Cogency v2 n2

COGENCY Vol. 2, N0. 2, Spring 2010
unshakable foundations. In this picture we find the roots of the following
idea: “‘You can’t go on having one thing resting on another; in the end there
must be something resting on itself.’ (The a priori) Something firm in itself”
(PO, p. 407). To this Wittgenstein gives this curt (but we think reasonable)
response: “I propose to drop this mode of speech as it leads to puzzlements”
(ibid.). Notice that Wittgenstein does not engage in a refutation of a
thesis through argument, but rather proposes the changing of a conceptual
picture – the very way a subject is conceived – by changing the language
applied to the subject. His reasons (implicit in this case) are that the problems
(disquietudes) arising from the first picture do not arise in the second;
thus the problem is dissolved–rather than solved through the discovery and
presentation of evidence.
To sketch another example: Wittgenstein recommended comparing mathematical
equations to rules, rather than – as their surface grammar suggests
– to truth-claims. For this, he urged, would help us escape the disquieting
back-and-forth debate over what these propositions might be about –
while at the same time highlighting their important normative function in
practices that permeate our lives as rational animals. Here again Wittgenstein
is encouraging philosophers to put aside a captivating but misleading comparison
or “picture.”
Philosophical argumentation of the kind Wittgenstein practiced and recommended
is inherently persuasive – its function is dialectical rather than
demonstrative. It serves, not to establish a conclusion, but to reorient our
thinking. Rather than proving something (e.g., a “platonic” as contrasted
with a conceptualist theory of numbers), Wittgenstein offered philosophy a
“means of rescue” from its metaphysical “fly-bottles.” 31 Admittedly, the persuasions
found in his writings are not rational in the sense of “certifiable
within standard rules of deductive and inductive inference.” But “rational”
surely has a broader sense than that. Wittgenstenians will call it a family
resemblance term and argue for including their philosophical persuasions
in the family. And a few of us will even suggest that some of “what happens
31
The “theraputic,” ad hoc, and (we think) appropriately ad hominem character of philosophical
argumentation as Wittgenstein practiced it is suggested by the following striking
remark from CV, p. 43c, 1942: “At present we are combating a trend. But this trend will die
out, superseded by others, and then the way we are arguing against it will no longer be
understood; people will not see why all this needed saying.”
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