Deflating Wittgenstein: With Daniel Kaufman and Crispin Sartwell [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. (There are a few minor exceptions to this in each piece.) That is, the commentaries aren’t cases of detailed research on the subjects discussed or the persons interviewed.

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This is a commentary on a one hour 48 minutes video discussion between Daniel A. Kaufman and Crispin Sartwell on the subject of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Despite the aforementioned subject matter, Kaufman (at one point) states the following:

“Wittgenstein has almost zero influence in analytic philosophy today. The interesting thing is that your experience [i.e., Crispin Sartwell’s negative experience] represented the last gasp of that tradition.”

Kaufman also says (ironically, I presume) that there are only “three Wittgensteinians around today”. (He mentions P.M.S. Hacker as one of them.) Kaufman continues by saying that “analytic philosophy went completely beyond [Wittgenstein]”. He cites the influence of cognitive science as an example of this. Kaufman claims that the “whole point of [cognitive science] is doing exactly what Wittgenstein believed that you shouldn’t do”. Despite that, Kaufman is also against what he calls the “cognitive science revolution” in philosophy. He also believes in “bringing Wittgenstein back” in order to fight a counter-revolution against that cognitive science hegemony (at least within philosophy).

Kaufman admits that Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations would still come out as a “number one” book in many polls of analytic philosophers. In addition, it’s ironic that Kaufman says that Wittgenstein today is a “dead parrot” when one considers the fact that only recently there were as many as 1000 publications on Wittgenstein in one year alone. (As of today in ResearchGate, there are 22, 934 publications which both mention and are about Wittgenstein.)

But perhaps all this entirely depends on whether Wittgenstein is a dead parrot to analytic philosophers (as a whole) alone or whether he’s a dead parrot to intellectual culture generally.

Stop Getting Wittgenstein Wrong!

Sartwell (whom Kaufman interviews on this subject) points out that Wittgenstein worship was still prevalent in the 1980s. That’s some 40 years or more after Wittgenstein worship had first kicked in (if within very small circles). Sartwell mentions Cora Diamond, who was teaching at the university he was a student at. Sartwell says “it felt like a cult” at the time. And that’s exactly something that Gilbert Ryle (an admirer of Wittgenstein) noted some 40 years before the 1980s. (Read Ryle’s article from 1951.)

In terms of one fairly recent example of Wittgenstein veneration, it’s worth citing the 2012 book Groundless Ground: A Study of Wittgenstein and Heidegger, by Lee Braver. This book 239 pages long and it doesn’t contain a single criticism of Wittgenstein or his ideas. What’s more, Lee Braver doesn’t even quote any critical words (against Wittgenstein) of any other philosophers or commentators.

Along with Wittgenstein worship (“Bible study”, as the Guardian’s Giles Fraser put it) comes the Wittgenstein Interpretation Industry (mentioned earlier). That is, Wittgenstein worship generates the Wittgenstein Interpretation Industry.

The Wittgenstein Interpretation Industry is primarily driven by the following question (or variations thereon):

What did Wittgenstein really mean by x?

Sartwell picks up on this when he states the following:

“The only thing that mattered to them [the Wittgenstein “cult”] was the question: ‘What did Wittgenstein really mean?’… There wasn’t a question as to what’s the best position here… but what did Wittgenstein really mean?”

That’s what you find with many Wittgenstein acolytes. That is, they’ll shout you down for getting Wittgenstein wrong. They may (sometimes) be right about this. (Who knows?) But whether one is right or wrong, Wittgenstein’s ideas or positions (as they can be agreed upon by all the parties concerned) are rarely discussed . Instead the primary question is usually the following: “What did Wittgenstein mean by y?” Either that, or one becomes a victim of the exclamation: “Stop getting Wittgenstein wrong!”

Yet, ironically, Sartwell immediately says that he “rebelled against Rorty as he read Wittgenstein”. So here again we have an example of the Wittgenstein Interpretation Industry. It gets worse. Kaufman then asks Sartwell this question: “Do you believe that Rorty read Wittgenstein correctly?” And Sartwell answers: “Yes and no. He read him tendentiously.” Sartwell continues:

“His basic premise was not to get Wittgenstein right; but to annex him for his own project.”

Isn’t that what most — or even all — philosophers have done when they’ve discussed the works of other philosophers?

All this raises the question:

Is there such a thing as Wittgenstein’s Wittgenstein?

Or is Wittgenstein’s Wittgenstein simply Sartwell’s (or add some other name here) Wittgenstein? And if Jacques Derrida was correct when he said that “there is no outside-text”, then perhaps it doesn’t matter what Wittgenstein really meant!

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*) Read Crispin Sartwell’s article on Wittgenstein here.

The Hard Problem of Consciousness: Some Distinctions Between “How” and “Why”

i) Introduction

ii) The Grammar of How and Why

iii) The Hard Problem of Consciousness

iv) Confusing and Conflating How and Why

v) How and Why as Found Elsewhere

Many scientists say that “science doesn't ask 'why': it can only answer 'what' and 'how'”. So perhaps that same logic can also be applied to - at least some - philosophical questions. Of course many people will immediately respond by arguing that not only is this either/or position on how and why incorrectly applied to philosophy: it's not even properly applicable to science either.

The Grammar of How and Why

Sometimes this issue is simply a matter of grammar. For example, the question

“Why is it that x is thus and so?”

can be neatly parsed into the following question:

“How is it that x is thus and so?”

In other cases, however, a why-question can't be parsed into a how-question (as well as vice versa). For example, many people will argue that the question

“Why is there something, rather than nothing?”

can't be parsed into the following question:

“How is there something, rather than nothing?”

But even here, and with enough ingenuity, the why can be turned into a how. That is, the how may explain the why. And, therefore, the why-question will become a how-question (as well as vice versa).

However, in the main example of this piece, such a substitution (or parsing) doesn't seem to work. That is, it doesn't seem to be the case that the question

“How does physical x cause experience y?”

can be accepted as a substitute for this question

“Why does physical x cause experience y?”

Though even in this more clear and obvious case, these two questions have still been conflated, confused or interchanged by many people – even by certain philosophers.

In addition, in some cases both how-questions and why-questions seem suspect from the start. Take these two questions:

1) “How is it that H₂0?”

2) “Why is it that water is H₂O?”

Yet, despite all this grammatical fun, it may still be the case that some why-questions are genuinely bogus. Perhaps this is so because they can't be turned into how-questions. That is, because of that lack of a substitution, they may well be bogus. This essentially means that (in certain cases at least) some why-questions can't even be answered – not even in principle. Now does that fact alone automatically make them bogus? One must presume so. That is, surely a question that can't in principle be answered must be bogus.

This issue is mudied, however, by the simple possibility that science – and even philosophy – may make discoveries in the future which will make certain of today's unanswerable why-questions answerable. That would mean that they aren't in fact unanswerable in principle at all – they're simply unanswerable at this moment in time.

However, it can still be argued that certain remaining why-questions will never be answered. Of course the problem with that claim - which is both modal and futurological in nature - is how to justify it.

The Hard Problem of Consciousness

Professor Donald Hoffman states the old(ish) philosophical chestnut in this way:

“We still don't have any scientific theories that explain how conscious experiences could emerge from brain activity.”

Yes “we” do! Though, of course, it entirely depends on what exactly Hoffman means by the words above. (Specifically, the modal phrase “how conscious experience could emerge from brain activity”.) For one, in many cases neuroscientists do know that when physical events and states of a certain type occur, then experiences of a certain type occur.

Sure, perhaps these are merely correlations. Though are they as simple as David Hume's example in which a cock's crow is deemed to be the cause of the rising sun? That is, is this simply a case of “correlation without causation”? Many would reply to the question in the following way: Of course it's more then “mere correlation”!

Neuroscientists also know a lot about the brain states and events which are tied (to use a non-committed word) to experience. So perhaps Hoffman means the following:

We still don't have any scientific theories that explain why [i.e., not how] conscious experiences could emerge from brain activity.

That is a tried-and-tested expression of the Hard Problem of Consciousness. It can be expressed in this way:

The problem isn't how experience y arises from physical x: the problem is why it does so.

Or more philosophically (or not):

1) Why does experience y arise from physical x?

2) Why does experience arise from the physical at all?

They above basically questions about the philosophical and conceptual connections between the physical and experience. Or to put that more concretely:

What has an experience of a red rose got to do with physical events and states in the human brain?

Confusing and Conflating How and Why

Does Donald Hoffman himself (in the quote above) confuse how and why?

It can be argued that scientists do tell us how “matter create[s] consciousness” or how “neural activity create[s] conscious experiences”. They tell us that when certain physical things do certain physical things, then experiences occur.

Yet even after an acceptance of brain-to-experience causation, the why-question can still be asked. Indeed it often is!

So, the argument goes, not only do these causal accounts not answer the why-question: they don't even answer the how-question. (As Ludwig Wittgenstein might have put it: Such is philosophy!)

Here's a very loose analogy.

When you press the light switch down, the light comes on. So when someone asks you, “How does the light come on?”, your answer could be: “By pressing the switch.” Of course there's more to it that than this. Yet all the hows can be described for the light coming on. However, it's indeed still the case that all the physical things and physical events (which are required for the light to come on) aren't identical to the light itself.

So now, of course, it has been argued that all the physical things and physical events required for a particular experience aren't identical to that experience.

How and Why as Found Elsewhere

Again, perhaps Hoffman means why not how. For example, what if the following why-questions are bogus? -

1) Why does physical matter create conscious experience?

2) Why does neural activity create conscious experiences?

What's more, what if many of the how-questions have already been answered and the rest can, in principle, be answered in the future?

So why may the why-questions be bogus?

Firstly, what does it mean to ask the following question? -

“Why does neural activity create conscious experiences?”

Is there really a why beyond the how?

If I were to ask the questions

1) “Why is water H₂0?”

2) “Why do H₂O molecules create water?”

most people would laugh. A chemist can tell you how H₂O molecules create (or cause the structure of) water. However, can he tell you how water is H₂O? And perhaps the question “Why is water H₂O?” doesn't make sense either. As Ludwig Wittgenstein (more or less) put it in his Philosophical Investigations:

Just because a question can be asked, that doesn't mean that it has an answer.

Grammatically, the questions directly above (as well as many others) are in perfect shape; though philosophically, logically and conceptually, they may be inane. (See this excellent paper on this subject by Gordon Park Baker.)

Take two more obvious examples:

“Why is the colour blue happy today?”

And my version of Noam Chomsky's well-known example:

“Why do colorless green ideas sleep furiously?”

These are still grammatical sentences. Can these questions be answered? Could there even be a possible answer to these questions? So does the same apply to this question? -

“Why does neural activity cause experience/s?”

That above is also a perfectly grammatical question and sentence. Though, admittedly, it doesn't seem to be in exactly the same ballpark as Chomsky's example and my question about the colour blue. Nonetheless, can that question about neural activity and experience be answered? Indeed could there even be an answer to that question?

Here again this may be a commitment to a modally negative answer to Hard Question [rather than “problem”] of Consciousness. And that may well be as controversial a position as claiming that these hard questions can – at least in principle – be answered.

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.