Lee Smolin on Time and on Thinking in Time [A commentary on a YouTube Video]

[The following paragraph is a standard introduction to my commentaries on various science- and philosophy-based YouTube videos.]

When it comes to my commentaries on particular videos, only the content of - or the words within - the video itself will be discussed. That is, the commentaries aren't cases of detailed research on the subjects discussed or the persons interviewed. (As one would find in an academic paper or even in an in depth article.) The reason for this is that I believe that this will help both the readers of the commentaries and the viewers of the video. And that, hopefully, will still be the case even when it comes to those readers and viewers who aren't newcomers to the subjects discussed or the people being interviewed in the videos.

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i) Introduction

ii) Psychological Time (or Time Perception)

iii) Natural Laws and Other Timeless Things

iv) Smolin Links Time to Politics

The seminar above (captured on a YouTube video) is called 'The Nature of Time'. Yet Lee Smolin (a theoretical physicist) doesn't actually spend that much time on time itself in this video. Perhaps that's because time in itself doesn't exist. What I mean by this is the following: 

Perhaps time is always defined (or even constituted) contextually or relationally. 

I believe that this is Smolin's position. 

Of course arguing that time is defined (or constituted) relationally or contextually isn't itself to deny the existence of time. No; it's just another way of saying what time is.

Smolin does attempt to link all the disparate things he talks about to time; though he's not always that convincing when he does so. Certainly not when he ties (or links) time to politics and how people feel about time.

In any case, Smolin himself says that he doesn't like “mysticism”. He also says that he doesn't like what he calls “wow” (i.e., not woo). And that word - “wow” - is used at the beginning of his seminar.

What Smolin means by “wow” is that although he deals with some deep and fundamental issues, he doesn't thereby feel the need to sex these issues up - as so many popular-science authors and even some physicists do. Indeed Smolin specifically says that he doesn't want to “wow [the audience] with some science-fiction multiverses”. (From what I've read, Smolin doesn't believe in the multiverse theory. Or, more accurately, he has no need – from a physicist's perspective – for it.)

Psychological Time (or Time Perception)

Smolin's primary question is the following:

“Is time real? Or it it an illusion?”

Smolin's own position is that time “is the least illusional thing we know about”. That is exactly what many philosophers now say about consciousness or experience – and for very similar reasons. That is, such philosophers (e.g., David Chalmers, Philip Goff, Donald Hoffman, Giulio Tononi, etc.) say that consciousness/experience is “fundamental”. And, to use Smolin's own words, they also believe that consciousness/experience is “the least illusional thing we know about”. (In stark contrast, see Daniel Dennett the “illusionist”.)

Smolin himself states that “maybe time is fundamental” (unlike, as will be seen, the laws of nature). At a prima facie level, it's hard to understand (or even conceive) what that could mean. If space without things has always been problematic (certainly to Smolin himself), then surely time without things is equally problematic. Yet Smolin Smolin also believes that space is “dynamical”. And that surely must mean that time is dynamical too.

Smolin has just been quoted as saying “time is the least illusional thing we know about”. So here are a few details.

Firstly, Smolin gives a very obvious and telling example (if one accepts it) of time not being an illusion. He asks the audience the following question:

“If time is an illusion, then what is the future. Is the future already determined? Or is the future open?”

Of course these questions have been well-debated in philosophy and there are many answers to Smolin's questions.

Smolin also claims that (in my words) when we play down time, we do so at precisely the same moment that we're consumed by time. Smolin goes into more detail:

“Time is real. The flow of time is the most true thing we know. I used to believe that time is an illusion, as did many of my colleagues. Now I think that time is the most real thing we know. Everything emerges in time – including law.”

Smolin doesn't deny what's often called psychological time (or time perception). He doesn't deny the importance and relevance of psychological time either. Indeed these things appear to drive Smolin's scientific position on time.

As just hinted at, Smolin's position seems (at first) to be beyond physics and cosmology. However:

What if our psychological experience of time (or our attitude towards time) leads to conclusions about the (non-psychological) reality of time?

That is, Smolin does move from psychological time to time being something that is indeed beyond the (merely) psychological. (At least that's how I've read him elsewhere, if not in this video.)

Natural Laws and Other Timeless Things

Smolin says that we place “mathematics and ethics” beyond time. That is,we make them timeless. He also says that God is believed to be “outside of time”. And Smolin's following question will be of interest to philosophers:

“If we deem something to be true, is it's truth timeless?”

Thus is the equation 2 + 2 = 4 also “outside of time”?

Smolin cites another example of the belief in timelessness. He says:

“Physicists still think that time is an illusion. [They believe that there] are an infinite number of universes which all exist timelessly...”

And don't most physicists deem the laws of nature to be outside time too? (More of which later.)

One important aspect of Smolin's philosophical and scientific positions on cosmology is that he takes his cosmology (as it were) literally. That is, he doesn't just study the universe as a whole, he also places a scientific and philosophical importance on the universe as a whole. Basically, this is a kind of holist position in which top-down explanations and realities are just as important as bottom-up explanations and realities. That is, it's not all about how the universe is a consequence of its fundamental laws/constants, history and growing complexity: it's also a question about how the universe itself impacts downwards on those natural laws, constants, etc. In other words, we need to factor in the universe as a whole when explaining and describing laws, the constants, etc.

But how does this whole – the universe - affect its parts? Is this analogous to - or even the same as - downward causation as it's found in the philosophy of mind or when discussing physical (closed) systems?

In any case, let Smolin concentrate on natural laws for a moment.

Smolin asks: “Why are those the laws?”

He then states the following:

“We could have had all sorts of other kinds of laws.”

The American Philosopher C.S. Peirce (1839 - 1914) is relevant here. (Peirce is a strong influence on Smolin.)

Peirce believed that natural laws are the result of (to put is basically) earlier things. Or, at the very least, he believed that they demand an explanation. Smolin himself quotes Peirce (in Leibnizean mode) thus:

“'To suppose universal laws of nature capable of being apprehended by the mind yet having no reason for their special forms, but standing inexplicable and irrational, is hardly a justifiable position.'”

That is, natural laws don't just appear as the laws they are - no matter how fundamental we deem them to be. This is where Smolin (as influenced by Peirce) brings in evolution. Smolin says:

“Maybe, as Peirce said, laws are evolving in the scale of the whole universe.”

Indeed not only does Smolin apply evolutionary theory to natural laws: it can also be seen that he applies it to the universe as a whole and to black holes specifically (see this). And this, in turn, relates to Smolin's broader championship of relation[al]ism and what he sees as the dynamical nature of... well, everything.

Smolin Links Time to Politics

I believe that Smolin is wrong when he says that

“if science establishes that time is real or that it's an illusion, how we think about our human lives will change”.

If we stress the psychological in psychological time, then what science says (or doesn't say) won't have much of an impact on “human lives”. Sure, physicists like Smolin may imagine all kinds of possible scenarios as to how life will change when it comes to consensus scientific opinion. However, when it comes to time itself, I don't think that scientific opinion will have much of an impact. Unless, that is, Smolin means that any monumental scientific discovery will somehow filter down to laypersons. However, I can't even see how this will have a big impact on human lives when it comes to the psychology (or phenomenology) of time. Smolin is simply playing up cosmology and his own philosophy of time. It can even be argued that physics can survive (pragmatically or instrumentally) without having a strong or determinate position on time.

I can't help thinking that when Smolin links his scientific and philosophical views on time to politics (as he does in this video), that those links are very tangential and vague indeed. Of course Smolin himself doesn't believe that and he argues his case. Yet when he does so, it's all so much more vague and less philosophical/scientific than what he says on other subjects. (See the political 'Thinking in Time' chapter of Smolin's Time Reborn.)

So it can be said that Smolin is attempting a bit of wow himself by tying his philosophical and scientific positions on time to issues in politics. Take this statement:

“It matters what science discovers. From how we think about political organisation. To how we think about the far future of our society.”

But is that true of time too? Indeed which sciences is Smolin talking about when he mentions science's impact on “political organisations” and the "far future? He surely can't be referring to physics and cosmology. Yes, other sciences impact on these social and political questions and problems. However, Smolin is a theoretical physicist, not a social scientist or political scientist.

Take the natural laws again.

For hundreds of years philosophers and scientists have warned us not to conflate the laws of politics with the laws of nature. Or, more accurately, they've warned us not to believe that the word “law” means the same thing in both domains. Yet here's Smolin strongly tying how we see natural laws to the laws of politics and society.

Perhaps Smolin is simply being analogical or metaphorical. Or perhaps he's simply saying that we can learn something if we make such comparisons. However, when you read/hear some of Smolin's words (e.g., in his Time Reborn and in his seminars), this isn't the case. Smolin doesn't believe that his links between science/the philosophy of time and politics are purely (if at all) analogical, tangential or educative.

Donald Hoffman's Conscious Realism vs. Panpsychism and Idealism

i) Introduction 
ii) Panpsychism? 

iii) Idealism and Anti-Realism 

iv) Kant's Transcendental Idealism 

v) The Copenhagen Interpretation

Donald Hoffman's philosophical position is called conscious realism. He opposes that position to panpsychism and to Kant's transcendental idealism.

In terms of panpsychism: there are clear distinctions between Hoffman's conscious realism and panpsychism. However, there are very clear and strong similarities too. (In one place, Hoffman does say that he accepts what he sees as one type of panpsychism – the one that's not, in his eyes, “dualist”.)

If we turn to Kant.

Hoffman is against Kant's transcendental idealism for the primary reason that he doesn't deem it to be scientific. Nonetheless, his arguments against Kant are neither convincing nor does he distinguish his own position strongly enough from transcendental idealism.

As for anti-realism.

Hoffman hardly mentions it. Nonetheless, he does mention the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics favourably. In fact he uses it (in various places) in order to defend his own position of conscious realism. The thing is that Hoffman makes the Copenhagen interpretation seem idealist in nature. That said, he's hardly the first person to have done so (see here).

And on the subject of idealism.

This piece argues that Hoffman's conscious realism is a new-fangled take on idealism (i.e., idealism with mathematical and scientific knobs on it). Hoffman will deny this and he'll do so for various reasons. Primarily, Hoffman will do so because he does indeed believe that there's a “reality” out there. (He often uses the word “reality” positively – that there is a reality - many times; despite the fact that he's just written a book called The Case Against Reality.) Nonetheless, Hoffman also argues that we haven't got direct (or even indirect) access to that reality. Instead, we've only got access to the contents of consciousness. And that's still the case even if those contents belong to some kind of collective of consciousnesses (i.e., that of a collective of what Hoffman calls “conscious agents”).

Panpsychism?

Professor Donald Hoffman is explicit about his position on panpsychism. He writes:

“Conscious realism is not panpsychism, nor does it entail panpsychism.”

Of course it can now be said that even if Hoffman's conscious realism (CR) isn't identical to panpsychism - and also that it doesn't “entail panpsychism”, that still doesn't mean that it has nothing in common with it at all. It may even be the case that Hoffman's conscious realism has a lot in common with panpsychism.

Hoffman then makes various distinctions between his own position of conscious realism and panpsychism. He states:

“Conscious realism, together with MUI [multimodal user interface] theory, claims that tables and chairs are icons in the MUIs of conscious agents, and thus that they are conscious experiences of those agents. It does not claim, nor entail, that tables and chairs are conscious or conscious agents.”

That last sentence is of course directly and clearly aimed at panpsychism. That being said, not many (if any) panpsychists argue that tables and chairs are “conscious agents”. They simply argue that tables and chairs (or their many parts!) are conscious or that they have (whatever that may mean) experience. (More of which in a moment.)

The rest of the Hoffman quote above makes some correct distinctions between panpsychism and conscious realism. For one, panpsychists most certainly don't claim that “tables and chairs are icons in the MUIs of conscious agents”. And neither do they claim that tables and chairs are the “conscious experiences of [] agents”. More importantly (unlike conscious realism), panpsychists do claim that “tables and chairs [or their many parts] are conscious”; though they rarely (if ever) claim that they're also “conscious agents”. (This raises the question: What does Hoffman mean by “agent”?)

Of course there are different types of panpsychism and not all panpsychists would be keen on using the precise words “tables and chairs are conscious”. Instead, some panpsychists would say that tables and chairs are made up of entities which contain (or have) “phenonemenal properties/qualities” (or “(proto)phenomenal properties”). This clearly isn't as grand as claiming that tables and chairs are “conscious”. (I don't use the term “qualia” here because that will lead to unclarity.) And it's certainly less grand that claiming that tables and chairs are conscious agents.

However, one part of Hoffman's story does seem to chime in with panpsychism. Take this passage:

“The story that there was first the Big Bang and then, billions of years of later, life, and then, hundreds of millions of years later, consciousness, is fundamentally wrong. It's the other way around. Consciousness is fundamental.”

Most panpsychists would be very happy with Hoffman's sentence above. Nonetheless, although they believe that “consciousness is fundamental”, panpsychists and Hoffman have very different takes on those three words. Put simply. Consciousness is fundamental to panpsychists in the sense that all things have various degrees of consciousness (or experience). To Hoffman, on the other hand, consciousness is fundamental in that the contents of an individual's consciousness (or the contents of various collectives of conscious agents) is literally constitutive of reality or the whole of the universe (as well as everything in it).

Both panpsychists and conscious realists agree that consciousness (or experience) isn't an “emergent property” at all: it's been around since the Big Bang. Thus if consciousness has been with the universe (as it were) since the Beginning, then the issue of the emergence of consciousness becomes a non-problem.

Panpsychists tend to think of consciousness (or phenomenal properties or experience) as being “fundamental” in the sense that it exists all the way down and all the way up. (That is, all the way down to particles and all the way up to human beings.) Hoffman, on the other hand, stresses the fundamentality of consciousness by writing it into the story at the Big Bang (actually, just after). Having said that, these two emphasises work perfectly well together. That is:

i) If we have consciousness all the way down to particles,

ii) then that's precisely because we had particles - and therefore consciousness - (just after) the Big Bang.

Thus these two positions fit perfectly well together.

To repeat. Hoffman's position can be seen as a take on panpsychism in that he states that “consciousness is fundamental”. (Three words which many panpsychists often use together - see here.) Panpsychism also rejects the emergence of consciousness from the physical and stresses, instead, that it's not the case that (to use Hoffman's words) it's “a latecomer in the evolutionary history of the universe” that “aris[es] from complex interactions of unconscious matter and fields”. Instead, panpsychists believe that there's consciousness (or there are phenomenal properties) all the way down to the particle and all the way up to the animal brain. Thus there's no need for (radical) emergence.

Idealism and Anti-Realism

On the surface at least, Hoffman seems to take a very strong idealist position when he says that “brains and neurons do not exist unperceived”. (This is exactly what Bishop Berkeley argued; thought not, of course, about “brains and neurons”.) Now this isn't an expression of anti-realism because an anti-realist wouldn't say that any x doesn't exist “when unperceived”. He'd simply say that our perceptions “colour” what it is we take to exist. And there's no way around that.

All this displays the very common problem of conflating (or confusing) idealism and anti-realism.

Despite having just stated that, there is a strong sense in which one can derive idealist conclusions from anti-realist statements. That is:

i) If we describe things as “brains" and "neurons”,

iia) and those descriptions are contingent - and dependent – upon persons/observers, concepts, theories, etc.,

iii) then perhaps we may as well conclude that brains and neurons “do not exist unperceived”.

That is, brains and neurons (as well as other objects) don't exist until we describe/observe them. (This echos, to some extent at least, the debate which surrounded Niels Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics – see later section.) That's true enough. However, why embrace the idealist conclusion that everything that exists only does so in the minds of persons? That route leads to idealism, subjectivism, solipsism and woo.

In addition, what does Hoffman mean when he states that brains and neurons “have no causal power”? I ask that question because he doesn't explain it in the passages just quoted (though he may well do elsewhere). What's more, he concludes that this lack of causal power is “why we've never been able to boot up consciousness from neural activity”. So what does all that mean?

Kant's Transcendental Idealism

Hoffman's main problem with Immanuel Kant's position on noumena is that he believes that it's not scientific. Or, less strongly, he believes that Kant's position doesn't look promising from a scientific perspective.

As Hoffman puts it about one “interpretation” of Kant:

“This interpretation of Kant precludes any science of the noumenal, for if we cannot describe the noumenal then we cannot build scientific theories of it.”

Yet Hoffman's own conscious realism isn't a scientific theory either. (Sure, it's clearly the case that Hoffman believes that it is.) He then says that

“[c]onscious realism, by contrast, offers a scientific theory of the noumenal, viz., a mathematical formulation of conscious agents and their dynamical interactions”.

Hoffman often defends his conscious realism by talking about its “mathematical models”, etc (or by using the words above – i.e., “a mathematical formulation”). Despite that, only the mathematical models or “formulations” used in conscious realism are scientific (or mathematical). All the additions to that are examples of speculative philosophy. So this isn't that unlike people using mathematics and scientific terminology to defend - or back up - astrology, astral travelling, ley lines, Creationism, etc. (This aspect of Hoffman's conscious realism can't be tackled now. I've tackled it here.)

In addition, if conscious realism really “offers a scientific theory of the noumenal”, then it's not the noumenal that it's offering a scientific theory of. Of course this may be terminological pedantary in that, to Hoffman, the noumenal isn't in fact noumenal at all. Thus he believes that he can offer a scientific theory of it. Kant, on the other hand, created a theory in which noumena were – by definition – not only beyond science, but also beyond Hoffman's cognitive agents.

Hoffman then expresses a position that isn't at odds with either anti-realism or Kant's transcendental idealism. He writes:

“Many interpretations of Kant have him claiming that the sun and planets, tables and chairs, are not mind-independent, but depend for their existence on our perception. With this claim of Kant, conscious realism and MUI theory agree. Of course many current theorists disagree.”

The wording in the above isn't quite right. Hoffman says that Kant believed that

“the sun and planets, tables and chairs, are not mind-independent, but depend for their existence on our perception”.

Surely it's best to say that some things (whatever they are) exist mind-independently. The problem is that they don't exist as the sun, planets, tables and chairs. That is, the fact that we see these things this way is a result of our contingent modes of “perception”; as well as our concepts, theories, languages, etc. However, this is still not idealism because Kant's noumena exist. In addition, they aren't the contents of consciousness. So this is transcendental idealism; not immaterialism or subjective idealism.

To sum up. Whatever is “behind” (or the cause of) our perceptions is not itself dependent on consciousness (or on our perceptions).

The Copenhagen Interpretation

Hoffman states the following:

“Scientists believe that space, time, and objects exist even if they're not perceived. That's a fundamental assumption of most.”

So let's reiterate what's just been said above (i.e., before the subheading). Scientists (or at least some/most of them) do believe that objects exist even when not perceived. However, when they are perceived, then they're given (as it were) a determinate form – a form which is down to our contingent theories, experiments, perceptions/observations, concepts, languages, etc.

Secondly, not all - or even most - scientists “believe that space, time, and objects exist even if they're not perceived”. There have been (for many years) many physicists working on the non-existence of both space and time, for example. (Admittedly, that's a question of the very existence of space and time and it has little to do with our perceptions.) In addition, scientists aren't philosophers. Thus most scientists have little time for phrases like “objects exist even if they're not perceived”.

This leads us to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Hoffman often applies the Copenhagen interpretation to the “classical” (or macro) scale. (Indeed Hoffman himself mentions the Copenhagen interpretation on a few occasions and at one points says that "most proponents of the Copenhagen interpretation embrace it only for the microscopic realm".) For example, here's Hoffman applying it to DNA:

“For instance, [conscious realism] entails that DNA does not exist when it is not perceived. Something exists when we don’t look that causes us, when we do look, to perceive DNA, but, whatever that something is, it’s not DNA.”

Perhaps this is a bad example because at least DNA is a microphenomenon, if not a subatomic phenomenon. (Though DNA is determined by – and dependent upon - quantum phenomena.) Elsewhere, however, Hoffman applies exactly the same argument to brains (as a whole), cups, trees, and other everyday macro-objects. Now, to state the obvious, there's a vast difference between a electron (for example) and a tree (for example).

Another point is that Niels Bohr didn't embrace idealism. To put it simply. There's also a big difference between the stress on how we gain access to (as it were) reality and the idealist position that it's all about what goes on in one's head. (Or within what Hoffman deems to be a Collective Head.) Anti-realists accept that there is a mind-independent world. However, human beings only gain access to that world through their brains, consciousnesses, concepts, languages, etc. Idealism, on the other hand, seems to have it that literally everything is in the minds of subjects (or agents). And, if that's correct, then that puts idealism and anti-realism in radically different places. Yet, as is the case on so many occasions, anti-realism is basically seen as idealism (or, at the least, as a variety of idealism). Having said that, what Hoffman himself argues doesn't make this distinction clear. And, because of that, it can be argued that Hoffman's position is idealist rather than anti-realist.

Kripke on Wittgenstein: Kripkenstein [A Commentary on a YouTube Video]

The following paragraph is a standard introduction to my commentaries on various science- and philosophy-based YouTube videos.

When it comes to my commentaries on particular videos, only the content of - or the words within - the video itself will be discussed. That is, the commentaries aren't cases of detailed research on the subjects discussed or the persons interviewed. (As one would find in an academic paper or even in an in depth article.) The reason for this is that I believe that this will help both the readers of the commentaries and the viewers of the video. And that, hopefully, will still be the case even when it comes to those readers and viewers who aren't newcomers to the subjects discussed or the people being interviewed in the videos.

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i) Kripke as a Student and the Philosophical Investigations

ii) Stop Getting Wittgenstein Wrong!

iii) Wittgenstein's Scepticism and Relativism?

The Student Kripke and the Philosophical Investigations

Saul Kripke is honest enough to admit (in this video) that his initial interest in Ludwig Wittgenstein was solely down to who taught him at university when he was a student. (He mentions “three faculty members” particularly.) Of course alongside the fact that his teachers had an interest in Wittgenstein (specifically the “late Wittgenstein” of the Philosophical Investigations) would have been the fact that Kripke actually developed an independent interest in what Wittgenstein wrote and said. Having said that, Kripke also confesses that he didn't at first see the importance of Wittgenstein or his Philosophical Investigations. Indeed he didn't “develop [his] own take on what [Wittgenstein] was doing until 1962 and 1963”. Then again, Kripke was still only 22 in 1962!

Nonetheless, all this highlights the “context of discovery”, rather than “the context of justification”. In other words, the context of Kripke's discovery of Wittgenstein will have no interest to those strict analytic philosophers who're solely interested in the context of justifying Kripke's analyses of Wittgenstein.

Stop Getting Wittgenstein Wrong!

“Stop getting Bond wrong!” - Alan Partridge

The very neologism, 'Kripkenstein', was coined to express the idea that Saul Kripke got Wittgenstein wrong! This was particularly in reference to the issues of rule-following and the Private Language Argument, which aren't actually discussed in the video above.

The important point about Kripke is that he challenged what he deemed to be the standard interpretation/s of Wittgenstein at the time (i.e., in the early 1960s). Nonetheless, other philosophers didn't see Kripke's Wittgenstein as being that original or different – and that's according to Kripke himself.

What we get in this video is a reference to the classic problem of Wittgenstein: how to (correctly) interpret him. Unlike many other philosophers of the Anglo-American analytic tradition, most of what's said (or argued about) when it comes to Wittgenstein is about interpretation. Thus we have Philosophy X saying that Philosopher Y has “got Wittgenstein wrong!”. And then Philosophy Z ostentatiously comes along and says that both Philosopher X and Philosopher Y haven't “got Witggenstein right!”. And this goes on and on and on.

All this is very-well expressed by Lee Braver in his Groundless Grounds: A Study of Wittgenstein and Heidegger. He writes:

“[Wittgenstein's] writing style is perhaps the most obscure of all the great analytic figures, leading to an unusual state of affairs: 'one of the most striking characteristics of the secondary literature on Wittgenstein is the overwhelming lack of agreement about what he believed and why.' Already in 1961, the literature on the Tractatus was compared to literary scholarship in dissension and sheer mass. His opaque prose and sparse argumentation have given rise to a cottage industry of exegetical work and scholarly contention...”

In terms of the video itself, Kripke obviously denies those who said that he “didn't understand Wittgenstein at all”. Indeed Kripke backs this up when he says that “it's hard for anyone to claim that he or she has got the right understanding of Wittgenstein”. Why is that? Kripke continues by saying that “both the early and late Wittgenstein writes in some style which invites one to wonder what it really means”. More surprisingly, Kripke then says that Wittgenstein's work “may be more like continental philosophy than analytic philosophy”. However, it's still the case that Wittgenstein is “mostly thought to be an analytic philosopher anyway”.

The interviewer picks up on Wittgenstein's obscure way of writing. She says that perhaps Wittgenstein wrote in that style “on purpose in order to get readers to think on their own terms”. Kripke responds by saying: “Well, yes, that's what he says.” Kripke continues by saying that Wittgenstein wanted to “encourage readers to think for themselves”. More concretely, Kripke says that Wittgenstein didn't “state theses in philosophy, since everyone would agree to [not with] them”. In other words, Wittgenstein didn't want agreement – at least not in this respect.

Wittgenstein's Scepticism and Relativism?

It's ironic that Kripke (when asked about Wittgenstein's scepticism) says that Wittgenstein wouldn't have seen himself as a sceptic. That's true. In an ironic sense, Wittgenstein didn't see himself in any way – and that's partly the point of Wittgenstein. Yet Wittgenstein did have a go at (almost) the whole of Western philosophy. He also had a go at scepticism itself. That is, he was sceptical about scepticism. But scepticism about scepticism is... well, scepticism. Instead, and I believe that Kripke is bang on here, Wittgenstein “might have compared himself to Berkeley, who also believed that he was defending common sense”. Kripke, then, does believe that that Wittgenstein was a “sceptic”. He says that Wittgenstein “certainly raised sceptical problems”. Of course Wittgenstein (as already stated) and many Wittgensteinians would deny this. Why? Because the “game of scepticism” (to use the language of Wittgensteinians) is part of the Western tradition that Wittgenstein wanted to escape from. (Though Wittgenstein never escaped from Kant, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, etc.)

Not only does Kripke accuse (as it were) Wittgenstein of being a sceptic, he believes that he was a “relativist” too. Here again Wittgenstein and many Wittgensteinians would deny such an accusation. (Though the term “relativism” wasn't much used in Wittgenstein's day.) Indeed Kripe says that Wittgenstein's On Certainty is a “highly relativistic book”. An example of this is that Wittgenstein would have argued that “instead of consulting a physicist, consult a witch doctor” in order to find out what is and what isn't the case in a particular culture or language game. (This chimes in with Paul Feyerabend's well-known position on voodoo.). Indeed Kripke detects a moral motivation here. That is: “If you're going outside the language game, aren't you trying to condemn and fight the other one?” And that is “certainly relativism plus”, as Kripke puts it. According to Kripke, the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe (who translated Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations) classed Wittgenstein's position as “linguistic idealism”. Indeed Anscombe once asked Wittgenstein (according to Kripke) this question:

“What if you had a friend of took up witch doctoring? Would you be embarrassed or at all opposed to this?”

Wittgenstein replied by saying that he “probably wouldn't like it, but [he didn't] know why”.