Claudio Ferreira Costa: PHILOSOPHICAL TEXTS - TEXTOS DE FILOSOFIA

                  THIS "BLOG" WAS IDEALIZED TO MAKE MY WORK IN PHILOSOPHY MORE ACCESSIBLE. IT CONTAINS MORE THAN 100 WRITINGS, THOUGH USUALLY IN DRAFT FORMS, IN ENGLISH AND/OR PORTUGUESE. THE PAPERS WITH INTEREST FOR THE RESEARCHER WERE MARKED WITH #.

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ESSE "BLOG" FOI IDEALIZADO COMO UMA MANEIRA DE TORNAR MEU "FABULOSO" TRABALHO FILOSÓFICO FACILMENTE ACESSÍVEL A PESSOAS LEGITIMAMENTE INTERESSADAS EM FILOSOFIA. ELE CONTÉM MAIS DE 100 ESCRITOS, EM GERAL ESBOÇOS, MUITOS DELES EM PORTUGUÊS. ALGUNS SÃO DIDÁTICOS, OUTROS NÃO. OS TRABALHOS DE INTERESSE PARA PESQUISADORES FORAM MARCADOS COM #

Muitos textos podem ser encontrados de forma mais atualizada em Academia.edu

FROM MY CURRICULUM

I was born in old Vila Seropedica, near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1954. After an intellectually boring undergraduate study in medicine, I gained my MS in philosophy at the IFCS (Rio de Janeiro) and a Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Konstanz (Germany). Since 1992, I have worked as a researcher and professor at the UFRN (Natal), secluded in the beautiful Northeast of Brazil, though always in contact with the international philosophical discussion through many grants taken at the universities of Konstanz, Munich, Berkeley, Oxford, Göteborg, and École Normale Supérieure (INS). The UFRN gave me a lot of intellectual freedom, an indispensable condition for independent work. 

Despite my usual focus on contemporary analytic philosophy, I disagree with mainstream philosophy's lack of comprehensiveness. 

The books I am not ashamed to have written are "The Philosophical Inquiry" (Lanham: UPA, 2002), which develops a thesis on the nature of philosophy, Lines of Thought: Rethinking Philosophical Assumptions" (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), and "Philosophical Semantics: Reintegrating Theoretical Philosophy" (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018). The book from 2014 is a selection of essays (some of them, in my humble view, really relevant), while the long book from 2018 can be read as a comprehensive analysis of a cluster of concepts regarding philosophical methodology, the concept of meaning, verificationism, and truth, based on the investigations of philosophers of language from Frege to Wittgenstein. The last published book, "How Do Proper Names Really Work?" (De Gruyter 2023), aims to overthrow the old stalemate between the new and the old orthodoxy in the philosophy of language.

I have social dyslexia (a light form of autism). This means little contact with the outside world. This is good for intellectual independence, though it makes the divulgation of ideas a hard task.

SOME BOOKS (ALGUNS LIVROS):

This book completely renews our theories of reference

 

O MUNDO EM 2050

 

O CENÁRIO GEOPOLÍTICO NO ANO 2050

 

Aqui vão minhas predições filosóficas holísticas e contraindutivas sobre o cenário geopolítico do ano 2050.

Confesso que sempre errei em minhas previsões. Mas como sou adepto da lógica contraintuitiva, acertarei dessa vez. Essa lógica funciona assim: eu sempre errei em minhas previsões político-filosóficas; logo, dessa vez eu irei acertar. Eu sempre errei em minhas previsões político-filosóficas; logo, daqui para frente, eu sempre acertarei. Essa lógica nunca falha, pois quanto mais erros eu tiver cometido no passado, mais provável é que eu acertarei no futuro. Por isso, ouso dizer com toda segurança que, dessa vez, acertarei.

A questão é: como será o mundo geopolítico em 2050? Para refletirmos sobre isso, precisamos primeiro voltar a Platão. Ele se opunha à democracia ateniense porque a considerava ilusória e perversa. Os sofistas eram pagos para ensinar aos políticos como enganar o povo, e o resultado foi que o próprio povo, manipulado por demagogos em uma cidade-estado decadente, votou pela condenação de Sócrates apenas porque ele desafiava os sofistas e os demagogos mais influentes ao dizer a verdade.

A solução proposta por Platão encontra-se em seu célebre diálogo A República. Nele, todas as pessoas — independentemente de sua origem social, seja entre o povo de alma apetitiva (trabalhadores, agricultores, artesãos) ou em qualquer outra das três classes naturais de pessoas — deveriam receber, desde a infância, uma educação universal. Aos 20 anos, seriam submetidas a provas rigorosas. Os aprovados se tornariam guardiões ou auxiliares, servindo ao governo; já os reprovados passariam a integrar o povo dedicado ao trabalho produtivo.

A razão dessas provas universais é que Platão não acreditava em méritos hereditários nem em direitos de classe. Embora elitista em sua concepção de governo, sua proposta rejeitava privilégios de nascimento: uma criança nascida de pais de alma apetitiva poderia revelar alma racional ou volitiva, e vice-versa.

Os que permanecessem entre os trabalhadores teriam o direito de acumular riquezas, mas não o acesso ao poder. Assim, os industriais do mundo atual seriam vistos por Platão como parte da classe produtiva. Já os aprovados poderiam ascender no sistema político, tornando-se soldados-auxiliares. Estes teriam poder político, mas seriam privados do direito à riqueza material, justamente para evitar a corrupção.

Dos 20 aos 30 anos, os aprovados nas primeiras provas dedicavam-se ao estudo da matemática e das ciências, mas ainda não tinham acesso à filosofia, considerada prematura nessa fase. O estudo filosófico viria apenas depois. Aos 30 anos, eram submetidos a novas provas: os aprovados passavam a integrar uma nova casta de guardiões, agora iniciados na filosofia. Entre eles, apenas alguns poucos se juntariam à elite filosófica destinada a governar o Estado.

Antes, porém, deveriam viver alguns anos junto ao povo para experimentar, na prática, a realidade da vida cotidiana das pessoas comuns. Somente após os cinquenta anos, após todas as etapas de formação e experiência, alguns poderiam se candidatar ao cargo supremo de rei-filósofo. Um tal sistema seria altamente meritocrático para Platão.

Platão defendia uma separação absoluta entre a governança e os ganhos materiais. Os governantes não precisariam beber de cálices de ouro, pois — como escreveu — o ouro já estaria em suas almas. Viveriam com pouco, justamente para não se corromperem.

A questão é: tudo isso lembra algo? De certo modo, o Estado chinês. Não é idêntico ao modelo de Platão, mas guarda semelhanças. O Partido Comunista da China reúne cerca de 100 milhões de membros em um país de 1,4 bilhão de habitantes. Todos podem tentar, mas é preciso um comportamento impecável para conseguir nele ingressar. O próprio Xi Jinping tentou nove vezes antes de ser aceito na décima. O único vírus capaz de destruir a moral do partido é a corrupção, razão pela qual Xi Jinping a combate duramente.

O povo não vota diretamente para escolher o presidente. Mas participa de eleições locais, elegendo pessoas próximas, que conhece e tem como avaliar sem ser enganado. Esses representantes precisam demonstrar competência para ascender. Além disso, muitos dirigentes são selecionados entre os melhores alunos das universidades mais prestigiadas, em um sistema altamente competitivo. A rotina acadêmica é extrema: estudantes que acordam às 7h da manhã para estudar e vão dormir às 11h da noite, com meia hora de intervalo para o almoço. O estado chinês atua como planejador e impulsionador do desenvolvimento, sendo capaz de dirigir o capital público e privado para a satisfação de metas de interesse do povo, em projeções de 5 ou mais anos.

Xi Jinping é um exemplo mais antigo. Ainda adolescente, cometeu erros, como fugir da escola, e o partido decidiu enviá-lo para viver entre camponeses, a fim de ser reeducado por meio do aprendizado da realidade da vida. Passou seis anos morando em uma caverna, trabalhando no campo. Só depois lhe disso lhe permitiram retornar a Pequim ou Xangai, sei lá eu. Para ascender na carreira política, teve de cursar engenharia e demonstrar sua capacidade ao governar duas províncias com metade do tamanho do Brasil. Como as administrações locais competem intensamente entre si, seu bom desempenho o levou ao Politbüro e, gradualmente, ao núcleo dos cinco dirigentes mais influentes, até alcançar a liderança máxima da China, com poder político e militar.

Ele não é visto como um ditador; ocupa o cargo porque o partido o considera a pessoa mais preparada. Se o partido decidir, perderá o lugar. O sistema é concebido como meritocrático: o povo não é enganado e existe uma democracia de base, já que a principal preocupação do partido é evitar a insatisfação popular. Na prática, esse modelo resulta em índices de aprovação superiores a 90%, em contraste com muitas democracias ocidentais em crise, nas quais uma parte significativa da população prefere não votar a fazer parte do circo. É evidente que o modelo chinês guarda semelhanças com a República de Platão.

Entender o modelo chinês torna-se mais fácil ao lembrarmos de sua longa tradição. A China teria começado por volta de 2.600 a.C., com a dinastia Xia, mas só se unificou de fato em 221 a.C., sob a dinastia Qin. Essa trajetória milenar moldou modos de pensar profundamente enraizados na mentalidade coletiva, reforçados pelo pensamento de Confúcio e de outros filósofos que desenvolveram uma filosofia sociopolítica prática voltada à harmonia interna do Estado.

O país, vasto e populoso, era marcado por revoltas camponesas que, de tempos em tempos, levavam novos líderes ao poder. Após tais revoluções, o novo governante recebia o chamado “mandato dos céus” e, em geral, no início, governava com justiça. Para que o sistema não privilegiasse apenas as elites, a partir da dinastia Han (206 d.C.) — que se consolidou na dinastia Tang (618 d.C.) — surgiu o sistema dos mandarins: funcionários públicos selecionados por meio de exames imperiais extremamente rigorosos.

Essas provas exigiam profundo conhecimento dos textos clássicos, especialmente de Confúcio. Para ser admitido na carreira, era necessário dominar a escrita pictográfica chinesa com seus milhares de caracteres, que atuava como uma linguagem universal, independente dos dialetos, contribuindo para a unificação cultural do país. O objetivo central do sistema dos mandarins era recrutar administradores com base no mérito, e não na origem aristocrática.

É impressionante a recorrência das revoluções camponesas contra as dinastias de elites na história chinesa. Em 184 d.C., ocorreu a revolta dos Turbantes Amarelos contra a dinastia Han. Mais tarde, em 304, veio a revolta dos Cinco Bárbaros, também contra a ordem Han. Por volta de 1351, uma nova insurreição dos Turbantes Amarelos abalou a dinastia Yuan, abrindo caminho para a ascensão da dinastia Ming.

No século XIX, destacou-se a Revolução Taiping, que teve um enorme custo em vidas humanas em um país já combalido pela exploração ocidental. Já no século XX, a revolução maoísta, igualmente baseada no campesinato, transformou radicalmente o país.

O que se observa é um padrão repetitivo: uma revolução popular derruba a dinastia vigente, instaura um novo imperador e inaugura uma nova ordem. Inicialmente, essa dinastia governa com valores renovados e legitimidade, mas, com o tempo, acaba se corrompendo, até que uma nova revolução camponesa surge, substituindo-a por outra dinastia que retoma os ideais de justiça e renova os valores.

A revolução chinesa pode ser vista como uma reencarnação desse antigo sistema dos mandarins, acrescida de um objetivo socialista marxista – ainda que a realidade tenha impedido sua plena realização.

Minha suspeita: o padrão histórico das revoluções camponesas, seguidas pela ascensão de novas dinastias legitimadas pelo chamado “mandato dos céus”, que, com o tempo, acabavam se corrompendo e sendo substituídas por novas revoluções, criou um modelo que talvez responda a uma questão central da República de Platão: quem decide o quê? Quem escolhe o rei-filósofo? Quem define o conteúdo das provas? Platão não tinha como responder.

Aqui, a resposta parece estar na própria natureza humana. Todo sistema, por mais justo que seja em sua origem, tende à corrupção com o passar do tempo. As revoluções, nesse sentido, foram a única forma de regenerar o sistema, de restaurar os valores. Elas têm sido a maneira de fazer com que o sistema escolha mandatários capazes, mas isso é guiado pela natureza corruptível das sociedades humanas, assim como os ciclos econômicos, que, guiados por essa mesma natureza, são inevitáveis. Gostaria que essa resposta pessimista, de uma repetição inevitável de ciclos de corrupção, ruptura e renascimento, fosse incorreta.

   O ponto crucial é que o modelo chinês – no qual os governantes pertencem a uma elite meritocrática piramidal, baseada nos interesses reais do povo e sustentada por uma democracia de base, mostra-se muito mais capaz de promover o desenvolvimento econômico e humano do que as democracias ocidentais – muito além das democracias-títere dos interesses norte-americanos, como o Japão, a Coreia do Sul e Taiwan. Retirar 800 milhões de pessoas da pobreza, elevando-as à classe média e à alta, é um fenômeno sem precedentes na história. O sistema herdado pelos chineses revelou-se absurdamente eficaz e, ao que tudo indica, continuará assim, pois depende da mesma meritocracia hierárquica que, por longos períodos históricos, tornou a China o mais rico país do mundo.

   Se lançarmos um olhar sobre a história da China, veremos que o governo chinês era considerado o centro do mundo, cercado por estados tributários – no bom sentido – como Vietnã, Coreia, Okinawa, Tailândia, Camboja, Nepal, Tibete e, em certos períodos, até mesmo o Japão. Digo “no bom sentido” porque esses estados tributários não perdiam sua soberania: tratava-se de relações diplomáticas e comerciais de mútuo benefício, muito diferentes das práticas colonizadoras ocidentais. A China não explorava esses países como ocorreu na colonização da África pela Europa, muito menos como Roma fez ao escravizar povos dominados, e tampouco como os Estados Unidos, que exerceram e ainda exercem sua influência militar e ideológica em países menos desenvolvidos, mantendo-os forçosamente incapazes de se industrializarem, subindo à mesa dos mais ricos.

   A China exportou para esses estados tributários a escrita simbólica, desenvolvimentos técnicos, roupagens e hábitos que só o ancestral sistema chinês dos mandarins era capaz de desenvolver. Com o Japão, essa influência também se estendeu até lá pelo século X. Foi então que uma casta guerreira, a dos samurais, tomou conta do Japão e passou a piratear as águas da China. Daí veio a profunda oposição entre a China e o Japão. Ela teve origem na perversão da versão japonesa do “reino do meio”, a China, assim chamada por se considerar o centro do mundo civilizado lá no século III. Esse é o mesmo Japão imperialista que criou com a China uma dívida moral pelas terríveis ações de agressão feitas na primeira metade do século XX e que até hoje, como títere do imperialismo ocidental, se recusa a reconhecer.

   O resultado dessas considerações é claro: o sistema chinês mostra-se incomparavelmente superior às democracias ocidentais decadentes, que, em geral, se podem comparar cada vez mais à democracia ateniense.

   Se quisermos sobreviver, suspeito que tenhamos de nos submeter à China como estados tributários – no bom sentido – pois versões locais de seu modelo, que tende a dominar o mundo por volta de 2050, se expandirão globalmente. Nesse cenário, poderíamos assistir ao nascimento de uma verdadeira república, como a imaginada por Platão, sob a forma de uma confederação mundial.

   É claro que nada disso acontecerá sem resistências — e elas serão sérias, envolvendo guerras e o constante risco de desaparecimento da humanidade, seja por um conflito nuclear ou por uma catástrofe climática.

   Por exemplo, Xi Jinping já disse que, a partir de 2027, irá reintegrar Taiwan. Podemos imaginar Taiwan economicamente fragilizado com forças navais muito superiores cercando a ilha, exigindo rendição ou enfrentamento. Para evitar um milhão de mortes, o governo de Taiwan acabará se rendendo, tornando-se equivalente a uma Hong Kong, no sentido de manter sua administração interna, mas sem servir a interesses ocidentais.

 Nesse cenário, os Estados Unidos e o Japão já estarão conscientes de que o preço a pagar, se intervirem, será enorme. Acredito que, no fim das contas, eles terão de recorrer ao banco dos BRICS em busca de ajuda não exploratória, algo merecido, já que suas populações terão sido, por tempo demais, ludibriadas pelas elites. Infelizmente, não há parto sem dor.

 

  

WITTGENSTEINS VERIFICATIONISM AND THE GREATEST BLUNDER OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY

  

To be presented at the Wittgenstein Colloquium

 

WITTGENSTEIN’S VERIFICATIONISM AND THE GREATEST BLUNDER OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY

 

 

Summary

This paper reconsiders the legacy of verificationism by returning to its original source in Wittgenstein’s thought. The logical positivists, in their attempt to deploy Wittgenstein’s insight as a weapon against metaphysics, misconstrued his project by recasting it into rigid logico-semantic formulations. In doing so, they constructed a strawman version of verificationism – one that ultimately proved untenable and was subsequently abandoned. The academic influence of their successors ensured that this rejection hardened into “received wisdom”: verificationism came to be regarded as a philosophical dead end.

I argue that this conclusion represents a profound misstep in contemporary analytic philosophy. To move beyond it, we must disentangle Wittgenstein’s original insight from the positivist distortions. What emerges is not a failed semantic theory, but rather a viable framework for a pragmatic investigation of representative language. Wittgenstein’s verificationist idea, properly understood, illuminates the distinction between cognitive meaning and its relation to truth-values, while opening the way to a broader pragmatic analysis of how representative language functions.

The paper proceeds by offering a series of concise responses that a Wittgensteinian verificationist might give to some of the principal objections traditionally raised against the view. In doing so, it seeks to rehabilitate verificationism as a workable and philosophically fruitful approach, once freed from the misinterpretations of logical positivism.

Keywords: Wittgenstein, verificationism, cognitive meaning.

 

My thesis on Wittgensteinian verificationism is the following: As it is well known, he was the creator of the idea (Cf. Glock: 354). The philosophers of logical positivism appropriated his insight as a tool for their attack on metaphysics, attempting to develop it into a general logical-semantic principle. In doing so, they created a rigid  ristraw man that had little to do with the principle Wittgenstein had originally proposed to them. However, they soon realized that this straw man could not stand, concluding that the verification principle was untenable. Since they were influential, this conclusion was passed down as inherited wisdom. As a result, verificationism seems today dead and buried. However, when we turn to a careful consideration of the principle as proposed by Wittgenstein, we see that it remains perfectly defensible. In my judgment, this misunderstanding is the greatest blunder of contemporary analytic philosophy. (Costa 2018, V) In what follows, I will try to show why.

 

1

 

To highlight the contrast, I begin by presenting the formulation of verificationism initially proposed by the logical positivist A. J. Ayer. In his words:

 

The mark of a genuine factual proposition is that some experiential propositions can be deduced from its conjunction to certain other premises without being deducible from these other premises alone” (1952: 38–39).

 

Calling the factual proposition S, the other premises P, and the observational result deduced O, we can formulate this as: “S & P ⊢ O”.

   The problem, soon recognized by Ayer himself, was that the criterion is too liberal, rendering all propositions true. If S is “The Absolute is lazy” and P is “If the Absolute is lazy, then snow is white,” since this implication is true and snow is indeed white, it must then be true that the Absolute is lazy. Moreover, it seems that S cannot be true or false without already being meaningful.

   Just like this first formulation by Ayer, other positivist reformulations of the verification principle proved untenable, as Carl Hempel’s article (1950) has shown.

 

2

 

I now consider how Wittgenstein addressed the question. Here are a few quotations from 1929-1930:

 

The meaning of a sentence (Satz) is its method of verification. (1984b: 29)

A sentence without a way of verification has no sense (Sinn). (1984a: 245)

If two sentences are true or false under the same conditions, they have the same sense. (1984a: 244)

- The method of verification is not a means, a vehicle, but the sense itself. Determine under what conditions a sense must be true or false, thus determine the meaning of a sentence. (1984a: 47)

 

For Wittgenstein, the principle is the full cognitive meaning of a sentence, which is true if it is applied and false if not. The method of verification is the same as the “propositional content”, a version of what Frege called “thought” (Gedanke). Around 1932–35 Wittgenstein presented a particularly illustrative example annotated by Alice Ambrose. It is worth quoting in full:

 

Consideration of how the meaning of a sentence is explained makes clear the connection between meaning and verification. Reading that Cambridge won the boat race, which confirms that ‘Cambridge won,’ is obviously not the meaning, but is connected with it. ‘Cambridge won’ isn’t the disjunction ‘I saw the race, or I read the result, or...’ It’s more complicated. But if we exclude any of the means to check the sentence, we change its meaning. It would be a violation of grammatical rules if we disregarded something that always accompanied a meaning. And if you dropped all the means of verification, it would destroy the meaning. Of course, not every kind of check is actually used to verify ‘Cambridge won,’ nor does any verification give the meaning. The different checks of winning the boat race have different places in the grammar of ‘winning the boat race.’ (2001: 29)

 

The principle appears here as a variety of means or ways of verification which together constitute the meaning of the declarative sentence. If we remove one means of verification, we can remove part of the sentence’s meaning. If we remove all means of verification, it ceases to have meaning.

   Moreover, these means differ in value. Some are fundamental, strongly contributing to the meaning, such as seeing the Cambridge team’s boat win and hearing the referee’s whistle; others contribute less to the meaning, such as hearing someone say that Cambridge won.

   Furthermore, there is a causal relation between verification by watching the race and by hearing about, reading in a newspaper, having seen the trophy at the club... Verification is usually branched, like a tree: the trunk being direct observation, and the branches, dependent on the trunk. Moreover, what one means by an assertive utterance can be aspectually emphasized, for example, when I say I know because someone told me so.

   It is possible, however, to present a more precise general formulation of verificationism à la Wittgenstein, according to which meaning naturally flows from the declarative sentence as ways of verification. To this end, I consider S to be any declarative sentence and call the verification rule the sum of means of verification hierarchically constituting the meaning of S. As a result, the principle of verification or VP becomes:

 

VP (Df.) = the cognitive meaning of a declarative sentence S = the rule of verification for S.

 

Consider the analysis of a simple example using VP regarding the sentence (i) “This piece of metal is magnetized.” Following Wittgenstein’s advice, if we try to explain the meaning of (i), we will find its verification rule understood as a sum of means of verification. One explanation is as follows: “A magnetized piece of metal attracts iron objects; this is a piece of metal; This piece of metal attracts pieces of iron; hence (i) is true. The meaning of (i) is the verification rule, whose effective application equals its assertion. The rule is nothing more than what we understand or mean by (i). Nothing could be more intuitive.

   My conclusion is that Wittgenstein’s principle of verification should not be seen in terms of an essentially logic-semantic principle, as the positivists wished, but rather as constitutive of a pragmatics of factual discourse, showing that we should select and organize the principal types of declarative sentences and analyse their verification rules in an investigation reminiscent of the speech acts theory.

 

3

 

Let us now consider some main criticisms made of the principle of verification in the light of the formulation above (Costa 1984, V).

  The first is that the principle is self-refuting. It is either analytic or synthetic. If it is analytic, then it must be non-informative and its negation contradictory. But since it seems to be neither of these, it is synthetic. Yet if it is synthetic, then it must be verifiable in order to have meaning. But when we try to apply the principle to itself, we see that it is unverifiable. Therefore, it is devoid of meaning!

   A Wittgensteinian response would be that the principle is a general grammatical sentence about the way all of our factual language must work so that its sentences may reach truth-values. My way of presenting this is to say that the VP is, in fact, analytic, for all it does is to make explicit a hidden synonymy between “meaning as the cognitive content of a declarative sentence” and its analytic unpacking as “the rule, i.e., the hierarchized means by which we establish the truth-value of its cognitive content.”

   Analytic sentences of hidden synonymy are common. Consider the sentence “6514 = 3,257 + 3257.” This is an identity sentence, but only a savant would perceive that it is just as analytic as “4 = 2 + 2” or that its negation is contradictory. Therefore, we have good reasons to admit that VP is an analytic principle.

 

4

 

Let us now consider W. V-O. Quine’s objection. It was inspired by Duhem’s holism, according to which it is impossible to confirm a scientific hypothesis apart from the constitutive assumptions of the theory to which it belongs. In Quine’s concise statement: “…our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body.” (1951: 9) From this followed his semantic holism, according to which our language forms a network of meanings that cannot be divided up into verifiability procedures explanatory of the meaning of isolated statements.

   The problem with Quine’s holism is that he seems not to have noticed that the statements of a theory are not all verified at once. The constitutive assumptions of the linguistic field to which the statement belongs are first and separately verified. Finally, the statement we have in mind is verified under the presupposition that those statements have already been verified.

   Consider Galileo’s statement: “Jupiter has four moons.” He verified it by telescopic observation, night after night, of four luminous points to the right and left of Jupiter that systematically moved from one side of the planet to the other. His obvious conclusion was that they were moons of Jupiter. But there were constitutive assumptions that had already been verified, such as the law of the telescope, according to which the power of magnification results from the focal length of the telescope divided by the focal length of the eyepiece, that Jupiter is a planet orbiting the Sun like the Earth, that the Moon is Earth’s satellite, etc. It is obvious that Galilei’s way of verification of Jupiter’s moons comes after all these already verified constitutive assumptions, being therefore detached from them in full correspondence with the meaning of the statement.

 

5

 

I now want to consider the objection of existential-universal asymmetry. The idea is that I can verify “This piece of copper expands when heated”, but I cannot verify “All pieces of copper expand when heated”, since in order to do so, I would have to observe the heating of all pieces of copper in the world. This finding makes the universal laws of physics unverifiable.

   The answer lies in the distinction between what is absolutely certain and what is practically certain, and in the false belief that in order to be conclusive, one must be absolutely certain. Consider the sentence “I affirm that 2 + 2 = 4.” This sentence is absolutely certain. Now consider: “I affirm that all pieces of copper expand when heated.” This sentence is practically certain. It has been sufficiently verified to be beyond doubt. Of course, it remains probabilistic. Even so, it is conclusive. The same with the laws of the universe.

 

6

 

Let us now consider the issue of arbitrary indirectness. Consider the sentence “The mass of an electron is 9.109 x 10 kg raised to the thirty-first negative power.’ Cases like this force us to admit that many verifiability rules are based on indirect observation. But how can we distinguish direct from indirect observation? Is this not a desperately confusing distinction? (Lycan 2000: 121).

   To this, one could answer that our assertoric sentences are always made within what Wittgenstein called practices, language games, linguistic regions. Consequently, our distinction between direct and indirect observations should always be taken against the background of a linguistic practice, without assuming the practice of our everyday observation as the only true one.

  Thus, consider the bacteriologist’s linguistic practice. She will say that she verifies a cell with deformations directly in her microscope, but that she can, in this way, indirectly verify that there are víruses infecting the cell. Consider now the archaeologist’s linguistic praxis. They will argue they indirectly know that humans inhabited North America 21,000–23,000 years ago because of the direct Discovery of human footprints in New Mexico. My conclusion is that there is no problem in distinguishing between direct and indirect verification, provided that we take into account the verification’s linguistic practice.

 

7

 

There are also empirical counterexamples. I consider only one, proposed by Michael Dummett (1978: 148 ff): “John was courageous”, when John died without having had any opportunity of demonstrating courage. Assuming that the only way to verify that John was courageous would be by observing his behavior, this sentence seems unverifiable. Hence, it should be senseless. But it seems meaningful. The answer is that this sentence has a grammatical meaning but no cognitive meaning. To make this clear, suppose you go on a hike in a remote place and find written on a stone, “John loves Mary”. This sentence has a grammatical meaning, but as you do not know which John and Mary were, you cannot give it any cognitive meaning.

 

 

8

 

Now I wish to consider two opposing cases of formal sentences that are said to be meaningful but unverifiable. Verification here means proof based on axioms. Consider Goldbach’s conjecture:

 

G: Every even number greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of

two prime numbers.

 

The objection is that this conjecture has cognitive meaning, though no one has yet found a proof that verifies it. Our answer is: you are reading a conjecture as if it were a theorem. As a conjecture, its true form is: “It is plausible that G”. Indeed, G is plausible because until now all prime numbers we have found as expressing the sum of two primes. Hence, as a conjecture, G is true, as it has been verified.

   Consider now the case of Fermat’s last theorem:

 

F: There are no three positive integers x, y, and z that satisfy the

equation xⁿ + yⁿ = zⁿ, if n is greater than 2.

 

It was only proven in 1995 by Andrew Williams. Now, one could argue that before 1995 the theorem existed and was meaningful, though there was no verification in sight. Our answer is that to say that F was a theorem before 1995 was a misnomer. It was only a conjecture. Its real form was “It is plausible that F”. In fact, the origin of the misname was Fermat himself, since he jokingly wrote that he had a proof of F that he couldn’t put on paper since the margins of his notebook were too narrow.

 

9

 

The last objection I would like to answer here comes from Quine’s rejection of the distinction between analytic and synthetic. As I take the verification principle as analytical, it makes sense to address this possible charge.

   Quine defined an analytical sentence in a Fregean way as tautological (true by logical constraints) or shown as tautological by the replacement of its non-logical terms with cognitive synonyms. However, he found the word ‘synonymous’ in need of explanation. His first answer was that a synonym is a word that can be replaced by another in all contexts salva veritate. However, this answer does not work in all cases: “creature with heart” and “creature with kidney” are not synonymous, but can be replaced in all contexts salva veritate, since their extensions are the same.

   In a further attempt to define analyticity, Quine made an appeal to the modal notion of necessity: “Bachelors are unmarried males” is analytic if and only if necessarily, bachelors are unmarried males. But he also saw that the usual notion of necessity does not cover all cases. Phrases like ‘equilateral triangle’ and ‘equiangular triangle’ necessarily have the same extension, but are not synonyms. Consequently, we must define ‘necessary’, in this case, as the specific necessity of analytic statements, so that the concept can be applied in all possible circumstances... However, the ‘necessity of analyticity’ is an obscure notion, if it really exists. Dissatisfied, Quine concluded that any attempt to explain analyticity, if not circular, “has the form, figuratively speaking, of a closed curve in space.” (Quine 1951: 8)

   A well-known response to Quine is that a word could not be defined by words that do not belong to its specific field. We do not define words belonging to ornitology using words from quantum physics and vice versa; thus, we should not try to define analyticity by means of words like necessity.

   My objection is that Quine’s attempt took the wrong turn. It seems more sensible to take recourse to the dictionaries’ definitions like:

 

Synonymous = words of the same language that have the same or nearly the same meaning (Webster 1995)

 

This can be read as saying that two words are synonymous if they have similar (identical or nearly identical) meaning-definitions that give their meanings back.

  “A creature with a heart” and “a creature with a kidney” are not synonymous, since in the first case the definition is of an animal that has an organ to pump the blood, while in the second is of an animal with an organ to clean the blood. An ‘equilateral triangle’ and ‘an equiangular triangle’ are not synonymous because the former is defined as a triangle whose three sides are equal, while the latter is defined as a triangle whose three internal angles are congruent with each other.

   Moreover, since meaning-definitions are made to have the same meaning as their definienda, they are also synonymous. Hence, we can replace Quine’s flawed definition of analyticity with a more adequate definition, expecting that the tautologies generated by analytic statements only require replacement by their meaning-definitions.

   This is the case with the sentence “Bachelors are unmarried adult males”. Defining bachelor as “an unmarried adult male” and replacing the subject ‘bachelor’ with its definition, we produce the tautology “Unmarried adult males are unmarried adult males”. Of course, our natural language is inherently and purposefully vague. What precisely is a marriage, or a male? At what age can a male be considered an adult? Higher precision here would demand stipulation.

   We should say the same about the definition of verification. Definiendum and definiens are here synonymous by precise similarity, not by formal identity. And so it is good. After all, as Aristotle wrote: “It is the mark of an educated man to seek precision only so far as the nature of the subject admits.” (1985: 1094b).

 

 

 

REFERENCES

 

Ayer, A. J. (1952). Language, Truth, and Logic. New York: Dover.

Aristotle (1985). Nicomachean Ethics, in The Complete Works of Aristotle. Ed. J. Barnes (Princeton University Press, 1985).

Costa, Claudio (2018). Philosophical Semantics: Reintegrating Theoretical Philosophy. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Dummett, Michael (1978). Truth and Other Enigmas. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

Glock, H-J (2010). Wittgenstein’s Lexicon. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.

Harkaway & Co. (1995). Webster’s New Encyclopedic Dictionary. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal.

Hempel, Carl (1959) “The Empiricist Criterion of Meaning”, in A. J. Ayer (ed.) Logical Positivism. New York: Free Press. First published under the title “Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning”, in The review internationale de philosophie, vol. 11, pp. 41-63.

Lycan (2000). Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction. London: Routledge.

Quine, W. V. O. “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, Philosophical Review 1951, 60 (1), 20-43.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1984a). Wittgenstein und der Wiener Kreis. Werkausgabe Band 3, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1984b) Philosophische Bemerkungen. Werkausgabe Band 2, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig (2002). Wittgenstein’s Lectures – Cambridge 1932-1935. Ed. Alice Ambrose, New York: Prometheus Books.

 

 

A NOTE ON SKEPTICISM ABOUT RULES

unpublished note  

A NOTE ON SKEPTICISM ABOUT RULES

 

Summary:

The aim of this short note is to present a decisive solution to the paradox proposed by Wittgenstein and Kripke concerning the impossibility of learning a rule due do the infinite number of possible interpretations of what is being teaching. The point was already noted by Craig DeLancey, and I am only calling attention to its importance. If the defended solution is correct, as it seems evident to me, then the paradox receives an easy solution, and the analysis of meaning is saved.

 

Key-Words:

Following a rule, Kripke, Wittgenstein, paradox, meaning

 

One could say that Wittgenstein (1984c, sec. 185 f.) formulated a skeptical riddle that endangers the possibility of an ongoing common interpretation of rules and, consequently, the idea that our language may work as a system of rules, and in this way threatens the proper concept of meaning. A similar skeptical riddle was imaginatively formulated by Saul Kripke (1982, Ch. 1). Answering this riddle interests us here because if the argument were correct, it could imply that it is a mistake to accept that there are verifiability rules responsible for the cognitive meanings of sentences.

   Wittgenstein introduced his riddle with the following example. Let’s say that a person learns a rule to add 2 to natural numbers. If you give him the number 6, he adds 2 and writes the number 8. If you give him the number 73, he adds 2, writing the number 75... But imagine that for the first time he is presented with a larger number, say the number 1,000, and that he then writes the number 2,004. If you ask why he did this, he responds that she understood that he should add 2 up to the number 1,000, 4 up to 2,000, 6 up to 3,000, etc. (1984, sec. 185). According to Kripke’s version, a person learns the rule of addition, and it works well for additions with numbers below 57. But when he performs additions with larger numbers, the result is always 5. So for him 59 + 67 = 5… This occurs because she understood ‘plus’ as the rule ‘quus,’ according to which ‘x quus y = x + y if {x, y} < 57, otherwise 5’ (1982: 9).

   What these examples demonstrate is that a rule can always be interpreted differently from the way it was intended, no matter how many specifications we include in our instructions for using the rule, since these instructions can also be differently interpreted. The consequence is that we cannot be assured that everyone will follow our rules in a similar way or that people will continue to coordinate their actions based on them. And as meaning depends upon following rules, we cannot be certain about the meanings of the expressions we use. How could we be certain, in the exemplified cases, of the respective meanings of ‘add two’ and ‘plus’? 

   In my view, neither Wittgenstein nor Kripke gives a satisfactory answer to the riddle. Both assume a Humean-kind skeptical solution. Wittgenstein’s answer can be interpreted as saying that we follow rules blindly, as a result of training in the conventions of our social practices (1984 sec. 201, 202, 211, 219). Kripke’s answer is similar: following a rule is justified not by truth-conditions derived from correct interpretation, but by assertability conditions (1982: 74) based on the fact that any other user in the same language community can assert that the rule follower ‘passes the tests for rule following applied to any member of the community’ (1982: 110). However, against both one could insist that the simple fact that in our community we have so far openly coordinated our linguistic activity according to rules does not imply that these coordinations need to work this way, and does not even imply that they should continue to work this way, which shows that the riddle remains basically unsolved.

   For my part, I always thought that the ‘paradox’ had a more straightforward solution. A central point can be seen as in some way suggested by Wittgenstein’s philosophy, namely, that we learn rules in a similar way because we share a similar human nature modelled in our form of life (Costa 1990: 64-66).  This makes it easy for us to interpret the rules we are taught in the same manner, and means that we must also be naturally endowed with innate, internal corrective mechanisms able to reinforce agreement.

   I think, however, that if we follow this path further, a decisive solution of the riddle can be found in Craig DeLancey (2004). According to him, we are biologically predisposed to construct and interpret statements in the most economical way possible. Or, as we could also say, we are innately disposed to put in practice the following principle of simplicity as a pragmatic maxim:

 

PS: We should interpret (and establish) a semantic rule in the simplest way possible.

 

Because of this principle, we prefer to maintain the interpretation of the rule ‘add 2’ in its usual form, instead of complicating it with the further condition that we should add twice two after each thousand. And because of the same principle, we prefer to interpret the rule of addition as a ‘plus’ instead of a ‘quus’ addition, because with the ‘quus’ addition we would complicate the interpretation by adding the further condition that any sum with numbers above 57 would give as a result the number 5. The application of such a principle of simplicity allows us to harmonize our interpretations of semantic rules, thus solving the riddle.[1]

   One might ask: what warrants the assumed similarity of human nature or that we are innately equipped to develop such a heuristic principle of simplicity? The obvious answer lies in the appeal to Darwinian evolution. Over long periods of time, a process of natural selection has harmonized our learning capacities, eliminating individuals with deviant, less practical dispositions. Thus, within our human way of life the principle of simplicity offers a plausible explanation of our capacity to share a sufficiently similar understanding and meaning of semantic rules. If we add to this the assumption that human nature and recurring patterns in the world will not change in the future, we can be confident in the expectation that people will not deviate from the semantic rules they have learned. Of course, underlying this last assumption is Hume’s much more defiant criticism of induction, which might remain a hidden source of uneasiness. But this is a further issue that goes beyond our present concerns.

   Summarizing: Our shared interpretation of learned rules only seems puzzling if we insist on ignoring the implications of the theory of evolution, which supports the principle of simplicity. By ignoring considerations like these, we tend to ask ourselves (as Wittgenstein and Kripke did) how it is possible that these rules are and continue to be interpreted and applied in a similar manner by other human beings, losing ourselves within a maze of philosophical perplexities. For a similar reason, modern pre-Darwinian philosophers like Leibniz wondered that our minds are such that we are able to understand each other, appealing to the Creator as producing the necessary harmony among human souls. The puzzle about understanding how to follow a rule arises from this same old perplexity.

 

 

REFERENCES:

 

Costa, C. (1990). Wittgensteins Beitrag zu einer sprachphilosophischen Semantik. Konstanz: Hartung-Gorre Verlag.

 DeLancey, C. (2004). ‘Meaning Naturalism, Meaning Irrealism, and the Works of Language.’ Synthese 154 (2), 231-257.

Kripke, S. (1982). Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language: An Elementary Exposition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wittgenstein, L. (1994). Philosophische Untersuchungen (Philosophical Investigations), Werkausgabe Band 1. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

 

 

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[1] DeLancey clarifies ‘simplicity’ by remarking that non-deviant interpretations are formally more compressible than the deviant interpretations considered by Wittgenstein and Kripke. Moreover, a Turing machine would need to have a more complex and longer program in order to process these deviant interpretations.