclitus wasn't wrong. He would not be remembered if he'd said something false or meaningless. Instead, he used figurative language in so memorable a manner that he solved a particular coordination game for all future Paideia.

With such blunt statements, Wittgenstein seems less a religious thinker and more a stodgy literalist. But a close examination of this remark can show us not only what Wittgenstein means by a ‘religious point of view’ but also reveal Wittgenstein as a religious thinker of striking originality.
‘The man’ who made the remark about rivers is Heraclitus, a philosopher at once pre-Socratic and postmodern, misquoted on New Age websites and quoted out of context by everyone, since all we have of his corpus are isolated fragments. What is it that Heraclitus thinks we can’t do?

Nothing. He used figurative language to suggest that all things are in flux.

Obviously I can do a little in-and-out-and-back-in-again shuffle with my foot at a riverbank. But is it the same river from moment to moment – the water flowing over my foot spills toward the ocean while new waters join the river at its source – and am I the same person?

Yes. However there is a predicate associated with you which is different if you think you are stepping in the same river as opposed to encountering something wholly new or different. It is possible that some dramatic change in your behavior is precipitated by your Heraclitean epiphany.

One reading of Heraclitus has him conveying a mystical message. We use this one word, river, to talk about something that’s in constant flux, and that might dispose us to think that things are more fixed than they are – indeed, to think that there are stable things at all. Our noun-bound language can’t capture the ceaseless flow of existence. Heraclitus is saying that language is an inadequate tool for the purpose of limning reality.

This seems a silly 'reading' of Heraclitus's language because it does the very thing it denies can be done.

What Wittgenstein finds intriguing about so many of our philosophical pronouncements is that while they seem profoundly important, it’s unclear what difference they make to anything.

The same is true of our legal and scientific and commercial pronouncements- if you are ignorant of the law, or of science or don't understand how businesses operate.

Imagine Heraclitus spending an afternoon down by the river (or the constantly changing flux of river-like moments, if you prefer) with his friend Parmenides, who says that change is impossible. They might have a heated argument about whether the so-called river is many or one, but afterwards they can both go for a swim, get a cool drink to refresh themselves, or slip into some waders for a bit of fly fishing. None of these activities is in the least bit altered by the metaphysical commitments of the disputants.

They may equally well get into a punch-up which in turn leads to bad blood between their disciples which in turn leads to some unfortunate political development which has historic consequences.

Wittgenstein thinks that we can get clearer about such disputes by likening the things that people say to moves in a game.

We all already do that because we aren't stupid. That language is used tactically is a discovery kids make by the age of three or four.

Just as every move in a game of chess alters the state of play, so does every conversational move alter the state of play in what he calls the language-game. The point of talking, like the point of moving a chess piece, is to do something.

Nonsense! Most talking is purely phatic and done because it is pleasurable in itself. There is no point in moving a chess piece save for the pleasure gained by playing chess- unless, of course, the thing has been monetized or has a thymotic motive.

But a move only counts as that move in that game provided a certain amount of stage-setting. To make sense of a chess game, you need to be able to distinguish knights from bishops, know how the different pieces move, and so on. Placing pieces on the board at the start of the game isn’t a sequence of moves. It’s something we do to make the game possible in the first place.

This is not true. We can play chess without a board or any pieces- provided we are smart enough to visualize the board. Indeed, there are people who can play blindfold chess simultaneously against a number of different players.

One way we get confused by language, Wittgenstein thinks, is that the rule-stating and place-setting activities happen in the same medium as the actual moves of the language-game – that is, in words.

This can only happen to stupid people but stupid people get confused by all sorts of things. Why pretend that philosophy- a subject whose prestige has been in continuous decline for its entire existence- should consist of stupid people thinking about the possible confusions of people stupider than themselves? Surely, it is obvious that philosophy has bottomed out such that it can postulate none more stupid than its own practitioners.

‘The river is overflowing its banks’ and ‘The word river is a noun’ are both grammatically sound English sentences, but only the former is a move in a language-game.

Nonsense! Both are moves in different language games- or the same one if its purpose is comedic.

The latter states a rule for using language: it’s like saying ‘The bishop moves diagonally’, and it’s no more a move in a language-game than a demonstration of how the bishop moves is a move in chess.

It is a move in language-grammar focused on Grammar. A demonstration of how a bishop moves is itself a move in a game designed either to teach a novice the game or else to annoy the fuck out of an expert player.

What Heraclitus and Parmenides disagree about, Wittgenstein wants us to see, isn’t a fact about the river but the rules for talking about the river.

If so Wittgenstein was a cretin. Both Parmenides and Heraclitus knew the rules for speaking Greek and did so to superlative effect. That is why they are remembered. Heraclitus wasn't talking about rivers at all. Parmenides never said that Night owned a House which he had visited.

Heraclitus is recommending a new language-game: one in which the rule for using the word river prohibits us from saying that we stepped into the same one twice, just as the rules of our own language-game prohibit us from saying that the same moment occurred at two different times.

Does Egan really believe this nonsense? Is he under the impression that Heraclitus was a Grammar Nazi who used to roam around beating people who said 'I bathed in that river on more than occasion' ?

There’s nothing wrong with proposing alternative rules, provided you’re clear that that’s what you’re doing. If you say: ‘The king moves just like the queen,’ you’re either saying something false about our game of chess or you’re proposing an alternative version of the game – which might or might not turn out to be any good. The trouble with Heraclitus is that he imagines he’s talking about rivers and not rules – and, in that case, he’s simply wrong.

Does Egan read over what he writes? Is it possible that a guy with a college education does not understand the difference between figurative language and purely descriptive, factual, language? Do his students- this guy teaches at CUNY- think there was a guy in Ancient Greece who thought there was some evil conspiracy associated with giving fixed names to rivers?

Heraclitus was not talking about either rules or rivers. Had he been a babbling fool with some odd grammatical bee in his bonnet, nobody would remember his name.

The mistake we so often make in philosophy, according to Wittgenstein, is that we think we’re doing one thing when in fact we’re doing another.

The mistake Egan is making is that he is talking utterly stupid shite when, in fact, he thinks he is saying something sensible.

But if we dismiss the remark about rivers as a naive blunder, we learn nothing from it. ‘In a certain sense one cannot take too much care in handling philosophical mistakes, they contain so much truth,’ Wittgenstein cautions. Heraclitus and Parmenides might not do anything different as a result of their metaphysical differences, but those differences bespeak profoundly different attitudes toward everything they do.

Maybe, but maybe not. Their views might be complementary rather than competing. It is likely that there were political and 'liturgical' implications to their thought as well as aesthetic and philosophical ones. This is because even 'cheap talk' is useful in the creation and maintenance of complex coalitions which ultimately create 'separating equilibria' on the basis of 'costly signals'.

That attitude might be deep or shallow, bold or timorous, grateful or crabbed, but it isn’t true or false.

That attitude may be wholly simulated or perfunctory. This may not matter for the coordination or dis-coordination game in question.

Similarly, the rules of a game aren’t right or wrong – they’re the measure by which we determine whether moves within the game are right or wrong – but which games you think are worth playing, and how you relate to the rules as you play them, says a lot about you.

No. You can say a lot about you. Others can say something about you if they think it worthwhile to do so. Games can't say anything about you. How you relate to the rules of games is something you can yourself say something about. But those games or those rules can not do so.

It is a different matter that a person may try to 'lamplight' you by saying- 'your choice of King's gambit proves you want to be sexually harassed by me. ' The proper thing to do is to Title IX the fuck and switch your major to something sensible- like Accountancy or Air Conditioner Repair.

Attitude can matter when you get started in a useful trade. A good attitude can mean marrying the boss's daughter and joining the Elks or the Shriners. A bad attitude can get you in trouble with the cops if you live in a Hollywood movie from the Fifties.  Other than that, attitudes don't matter very much.

What, then, inclines us – and Heraclitus – to regard this expression of an attitude as a metaphysical fact?

We don't know that Heraclitus had shit for brains. We do know that Egar and his ilk are utterly stupid. What inclines them to think attitudes are important is their mental and emotional retardation.

Recall that Heraclitus wants to reform our language-games because he thinks they misrepresent the way things really are.

Don't recall any such idiocy. Check Wikipedia. This cretin is lying.

But consider what you’d need to do in order to assess whether our language-games are more or less adequate to some ultimate reality.

You'd need to hang out with smart people- not listen to cretins like Egar. Suppose I'm a lawyer. The way I know my language-game is adequate to the ultimate reality of Jurisprudence is if I win every case I bring before the Supreme Court. Utility or success in one's enterprise is the proper method of assessment.  Veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus- we have hit on the truth when our intellect equates to the thing and this is evidenced by the successful completion of our plan.

An adolescent may only be able to strike an attitude and mumble some gormless shite but we don't have to remain adolescents forever.

You’d need to compare two things: our language-game and the reality that it’s meant to represent. In other words, you’d need to compare reality as we represent it to ourselves with reality free of all representation.

No you would not. You can discard any and every language-game and play a game against nature. We can't represent something in a manner free of representation. If we could, then, by ex falso quodlibet, all dogs are the Nicraguan horcrux of my neighbor's cat which is actually secretly Ugandan.

But that makes no sense: how can you represent to yourself how things look free of all representation?

Drugs. Lots and lots of drugs. Either that or just lie about it.

The fact that we might even be tempted to suppose we can do that bespeaks a deeply human longing to step outside our own skins.

As opposed to a deeply feline longing to lick one's own anus.

We can feel trapped by our bodily, time-bound existence.

And we can go to the Doctor and get a prescription for that sort of thing.

There’s a kind of religious impulse that seeks liberation from these limits: it seeks to transcend our finite selves and make contact with the infinite.

There's also a kind of religious impulse to lie about the mighty mystical state you have achieved and ask for money or a b.j on that basis.

Wittgenstein’s religious impulse pushes us in the opposite direction: he doesn’t try to satisfy our aspiration for transcendence but to wean us from that aspiration altogether.

The Unitittyarian philosophy- 'nipples are many, titty is one'- doesn't just wean us away from that aspiration it also buys us a drink and helps us enlist in the army.

The liberation he offers isn’t liberation from our bounded selves but for our bounded selves.

So, instead of being able to survive the death of one's body and gain omniscience, we can be liberated from wanting any such thing. How? By studying some stupid shit which is even stupider than the shit the Maharishi was peddling.

Surely, there is a better way forward?

Wittgenstein’s remark about Heraclitus comes from a typescript from the early 1930s, when Wittgenstein was just beginning to work out the mature philosophy that would be published posthumously as Philosophical Investigations (1953). Part of what makes that late work special is the way in which the Wittgenstein who sees every problem from a religious point of view merges with the practical-minded engineer.

Wittgenstein was writing nonsense while Tarski and Turing and Godel and Von Neumann and so forth were doing useful work. Turing and Von Neumann directly contributed to the defeat of the Axis powers. Wittgenstein was not lacking in public spirit but could do little.

This was also a time when Organised Religion was taking a more active role in opposing racism and championing Social Democracy. That too was a boat Witlesstein missed. Yet, he does represent some inchoate ideal of passionate asceticism which nevertheless inspired a great love whose expression in English is as beautiful as anything Eloise wrote to Abelard. Much is forgiven him because he suffered much. But, we must admit, he was a shite philosopher just as Sraffa was a shite economist. Why? Both were useless. They didn't want to be useless. But that is what they were.

Metaphysical speculations, for Wittgenstein, are like gears that have slipped free from the mechanism of language and are spinning wildly out of control. Wittgenstein the engineer wants to get the mechanism running smoothly. And this is precisely where the spiritual insight resides: our aim, properly understood, isn’t transcendence but a fully invested immanence. In this respect, he offers a peculiarly technical approach to an aspiration that finds expression in mystics from Meister Eckhart to the Zen patriarchs: not to ascend to a state of perfection but to recognise that where you are, already, in this moment, is all the perfection you need.

But it isn't what is needed from us. Smart people need to do actual engineering. Our spiritual needs match with the material needs of the other. Shotoku Ninomiya convinced a Buddhist priest to take up fishing to feed the poor. That is Zen. Nisho Innoue got a bunch of young officers to go around assassinating Liberal politicians so as to precipitate a War Japan was bound to lose. That wasn't Zen. Eckhart praised Martha- i.e. the active life- over Mary- the contemplative life- but said that Mary had taken the first step to becoming Martha. What is severely missing in Egan's essay is this 'Mussar' or ethical notion of Spirituality. It is the only 'transcendence' worth having. Everything else is just shitting higher than your arsehole.