A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action, Vol 3 Critique of Cavell’s Claim of Reason

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The Wittgensteinian Philosophical Revolution connected to his later work was an event to behold, not because the Cambridge Philosopher provided the final solution to Philosophy promised in the early work but because he began to see the breadth and depth of problems in areas of Philosophy he previously thought irrelevant: not because he began reflecting in the name of Science and ended reflecting in the name of Social Science: not because he managed in either his earlier or his later work to provide more than an album of sketches: but rather because his later investigations shared some of the animus of Aristotelian and Kantian Philosophy. In regard to this last point we encounter a belief in, and use of, the logical principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason in what appears to resemble a hylomorphic and critical spirit. In this shift towards the region of the social sciences and the use of these principles in an appropriate spirit, Wittgenstein’s later philosophy succeeded in removing the weeds of 20th century, namely scientism, logical positivism, logical atomism, naturalism, pragmatism, existentialism phenomenology, logical solipsism, mind independent realism, dualism, empiricism. In doing this important work he managed to produce a “clearing” in which the seeds of hylomorphic and critical Philosophy could be sewn again.

Stanley Cavell is one of the major American Wittgensteinian scholars who saw in the work of Wittgenstein a unifying influence insofar as the warring factions of analytic and continental Philosophy is concerned. There are many facets to Cavell’s work but one of his more interesting claims is the wish to shift the focus of Philosophy from statements and facts, to judgements in general, and intuitional/experiential/conceptual judgments in particular. In a work entitled “The Claim of Reason”(Oxford, Oxford university Press, 1979) he claims the following:

“All I want from these considerations so far is a prospective attention to Wittgenstein’s emphasis upon the idea of judgement. In the modern history of epistemology, the idea of judgement is not generally distinguished from the idea of statement generally, or perhaps they are too completely distinguished….The problem is to see whether the study of human knowledge may as a whole be distorted by this focus. The focus upon statements takes knowledge to be the sum(or product) of true statements and hence construes the limits of human knowledge as coinciding with the extent to which it has amassed true statements of the world…The focus on judgement takes human knowledge to be the human capacity for applying the concepts of a language to the things of a world, for characterising(categorising) the world when and as it is humanly done, and hence construes the limits of human knowledge as coinciding with the limits of its concepts(in some historical period).”(P.17)

It is difficult not to recall in this context the opening salvo of Wittgenstein’s early work, the “Tractatus Logico Philosophicus:

1.0 The world is everything that is the case

1.1 The world is the totality of facts not of things

(Wittgenstein. L, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, trans Ogden C.K., (New York, Cosimo classics, 2007, P29)

We noted in volume 2 of this work, in the opening essays on Kant, the role of, firstly, categories of understanding/judgement, and secondly, the search of reason for the totality of conditions of a phenomenon in knowledge claims. The focus for Kant is not on truth alone but on a definition of knowledge that can be characterised in terms of the classical definition of Justified True Belief, a definition connected with the works of Plato and Aristotle. In Kant’s work, concepts are obviously constituents of these judgements but the Kantian account of concepts reaches far beyond the account we find in the later work of Wittgenstein which admittedly has both Kantian aspects and pragmatic/empirical aspects:

570 Concepts lead us to make investigations, are the expressions of our interests, and direct our interest.”(P.151e)

Kant famously claimed that without concepts intuitions are blind. For Kant, concepts are the instruments of thinking that organise the manifolds of representations: concepts unify and differentiate intuitive representations. The telos of Kantian concepts is not merely to conduct investigations but also to combine with other concepts in the formation of judgements or statements. This combination of concepts is controlled by both the Categories of the Understanding and the rational logical principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. Using these concepts to categorise the things of the world is one conceptual function. Another function of conceptualisation is to use concepts in different ways, e.g. to characterise our actions, use concepts to characterise what happens to us and to characterise what we possess(e.g. the power to act, think, speak, reason). These are all Aristotelian categories of existence. Concepts are also used in accordance with Kantian categories of judgement and what for Wittgenstein is the language-game of the reporting of facts, for Kant is a judgement or statement in which something is being said of something via the combination of concepts. For Kant also, reason uses concepts in its investigations into the totality of conditions for any given phenomenon. These “conditions” are not criteria but rather grounds and these grounds will be in accordance with the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason.

The reference by Cavell to the focus on statements and truth rather than judgements and concepts appears to disregard the Aristotelian and Kantian rationalistic accounts of concepts , judgements, statements, and knowledge. Both Aristotle and Kant would have largely agreed with much of what was said in the above quote by Wittgenstein in which it is claimed that pragmatically, concepts can be used to both direct interests and express these interests. Both Aristotle and Kant would also have agreed with Cavell and Wittgenstein in opposing the modern epistemological project. Wittgenstein’s later philosophy takes up epistemological problems in terms of the grammatical rules of language, and in terms of a narrative dimension that was not present in his early Philosophy. Kant would probably have regarded these rules as being related to the above mentioned conditions for the application of concepts. It is not clear however, whether Kant would have shared Wittgenstein’s commitment to the role of language in this context of explanation/justification. Kant might, that is, have shared Frege’s view of the role of language in philosophical investigations:

“it cannot be the task of logic to investigate language and determine what is contained in a linguistic expression. Someone who wants to learn logic from language is like an adult who wants to learn how to think from a child. When men created language they were at a stage of childish pictorial thinking. Languages are not made to match logic’s ruler(Letter to Husserl).

Wittgenstein’s earlier picture theory of meaning and his statement that the limits of my language are the limits of my world raises questions relating to epistemologically oriented accounts of language. The paradigmatic shift of Wittgenstein’s later work involved moving from an attempt to link Logic and language directly via a form of logical atomism, to the use of language and the normative rules governing this use. This of course leaves a question hanging in the air regarding metaphysics and its relation to Language. For Aristotle and Kant metaphysics governs logical principles and to the extent that logic is an important consideration in the use of language(All the statements of ordinary language are in perfectly logical order (Tractatus 5.5563)), there must be some relation between metaphysical conditions and language. Yet we do not find in either Wittgenstein’s earlier or later work any mention of Aristotelian or Kantian metaphysics. We do, however, find the following in Zettel:

“Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.”(Zettel §55)

This remark suggests that there is no essential quarrel between the Aristotelian and Kantian search for the totality of conditions of the phenomenon/phenomena being investigated. The following Kantian characterisation of Logic (quoted in volume 2 of this work) supports the claim that there is no essential difference between the Kantian and the Wittgensteinian view of logic:

“Logic, again can be treated in a twofold manner either as the logic of the general or as the logic of the special employment of the understanding. The former contains the absolutely necessary rules of thought without which there can be no employment whatsoever of the understanding. It, therefore, treats of the understanding without any regard to difference in the objects to which the understanding may be directed. The logic of the special employment of the understanding concerns the rules of correct thinking as regards a certain kind of object. The former may be called the logic of the elements, the latter the organon of this or that science. The latter is commonly taught in the schools as a propaedeutic to the sciences, though according to the actual procedure of human reason, it is what is obtained last of all, when the particular science under question has been already brought to such completion that it requires only a few finishing touches to correct and perfect it”(Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Trans Kemp Smith N., London, Macmillan, 1963, B76)

The special use of the understanding may well be what we see Wittgenstein exploring in his grammatical investigations. This may also be (though it is doubtful) what Cavell is referring to in his account of concepts and criteria. Whether these observations have any substance will largely depend upon whether the Kantian position would share the Fregean or the Wittgensteinian view of language. For Wittgenstein, grammatical rules do not determine the truth of a judgement, only whether or not the judgement makes sense. At the same time, Wittgenstein claims that grammatical investigations reveal essence (what is essential). On the other hand, Wittgenstein also claims that language itself does not have an essence and this might support the Fregean view that language has an essentially pictorial nature (as insisted upon by the Tractatus). This might also explain why, in Wittgenstein’s later work, the account of language games and forms of life amounted to no more than an “album of sketches”.

Science of course investigates the essences of many different kinds of object (events, actions, artifacts) and in this context the Aristotelian division of the Sciences into the theoretical sciences, practical sciences, and the productive sciences is still useful and relevant. Kant complemented this system with his division between Pure Reason, Practical Reason, and Judgement. We find, however, very few references to Aristotle or Kant in Wittgensteins “album of sketches”, apart from a curt acknowledgement that Kant’s method (the special use of understanding) resembles the grammatical investigation.

Cavell interestingly fixates upon the Wittgensteinian idea of a criterion in discussing the role of a judge in the application of criteria to cases. This analogy of a tribunal is an interesting one. Cavell suggests in the context of this discussion that the judge does not make the law but only applies it. The tribunal is a forum in which criteria are used to establish what counts as evidence (truth conditions) for a claim, and what does not. Criteria are therefore in their structure normative, and this is reflected in the normative judgement “An X ought to be classified as a Y if it satisfies the criteria for a Y”. This is the general form for a normative value judgement that is concerned with conceptual classification. An aesthetic value judgement can then be characterised thus: “An X ought to be classified as naturally beautiful if it meets the criteria of disinterestedness, not related to a concept, related to the form of finality of an object etc”. In the ethical context an ethical value judgement might take the form of ” An action ought to be classified in terms of the good if it is done with a good will”.

In relation to the above Cavell states:

“Without the control of criteria in applying concepts we would not know what counts as evidence for any claim, nor for what claims evidence is needed.” (P.14)

We should remind the reader here, however, that the form of conceptual judgement being discussed by Cavell is object-specific and the scope of the judgement is restricted to the “things of the world” rather than widened to include the relation of concepts to concepts in the categorical form of a judgement that is generally truth conditional (rather than merely one part of the judgement being criteria-dependent).

Cavell points out that as a matter of fact we agree in our judgements (thanks to criteria, he argues). Wittgenstein, we know asks himself the Aristotelian question “Why do we agree?” and gives himself a very Aristotelian answer, namely “Because we share forms of life”. This justification for Aristotle, however, would in turn be an argument for his essence-specifying definition of being human: namely, “rational animal capable of discourse”. Embodied in this definition is a hylomorphic commitment to a community that takes it for granted that our forms of life are both involved in processes of actualisation and thus organically “given”(not needing a social contract to exist).

Cavell also points to how Wittgenstein uses his conception of criteria to demolish all forms of logical solipsism:

“An inner process stands in need of outward criteria”(Wittgenstein L, Philosophical Investigations Trans Anscombe G., E., M., Oxford, Blackwell, 1972, §580)

This is not to say that an inwardly located sensation such as pain is to be regarded as nothing. It is not nothing, but rather something, about which nothing can be said (philosophically). This comment when generalised increases in significance especially insofar as those first structuralist Psychologists were concerned. Wundt and many other Psychologists after him have regarded sensations as a building block of Psychological theory. Wittgenstein as we know claimed in his Philosophical Investigations that:

“The confusion and barrenness of psychology is not to be explained by calling it a “young science”; its state is not comparable with that of physics, for instance in its beginnings. (Rather with that of certain branches of mathematics. Set theory) For in Psychology there are experimental methods and conceptual confusion.(As in the other case conceptual confusion and methods of proof.) The existence of the experimental method makes us think that we have the means of solving the problems which trouble us; though problem and method pass one another by.” (P. 232)

Put simply in the context of the above discussion, the language game with pain is a game in which language is substituted for the cry of pain. Language functions, that is, as a signal for the people in my vicinity to do something. The expression of the pain is not an assertion that I am in pain. This not to deny that a practical principle–the pleasure pain principle–could be formulated to explain human behaviour in general and pain behaviour in particular. This in turn means that pain is not a detail in our lives to be observed and conceptualised but rather some kind of principle to be understood. Why this is so, is explained by Wittgenstein in terms of an account of the natural history of the helplessness of the child. The child falls and scrapes their knee, crying inconsolably. The parent teaches the child to stop crying and instead say “I am in pain”–i.e. teaches the child to “think” in relation to the pain, using the Kantian “I” in an effort to distract attention from the pain.

Cavell is puzzled by the following “parable” of Wittgenstein’s:

“If I am inclined to suppose that a mouse has come into being by spontaneous generation out of grey rags and dust, I shall do well to examine these rags very closely to see how a mouse may have hidden in them, how it may have got there and so on.But if I am convinced that a mouse cannot come into being from these things, then this investigation will perhaps be superfluous. But first we must learn to understand what it is that opposes such an examination of details in philosophy.”(§52)

Cavell reflects upon this in terms of states of mind when perhaps it might have been more appropriate to relate the above to the claim that it is not objects that steer investigations but concepts and principles. In the initial stages of a context of explanation we may begin this process by attempting to form concepts by organising intuitions or representations, but once a concept is formed the intuitions are subsumed and determined by the concept: they no longer steer a process in the context of exploration/discovery but rather participate in a process in a context of explanation/justification. Concepts in their turn, in this latter context of explanation/justification relate to categories and logic and it is primarily this constellation of intuitions, concepts, categories, and logic that determine the relation of judgements to each other.

Wittgenstein, interestingly, in his reflections upon the problems of Philosophical Psychology distinguishes between states and processes, thus introducing his own system of categories into his “album of sketches”. The remarks made in this area are reminiscent of the Aristotelian account of virtue (areté) and its dispositional character:

“Expectation is, grammatically a state; like being of an opinion, hoping for something, knowing something, being able to do something….What, in particular cases do we regard as criteria for someone’s being of such and such an opinion?When do we say: he reached this opinion at that time? When: he has altered his opinion? And so on. The picture which the answers to these questions give us shows what gets treated grammatically as a state here( §572-73)

“”Understanding a word”, a state. But a mental state?-Depression, excitement, pain are so called mental states….We also say “Since yesterday I have understood this word. “Continuously”, though? To be sure one can speak of an interruption of understanding. But in what cases? Compare: “When did your pains get less? and “When did you stop understanding that word?”(P.59)

Aristotle in his work distinguishes between capacities and dispositions. For Kant , understanding a word must be a power of our understanding whereas feeling a pain is a power of the sensible dimension of our mind. The expression “I am in pain” is a substitute for a cry of pain and is a signal or a criterion for you (because sentience is private) to help or sympathise. It is a signal, not to attend to the detail of my pain,(unless one is communicating with a doctor) but rather to attend to me, the bearer of the pain, perhaps with words of sympathy that help to distract attention from the detail of this uncomfortable feeling. This use of the word “pain” in the community is systematic and reflects not just an agreement in judgements but is an agreement in relation to human forms of life. Wittgenstein elaborates upon his idea of communal agreement by claiming that it includes agreement in definitions. Given his commitment to the role of logic in processes of understanding and his use of the idea of human forms of life, there is nothing in Wittgenstein that could serve as a basis to deny Aristotle’s definition of being human: being, that is, a rational animal capable of discourse. In such a context perception or seeing something as something is a perceptual capacity that plays a role in the willingness to say “He is in pain”. Cavell claims this is a moment of proclamation (P.34) in which we need to see his wince as pain behaviour (P.35). Wittgenstein situates this moment of proclamation in a wider context of predication when he claims:

“it is what human beings say that is true or false” (§241).

What people say is of course expressed in propositions which are either true or false. Subsuming something (either an intuition or a perception) under a concept is not itself a propositional activity but obviously it is a condition of naming the experience which one is then going to characterise in a subject predicate judgement using concepts. “He is in pain” is saying something about his scraped knee or stomach ache and the effects this pain is having upon him as a person. Pain statements appear to fall between pure physical statements about physical objects such as a body e.g. “He is two metres tall” and statements about his soul “He is talented(can produce an album of philosophical sketches) but he is not a genius”(like Aristotle or Kant). The predicative moment of judgement is clearly a more complex moment in which something is asserted of something, producing a categorical judgement in accordance with a list of Categories Kant outlined in his first critique. Cavell’s account of these different levels of activity is different:

“Criteria do not determine the certainty of statements, but the application of the concepts employed in the statements.”(P.45)

This reminds us of the function of a dictionary that does not teach us how to explain and justify the truth of a proposition but teaches us how to use a concept and perhaps justify that use.

Much of the later work of Wittgenstein is designed to combat the dogmatism and scepticism behind the furious debates we encounter in modern epistemological discussion, and in that respect Wittgenstein’s later work shares much of the animus of the work of Aristotle and Kant.

Kant’s philosophy is discussed by Cavell in an essay entitled “Austin and Examples”(Must We Mean what we say?(Cambridge, CUP, 1969). Cavell claims here that Kant’s Categories did not register the sense of the externality of the world and he also claims that, had Kant been more thorough in his account of the a priori intuitions of space and time, there would have been no necessity to postulate a world of things in themselves. Cavell further argues that Kant uses things in themselves to justify an idea of God.

It is interesting to note that in the above criticism Cavell conveniently ignores the Kantian account of practical reason: an account that takes us much further into the realm of the noumenal, further than any theoretical reasoning could, and it does so not by appealing to the idea of God, but rather to the idea of Freedom in answer to the philosophical question “What ought we to do?” God makes a brief appearance in this account but only as a means to connect the good in itself (leading a worthy life by following the moral law) with good in its consequences (leading a flourishing life). This is not the defensive appeal of a Descartes to a God to support his shaky reasoning about the Cogito, but rather a fulfillment of a Philosophical promise that stretches back in time to Glaucon and the demand made upon Socrates to give an account of justice in terms of the principle of sufficient reason. Kant. we have agued, was a rationalist who kept his philosophical promises. Cavell has also failed to register Kant’s hylomorphic commitments. Matter for both Aristotle and Kant is mysterious as is God (primary form for Aristotle): both of these “ideas” have aspects of existence that lie outside our finite understanding. The origin, but perhaps not the entire nature, of our souls is also mysterious demanding a complex hylomorphic account as far as Aristotle is concerned: an account that involves actualisation processes over long stretches of time. This process of actualisation gives rise to sentience (capacity for feeling pain, sensation) perception, judgement, understanding, and reason. Principles (forms) direct this actualisation process and the task of reasoning attempts to grasp the totality of these principles or the totality of the conditions of existence of the soul, the world, and God. A task that might come closer to its completion in one hundred thousand years, when a cosmopolitan Kingdom of Ends is actualised. Cavell, in his criticism of Kant is also ignoring the metaphysical aspects of Aristotelian and Kantian Philosophy. In the context of this discussion he insists mysteriously upon a transcendental deduction of the thing in itself, about which nothing can be said. It is not clear, however, whether or not the thing in itself can be proclaimed in accordance with Cavells account of the proclamatory moment of judgement.

Cavell acknowledges that many aporetic philosophical questions might not be answered via an appeal to criteria:

“Am I am implying that we do not really know the difference between hallucinated and real things, or between animate and inanimate things. What I am saying is that the differences are not ones for which there are criteria: the difference between natural objects and artifacts is not one for which there are criteria. In such cases the role of origins is decisive, indeed definitive.”(P.63)

There is not however any reference to the necessity of rational explanation in the justification of criteria. What does emerge from this discussion, however, is an admission that Austinian criteria are not sufficient to account for, or explain, the existence of anything, but can at best serve the more limited function of the identification or recognition of something, e.g. a goldfinch. Wittgensteinian criteria, on the other hand, Cavell claims, do not relate

“a name to an object but rather relate various concepts to the concept of that object”( P.73)

This means that the test of whether someone in fact possesses the concept of something, becomes far more complex. Any such test must involve investigating whether they are capable of a range of judgements and activities( e.g. acts of sympathy). But what, then about the concept of the soul? Is this the concept of the “I” noted in Wittgensteinian notebooks? We find this mysterious comment in the Philosophical Investigations:

“The human body is the best picture of the human soul.”(P.178)

We also find:

“My attitude towards him is an attitude towards a person.”(P. 178)

Here there is a category distinction between the movements of an artifact, e.g. a machine, and the movements of a human being. We are clearly dealing here with a categorical disposition which Wittgenstein prefers to call an attitude. A disposition, for Wittgenstein is not a mental occurrence because inward processes are in need of outward criteria. This attitude might demonstrate itself in a form of life in which we sympathise both with our action and with our words. This is something that can only be claimed metaphorically when dealing with artifacts like machines, e.g. “how are we feeling today?” said to a computer appears almost ironic, a kind of private joke.

One of the reasons why the album of sketches Wittgenstein produced, left its author with a sense of incompleteness, is that the distinction between kinds of living beings requires a hylomorphic account of psuche (life) of the kind given by Aristotle–an account supported by a metaphysical matrix that appears to lie outside the realm of Wittgenstein’s concerns. We saw Wittgenstein, however, using the category of possession or “having” in his discussion of “pain”. Even if it cannot be true to say that I know that I am in pain, we can claim to have, or bear our pains: this is the basis or the condition for saying that one is in pain. This is one example of a general relation to all sensations that belong to that dimension of our mental lives Kant calls sensibility. It is not clear, however, that our relations to our sensations are the most important part of our mental lives insofar as Psychological investigations are concerned. Psychology, for Kant, begins with the “I think” which in the young child heralds a new kind of awareness of himself and everything around him. Do other people, then know what I am experiencing only from what they observe of my behaviour? In relation to this question Wittgenstein refers to a complex relation between a persons behaviour and their state of mind. He claims that we know of the one via the other. The behaviour of depression, for example, reveals or manifests a depressed state of mind (PI P. 179e) The full account of the essence of depression however, must be a wider question relating to origins and the telos of depression as a complex state of a person: a state intimately connected to his behaviour. In such an account, Freudian reference to mechanisms of mental activity involving the loss of objects we value (the Freudian triangle of desire, refusal and wounded desire) will play an important role in providing an account of the sufficient conditions of this complex state. Any sensations that are part of this state must surely play a relatively minor role (the role of a detail) in the operations of the principles regulating these mechanisms.

When we reach higher levels of mental activity and ask more complex questions such as “Why the depressed man committed suicide” we are appealing to the regions of the mind Kant called understanding and judgement–a region Socrates unequivocally claimed is responsible for the “Knowledge of “The Good”. Socrates’ response to the behaviour of the depressed man would have been similar to his response to Medea who claims that he knows what crimes he is about to commit in his anger, but his anger is greater than his knowledge. On the account Socrates favours, Medea has not fully recognised the nature of the Good. What this meant had to await Aristotle’s more systematic account of akrasia in which the knowledge being referred to, was logically structured in syllogisms consisting of premises that need to be actively acknowledged by the agent. Merely knowing what crime one is committing, e.g. “murdering oneself”(if one intends to commit suicide) is not in itself sufficient: the knowledge must be actualised and active in the agent at the time of considering the act: i.e. the agent must not be overwhelmed by either anger or sorrow, states of sensibility that are capable of dragging our reason about like a slave. When full knowledge of murdering oneself is active we become aware of the mechanisms that have weakened our ego (to the extent that it(the ego) is no longer able to protect the body of the person concerned). Kant’s diagnosis of this state of affairs is to point out that the agent actually murdering himself (a situation in which the requisite knowledge cannot be active) is not conscious of the contradiction involved in using ones life to end ones life. The knowledge of these mechanisms will of course be strewn over the theoretical, practical and productive sciences, all of which are embedded in a matrix of hylomorphic metaphysics. For Aristotle, the principles (arché) involved in such contexts are not a series of album sketches or pictures at an exhibition. These are the principles we need to understand if we are to understand ourselves, the world, and God to the extent that we can, given our finite natures.

Cavell in his discussion of “Knowledge and the basis of Morality” cites on P.250 (Claim of Reason) Schopenhauers dark opinion on this matter. For Schopenhauer all attempts to lay a foundation for Morality consist of:

“stilted maxims, for which it is no longer possible to look down and see life as it really is with all its turmoil.”(Schopenhauer’s “The Basis of Morality. P. 133)

What this actually means is not immediately clear but it is clear that it is meant as a criticism of Kant’s moral law, given that this law was proclaimed by Kant to be the basis for morality and the foundation of ethics. For Schopenhauer the man that thinks he knows the good, and leads a flourishing life as a consequence is like a beggar dreaming that he is a king. Suffering is everywhere, Schopenhauer argues, it is the essence of life to suffer. This is an intuitive form of ethics that regards the moral law as an illusion. This is also an epistemological view of ethics which demands that we explain rather than justify moral action. For Schopenhauer the facts speak for themselves–suffering is everywhere and this is confirmed by observation. He fails to understand that Kant’s theory is a justificatory theory, not of what we in fact do, but rather of what we ought to do. Appeal to facts in such a context, is merely a variation of Thrasymachus’ naturalistic argument against Socrates’ value laden account of justice. This kind of naturalistic argument fails to see that the believer in the moral law could acknowledge all the relevant facts to be true e.g. that many people do not keep promises, that many people commit suicide, but still logically believe that one ought not to make promises one had no intention of keeping and one ought not to murder oneself.

Cavell points out in the context of this discussion that it is disagreement over what we ought to do that makes people angry with one another, and he quotes Socrates on this issue. Indeed if anyone knew this fact it was Socrates. And yet even while the state was unjustly putting him to death, he believed in this normative idea of the Good, which in turn allowed him to transcend the fact of his impending death. Cavell argues also, that we ought to believe in the possibility of rational disagreement about what ought to be done. Is this kind of disagreement possible? In his prison cell there were friends trying to persuade Socrates to ” cut and run” as Lear put the matter in the previous chapter. Does Cavell believe that this is an example of a rational disagreement? Socrates’ interlocutors failed to get Socrates agreement : hoping he would choose to escape the injustice inflicted upon him. Does this hope alone sustain the claim that their argument was rational? This much is clear:

“We are often told that “there are”(meaning what?) certain moral “rules or principles”; but when these are formulated I find that I am unclear whether the assertions in question ( e.g. “Promises ought to be kept,” “keep your promises!”) are rules or principles or “stilted maxims”, and unclear whether I believe or am convinced of them.”(Claim. P.257)

In the following passages Cavell then appears to settle upon a psychological account, in which agents with cares and commitments to the attitudes of others, and certain forms of argument, constitute what is ethical. Moral persuasion becomes the mechanism of this transactional account in which moralists and propagandists share a commitment to the same mechanism. The rationalism of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Kant are conspicuous by their absence. So, if I say to someone “You ought to keep your promise to X” this, on Cavells account, is a mode of presenting the action to be done and not the subject of a rational inference. This mode of presentation involves taking a position with respect to the content of the factual premises involved in the argument. If, then, the content of the above is “You ought to return the money owed” this, on Cavells account, is the same content as “You ought to keep your promises”. Also, on Cavell’s account the modal imperative of the ought is a mode of presenting the reasons one would use to support these imperatives and:

“What makes their use rational is their relevance to the person confronted, and the legitimacy your position gives you to confront him or her in the mode you take responsibility for.”(P.323)

Legitimacy? Is it not the very point of the universal essence of the universal justification of the categorical imperative that anyone with the right argument has the right to confront anyone with their argument? Of course, not just any argument will do, as Charles Stevenson claims in his work “Ethics and Language”. Imagine, for example that one is confronted by an interlocutor who produces a transactional argument of the kind we have encountered in Cavell’s reflections and his/her opponent is persuaded by the legitimacy of the position and the mode of the argument. Is this sufficient to make the argument an ethical argument? Is ethics transactional? Is ethics a kind of game?

What we have been presented with above is a theoretical account of morality that attempts to chart the psychological conditions of the transactions that occur in an argument. In cases where the issue cannot be resolved, Cavell claims (P.326), what breaks down is not the argument but rather the transactional relationship, perhaps because one or both participants have mistaken the others cares and commitments: or alternatively one or both parties fail to be persuaded. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Kant would all refuse the ethical validity of this transactional account. Psychology, we know, detached itself from Philosophy perhaps partly for the purposes of engaging in such transactional analyses. It would be a tragedy of monumental proportions if, after this grand divorce, ethics, the queen of Philosophy, would be reduced to a Psychology that ceased to search for causes of different kinds(including teleological causes) and satisfied itself instead with correlations between variables and the probability values of such correlations.

For Kantian Philosophy (waiting for the day of the feast when rationality invites the guests), the above account reminds Kantians of the presence of the ghost of Hegel at the feast of dialectical spiritualism attempting to synthesise antithetical concepts in a process that appears very transactional. One can of course label such a synthesis with the term “agreement” if one conceives of the process in terms of transactional partners, but the ethical categorical imperative does not tolerate antithetical transactional components. For ethics transactional synthesis is a kind of game that aims at agreement. To agree is to win the game and part of the agreement is the transactional act of agreeing to play such a game in the name of ethics.