Social Inquiry After Wittgenstein and Kuhn by Gunnell John;

Author:Gunnell, John;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: PHI019000, Philosophy/Political, PHI034000, Philosophy/Social
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2014-10-27T16:00:00+00:00

5

CONVENTIONAL OBJECTS, CONCEPTS, & THE PRACTICE OF INTERPRETATION

And this language, like any other, rests on convention. (PI, 355) Concepts lead us to make investigations. (PI, 570)

Every interpretation hangs in the air together with what it interprets. (PI, 198)

—WITTGENSTEIN

FURTHER REMARKS ON PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY

The intricacies of the use of mental terms that Wittgenstein probed might seem too precious for social scientists to confront, but his remarks relate to conceptual entanglements in which the language of these fields is deeply involved. After the Investigations, much of his work continued to be devoted to elaborating his basic claims about meaning, interpretation, and the character of mental concepts. This included an analysis of the concept of emotion and an emphasis on emotions as discursive phenomena peculiar to creatures that can “talk” and have “mastered a language” and participate in the “pattern” of meaning that constitutes “the tapestry” of the human “complicated form of life.” He was pointing out that for philosophers, and, we may say, anyone engaged in social inquiry, “emotions” are expressions that are elements of human interaction and not reducible to physiological phenomena. One might speak of experiencing an emotion, but, as in the case of meaning, this is different, for example, than experiencing a sensation such as pain or a “mental image,” even though sensations might accompany an emotion. His point was that meaning resides in the conventions informing speech and action, which we attribute to human beings and which humans invoke. We do not begin with the belief that a person may be an “automaton,” but with an “attitude towards a soul (mind, Seele). I am not of the opinion that he has a soul.” And “the human body is the best picture of the human soul.” There are various ways to look at human “behavior” (Benehmen), but there is no sharp break between mind and body, which simply represent different aspects of a human being and the respective grammars and language-games. Wittgenstein claimed that “playing our language-game” of explaining meaning “always rests on a tacit presupposition” about what sort of conventional activity is going on—for example, a play, a psychological experiment, and so on (PPF, 1–34).

He also continued to insist that we “cannot explain intentionality [Intention]” as an “atmosphere” in our “minds” (Geiste) surrounding a word—“a ‘corona’ of faintly indicated uses.” Understanding and knowing how to engage in some activity are not explained by referring to some “inner process,” any more than meaning is some mystical underlying “experience” (Erlebnis) that one has in hearing and uttering words. He again acknowledged, however, that there is a way in which a word may be said to have a different “character” in different “contexts” and yet at the same time to have a single character or “face” (Gesicht), because the latter was the consequence of typical use. He also reiterated that equating meaning with use included such things as the form of “expression,” as in the case of singing, but that there is no “feeling” or “atmosphere” that goes along with a word and transcends different contexts and forms of expression.

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