A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action: Volume 4(P.M.S. Hacker –Wittgenstein, Consciousness, and Metaphysics

Visits: 2014

Wittgenstein was an enigmatic figure. Mercurial brilliance combined with a Viennese pessimism that rivalled Freud’s, confounded his Teachers and fellow- students at the contemplative centre of Excellence at Cambridge. In notes taken by some of his students(Some notes on Conversations with Wittgenstein”(Acta Philosophica Fennica 28 ed J Hintikka(North Hill, Amsterdam , 1976) Wittgenstein is reputed to have claimed:

“My type of thinking is not wanted in the present age. I have to swim so strongly against the tide. Perhaps in a hundred years people will really want what I am writing” (P.25).

An Insightful comment. We have, in these volumes claimed that the work of Wittgenstein marks a departure from the thread woven by the “new men”(Descartes, Hobbes, Hume, Rousseau, Adam Smith etc): a departure that aligns itself with the thread of tradition leading from Aristotle to Kant and on to a Cosmopolitan future thousands of years in the future. This image of swimming against the tide of contemporary Philosophy may in fact provide Wittgenstein’s answer to the question we posed concerning why he and his followers refrained from engaging more directly with the rationalism of Hylomorphism and Kantian Critical Philosophy. That the starting point for Wittgenstein represented in his earlier Philosophy was a form of mathematical intuitionism may also provide part of an answer to our question. We ought to recall that he came to England to study Engineering and his fascination with Mathematics brought him to Cambridge to study with one of the the authors of Principia Mathematica.

We know also that Wittgenstein was struggling to put his later thoughts into writing . Hacker claimed that the mastering the form of the Philosophical essay or paper did not come easy to him:

“to be forced to think sequentially is torture for him”(An Analytical Commentary to Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, Vol 1, Baker, G., P, Hacker, P.,M.,S(Oxford, Blackwell, 1980).

So, Wittgenstein instead relies on a numbering system and continual editing and re-editing of remarks he probably made whilst lecturing, to present the intuited connections between his thoughts. In his early work Wittgenstein believed that how Language relates to the world cannot be represented in Language and that therefore the limits of my language are the limits of my world. In his early work he also appears to believe that Mathematics does provide us with truths about the world and his theory of meaning in the Tractatus is primarily referential and directed at Reality conceived of as a totality of facts. On this view (which he later characterised in terms of the Augustinian view of language) he believed that to grasp the meaning of a sentence was equivalent to grasping what the sentence describes. This dominating thought marginalised all other forms of discourse: interrogative, imperative, expressive, etc. Augustines. view, Wittgenstein argued, was connected with a Philosophical Psychology that viewed the mind as an immaterial medium in which inner events occur. Learning a language according to Augustine was a matter of learning how to associate words with objects so that words then struck a note on the keyboard of the imagination. “Correlation” of words with objects becomes then the central feature of learning a language. This might have been an implication of Wittgenstein’s early view of the solipsistic linguistic soul that mysteriously “injects” meaning into language. For the later Wittgenstein these “objects” become a part of language: become “linguistic samples” that are used in a language-game. They have now become a part of language because they have become part of the process of communication: part of the telos of language.

The Aristotelian concept of “form of life” that we find in Wittgenstein’s later writings, Hacker argues, may originate from Spengler who claimed that language cannot be reduced to “utterances” or “events” but is rather embedded in a culture or human form of life. Involved in such a view is the claim that words and concepts no longer “mirror” or “picture” our life but rather stand in the middle of it as part of the hurly burly of human activity– human activity that includes people expressing their pain, asking each other questions and commanding each other to do things. Many different forms of language occur in such a form of life. This reflection of Spengler’s influenced Wittgenstein to transform inner mental acts and activities into more publicly accessible human intercourse. In Wittgenstein’s later work it is this concept of “form of life” that plays an important role in the justification of psychological and linguistic activity. The idea of “picture” is also jettisoned on the grounds that a picture of a boxer standing, for example, has not clear meaning until we know its intended use and context, e.g. this is how you ought to stand in attack mode, or, this is how you ought not to stand in defence mode. We now find Wittgenstein, in his later work turning toward psychological explanations and explanations of language-meaning that refer to the natural history of being human rather than solipsistic psychological/atomistic judgements embedded in commitments to science and positivism. Hacker refers to Wittgenstein’s comment §199 in his “Philosophical Investigations”:

“To understand a sentence is to understand a language”

Language is now regarded sub specie humanitatis in terms of a pattern of activities that constitute complex forms of life that have a particular natural history and the general telos of communication. The limitations of condensing the use of a name into a mere relation to the external world now becomes obvious to everyone. The idea steering Wittgenstein’s thought at this point is that the meaning of a word is best accessed by “recalling” its use. So a fictional name such as “Gandalf” has meaning, but not in relation to anything in our natural history, because the name has never been allocated to a living human being. It suffices however to differentiate Gandalf from real people like Napoleon that no longer exist but also from other fictional characters such as Bilbo.

Does this new conception of Language have an essence specifying definition? Wittgenstein specifically says (and this point is endorsed by Hacker), that every explanation of something does not require an essence-specifying definition of that thing. In several places, Wittgenstein also points to the difficulty of providing a synoptic view (“uno solo ochiata”) of what otherwise looks like a motley collection of language games. He speaks of the similarity between these “activities” in terms of a “family resemblance”. This however does not mean that we cannot explain/justify these language-games/forms of life. The final justification–the final answer to the final “Why?” question is, “This is what we do!”. At this point, as he puts it, our spade is turned, and there is no further explanation/justification. Language-games may all differ but speaking a language is a fundamental power involving many other powers which we all possess and these are rooted as much in our natural history as in our human nature. The question that needs to be put once again is whether these Wittgensteinian reflections by Hacker are consistent with Aristotelian and Kantian Rationalism. In Hackers later work “Human Nature: A Categorical Framework”, the title makes it clear that there will be, as far as he is concerned, a positive answer to this question. We wish at this point to explore the extent to which Wittgenstein is engaged in the same kind of project as Aristotle and Kant in the domains of Philosophical Psychology, Epistemology, and Metaphysics.

The Tractatus is clearly at odds with much of what Kant stands for in the name of Science and Metaphysics, even if parts of it were inspired by Schopenhauer. In this work we are presented with a solipsistic, metaphysical self that injects meaning into language. This is clearly a position that Kant would have raised doubts about in the name of what he regards as clearly delimited boundaries of pure reason, and what can and cannot be thought. Wittgenstein claims in the context of this discussion that “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.”(5.6). This is one of the grounds for his claim that logic does not describe the world but rather “shows” the scaffolding of the world: a scaffolding about which nothing can be said. In other words, language is a means of representation and its nature is such that we cannot meaningfully represent this state of affairs in language. Both the World and the “I” are mystical elements of the account we find in Tractatus. Phenomenally there is no “I” because it stands at the boundary of the world in much the same way in which one will not find the presence of the eye in the visual field. Similarly, that the world exists is mystical but we do know somehow that it is the totality of facts or states of affairs. Both of these abstract and mystical positions were to be abandoned in the later work. We pointed in volume 2, Chapter 17, P.239, that the Copernican Revolution in Wittgenstein’s shift from the earlier to his later position may have been partly caused by a lecture given by Brouwer(the so called father of mathematical intuitionism). In this lecture Brouwer spoke about the primacy of the will in Schopenhaurean terms. The importance of the role of action in the activity of calculation with numbers and counting was argued to lie at the source of mathematical intuition. For Wittgenstein, there subsequently dawned a new understanding in which justifications, even in Mathematics, must occur not sub specie aeternitatis but rather sub specie humanitatis. This may have been the key step in a process which would move Wittgenstein closer to Kantian Critical Philosophy. This move toward action also brought with it a re-conception of the role of human judgement in human arenas of activity. The focus is now upon “good judgement” about what we do when we follow grammatical rules: intuition becomes a secondary phenomenon in such an account.

We pointed earlier to Hackers mistaken view of Kantian synthetic a priori judgement. For Kant it was obvious that different objects and different principles required characterisation in terms of the special rules of the understanding (to be distinguished from the more general rules of logic). Practically oriented judgements for Kant are attended by different “categories of judgement” relating to “Agency” and “Community”. Aristotle too would have distinguished between theoretical judgments relating to substance and practical judgments relating to “Having”, “Acting” and “Being affected”.

Wittgenstein’s new method also rips us out of the context of exploration/discovery and we then find ourselves in a context of explanation/justification in which Socratic recollection is the methodological animus that replaces analysis into simples. The new method rests upon the Platonic/Aristotelian ground of action and good judgement, and agreements in judgments. Actions and Judgements are “recalled” and not discovered. In a murder trial, for instance, we do not discover a murder but rather recall the judgement that murder is wrong and also recall the accusation of the accused by the state prosecution at every phase of the trial. “Murder is wrong” would in Wittgenstein’s terms be a “norm of representation” in this context: a rule of the proceedings which we need to remind ourselves of. Many have pointed to the “conventional” nature of court proceedings and also Wittgensteinian Philosophy. There is a claim in Wittgenstein that in dealing with grammatical remarks we are dealing with “conventions”, but this needs to be viewed in the light of the following interesting claim in the work “Remarks on the foundations of Mathematics”:

“Conventions which are not causal, but stricter, harder, more rigid, are always conventions in grammar.”(P.88)

So, the “conventional” law against murder is “harder” and more logical than the law of gravity which is a causal law. Similarly, turning to Psychology, the “Principles” ERP and PPP have causal aspects and must therefore be regarded as less logical and rigid than the Reality Principle(RP). The Reality Principle, for Freud, certainly imposes the kind of necessity upon the judgements and actions of humans, resembling the kind of necessity Kant claims the categorical imperative imposes upon us. The categorical imperative is the moral law that regulates Socrates and his “knowledge” that murdering others is wrong. We know, Kant argues, both rationally and non observationally, that murder is wrong, and because we know this we are duty bound by this knowledge–bound by a rigid logical necessity. Calling this phenomenon “conventional” is acceptable if the term preserves the force of the universality and necessity of Socratic elenchus and Aristotelian logic. For all Philosophers committed to the power of ethical argumentation, practical contradictions such as using ones life to take another life unlawfully, devalues ones worth to such an extent in other peoples eyes that it is to be avoided at all costs: the ultimate price for murdering someone is of course ruin and destruction for oneself. Treating people as ends in themselves in the Kantian system is more than a recommendation(which some claim is the mark of a “convention”) and is part of the long civilising process that leads finally to a kingdom of ends. The term “Conventional” has the meaning since Hume of being less of a justification for a judgment or action than the term “Natural” which was a term associated with “law”. In Wittgenstein’s eyes it achieves more of the status of a bond, e.g. “The Geneva Convention” may not be a law, but it carries the full force of a categorical imperative in the chaotic conditions of War.

Hacker, in his early work, “Insight and Illusion: Themes in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein” points to the Kantian synthetic apriori truth, “Every event must have a cause” and claims that this is not a truth about the world but rather a “rule” or norm of Newtonian Physics and its systematic description/explanation of Nature. Kant is well aware that Physics is a discipline on the frontiers of exploration and discovery of the physical universe and that the “law” of cause an effect is an indispensable tool for these “explorers”. Once found, the cause itself can then be subjected once again to this law, and the search continues up until that point when we arrive at the terminus of possible observation and then we can either postulate an uncertainty principle, or a “First Cause”(that actually contradicts the law of causation). This gives the whole enterprise of science an air of uncertainty and this has led many into different forms of retreat ranging from firstly, science is not after “The Truth” but only particular truths, or secondly, scientific theory provides us with “models” which we can jettison as soon as a better model presents itself. Kant would not subscribe to such scepticism given his commitment to a Metaphysics of Material Nature in which he outlines the general conditions under which the categories can be applied to material nature. This endeavour has both quantitative and relational aspects. The latter law “every event must have a cause” reworks any sequence of subjective impressions into an objective order in accordance with Aristotelian “efficient and material causes” : a process involving a priori forms of intuition. For Kant there are three kinds of laws operating in his architectonic conception of science: firstly, those arising from generalisations accumulated in experimental situations, e.g. rocks when thrown describe a curvilinear parabolic path back to earth. Experience generates these kinds of laws which requires the assistance of mathematics for complete description and explanation. The application of mathematics requires, as far as Newton was concerned, the ideal postulation of a constant, e.g. every object continues in a state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line unless acted upon by some outside force. This is obviously an ideal intuition required by mathematics if it is to be applicable.

In the two other kinds of laws neither ideal postulation of “constants”(uniform motion, uniform state of rest, straight line) nor experience based experimentation are present. The “transcendental law of efficient causation” according to Kant is formulated thus:

“All things change in conformity with the law of the connection of cause and effect”

This is neither an idealisation nor a generalisation grounded in experimentation. Here the unity of apperception(“I think”) plays an important role. This in its turn is also a different law to the Metaphysical law that “All change must have a cause”(including the “Internal” cause” of desire that propels a lion towards its prey.) The Kantian architectonic is obviously more systematic than the architectonic of science we find in Aristotle and it is therefore simpler to compare Wittgenstein’s position to the Aristotelian position. The atomistic/analytical conception of “cause” is that logically, the cause, is distinct from the effect: we are dealing with two distinct events here. This is a very different kind of answer to the question “Why?” compared to that question we ask in relation to an agent when we ask him why he believes or judges “Murder is wrong”. In this latter case, the judgement and the justification belong logically(in the context of practical reason) together in one argument that uses the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. On Wittgenstein’s account we could point out that we all agree with such good judgement because we “know”(non-observationally) what is right and what is wrong. If, for example, a murderer stood up in court and sincerely claimed “Murder is right”(not this particular murder but murder in general) he will probably be subjected to a psychological investigation before sentencing. He is not merely saying something false but rather something nonsensical. There may well have been investigations prior to the trial and even events during the trial that are designed to explore the possibility that the murderer is innocent of the charge. Everyone accused is presumed innocent until found guilty in a due process. Such investigations will be in accordance with the judgement every event must have a cause. These are physical, forensic investigations that are exploratory requiring either physical or observational evidence. The question we pose is the following: which of these two types of investigation is best conceived of as “psychological”? Kant would argue that both types of investigation could be conducted in relation to human activity of the kind we find in the courtroom proceedings. He called one type of investigation “Physical Anthropology”. This deals with “events” that happen to man and this kind of investigation occurs best in the conceptual framework of substance and efficient causation where the focus is on a physical rather than a conceptual connection. The second type of investigation occurs best in a framework of Agency, Action, and Aristotelian final and formal “causes”(aitia= explanations). Kant calls this second type of investigation “Pragmatic Anthropology” and describes it in terms of what man makes of himself and his world. There is a metaphysical difference between these two kinds of investigation that related firstly to the ontological difference between “events” and “actions” and secondly to the differences between material/ efficient causation and formal/final causation. In the latter we are dealing with the idea of reason Kant refers to as Freedom and in the former we study how the categories of the understanding organise experience. There is, that is, in the one case of Physical Anthropology a reliance on the method of observation that assists us in transforming the matter of appearance into experience where concepts are formed in the realm of the unity of apperception(“I think”). Examples of concepts that are formed in this kind of of investigation are given in Kant’s work “Metaphysical foundations of natural science”. Motion, for example, is “explicated” in the following terms:

“matter is the movable insofar as it can as such be an object of experience”(P118)(Philosophy of Material Nature, trans Ellington J., W.,(Indianapolis, Hacket Publishing, 1985)

Theoretical Ideas of reason are also involved in the formation of the concept of absolute space that is required to makes sense of motion that occurs in a straight line: this motion occurs in accordance with the forces determining the position and composition of matter in the universe, namely the forces of attraction and repulsion. Material and efficient causation are the forms of explanation/justification used in relation to events that “happen” in experiences whose knowledge is then determined by observations. When one moves to the realm of the “pragmatic” and what man makes of himself we move not just into the realm of agency which causes itself to act by desire and freedom but also into a realm in which cause and effect(action and consequences) are conceptually linked. Both Hacker and Wittgenstein seek explanations and justifications in this categorical realm where the end of a flourishing life(eudaimonia) is a fundamental constitutive factor of much that is “happening”.

It is not a simple matter to claim that Psychology/Anthropology should have both Physical and Pragmatic aims. This is clearly recommended by Kant and we can also see the outlines of this ontological distinction in the work of Freud. What happens to one in ones childhood and infancy can have serious consequences for the actualisation of ones potentiality to become fully human: thereby possessing the powers necessary to makes something of oneself and ones world. Freud’s case studies are adequate testimony to this fact. To lead ones life fully and consistently in accordance with the Reality principle is no easy task and requires a large number of enabling conditions that Freud is referring to in his theorising. We know that Freud was one of the few Psychologists Wittgenstein spent time reading, speaking at certain times of being a disciple of Freud. Like some disciples he was of course critical of the master. In particular he presented a criticism of Freud’s “determinism” which is not wholly clear. Freud certainly appealed to Principles but these were not characterisable in terms of material and efficient causation requiring the collection of experimental evidence. We should recall in the context of this discussion Freud’s destruction of his “Scientific Project”. The ERP and probably the PPP were certainly principles regulating the activity of children and the patientsFreud treated, and one can without contradiction say that in many cases we are dealing with what “happened” to these patients(Physical Anthropology). The psychoanalytical proceedings, however, like the above court proceedings were largely governed by the Reality Principle and the failure of the agent to make this principle constitutive of the kind of life they “choose” to lead. Psychoanalysis, then, has theoretical, practical and productive elements. Therapy is designed to install(techné) the Reality Principle in the lives of his patients. Is this determinism, given the emphasis in psychoanalysis of the maxim “the truth will set you free”? Freud’s idea of “causation” was undoubtedly tied to the Greek concept of aitia, which also means “explanation” and there is no doubt that Freud was not manipulating the will of his patients but rather strengthening it for a future, better, hopefully flourishing life. In this endeavour everything had meaning including “dreams” which he defined as wish fulfillments following both the ERP (the wish to continue sleeping) and the PPP(the desire to experience pleasure and avoid experiencing pain and anxiety). Wittgenstein complains about this “explanation” or explication of dreams but his criticism, again, is not wholly clear. There are transitional states between waking and sleeping when experiences in the form of images occur, and for some of these it would be difficult to explicate these in terms of the Pleasure-Pain Principle, but I can see no objection to regard these as types of “dream”. These images may be caused by the wish to sleep that is largely regulated by the ERP.

Many different kinds of dream are recorded in Freud’s “Interpretation of dreams”. Those that he describes in the transitional states between sleeping and waking appear to resemble hallucinations caused perhaps by the very specific wish to carry on sleeping when there is an active attempt by a part of the system to awaken. Waking upon missing a step whilst descending steps is an example that may be thought to be caused by the impulse to awaken, but an alternative “interpretation” would refer to to the creation of the image as part of the wish to sleep. These latter kinds of dreams are not usually associated with REM dreams which usually occur in the steady state of a sleep that is not deep but neither is it in the dynamic state of awakening. Freud’s thoughts in this work, it needs to be said, stands on the cusp of his “turn” toward the more philosophical kind of theorising that we find in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and Kant. What is clear is that whether we are experiencing images falling asleep, or we are in the process of experiencing images whilst awakening, the best description of this activity is that this experience and process is “happening to us”. In spite of the putative counterexamples of lucid dreaming these activities are not subject to our will. The Category of “Wish” for Freud is therefore Psychologically regulated by the ERP and PPP. I “have” my dreams in a similar way to the way in which I “have” my pains (sensations are by definition not will-active phenomena(to use a concept of O’Shaughnessy)). Images are constituted of sensations. Even in the case of my saying to myself “I am going to wake up now” and then doing so, there is still room for doubting the description of what is happening here if I claim that I have willed myself to wake. The wish to stay asleep for a moment longer may well have given rise to the “image” of my saying these words. The dream scene does not occur in a spatio-temporal continuum where the world and my expectations mesh harmoniously. On the contrary my expectations seem to change randomly as do my surroundings but there are probably ERP and PPP explanations behind these changes. Wittgenstein complains about the Freudian insistence that there must always be some explanation to the “changes” he is witnessing. We also find Wittgenstein complaining in the notes taken by his students entitled “Conversations on Freud”, that he doubts the veracity of the claim that anxiety is a repetition of the birth trauma. He re-describes this position as an appeal “to something that happened long ago”. Birth is an “event” that “happens to us”. In a psychologically oriented organism where the death instinct(a phenomenon connected with a compulsion to repeat) can be represented in a memory system which according to Freud never forgets anything(at least if an experience is registered by the psi neuronal system and a physical/chemical change occurs), it surely is not unreasonable to attribute the more traumatic forms of anxiety to this origin. There may be objections to this explication that Wittgenstein has in mind but he does not present them, and it must therefore be said of this objection that, as it stands, it is at the very least incomplete. There are Aristotelian considerations to bear in mind too: the “trace” of other earlier animal forms are to be found in the physiological development of our bodies in the womb. The life and death instincts obviously reside in this physiological matrix, and any explication of such a “hidden” process must necessarily be speculative.

In Freud’s works we are dealing with a cross-over of three forms of Aristotelian science: Productive(therapy), Practical and Theoretical, and a cross-over of two different kinds of Kantian “Anthropology”(Physical and Pragmatic). The discipline of Psychology as it presented itself after its grand divorce from Philosophy in 1870 has suffered from “conceptual confusion” for most of its history, if Wittgenstein is to be believed. We have in these volumes mapped out the development of its key concepts. Freud may be an exception to this criticism, if Wittgenstein’s criticisms are incorrect or incomplete. Freud did not, however, succumb to the demons of materialism or dualism in his later waves of theorising.

Wittgenstein shares with Kant the conviction that Reason cannot be the only court of appeal for all contexts of explanation/justification. He sees, that is, a logical space for a special use of understanding/judgement which can be accessed by grammatical investigations. Concepts for Wittgenstein, and for Hacker, are explicated in terms of the rules for the use of the word expressing that concept. There are remarks on ethics in Wittgenstein but there is no specific commitment to separating the metaphysics of morals from the metaphysics of material nature, as there is in Kant. We know that for Wittgenstein the worth of a person was an important issue which he dealt with both religiously and privately. This stands in contrast to the major metaphysical Philosophers, Plato, Aristotle and Kant where religious reflection was specifically integrated into their metaphysical positions. There are indications that Wittgenstein believed that grammatical investigations alone would not be able to give a perspicuous representation of what religious people have faith in, and in this respect his position resembles the Kantian position which maintained that belief in God is not an epistemological matter but rather a matter of having faith in the theoretical ideas of God and the soul. There is a feeling that even in Wittgenstein’s later work that what he could not speak about he would consign to silence.

In his lectures on Religious Belief recorded in the notes of his students Wittgenstein says:

“These controversies look quite different from any normal controversies. Reasons look entirely different from normal reasons…..the point is that if there were evidence this would in fact destroy the whole business.” (P.56)

He goes on in these lectures to object to the anthropomorphisation of the idea of God when we are being taught the use of the word “God”. He insists however that this concept is understood by those who can consistently answer questions put to them in different ways. He, like Kant, also dismisses supernatural phenomena produced in evidence for the existence of God. It becomes clear in these conversations that the “form of life” of a “religious” man like himself, is the decisive “ground” for his belief system. Religious people who lead their lives “as if” there is going to be a day of Judgement is, Wittgenstein argues, sufficient reason to believe in the validity of their belief system. Neither Wittgenstein nor Kant would agree to the counterargument that there is any contradiction in organising ones life in this fashion.Such a form of life, for Wittgenstein, was a consequence of human natural history. In this form of life, a certain form of anxiety is a result of the death instinct receiving representation in such a natural history( which in its turn gives rise to a seeking after safety and comfort). The repetition of both this anxiety and the response to it , namely, believing in God, might then also involve believing in the power and efficacy of the life instinct, and it is this element of our psychic apparatus that gives us the hope to transcend all compulsions to repeat old traumas. Freud is an interesting author to refer to in this debate because he is regarded himself by others as an atheist in spite of indications in his work to the contrary. He describes himself as a Kantian Psychologist, for example. Freud certainly saw in mass religious movements something pathological and delusional in particular when it came to the blind acceptance of authoritative influences. He “interpreted” this behaviour in terms of an infantile longing for a father figure: a desire for safety and comfort. Saying, however, that religious belief/judgement/action falls into the category of “wish-fulfilment” does not necessarily carry the same critical weight. Freud claims that religion promises a happiness it cannot deliver, but both Aristotle and Kant realised that there is another dimension to the hope for happiness than an actual flourishing life. There is, namely, the knowledge that ones form of life is such, that one is worthy of happiness on ethical grounds(areté, duty). Wish-fulfilment need not necessarily be tied to the form of anxiety connected to early trauma. For Wittgenstein, as we noted, the connection between early trauma and late delusional activity was too speculative. He clearly believed that the source of this form of pathological activity does not necessarily have to lie so far back in ones history.

Elisabeth Anscombe was herself a Catholic who pointed to the relation between the collapse of religious authority and the collapse in the belief of the importance of virtue and duty. Kant, whilst not being an atheist, in his writings regarded God as a theoretical idea of reason, and there is the suggestion that this idea is more fragile as a source of Good than the practical idea of Freedom. Indeed we find in Kant a withdrawal from the idea that the source of our idea of the Good is in the theoretical idea of God. This might be that even if this idea is the source of the Good-in-itself this lies outside the bounds of knowledge. What appears to lie within the bounds of our practical knowledge is the practical wish/hope that God will provide us with a flourishing life if we are worthy of it. Indeed the primary argument for the existence of God presented by Kant is that enlightenment believers believe in the humanistic ideal that if the good-in-itself is present in their lives in the form of good judgement and good deeds, good consequences will follow(eudaimonia–a flourishing life). There is in, other words, in Kant a necessary(logical) conceptual(grammatical?) connection between the happiness of a flourishing life and the life of virtue and duty.

There is also in Kant an account of a hypothetical form of practical thinking that produces a hypothetical idea of God as a possible cause of my safety and comfort. Here the categorical thought that God is a good in itself , is absent, and the principle of self love is the putative “good-in-itself” that such religious believers embrace. Extreme forms of this self-love(narcissism) may indeed the consequence or “effect” of early trauma. The principle of self-love, for Kant is not a good- for- the -soul. Such a narcissistic imperative for Freud is a causal determinant of the form of life one leads and here one can certainly use the Kantian psychological ontological description of “something happening” to the agent, rather than the description of an agent freely choosing their destiny.

Wittgenstein may share much of the Kantian animus insofar as his account of religion is concerned and we should add that he denied being a religious man but claimed that he could see everything from a religious point of view. Secondly, he found Tolstoys, work “What I believe”, to be a very interesting and satisfying account of the role of religious writings in a religious life. Thirdly, the dedication chosen for his work “Philosophical Remarks” reads “To the Glory of God”. So, in conclusion for Wittgenstein, and perhaps also for Hacker, Religion was not a soft “conventional” choice that has been made in the natural history of human being or a pathological deviation in mans actualisation process. Religion is rather a grammatical choice taught to me by my elders in a categorical spirit of “The Good”– a choice that will help me to determine the goods for my soul, the goods for my body, and the goods of the external world. If Religion is conventional, it is so in the way in which concepts are conventional. Rules must be followed in the use of concepts. It is grammar that tells us the essence of things/objects: tells us, that is, the category of the object conceptualised. This in, Hackers view is one of the seminal achievements of the later Philosophy of Wittgenstein. The special rules of the understanding that Kant refers to, is, according to Wittgenstein , to be investigated grammatically in accordance with his Critique of Language. In his earlier work Wittgenstein claimed that logic “showed” us the scaffolding of the world. In his later he is more cautious and we are provided with an “album” of grammatical sketches which condense clouds of Philosophy into drops of grammar but leaves the answers to many aporetic questions open, especially in the arenas of ethics and religion.

Wittgenstein argues that we are taught the meaning of the word “good” via explanations relating to why something is good–explanations given to us by our elders. Wittgenstein insists that we cannot give an essence-specifying definition of “the good” because there are a “family” of meanings involved. In this respect this idea resembles the idea of “language” where the terminus of his account rests with the family resemblance of language games. This point was illustrated in his analysis of the name of Moses. Russell’s analysis had claimed that one description or a conjunction of descriptions will give us the “meaning” of a name. Wittgenstein questioned this account and claimed that concepts and names are not determinate in this way and even the name of Moses is constituted of a family of meanings. Saying that “Moses does not exist” for Wittgenstein can have many different meanings. This does not however, entail that all terms possessing this kind of indeterminacy have no meaning. The meaning of the terms “God” and “good” are given in the explanation of these meanings and these are the same explanations we were taught when we were taught the meanings of these words.

Hacker in several places in his various works, points to the importance of not arbitrarily imposing one grammatical form upon another, e.g. not imposing the form of the thing named upon the “I”. Believing that “I” is a name generates conceptual confusion in the hands of what he calls “rational psychologists”(An Analytical Commentary on Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, Baker G., P., and Hacker P., M., S.,(Oxford, Blackwell, 1980, P.228). This is the kind of “metaphysics” Wittgenstein aims to dismantle with his grammatical investigations. Hacker in this work points out that Wittgenstein maintains that:

“We are concerned here with the Kantian solution of the problems of Philosophy.”(P.231)

This suggests that these two Philosophers to some extent share a Weltanschauung. The consequence of the conceptual confusion of these “rational psychologists” is the creation of a “picture” of the mind as an inner theatre where performances occur, where scenes are displayed. This is one aspect of the substantialisation of the so called “immaterial substance” Descartes conceived of. On such accounts knowledge, understanding and imagining are inner activities rather than publicly manifested powers, abilities, and dispositions. Many other mental phenomena also become “contaminated” with such a view of the mind. Curiously, in spite of their considerable differences and disagreements both Émpiricists and Cartesian Rationalists embrace the above “picture”, assisted by both Science and some forms of Analytical Philosophy.

“Pain” is a state of consciousness that comes and goes, the first person account of which is learned by replacing ones groans and pain behaviour with the utterance “I am in pain!”. Here no name is being used to pick out an actor in the inner theatre. When this model is not just generalised to sensations but also to the will and action we are in danger of misunderstanding completely the roles of various mental powers, capacities, and dispositions in the human form of life. In his Notebooks 89 Wittgenstein had correctly pointed out that the will is not a phenomenon. Hacker clarifies this on P.308 of his work:

“For an experience is a phenomenon, which an act of will–following a rule, doing thus and so for the reasons such and such–is something we do–not something we observe.”

Here we note the full force of the Wittgensteinian “turn” from the solipsist of the Tractatus touting an account of intuition requiring a linguistic soul injecting meaning into propositions, toward the Cultural Philosopher carefully distinguishing between many meanings of Being(Aristotle), and many categories of Being(Kant). If the mind was a private theatre of parading phenomena that are “observed” or “introspected”, there could not, on Wittgenstein’s account, be the agreement in the judgements we publicly manifest. To demonstrate this we have Wittgenstein’s private language argument which claimed that if everyone possessed a beetle in a matchbox in the way in which we possessed “phenomena in our minds” there would be no means of determining whether everyone had the same beetle in their matchbox or a different one. This of course is a standard objection to the solipsistic position. Some modern Philosophers have thought of this beetle as Consciousness. Hacker reflects on this problem in the following way:

“For are living beings, animals and human beings, not physical objects? And how can a mere physical object be conscious(Cf., PI §283)? I experience my own consciousness one is inclined to say, but how can I transfer this experience to objects outside myself? How can physical bodies in a physical world have something as alien to physical phenomena as consciousness?And if one thinks as many philosophers and psychologists do, that it is the brain that is conscious this exacerbates the mystery. For how can mere matter inside the skull be conscious?”(P.234-5)

Hackers proposed solution to the problem:

“The first step toward clarity is to remind ourselves that it is only of a living human being and what resembles(behaves like) a living human being that one say that it is conscious or unconscious(PI §281). We do not attribute consciousness or lack of consciousness to stones, tress or machines–not because they are insufficiently complex in structure or physical constitution but because they are not living creatures that behave like us in circumstances in which we attribute consciousness to each other.”(P.235)

The above are clearly grammatical investigations into the term Consciousness”. The above is also an explanation of what Consciousness means. Hacker also refers to the remark below from Wittgenstein’s “Zettel”:

“Consciousness in another’s face. Look into someone else’s face, and see the consciousness in it”( §220)

Wittgenstein continues this line of reasoning with:

“Grief one would like to say, is personified in the face. This belongs to the concept of emotion.”(§225).

In other words there are public criteria for the attribution of consciousness to other beings. There is no “inferring” from behaviour to Consciousness–the connection however is conceptual. The facial expression is not a symptom but rather part of the context of exploration/discovery. These remarks demonstrate a wider emphasis upon the concept of Action. It is, in other words, what people say and do in particular circumstances that is important for the ascription of psychological predicates. These activities do not logically entail the judgement made about them, but they are nevertheless logical criteria. Behaviour is also a logical criterion for that most private of events, namely being in pain, which is of course not an action but rather something that happens to one. Saying that one is in pain on the basis of observing the behaviour of pain or hearing the words “I am in pain” is as certain as 2 times 2 equals 4(PI P.224), Wittgenstein argues.

Consciousness is, however, intentional. It is about the world whether that access occurs via perception or conception. It is surely correct to argue with Kant that it is representational. Intuitive representations, however, are different to conceptual representations which are more complex and fall into the categories of understanding/judgement. Wittgenstein’s account looks suspiciously pragmatic but it would be wrong to regard it as a pure behavioural account. It does leave one wondering whether it was correct to abandon the epistemological quest to examine the relation of Consciousness to the world in favour of a more active conception of Consciousness that is engaged in saying and doing things.

O Shaughnessy is of the opinion that the relation that Consciousness has to Reality could not occur without the presence of some form of knowledge in the mind. For him, as is the case with Freud, Consciousness is a vicissitude of human life systems– a vicissitude that is not a singularity but rather evolved into existence via the various processes of evolution(natural selection, sexual selection). The higher ontological state of Mentality, in its turn, is a vicissitude of self-conscious being. For O Shaughnessy (cf Freud) the final end of consciousness is motor activity but this presupposes knowledge of the good of the activity. Plato, we know in the Republic, regarded knowledge of the Good as the most important form of knowledge. O Shaughnessy claims, however, that this knowledge rests naturally upon an orientation in the world that is fundamentally of an epistemological nature. His argument is as follows:

“The property of intentionality, of being directed or “about___” which characterises mental phenomena generally, characterises the experiences that are analytically necessitated by the state consciousness. This property carries the implication that a conscious subject must know something of the World in which he finds himself. How could a person have experiences with determinate content if he knows nothing of the world towards which they are directed. A self consciously conscious subject–more, anything that is the bearer of a self conscious type of mind–must be acquainted with certain general properties of the world; for example, with the character of the overall framework, the rules of individuation and explanation that prevail in the World.”(P.6).

This quote has a Kantian atmosphere about it that we shall explore in a later chapter. We shall also explain in the next chapter the extent to which P M S Hacker subscribes to the above characterisation of Consciousness.