The View From Nowhere by Nagel Thomas

Author:Nagel, Thomas [Nagel, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1989-02-09T05:00:00+00:00

4. Consciousness in General

So far as I can see the only reason for accepting such limits would be a Wittgensteinian one—namely, that such an extension or attempted generalization of the concept of mind takes us away from the conditions that make the concept meaningful. I don’t know whether Wittgenstein would actually have made this objection, but it seems a natural development of his views. He observed that while experiential concepts are applied in the first person from within, not on the basis of behavioral, circumstantial, or any other kind of evidence, they also require outward criteria. To mean anything in application to oneself in the first person they must also be applicable to oneself and others on circumstantial and behavioral grounds that are not just privately available. This he took to be a consequence of a general condition of publicity that must be met by all concepts, which in turn derives from a condition that must be met by any rule of whatever kind: that there must be an objective distinction between following it and breaking it, which can be made only if it is possible to compare one’s own practice with that of one’s community.

I am doubtful about the final “only”, and though I have no alternative theory to offer, it seems to me dangerous to draw conclusions from the argument “How else could it be?” But I don’t wish to deny that the experiential concepts we use to talk about our own minds and those of other human beings more or less fit the pattern Wittgenstein describes. Provided Wittgenstein is not understood, as I think he should not be, as saying that behavior and so forth is what there really is and mental processes are linguistic fictions, his view that the conditions of first- and third-person ascription of an experience are inextricably bound together in a single public concept seems to me correct, with regard to the ordinary case3

The question is whether the concept of experience can be extended beyond these conditions without losing all content. A negative answer would limit our thought about experience to what we can ascribe to ourselves and to others in the specified ways. The objection is that beyond these limits the distinction between correct and incorrect application of the concept is not defined, and therefore the condition of significance is not met.

In a well known passage (sec. 350) Wittgenstein says I can’t extend the application of mental concepts from my own case merely by saying others have the same as I have so often had. “It is as if I were to say: ‘You surely know what “It is 5 o’clock here” means; so you also know what “It’s 5 o’clock on the sun” means. It means simply that it is just the same time there as it is here when it is 5 o’clock.’” This is a fair reply to someone who is trying to explain what he means by saying that the stove is in pain. But could it be

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