Notes: This course is another in a series of reading group seminars on philosophical methods, most of them centering on whether Wittgenstein's ordinary language methods can be applied to problems in epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of language.

Our record is mixed success. This is partly because getting clear on what the issues are about method is a recurrent task, and it often prevents our getting to answers on particular philosophical questions. On the other hand, it seems such clarity regarding the issues is pretty rare, and perhaps we have some contribution to make on those matters.

Nevertheless, we do yearn for some answers to some standard philosophical problems, and last semester worked on putting together Wittgensteinian (or ordinary language--the two may not be the same) positions on some of Russell's Problems of Philosophy. This semester we are going to look at some problems in philosophy of language prompted by an exchange between John Searle (Univ. California, Berkeley, author of several trenchant books in philosophy of language and philosophy of mind) and Jacques Derrida (University of Geneva, University of California, Irvine, author of many difficult books on language, philosophy of language, philosophical methods, and political philosophy, and principal architect of the deconstructionist school of philosophy). The exchange is mostly captured in a small book with Derrida's name on the cover, Limited Inc with Searle's reply to D's first article summarized rather than included.

Derrida is not a clear or straightforward writer, but this book is perhaps more clear than most. Nevertheless, exposition is an unavoidable chore, the work to extract what he is saying. Searle's article is an interesting contrast, with a blunt, no-nonsense tone and a straightforward agenda. Between the two, there are several issues raised, and we will try to make the issues clear and the positions of both thinkers on those issues, and also decide who is right. Here are abbreviations for some of the issues:

Is that which is communicated by means of language to be identified with the intentions of the speaker? Searle defends an affirmative answer, Derrida negative.

Is writing importantly different from, and parasitic on, speaking? If so, what makes the difference? This is the issue in which context plays an important role in understanding the two philosophers' positions. Searle claims the answer is yes and that the difference arises out of the permanence of writing, and not, as he attributes to Derrida, the reiterability of the linguistic elements in different contexts that makes writing and speaking the same.

How can we properly understand J. L. Austin's views on context? Derrida quotes from Austin's How to Do Things with Words, p. 147: "The total speech act in the total speech situation is the only actual phenomenon which, in the last resort, we are engaged in elucidating." Searle's first formidably influential book is Speech Acts (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1969), written after working under Austin at Oxford. Searle understandably regards himself as an authority on what Austin was thinking. Derrida, however, is clearly more sympathetic toward a view of "linguistic elements" which takes them to be bound or limited by the contexts in which they occur in an extreme way, and this is consistent with parts of Austin's view. At this writing, I'm inclined to think Derrida has Austin right and Searle has him wrong, but my main interest is in the stakes involved. In particular, there are hints that Searle thinks our ability to formulate any general account of language depends on our ability to treat language in a context-free way. In this I think Searle may be right, and the results may be corrosive for all philosophy of language.

Let's think about an example (This is from an e-mail exchange in a previous semester on dichotomies):

>to jwp: words are conventional. so are dichotomies. and articles of >convention always have some sort of problem. i woke up thinking that >this morning. so, i guess what i am saying is that yes, words are >conventional and there are big problems attached to that that most >people won't acknowledge because for the most part, they get the job >done--even if it's only a half ass job. >i think. *furrowed brow*

>what would you say the criteria needs to be to classify something >"conventional?" and is the plain people criteria different from the

>philosophy people criteria? > >uhh, yeah. >dayna

Dear Dayna,

Terrific. Lessee. Is the plain people criterion different from the philosophical people criterion for deciding? Yes. The plain people criterion is built on nonphilosophical examples, conversations about words and opposites and dichotomies and conventions and nature and necessary, in which no philosophical thinking has to be assumed in order for the plain people to make sense of what is going on *deep breath*

and the philosophical criterion is whether it is tempting to think they are conventional given the irresistible philosophical temptations to schematize and abstract what language is, what communication is, what persons are, and is nonsense.

Way different.

For instance (I've been wanting to write out this for some time for the dichotomies group, so I'll do the articulation in this note to you and then print this off for them, and this is going to take a while): Is it true that (as was claimed routinely up til about the 70's in human action theory, which thought of itself as doing basic foundational work in ethics) everything people do is either voluntary or involuntary?

** The philosophical story goes, of course. Human actions are bodily movements resulting from an act of will. When you flinch from the unexpectedly hot oven door or you blink because the bit of leaf got hurled by the breeze too close to your eye, that's not really you doing it but your body acting on reflex, so we need to distinguish between blinks and winks. The human actions are the things we do rather than our body does for us, and it is those that we can be praised or blamed for. One of the favorite examples, showing this debate goes back to the 50's, was poking your arm out the window to signal a left turn. Now I might have someone in the back seat that I use as a turn signal, having hooked up electrodes in shoulder and triceps so when I push a button his arm goes out, but it would be, umm, misleading (false? maybe) to say that he did the signaling. So we distinguish between me raising my arm and my arm going up. The human actions are the things we do that are voluntary. Almost all the things we do except for these things we can list, like digestion and reflexes and unconscious turnings in our sleep and dreaming and our eyes working the way they do and for that matter my arm obeying me when I raise it--most of the things we do that are of interest to us are voluntary, the rest involuntary.

It follows from the philosophical story that my writing to you is voluntary, your reading is voluntary, my walking up and getting a scone and a cup of coffee at Wildberries and reading the paper is voluntary, etc.

But there's a problem. The problem is that this account is at odds with the way nonphilosophical conversations or examples go. Now it might be we have ways to deal with that, but let's first look at and get clear on the extent of the problem.

Suppose I'm not a philosopher, sitting at Wildberries drinking coffee and reading Jon Carroll, and you walk up and ask me, "Did you come here voluntarily?"

I am likely, depending on how well I know you, to look around and wonder what's going on. I need some way to make sense of this question. There is a possibility that it does not make sense. It may be, for instance, that it is an expression of your paranoid schizophrenia, and the correct response will be to back away and call the guys from Sempervirens to take you away.

But there is a way to make sense of the question in some examples. (The phrase "in some examples" winds up later being important to the argument.) That would go like this. You know my ex-wife. You know my present girlfriend. You know that my ex-wife is looking for me, thinks that we need to talk, and that I am not, Not, NOT, wanting to talk to her but am avoiding her. You know that my girlfriend agrees with my ex-wife, thinks that my ex-wife and I need to talk. You were in Wildberry's earlier and happened to see my ex-wife there standing in line for coffee and she asked for it for here rather than to go, and then saw my girlfriend heading back down toward campus with a grim look on her face as you walked out to go to the art supply store. It took a while at the art supply store, and by the time you got done your Ramone's insulated mug was about empty so you go up to Wildberries' to get a refill and a sandwich. You get it and then you see me reading Jon Carroll. You walk over and ask, "Did you come here voluntarily?"

The idea is that you think maybe my girlfriend set this up, coerced me into coming up to talk to my ex-wife, though of course I don't want to do that.

It may be I know nothing of all this, and so it doesn't make sense, but then when you explain I will start folding up the paper and looking around apprehensively and tell you, Oh, no, I didn't know any of that, do you see her around still, I think I'm late for my office hours, nice to see you. Later you might talk to my girlfriend and both of you laugh at me, you saying as a part of that conversation, "I thought you got him to go up there, but it turned out it was voluntarily."

What though of other cases in which there is no ex-wife, no girlfriend, no we need to talk, no person who sees the possibility of coercion--in other words, all the cases so far when I have been up at Wildberries' drinking coffee and reading Jon Carroll? Weren't those voluntary? If we deny that, are we saying then that they are INvoluntary, which seems really weird? The proper response is that the question and the dichotomy do not make sense in those cases, my sitting in those cases is neither voluntary nor is it involuntary until we have a way in the case to make sense of the claim or the question.

[an objection] But surely we do have a way to make sense of the claim, namely the philosophical line of thought that I marked with the double asterisk up above. There are the things we do by reflex or while asleep or our body does for us, and then there are the things we do on our own as a result of our own will, and those latter things are the ones that are voluntary and all the rest are involuntary.

[the objection answered] The plain person, though, can have a question, namely, what's the argument that this huge set of philosophical matched luggage that shows us how to allocate the dichotomy is right? is not nonsense? The fact that the terms do make sense in some cases and not in a great many other cases seems to suggest that the philosophical line of thought is based only on buying something like a Cartesian sketch of human beings, and if it's not able to be made sense of in the examples except for accepting that sketch, then maybe the sketch is mistaken and here's a place where that shows. Perhaps philosophers have to misuse the words to make this story fly. As soon as there is a question whether philosophers have correctly understood acts of will or what voluntary is then we need more arguments that these terms do make sense in the examples where for the plain person they do not.

We haven't gotten to the part about the word voluntary and the voluntariness laid up in heaven. That's next, though. John