Showing incoherence ...

The statement 'It is not possible to talk' can't mean exactly what it says and still be true. However, the following seem reasonable (at least superficially):

(1) We know what it means, because otherwise we couldn't decide that it was false.

(2) There is some sense in which we can think that it's impossible to talk:

- there is behaviour that would be consistent with this (although it would also be consistent with other things which were inconsistent with it).

- it seems possible to imagine finding out (as in some nightmare) that we have never been able to talk, and that whenever we thought we were talking we were always making some kind of mistake.

- in order to understand the falsehood of the statement, we need to have some conception of what it would be for it to be true.

(3) When I say 'It is not possible to talk', you might think 'well - can this be true?'. If you thought it was true, you would (a) not answer me (or not answer me honestly) and (b) realise that I hadn't really spoken to you. You might think 'these sounded like words that meant something, and because I was taken in by their apparent meaning they made me think - and come to a remarkable conclusion - but in fact they didn't mean anything at all'.

All this clearly has a kind of fairytale quality to it, and, I think (for reasons that are peripheral for the present, but related to the private language argument), may also be incoherent.

However - it suggests something useful:

We can show things without saying them (obviously), but we may also be able to show things by saying something, and even by seeming to say what it is that we mean to show - even though what we seem to be saying can't be true.

Imagine you have a rare kind of colour blindness, so that under indoor lighting you see red as green & green as red, but in daylight you don't. You are coming to me for evening classes in road safety, and I need to show you which colour of light means stop and which means go. What do I show you?

And what if we don't know which one of us is making the mistake? What do the words 'red' and 'green' mean here? All we know is that we don't agree about which indoor light looks like the outdoor light. We can talk, though, because we can predict what each other will say when asked.

If I wanted to show you what to look for in an outdoor red light, I would show you an indoor light that looked green to me. I might even say 'look - this is a red light'.

When I say 'it is possible to talk' must be true in any language game in which its equivalent (under interpretation) can be constructed, I may be simultaneously introducing you to the possibility of its contrary.

And: maybe if you can't imagine the contrary you can't understand the statement.

The construction of the theoretical certainty depends upon an appreciation of the phenomenological uncertainty. If you can't think the unsayable - if you can't live with Cartesian anxiety - then you will never have theoretical certainty.

My thesis depends upon showing you a possibility that cannot be articulably entertained, and showing you by pretending to entertain it - the argument is a reductio from the presumption of its own unintelligibility.

Instead of an axiomatic contradiction, we have a contradiction with the possibility of axiomatisation.

Syntax and Paradoxes

Syntactical rules may appear to set minimal standards of intelligibility, but they don't guarantee intelligibility.

We shouldn't be deceived by the 'obviousness' of some of these rules - finding them obvious is really just the condition of being able to talk. In other words, we wouldn't be able to to talk if we didn't find quite a few of them obvious.

For Kripkean reasons, we cannot render a syntactical rule mechanically: any potential mechanical isomorph could be unreliable. We cannot say 'to find the consequence of the non-contradiction rule, press this button', because we would have to use the non-contradiction rule to test the reliability of the button.

We can only state syntactical rules if we have a working semantic context: if we can speak.

So while they might represent boundaries of intelligibity they cannot exist independently of it. They cannot conceptually precede it. We can't make sense of a syntactical rule outside of a semantic context.

So: incompleteness/inconsistency theorems, which seem to be purely syntactical, can only be constructed in a semantic context within which the normative syntactical rules can be stated unequivocally. It is within this semantic context that the rules have the correct scope, and can stand as tests for any potential mechancial isomorph.

It is because we can describe a logic gate functionally that it counts as a logic gate.

(But also: we describe the world this way as well. It is only because we can describe the world functionally that we can describe it at all - Goodman's paradox is constructed the same way as Kripke's).

Godel's paradoxes, then, become semantic paradoxes because we can say whether it is true that certain syntactical rules have been observed.

?

Moore's Paradox

"We cannot talk" is, arguably, a close relative of Moore's 'paradox': "It is raining, but I do not believe it is raining".

There are lots of detailed explications of this very odd statement, but it seems to me that there is a distinction that could help us to understand (and 'solve') it - between self-contradictory statements (e.g. the Liar) and statements which are incoherent with their own status as statements.

"I cannot talk" is clearly an example of the latter. It makes perfect sense to say "X cannot talk" where X is a third party - a mute, an animal or an object; but not where we substitute the author of the statement into X. If you can't talk, you can't say so either; so if you utter these words, you either cannot be saying what they are normally taken to mean (i.e. that potential interpretaion is barred - no charitable principle can rescue it) or you are not meaning to talk seriously - perhaps you are doing a bit of contentless verbalising, or playing word games.

In the traditional formulation, "It's raining" and "I don't believe it's raining" from the same speaker are not directly contradictory, but they do challenge each other's intelligibility. Making both statements is so grossly inconsistent with the context of assertion combined what we normally mean by "believe" that they are rendered unintelligible. An interlocutor who makes these statements, as serious contributions to a conversation, is either revealing an inability to converse or seeking to undermine the game.

Meaning, validity, the Liar ...

Liar paradoxes seem unavoidable in languages that allow us to attribute validity or truth to our own judgements in an unrestricted way.

It seems likely that only languages that allow us to attribute validity or truth can also allow us to attribute meaning: can allow us to say when a gesture or signal is being appropriately ('truly') used, or - more important - can allow us to state the conditions under which a gesture would be being appropriately used.

Is this a radical suggestion: that a gesture or signal has meaning if it can be translated into a language that can be used to (at least partly) say what its meaning is? Does this link having meaning too closely to being able to attribute meaning? Some reflection on the use of 'to mean' makes me think not, but ...

So we have behaviour; then we have games - in which behaviour may or may not be within the rules of the game; then we have language games, in which we have truth and falsehood - which have some relationship with the rules of the game, but which may not just reflect them; then we have language games in which truth and falsehood can be explicitly attributed, and in which concepts like 'true' and 'meaningful' have a role.

In this third group, liar paradoxes can be formulated, open question arguments arise, and we can do philosophy: e.g. by making statements like those in this post.

Godel, Arithmetic and Validity

Godel's proofs show that any axiomatic system to which arithmetic could be reduced must be either incomplete or self-contradictory.

The proof doesn't depend on any interpretation of the symbolism that he uses, so his paradoxes are, in a sense, syntactical rather than semantic. What he shows is that any system which could encode arithmetical calculations will also be able to encode computations which can be interpreted as tests of the validity of its own theorems, and which are therefore self-referential (since the outcomes of these validity tests are also theorems).

We don't normally think of arithmetic as being intrinsically about truth-telling, or validity. Why is it impossible to do arithmetic without generating valdity tests? If Godel is right, it can't be just an accident. His method depends on being able (in prinicple) to arithmetise all logical validity testing - it seems to make logical validity testing and an essential subset of arithmetical computation isomorphic.

Numbers are truth and truth is numbers.

Version 11

Intelligibility ... I could be wandering into a bog here.

Physicalism

A physicalist would say, of course, that the condition of 'seeing a bright light' (however intentional) would have to consist in some set of physical facts - e.g. about my nervous system, about some interaction between photons and my retina, about some set of brain activities.

This has to be wrong for two reasons:

(1) Suppose a physicalist specified such a set of conditions, and then met a person who was demonstrably in the relevant physical state but denied seeing a bright light. Would the physicalist have to say they were lying and/or mistaken?

Not necessarily: they could say that their specification had failed an experimental test, and some improved specification was required. However, this process of improvement would have to come to an end, in order to save the physicalism - and it would have to be an end which did not depend on testing against reports of seeing bright lights. At some point, the physicalist account would have to be more reliable than the intentional report - it would have to provide a basis for saying that the intentional report was dishonest or mistaken.

We do, of course, often decide that people are being dishonest about intentional states - and we may also conclude that they have made mistakes in the way they express them. However, any decisions of this kind are subject to Kripkean ambiguities and Davidsonian interpretive choices. It can never be a matter of absolute fact that an intentional report is dishonest or mistaken - there will always be some interpretation under which it can be saved. But when we reject these interpretations (as we often do) we are making a normative choice.

Some religious people, for instance, claim to believe remarkable eye witness accounts of miracles in order to save the integrity of their saints. For the physicalist to insist that my brain state plus certain environmental factors indicate that I am seeing a bright light - whatever I may appear to say about this on my own behalf - they are making a choice of this kind.

From this perspective, physicalism - along with all the other metaphysical foundationalisms - becomes a position adopted through interpretive choice. I guess this is what Simon Blackburn has in mind when he talks about quasi-realism. We should talk as though we are realists. But then why not quasi-idealism? Apart from making the computations more complicated there doesn't seem to be much to object to in it ...

A really committed physicalist might deny that the examples given above are coherent - claiming that someone in the appropriate physical state would also, necessarily, say appropriate things (utter appropriate noises?). But this just skips the demonstration - in order to show that physical states and intentional states go together, they need to be separately specifiable. If they can't be, then the physicalism becomes contentless.

(2) OQ again: For the physicalist, physicalism itself (the set of beliefs comprising physicalism) would have to be reducible to some physical state of affairs. To be a physicalist is to be in an intentional state - of believing that intentional states can be reduced to physical states - that must, therefore, itself, be reducible to a physical state.

One problem with this (related to (1) above) is that it's hard to see how a physical states can be right or wrong - it's just a physical state. Also, we'd need - in principle - to be able to specify this state without begging the question (e.g. by calling it 'the state of being a physicalist'), and without being diverted by accidental equivalences (e.g. if all physicalists, and no non-physicalists, happened to be tall & have large noses, for instance). We'd also have to accomodate the possibility (as in (1)) of people claiming to be physicalists - appearing to know the arguments etc. - but being wrong, because they were in an inappropriate physical state.

A more serious problem, though, is the general OQ problem: if having a true belief about X is to be in a certain physical state, then there must be a physical test for the truth of such a belief. In particular, there must be a physical test for the truth of physicalism. If there isn't such a test - if there is some non-physical test for the truth of the belief - then physicalism is incomplete. But to insist on there being such a test is to beg the question - it's simply to insist that physicalism must be correct.

N.B. - An argument against physicalsim is not automatically an argument for some other metaphysical substrate (idealism, for instance). All these metaphysical foundationalisms are equally vulnerable to similar kinds of arguments.

Also, it is perfectly possible that there are no other fundamental objects or forces in the world beyond those discovered by physical science - in the sense that we won't find any there, no matter how hard we look. (There are no fairies at the bottom of the garden).

However, this isn't sufficient for a physicalist account of intentional states.

Imagine an artist making a representation of a face: there must be a physical medium for this, but the choice of medium is only marginally relevant to the description of the activity. No list of media and of related techniques could give an exhaustive account of this activity, because some new medium - holography is a recent example - might come along in which the intentional act of 'making a representation' could be carried out.

This problem becomes worse if you think of 'making a representation' in terms of 'making a good representation' - i.e. making a representation that is recognisable, or apt.

Inconsistency

An inconsistent system may have its own consistency as a theorem, but we could not know what this theorem meant.

Reductionism

The central ethical decision that each of us has to make is whom to treat as intelligible.

There are two aspects of intelligibility:

(1) Being able to talk - being someone with whom we can hold a conversation.
(2) Being the subject of an intelligible narrative - acting in a way which can be explained.

There are no intelligible rules which completely determine the limits of intelligible talk or action. This is the open question argument again - perhaps the central case of it. If we could state all these rules we could ask whether they defined intelligibility - whether it was intelligible to say this.

In particular, there cannot be a list of rules which relates intelligibility to factual conditions. There is a reason for this in addition to the open question problem: what counts as a fact depends on what we count as intelligible. Claims about facts are subject to intelligibility decisions.

Similarly, it is not the case that just anything can count as intelligible. We do make decisions about this, and they are not arbitrary or random. For any language game (for any 'game of intelligibility') there will be moves (e.g. allowing contradictions) which would render the game unintelligible.

Some of the conditions of intelligibility of our language game (the one we are playing now) will look universal - will look like general rules of intelligibility. We can do experiments with some of these - Quinean experiments - to see which ones we can vary or do without, and which we cannot.

There are factual statements ("we can talk") and formal statements (the non-contradiction rule) which must be true in any language game. If we found a game which rendered these false under any possible translation schema, we would have to say that it was not a language game.

But whether we had exhausted all possibilities would be an empirical matter, and subject to Kripkean limitations (had we considered all possible interpretations?). There would always be some interpretation which rendered the game trivially intelligible - though possibly too complex to play.

Phenomenological Issues

It's a mistake to look for metaphysical 'grounds' for theorising in general, since there isn't any relevant way of distinguishing metaphysical hypotheses from other kinds. Our capacity to form hypotheses - our capacity to talk about the world - isn't rendered more intelligible by the generation of further hypotheses of the same kind as those which we are trying to illuminate.

Our capacity to talk cannot, itself, by rendered hypothetical. Therefore, realism may only be a consequence of the possibility of language: it certainly can't underpin it.

Most of us think of our internal experience - our phenomenological states - as contributing to our ability to speak: we can talk about the world because we sense it, and we have a direct experience of what these sensations are.

Cases of sensory deprivation leading to specific linguistic incompetence support this: blind people cannot identify colours, nor deaf people sounds.

But we need to separate two things here:

(1) What we say about our internal states.
(2) The internal states 'in themselves'.

We can clearly talk about our internal states. However, we can only talk about them as represented in language.

I can say 'I see a bright light', but I cannot independently identify my seeing of a bright light except by making this statement (or one equivalent). The condition of seeing a bright light is irreducibly intentional.

Also, this is a public, not a private condition to be in: we can have an argument about whether I really did see a white light - or whether I made a mistake, or am telling a lie. This is true of the most primitive sensory reports - even those which look like candidates for 'sense data'.

Error and deceit are features of the reporting stage, however: I can't be mistaken or dishonest about my internal experiences in themselves. I also can't share them 'in themselves'. (There's even something metaphorical and indirect about this way of talking.)

The states 'in themselves' are beetles in boxes (PI 293). We all have them, but they only come into theoretical focus, or even appear to be shared, when we talk about them. This is why 'consciousness' in this sense can never be the subject of scientific enquiry: it stands just outside the realm of any possible articulated enquiry.

The apparent link between these phenomenological processes and being able to speak - knowing the truth about the world by being acquainted with it through sensation - is, itself, a phenomenological intuition. We might as well say about it that it is our internal experience of our capacity to speak. This is such a disturbing thought that many people find it impossible to entertain, but it becomes obvious after a little reflection: my only incontrovertable grounds for thinking you might have the same intuitions as I have are found in what you say about them.

You might say that I have grounds in your behaviour, but these are not incontrovertible - for Kripkean (Rules and Private Language) reasons. The interpretation of behaviour is always corrigible, but you can only doubt what I say about my phenomenological states by doubting my linguistic competency or my honesty. In both cases, you are doubting whether we are, in fact, conversing in good faith - you are doubting whether we are really talking.

Aha ...

I've just spotted a difficulty, which I need to scope out:

'I can talk' looks empirical, as does 'You can talk'. For Moorean reasons, they may be slightly different.

Of course, 'You can talk' looks like 'You can walk'. But there are empirical tests which we can agree on for 'You can walk' (without which the statement would begin to lose its meaning ... ).

But while there are some similar empirical tests for 'You can talk', they aren't relevant to the fundamental case that I want to depend on. We might check whether a recovering stroke victim can talk, but we can't 'check' whether 'You can talk' is in general true: in the second sense, there is a normative factor associated with the radical translation argument. I decide (for me) that you can talk - even if only tacitly, by talking to you.

We may, of course decide what 'counts' as 'walking' as well, of course. (And we can probably completely articulate this within general tacit constraints).

But we can still talk even if we can't agree on what counts as walking ...

'Socialisation'...

We might as well call a 'socialised' individual one who can participate in and be represented within the conversation we are now having.

I'd probably have to say 'represented as a person' or 'represented as intelligible' ... which may make this a bit muddy?

Bloor (and others) on enthusiasm, private languages etc.

The private language argument is an also an anti-sceptical argument.

The issue is not whether there can be, in some representation of cognitive processing, something that looks like a private language (or, indeed, a 'language of thought') - a signalling system, for instance, that has a syntactical structure.

It is, instead, whether this thing that looks like a private language can have meanings attributed to its 'signals' that do not depend upon the meanings of language game within which it is described. Bloor thinks of a social matrix, or socialisation here. Wittgenstein is vague, but points to the need for public tests of some kinds. Locke refers to reason ...

As Bloor says, (p55, Wittgenstein, Rules and Institutions), arguments of this kind cannot 'claim absolute cogency or a decisive victory'.

But he's making the same mistake as Quine did - having found a concrete narrative (science, society) of the process which seems to exemplify or underpin public rationality, he mistakes the content for the form. It's like believing a laptop can think, or believing a word processor can speak because it can check grammar.

The normative aspects of attributing meaning, or rationality, cannot be captured in this kind of concrete narrative. Not only is there an open question problem here - about the normative status of the narrative, about it's capacity to confer validity on the processes it seeks to explain - but the very nature of the narrative itself is called into question. What is 'society' or 'socialisation'? If it becomes just 'what underpins rationality' (Spinoza? !), then this empties the narrative of content and the explanation of sense.

And , of course, the narrative depends, for its meaning, on the very categories it seeks to explain (truth, rule following, knoweldge). And, sadly, it can only claim to support them by trying to deny or marginalise the very aspect of them that we most want explained: the validity of their content.

If, on the other hand, we show that these categories can be recursively grounded in our ability to talk about things - an ability which needs no further exposition, since querying it is unintelligible - then we not only have the fundamental argument that Bloor denies is possible, but we also avoid the open question trap.

'Essential' metaphysics ...

Is it possible that being a Platonist makes it easier to do mathematics?

There's no reason why not, and plenty of pointers in the opposite direction: religious people are often better able to survive misery; people with less imagination may be less distracted by fear ...

None of these amount to arguments for the substantive positions, but if the 'heuristic postulate' was true, how should we respond?

Personally, I'd rather do philosophy. Is it impossible to be a good philosopher of mathematics and also a good mathematician?

Scientists tend to be naïve sensory empiricists. Could they do such good science if they weren't?

What delusions must a philosopher entertain in order to be good at philosophy?

Version 10
More on meaning and meaningfulness.

The dogma of any discipline is meaningless within the discipline - empirical science and religion are on equal footing in this respect. Where they are not on an equal footing is with respect to their scope:

It's quite easy to avoid language which makes religious presuppositions, but almost impossible to avoid language which makes scientific presuppositions. We can talk about the world without talking about God, but we can't talk about the world without talking about the world ...

Version 9
Working changes. Not very important.

Irrationality and games

In certain games, it can be wise to undermine your opponents' confidence in your rationality.

In a language game, we are engaged in constructing rationality: in negotiating the conditions of sense-making. In a commercial language game, the material dimensions of this negotiation can't be ignored. They partly determine what makes sense, but they also partly determine which aspects of the negotiation have to remain tacit.

In any language game - in any conversation - some of this negotiation is tacit, of course, but we think this can be ignored in 'scientific' or 'academic' language games.

But even in an ideal academic conversation ideas are products that are bought and sold ...

Commercial language

The reason this needs a closer look is because it provides a useful model of tacit negotiation over what makes sense.

In a commercial discussion, the material objectives of the parties tacitly (from the point of view of the language of the discussion) constrain the sense making opportunities. However a commercial negotiation can only continue if there is a working language within which to negotiate.

In this context, the comforting metaphors which inform the philosophical discussions of scientific truth telling look much less credible.

Even when we're standing at the door holding the key, we find that there's a particular way of turning it - a special flick of the wrist - that we need to learn.

Metalanguages ...

The one above the one we're using - in which a theory of truth for our language could be formulated - cannot be translated, and, so, cannot be recognised as a language ...

The one below, which we can give an account of, is reduced to syntax, rules, and symbols. It's meaning has been relegated to 'interpretation' and lost to truth-telling. Is it a language or a board game?

Neurath's Boat

It isn's just the planks and frames that keep the boat afloat, but also the conceptions of the sailors: their plans of the boat, their principles of naval architecture, the epistemological foundations of both ...

Which is why they can never have a complete design, never mind do a complete rebuild.

While it might seem intelligible to wonder about the foundations of any knowledge that we have, and to seek arguments for its reliability, it is a serious mistake to seek an argument for the possibility of intelligible conversation. If argument is possible, then so is intelligible conversation.

This doesn't mean that questions such as 'how do we speak?' and 'how can we speak?' don't make sense in certain contexts - e.g. the neurology of language, linguistic theory etc.. These disciplines can give us insights into the mechanical or computational processes involved in speech, or into linguistic structure. They may even show us how certain structures or processes are necessary for reliable communication, in the sense that (under interpretation) all languages incorporate these structures and processes.

What they cannot show is that some set of mechanical, cognitive, or structural criteria guarantee intelligibility - are not just necessary, but also sufficient. This is a corollary of Davidson's observations on interpretation - that there is always more than one solution to the translation problem, because we must make assumptions about the normative, epistemological, and motivational character of any potential interlocutor. The 'Principle of Charity' renders the interoluctor 'human', but not only is this a normative posture adopted by the translator, there are also quite likely ot be different renderings of this humanity.

We cannot get from grunts to sense without making normative choices, however 'obvious' these choices might seem to a routine user of a human language.

And yet sense is guaranteed, within any conversation, by the possibility of that conversation. 'This conversation is impossible' is not a possible conversational move.

Neurological, cognitive, and linguistic theories - or, indeed, epistemological theories - are all parts of some intelligible conversation or another. They cannot provide a better demonstration of the intelligibility of that conversation than their own intelligibility already guarantees.

To ask a question about that intelligibility is to ask a question about the possibility of asking questions.