Wittgensteins, Heideggers, and Gadamers, Oh My!

However, Sellars’ rejection of the Myth of the Given complicates this arrangement. Put schematically, he proposes that conceptual understanding, including the understanding of perceptual phenomena, relies on training in what he calls “the game of giving and asking for reasons,” which allows the trainee entrance into “the space of reasons.” Sellars charges that a range of philosophical approaches, particularly those travelling under the heading “empiricism,” illicitly ascribe to non-language using humans capacities they could only possess after they have learned language. Thus language for Sellars is conceptually prior to perception, at least as we human adults perceive, and one can easily extend this line of thinking to contend that language is likewise prior to praxis. In strictly temporal terms some sort of perception and praxis must supercede human language acquisition, but these sorts must, per Sellars, be impoverished in concepts, and hence in meaning, relative to that experienced by language-users.

Cristina Lafont’s Heidegger, Language, and World-Disclosure is quite a book. Against both those (such as Gethmann) (p. 12) who see Being and Time as merely an adjustment from the philosophy of consciousness (p. 2, note 3)(particularly, of course, as propogated by Husserl) and those (such as Okrent in Heidegger’s Pragmatism, Dreyfus in Being-in-the-World, Lorenz and Mittelstrass in “Die Hintergehbarkeit der Sprache,” and, presumably, Schatzki and perhaps Rorty and those Pittsburgh Hegelians who take note of Heidegger) who interpret the early Heidegger as some sort of pragmatist (p. 12), Lafont marshalls an impressive range of quotations from a number of sources, particularly Heidegger’s lectures from the 1920s but also from several of his works after his Kehre, to argue that language, rather than Dasein or praxis, was always the “house of Being” for Heidegger, though at times in his early writings he lost sight of this commitment.

Ultimately Lafont will wish to indict Heidegger for the unfortunate reification of language that she believes his resulting “linguistic idealism” commits him to, and it is unclear to me what position Lafont herself would ultimately prefer. Her focus is largely exegetical, and so from the fact that she thinks that the early Heidegger committed himself to linguistic idealism in lieu of some sort of practice theory it does not follow that Lafont herself would reject the latter view. That matter remains unclear. In any case, in line with things I have said on this blog before, whether or not Lafont is correct about the early Heidegger’s views is of less interest to me than how she articulates the case for language as the source of human meaning.

She begins by noting that in Being and Time Heidegger attempts to overcome the classic subject-object opposition while still remaining, perhaps against his own ultimate inclinations, within that framework. He does this by reconceiving the subject as Dasein, objects as equipment, and adding the world to this arrangement: hence subject/object gives way to Dasein/world/equipment. Lafont notes that this attempt to escape the transcendentalist enterprise, via the substitution of understanding for perception, hinges on the efficacy of the ontological difference between the ontic (things, including Dasein) and the ontological (Dasein alone). But Lafont argues that even in the context of Being and Time it becomes repeatedly clear, no matter how much Heidegger tries to contend otherwise, that language, too, is like Dasein in being both ontic and ontological. In other words, Lafont contends that even the early Heidegger is committed to the claim that the understandings that comprise the world into which each Dasein finds him or herself always already thrown are at root linguistic.

Even in the pre-thematic dealings with equipment characteristic of life in the Heideggerian workshop, linguistic signs take precendence. Chastizing Heidegger a bit in passing for attempting to treat language as a mere tool, in keeping with the philosophy of consciousness he is trying to overcome (but also in keeping with the more pragmatic approaches derived from Heidegger to which Lafont pays little attention), Lafont argues that the fact that “the being of equipment…always [belongs (to)] a totality of equipment” is “not constituted by equipment itself” (p. 32). Instead, Lafont urges, Heidegger’s immediately following analysis shows, almost against his will, how this referential totality is disclosed by the sign, which is “an item of equipment which explicitly raises a totality of equipment into our circumspection so that together with it the worldly totality of equipment announces itself” (p. 34, quoting BT, p. 110).

There’s much going on here that will take a while to unpack. I think that Lafont is arguing that early Heidegger held, though he did not fully appreciate the implications of this conviction until later, that language discloses to Dasein even those world-ly relations at play in wordless, ready-to-hand, transparent coping. We are close here to the repeated theme, taken up by Charles Taylor and Robert Brandom among many others, of language’s power to articulate, or make explicit, that which is somehow already there, implicitly (inarticulately), in praxis. Lafont’s Heidegger goes a large step further, however, to allege that what language really does is to disclose possibilities of being that would, absent language, never appear at all. This is a much stronger claim, arguably parallel to, though quite different from, Sellars’s critique of the Myth of the Given. Furthermore, both of these critiques seem to me to be oriented toward so-called philosophies of consciousness, and thus not necessarily to touch on praxis theories. It might help to sketch these three possibilities:

1. Philosophies of Constitutive Consciousness — Cartesianism, Husserlian Phenomenology, and early analytic empiricisms;

2. Philosophies of Constitutive Language — Sellars and Lafont’s Heidegger; and

3. Philosophies of Constitutive Praxis — Taylor, Dreyfus, Schatzki, and Heidegger and Wittgenstein as interpreted by each of them.

The challenges for approaches of type 3 are (a) showing how they avoid 2’s critique of 1 (b)successfully overcoming 1 themselves, and (c) clarifying the relationship between praxis and language. For this article we’ve set (c) as our main task. Accomplishing (a) and (b) here as well might make the project too big, but I think it could be done in principle.

The 1997 edition of Wilfrid Sellars’ Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (originally published in 1956) includes an introduction by Richard Rorty and an extensive study guide by Robert Brandom. Rorty suggests early in his piece that Sellars’ text joins two other major works of the 1950s, Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empicism” and Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, as the signposts on analytic philosophy’s road from early 20th century empiricism to late 20th century “post-positivism.” Whatever the merits of Rorty’s analysis here (and I see no reason to disagree), it is intriguing for a Wittgensteinian such as me to note Sellars’ frequent oblique references to his Austro-British contemporary, both affirmative and critical, many of which Brandom, as is his wont, makes explicit. In their commitment to a broadly pragmatic conception of language and meaning Wittgenstein and Sellars are clearly kindred spirits. In the details, however, lurk questions.  Sellarsian interpretations of Wittgenstein are common in the work of the Pittsburgh Hegelians, and since I am rather well disposed toward most of their exegetical claims and, as I stated in an earlier post, am more interested in the concept of primal praxis than in the matter of the extent to which Wittgenstein ever did or would have affirmed such a concept, I see no reason to quibble over exactly which paragraphs of the Philosophical Investigations reveal Ludwig’s truest intentions. Instead, let’s move on to Sellars’ attempted refutation of “The Myth of the Given” and to seeing how his arguments relate to the project as I’ve defined it thus far.

Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind is a critique of the widespread philosophical presupposition that pre-linguistic perception and experience are already meaningful in the way that language-influenced perception and experience are. What is allegedly given is conceptually formed awareness of objects and events, or what Brandom terms “sapience,” as contrasted with the non-conceptual awareness that travels under the heading “sentience.” Sellars contends that only by being initiated into and trained in the language games of giving and asking for reasons, as well as those further language games that presuppose such reasoning, does one enter “the space of reasons.” In this space one’s perceptions, actions, thoughts, and utterances have normative force. Without the requisite normative training one is actually merely sentient, engaging with the world not necessarily in a merely mechanical way, but yet not in a conceptual way. Conceptual awareness is not given. It must be achieved.

Sellars counters the Cartesian version of the Myth of the Given by challenging the supposed incorrigibility of “looks” language games. That is, to use an anachronistic framework, Descartes proposed that looks-talk was conceptually prior to is-talk. For example, I can be wrong about whether that apple is red, but I cannot be wrong about whether that apple looks red to me. Furthermore, Cartesianism was premised on the promise that my perception of the apple could ultimately, somehow, guarantee the fact of the apple’s actual redness. Whether or not this check ever gets cashed, however, Descartes would cling to the conviction that perception epistemologically precedes reality.

Strikingly, Sellars contends that Descartes had this relation precisely backward: reality epistemologically precedes perception. More precisely, is-talk is conceptually prior to looks-talk. “That apple looks red” makes no sense unless it would also make sense (whether the statement is correct or not) to say, “That apple is red.” As Brandom puts it, the former statement is just the latter statement absent a full endorsement. “That apple looks red” does commit me to the existence of the apple, but not to its redness, whereas “I think I see a red apple” would revoke even that commitment, and “That apple is red” would accept responsibility for all relevant implications. Somewhat amusingly, Brandom notes that an utterance such as “It seems to me that that apple looks red to me” is redundant because the cautious “it seems to me” has no work to do: the word “looks” has already withheld all there is to withhold here. These remarks clarify what it means to dwell in the space of reasons. When one does have the post-Cartesian courage to endorse one’s claims, one thus gains title to a potentially endless array of logical obligations and entitlements. To take a plausible example, if that apple is red then it is ripe, and would consequently make a good snack, and so I should pick it and take it to my hungry sister. Under the right circumstances I may take on this commitment whether I choose to accept it or not, and other language-users can take note of my commitment, simply by hearing me say, “That apple is red,” even if I do not. To be a language-user, to be sapient, is to live an inferential life.

Many have noted that Husserlian phenomenology reinforces the Myth of the Given.  The same would seem true as well of primal praxis. Here we return to the meaning of “meaning.” (Warning: the following sentence colorfully mixes at least two and maybe three or more philosophical idioms) If claiming that the language-free engagement with equipmental totalities can be meaningful entails presuming that Dasein can function sapiently absent appropriate training in language-games (particularly those of giving-and-asking-for-reasons), then primal praxis is guilty of the same crime as Husserl and other “empiricists.” If on the contrary languageless Dasein’s meaningful being-in-the-world amounts merely to an elaborate pre-conceptual sentience, no such crime has been committed. More precisely and thoroughly, something must give in one of three ways: either primal practioners are not sapient, primal praxis illicitly presumes a sapience it cannot found, or Sellars is wrong to tie sapience so tightly to language games.