Some philosophers come to controversies and want to set the existing arguments on some strong foundation. They want to make explicit just what everyone is assuming, the grounds on which the argument takes place, …and no one pays any attention.
Descartes is one of these. He wanted to find a way to resolve disputes. He thought, well, if we can all agree to our starting point, maybe we can get somewhere. But, what he ended up saying was that, well, it was hard to say exactly what anyone could agree on. He wanted to say that he could say, without a doubt, that he existed. Then things got controversial. He wanted to solve problems out in his community. He ended up showing that it might be impossible to even begin those arguments. He was not helping. So, people thought he made interesting philosophy, but not very helpful advice.
Wittgenstein also wanted to be helpful. He saw controversies galore all around him. Some of them were very hurtful. Some of them seemed unsolvable. He wanted to try again to show how these controversies could be cleared up.
The controversies he was interested in resolving involved certain philosophical theories. He wanted to argue that, because of certain discoveries people had made in language and meaning, it was possible to show that these problematical theories were really nonsense, or nonsense that masquerade as real and true facts about the world we live in.
Well, people have pretty much not heard this message. Or, it was heard, but interpreted in a way which made it unintelligible for Wittgenstein’s intended audience, and seriously misinterpreted for the people who did hear it. He wanted the people of Athens, so to speak, to hear his message, don’t listen to the philosophers, and they didn’t hear him. He wanted to tell the philosophers, don’t be so pig-headed and callous, and they kept at it, anyway.
There might be several reasons why Wittgenstein’s proposed solution to the problems created by philosophical theories was ignored by the non-philosophical public.
One has to do with the seeming originality of his solution. That is, the basis of many arguments in politics, religion, and one’s personal lives, are nonsense. This is quite a bit different than the normal or routine answers provided.
So, we hear from people talking about politics that originality can sometimes be a bad thing.
…Americans like their politicians to re-affirm comfortable old truths far more than they appreciate being hit with new ideas. (And the newer and more radical an idea is, the more important it is to swaddle it thickly in old truths.) A politician who flies too far forward of the great mass of public opinion risks being seen as flaky, flighty, and generally untrustworthy. In our interactions with family and friends, a lot of us end up in the same position — because of our intellectual training, we’re the smart one who’s thinking so far ahead, so fast, that everybody else feels left behind and overwhelmed. On both the personal and national levels, this mismatch leaves people on both sides feeling uncomfortable and untrusting. Since trust is the basic currency of politics, it’s far more important for us to build trust with people than it is to be original (or even right).
http://www.alternet.org/visions/154091/does_college
_make_us_less_equipped_to_change_the_world/
Granted, this writer was speaking about political notions offered to American political audiences, but in a way, this is the kind of audience that Wittgenstein would like to be able to reach with his message. He supposed that his European audience, much like this American audience, found itself in controversies that involved, and by his thinking, turned on certain central philosophical theories. This writer is saying that the solution that Wittgenstein was trying to offer, with respect to those theories, is so original, so damning of the core beliefs of the American, slash any audience, that people will likely never be able to hear or accept what he has to say.
However, beyond the problem that some advice is just too hard to accept, there is another problem with what Wittgenstein was trying to do. I want to say that, in a significant respect, he was trying to disabuse us of certain deeply held but false philosophical myths. Yes, there might be ways that this could be done, with difficulty, but possible. So, Cook and Lewandowsky try to explain how one can debunk commonly held but misleadingly false myths in our society. They summarized their argument, saying,
Debunking myths is problematic. Unless great care is taken, any effort to debunk misinformation can inadvertently reinforce the very myths one seeks to correct. To avoid these “backfire effects”, an effective debunking requires three major elements.
First, the refutation must focus on core facts rather than the myth to avoid the misinformation becoming more familiar. Second, any mention of a myth should be preceded by explicit warnings to notify the reader that the upcoming information is false. Finally, the refutation should include an alternative explanation that accounts for important qualities in the original misinformation.http://www.skepticalscience.com/docs/Debunking
_Handbook.pdf
The problem for philosophers, in general, and Wittgenstein, in particular, is that no one fully understands the distinction between the facts and the philosophical myths. Wittgenstein thought this distinction could be made by his “linguistic turn” and his thought that the distinction was all about having a proper understanding of language and meaning so that one could distinguish between sense and nonsense.
It turned out that even he could not be sure that he had understood language and meaning correctly because he came up with two or three explanations in his writings.
So, he would have liked to have demonstrated that certain philosophical theories were just myths, or disguised nonsense, but all of that depended on him being clear about language and meaning. He would have to say, I believe, that he was never so clear or confident as to give his advice his highest rated seal of approval.
To put this another way, there are certain philosophers who people do listen to. They listen to Karl Marx. Marx accepts the philosophical picture, or metaphor, that our lives are like the lives of kids on a playground run by bullies. It’s a picture that he had a hand in making people believe in. They think that there are elites, sometimes shadowy and who work behind the scenes, to manipulate society for their own benefit. The point that Marx made was that the kids on the playground suffer because of these bullies. In order to stop the pain and suffering, according to Marx, the kids have to band together and fight off the bullies, and eventually make the playground safe from those or any bullies. This is a common story which people very easily come to when they look at the way the bankers and their allies in the powerful corporations running the United States steal large amounts of money through the manipulation of the stock market and financial speculation.
Some people want to argue with Marx. They want to accept the claim that life is about the playground, but go on to make Marx and his allies the villains.
Wittgenstein wants to come at this dispute between the left and the right, not by joining one side or the other, or by accepting the original claim that life is like living on this playground run by bullies, but by rejecting this claim. He wants to say the metaphor itself about life being like living on such a playground is false. For Wittgenstein, such a claim is false and misleads everyone who accepts it from understanding our lives accurately.
The problem for Wittgenstein is that even though he says this metaphor is a myth, or disguised nonsense, he was not clear how to distinguish the facts of how we live from what the myth leads us to think mistakenly about how we live. So, it was not possible for him to be clear about what to hold onto and what to avoid or reject.
The problem, again, is that Wittgenstein might very well be correct that controversies in the real world are generated by the commitments people have to philosophical theories. And Wittgenstein might very well be correct that there is something radically wrong with these theories. However, he won’t as yet be able to make anyone listen to his arguments because both he and the philosophical community remain muddled about what is right or wrong with those theories.
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