I'm thinking about something parrallel to our conversation topic "elephant
question", and thought I'd offer it for your thoughts.
>From Wittgenstein's Philosophical investigations:
654. "Our mistake is to look for an explanation where we ought to look at
what happens as a 'proto-phonomenon'. That is, where we ought to have said:
this language game is played."
655. "The question is not one of explaining a language game by means of our
experiences, but of noting a language game."
Wittgenstein's naturalism (or "empiricism"?) is well evident in these two
passages. LW is telling us to "note" the language game. How is that done
exactly? (Where does one game end and another begin?) And again, if it
isn't our experiences by means of which we explain a language game, what is
it? -'Do not explain. Explanations stop here.' But do they? Why? Is LW
saying that experiences come only after language games? Well, this is
simply false, isn't it?
Certainly experiences as discrete particulars exist as a function of
language. Referents exist as a function of language (obviously). But that
is not to say that what the referred to particulars depict comes only after
language games. It does not. How could it? Utterances have motives, and,
inexplicable though those motives might be, that does not make them
irrelevant to the explanation of what they motivate. My thoughts and
feelings are not (in the first instance) referents: they can become such
only after motivating a description. Therefore they are primary, not the
language which renders them. Wittgenstein draws the opposite conclusion.
With what right?
How can language be the proto-phenomenon in this case? The web of language
(linguistically constructed everyday metaphysical entities) is the web of
phenomenon, pure and simple. No 'proto' about it. The proto-phenomenon is
something else.
656."...Look on the language game as the primary thing. And look on the
feelings, etc., as you look on a way of regarding the language game, as
interpretation..."
This instructs us to stand the real situation on it's head. In my humble
opinion. It is the language game which is the interpretation, and the
feelings which are the protophenomenon (Pirsig's "Quality Event" would be
the protophenomenon par excellance - before that there is reality, and
reality is not a collection of phenomena (the mystic intuition)).
comments?
E
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