Course Description: This reading group continues a series on Wittgenstein and philosophical methods. Wittgenstein suggests that, rather than focusing on answers or solutions to many philosophical problems ("What is knowledge, really?" "Can we ever know based on perceptions?" "Why should I be good?" "Why is there something rather than nothing?" "How is it possible for humans to communicate using language?"), we may be better off stepping back and re-examining the problem itself. He finds after doing some of these re-examinations that some problems result from thinking in a mistaken way of which we are not aware when we formulate the problem. That is, some philosophical problems rest on mistakes. There are different mistakes we can make, and we can describe the mistakes in different ways, so that investigating to find out whether a particular issue is based on a mistake might require several different kinds of thinking.
Wittgenstein remarks of some of these problems that the work on the problem is like doing therapy on a neurosis. I think this is because, among other things, we work to become conscious of our own thought processes in ways we find ourselves resisting. The goal of this kind of work is unlike much traditional philosophical work, too, in that we are not trying to discover an answer to a philosophical problem so much as we are trying to discover the confusions, assumptions, pictures, overextended analogies, grammatical errors, on which the problem rests, such that when we become clear about those mistakes we find we no longer have to ask the philosophical problem. We work, he remarks, not toward a solution but toward the problem's dissolving. Becoming clear about the problem prevents the problem from arising.
Jeff Johnson, whose book (his Ph.D. dissertation) provides us most of our reading this semester, remarked in a by-the-way comment at a conference once that this kind of work is a prophylactic philosophy. I find this remark interesting and insightful. It also may prompt a misleading implication. Use the right kinds of prophylaxis and you'll never get tuberculosis or anthrax or syphilis or the problem of other minds or ethics (in the sense of philosophical ethical problems)--I suppose that's right. But the idea that one could perhaps have a healthy life with none of these issues running in one's veins may mistake innocence for health. Perhaps it is like thinking that the immunity resulting from having had chickenpox is the same as the immunity resulting from vaccination. Having fought your way through the dreaming argument may make you useful as a philosopher in a way that having seen from outside the begged questions and the Cartesian picture as springs for the problem does not make you useful as a philosopher. I'm not saying this very well. Therapy is not the same as prophylaxis, even when therapy may help with later prevention. In my intro classes I find that getting students to appreciate the problem (which often means that they then have the problem) usually has the result that they become incapable of recognizing any way out, even when the focus of our work in class is to argue that nevertheless there is a way out.
Well. That didn't work very well, did it?
Text and Materials: Our main text is Pictures and Examples, by Jeffrey T. Johnson (UMinn Ph.D. Dissertation: 2006). Dr. Johnson has provided an Adobe .pdf file which I will post to Moodle with his permission. The permission does not include distributing the file beyond the members of this reading group.
We will begin by doing a little background reading regarding Wittgenstein and his methods, some of it looking in the horse's mouth and some of it essays written by others while standing back a bit. How long this takes will depend on the members of the group. As has been remarked, one of the problems with Wittgenstein is that there is no shallow end of the pool. Another is that working on particular philosophical problems produces results in a way that talking about working on those problems does not. We'll do both. The problems Dr. Johnson works with are standard problems in epistemology and in philosophy of language.
Course requirements and grading: Students must write, consistent with departmental guidelines for this kind of course, 7-10 pages (2000 to 2500 words) of graded work. Half of this needs to be turned in to me by the middle of the semester, the class meeting the week of October 8th. The rest is due Friday of finals week. You may do this as a series of one-page papers on your own schedule or as two larger papers at the deadlines, or as something in between those alternatives. One conspicuous possibility I'll promote is that some students will read essays on particular reading assignments in class in order to launch the discussions of those readings. I will provide some other suggestions for paper topics, but I am not going to nag or monitor your progress, and you are free to stay in denial about the writing requirements and your own satisfaction of those. I don't give incompletes.
Also, attendance is required: Anyone who misses more than two sessions (out of fifteen total) will lower her or his grade by one third of a point, more than four by one letter grade.
Scheduling: After we canvas members of the reading group regarding background and interests, I'll assign a mix of background editorializing essays and essays which model some of the methods at issue. If we seem ready for it, for instance, I will assign Johnson's chapter on the place of understanding in language. In that chapter he contrasts two ways to think about understanding: understanding (as it is given to us by examples of conversations in which we talk about understanding) and understanding-as-it-shows-in-philosophical-fever-dreams. We will probably read a few of the opening pages of Wittgenstein's The Blue Book, in which the opening question is, "What is the meaning of a word?" I take those two (and perhaps one or two more) as models of the methods at work on actual philosophical problems right before our very eyes, and will juxtapose essays about Wittgenstein and his methods by O.K. Bouwsma ("Wittgenstein's
Blue Book"), John Cook (on "Investigative Ordinary Language Philosophy"), Frank Ebersole, and myself. I'd like to get through these in the first two or three sessions, to include at least two student presentations.
After that we'll plow through Dr. Johnson's book. We will take the chapters in order, will note strengths and problems as we go, and will compose questions to ask Dr. Johnson via e-mail. For each chapter I'll have at least one student write a reaction to be read in class to help prompt discussion.
By the end I hope students will understand the methodological issues well enough that we will be able to take sides, anticipate objections, and argue with each other. I am convinced that these issues about method are the topics regarding which crucial work in philosophy will be done in the next few decades.