Wittgenstein, Brains and Ordinary Language Philosophy

(sent to analytic)

Larry:

On the distinction between knowing-that and knowing-how, and on what your club calls OLP, consider these expressions:

1. (a) I know how to drive to Dayton.  (b) I know how to breathe.

2. (a) I know that route 49 is the best route to Dayton.  (b) I know I have a hand.

The grammars of (a) all call upon the brain to perform two basic tasks: to remove doubt and to coronate this state of affairs. We might say the brain does something like this: FUNCTION(compare/contrast) + CORONATE(alternative). (We could quibble about the commands, but just keep them metaphorical for now). For Wittgenstein, language is only relevant for what it DOES. What it does is what it IS. And hence, the behavior of removing of doubt within the form of life is the only real purpose that "knowledge" serves. Knowledge is not a picture or an algebra; it is simply what one says to one another about the execution of a common mental task.

And so, once you put forth expressions (b), you break this grammar. And in so doing you create a language puzzle. The idea is first to confuse the brain with the expression. What is normally taken as a stipulation -- something self-evident or something not in need of doubt-removing in the form of life -- is now prescribed doubt-removing grammar. This leads to one of two courses of action. The  person either doesn't see the confusion and begins playing the game (which leads to brains-in-vats examples and a cereal-box sort of discussion). Or, they are insightful enough to sees the puzzle itself.

Those who cannot see the game end up trying to logic their way out of the situation. They want to prescribe "knowledge" as a rule or set of properties. As if you would actually go to a philosopher for answers like "so tell me if I knew professor" or "so tell me if the tree is real."    

Wittgenstein ended all of this. He realized that these were only forms of talking, and that philosophy could not prescribe these things. He realized that what expressions (a) were asking the brain to do could not be functionally imported into (b). He showed this not by formal logic, but by simply showing what would be the case if we accepted the new conditions of assertability. He showed that when one rearranges grammar in this way, they only create new forms of speaking that never actually do anything different than before (in terms of what the brain is asked to do). And that the whole point of words like "reality" "physical" "consciousness," etc., were merely language sets used to for helpful communicative brain tasks within the form of life, not "philosophical problems to be solved."

Importantly, we now get to OLP. I would not call W's views OLP. Wittgenstein is not proposing that "ordinary use" (as in common denominator) is what is key. What he is proposing is something more like "functional language philosophy" (FLP). The idea is words are only relevant for what brain tasks get performed. When one says "X is not real, it is in my head," one would want to know "what in god's name are you asking my brain to do to communicate with you?" ("what are your script instructions"). Until the claim is conjugated into a common frame of reference,  the sentence is pointless. It is the common-frame that is key, not for being ordinary but for being functional (behavioral). So your club has it wrong again. It isn't OLP, its FLP.

And it doesn't matter who says this premise or whether they are a general, Larry -- or even whether they are arrogant. What matters only whether you understand it and can receive it yourself as an idea. And whether, as such, you find it flawed or convincing.  

(Sigh). Regards. 

Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq. Assistant ProfessorWright State UniversityNew Website: http://seanwilson.orgDaily Visitors: http://seanwilson.org/homepagelucy.htmlSSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860