Firstly here's a quote from the philosopher Gilbert Ryle in which he talks about Wittgenstein’s general distaste for generalisations:
“…he
now [i.e., the late Wittgenstein] avoids any general statement of the
nature of philosophy, not because this would be to say the unsayable,
but because it would be to say a scholastic and therefore an
obscuring thing. In philosophy, generalizations are unclarifications.
The nature of philosophy is to be taught by producing concrete
specimens of it.” (1951)
So what about
Wittgenstein himself? He wrote:
“Our
craving for generality has [as one] source … our preoccupation with
the method of science. I mean the method of reducing the explanation
of natural phenomena to the smallest possible number of primitive
natural laws; and, in mathematics, of unifying the treatment of
different topics by using a generalization. Philosophers constantly
see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly
tempted to ask and answer in the way science does. This tendency is
the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into
complete darkness. I want to say here that it can never be our job to
reduce anything to anything, or to explain anything. Philosophy
really is 'purely descriptive'.” (1933-1935)
When Wittgenstein used
the phrase “craving for generality” to express his position
towards what he saw to be Western philosophy’s prime vice, he was himself generalising about Western
philosophy.
To state that
All traditional
Western philosophy generalises about things which can't be
captured by such generalisations.
is to generalise (even if
we drop the quantifier “all”). Similarly, the statement that
All traditional
philosophy is “concerned with the general rather than the
particular”.
is itself
concerned with the general (i.e., all Western philosophy) rather than
the particular.
If one classes
oneself as a Wittgensteinian particularist (even if one
doesn't actually use that term), that statement is a generalisation
about those who can be called generalists and also about what can be called generalism. (For that
matter, it's also to implicitly generalise about particularists and
particularism.) It's of no consequence at all if particular
Wittgensteinians don't use these terms (or indeed any ists or
isms). They may not use such words; though they're still tacitly
committed to the concepts which these words express.
To repeat:
“All generalizations
are unclarifications.”
is a
generalisation about (all) generalisations.
In order for
Wittgenstein’s position to have a point (or in order for him to demonstrate his own point) there must be (or there needs to be) at least one generalisation
that's not an “unclarification”. Though if there's at least one
such generalisation that isn't also an unclarification, perhaps it
could be (as Wittgensteinian might have claimed) the very
generalisation that
“All generalisations
are unclarifications.”
If the initial
generalisation isn't taken to be the sole exception to what it
claims, then it can be rewritten in this way:
All generalisations
- including this one - are unclarifications.
This self-referential
statement therefore allows itself to be either an exception to itself
(i.e., if it didn’t include the central clause) or to be
an actual example of what it claims. Though if it's not an
exception to its own claim, then it too must be an unclarification.
If it is an exception to what it claims, then there it may be the one and only
one exception. Thus
All generalisations
- including the one you're now reading - are unclarifications.
can be taken as a kind of
proof (or just an example) of what it claims (i.e., if it's actually taken as
an unclarification). If the statement about all generalisations
implies (or entails) that it too is a generalisation (if about
generalisations), then it must also suffer from the same kind of unclarity
that's taken to be a property of all other generalisations.
However, Wittgenstein's statement
about all generalisations is a second-order (or metalinguistic)
generalisation. That is, it's a generalisation about generalisations:
not a generalisation about events or things which aren't themselves taken to be linguistic generalisations. If all first-order generalisations (i.e., those in
the “object language”) are unclarifications, then a second-order
generalisation about first-order generalisations can be seen either
being free from the property unclarity (i.e., due to its
second-order status); or as being itself a victim of such a property
(i.e., perhaps it's not an actual or genuine metalinguistic
statement).
Note: Lycan's
Paradox (at least according to Michael Clark) also deals with
generalisations. More specifically, it deals with the statement,
“Most generalisations are false". It states that “a minority
[of generalisations] must be true”. However, since Wittgenstein's
own meta-generalisation is about generalisations (one which claims
they're all false or unclarifications), it's even less likely to be
true than the first-order generalisations it has as its target.
References
Ryle, Gilbert. (1951) 'Wittgenstein', from Analysis, vol. 12, pp. 1-9
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (1946-1949) Philosophical Investigations
-- (1933-1935)The Blue Book
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