the (bad?) art of metaphysics
So I'm going to be sitting in on a philosophy of language seminar at UPitt, given by Robert Brandom. The first class was yesterday and very exciting -- Brandom has a new theory/formalism of "pragmatic metalanguages" that he wants to debug before giving the Locke Lectures next year. I won't try to relate the introduction he gave yesterday, because I only have a tiny clue at this point where he's going.
But I just read one of the readings on the website: Rudolf Carnap's "The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language". Some of it is too militant for me---Carnap sets out a very rigid definition of what determines the meaning of a word, and then uses it to argue that the vocabulary of metaphysics (a category he defines very broadly, including ethics for example) is meaningless. This definition is very restrictive, though---the meaning of a word is set by its empirical criteria, or alternatively by conditions for when a particular "elementary sentence" involving the word can be asserted/verified---and I think if you take the common-language use of "meaningful" then you wouldn't say that all statements of metaphysics are meaningless.[Though there's actually an addendum remark he added 25 years later where he says explicitly that in this essay he was using the word "meaning" in a sense that ruled out the "non-cognitive (expressive) meaning components, e.g. emotive and motivative" which admittedly can be distinguished from "cognitive meaning". The thesis of the essay was "thus to be understood in the sense that they have no cognitive meaning, no assertive content."] But section 7 of the essay was really interesting to me because it set out a point of view that I've been thinking about a lot recently (after reading Wittgenstein) and leaning towards: "the (pseudo) statements of metaphysics do not serve for the description of states of affairs, neither existing ones (in that case they would be true statements) nor non-existing ones (in that case they would be at least false statements). They serve for the expression of the general attitude of a person towards life [german: Lebenseinstellung, Lebensgefuehl]."
I'm going to quote a long passage (see the link above for a reference to this translation):
Perhaps we may assume that metaphysics originated from mythology.... Primitive man endeavors to conciliate the threatening demon of earthquakes, or he worships the deity of the fertile rains in gratitude. Here we confront personifications of natural phenomena, which are the quasi-poetic expression of man's emotional relationship to his environment. The heritage of mythology is bequeathed on the one hand to poetry, which produces and intensifies the effects of mythology on life in a deliberate way; on the other hand, it is handed down to theology, which develops mythology into a system. Which, now, is the historical role of metaphysics? Perhaps we may regard it as a substitute for theology on the level of systematic, conceptual thinking. The (supposedly) transcendent sources of knowledge of theology are here replaced by natural, yet supposedly trans-empirical sources of knowledge. On closer inspection the same content as that of mythology is here still recognizable behind the repeatedly varied dressing: we find that metaphysics also arises from the need to give expression to a man's attitude in life, his emotional and volitional reaction to the environment, to society, to the tasks to which he devotes himself, to the misfortunes that befall him. This attitude manifest itself, unconsciously as a rule, in everything a man does or says. It also impresses itself on his facial features, perhaps even on the character of his gait. Many people, now, feel a desire to create over and above these manifestations a special expression of their attitude, through which it might become visible in a more succinct and penetrating way. If they have artistic talent they are able to express themselves by producing a work of art. Many writers have already clarified the way in which the basic attitude is manifested through the style and manner of a work of art.... What is here essential for our considerations is only the fact that art is an adequate, metaphysics an inadequate means for the expression of the basic attitude. Of course, there need be no intrinsic objection to one's using any means of expression one likes. But in the case of metaphysics we find this situation: through the form of its works it pretends to be something that it is not. The form in question is that of a system of statements which are apparently related as premises and conclusions, that is, the form a theory...whereas, as we have seen, there is no such content.
I wonder what sort of responses philosophers have made to this over the years. I'm also curious what people here think about it. As I said, this is basically the point of view I've been drifting towards about most metaphysics (e.g. a statement like "everything that happens, happens by grace of God" usually means roughly "I am pious", and "irrational numbers do not exist" means "I find finitary mathematics more aesthetically pleasing"). [thoughts ex post post: this parenthetical is sort of inflammatory, especially the dig about irrational number phobists. I don't really mean to be reductionist about people's reductionism -- there are other things people could mean in using the above statements. But the general claim is that when people use metaphysical language they could be doing anything *except* communicating what they purport to be. And use of metaphysical language seems to fulfil some psychological need.]
One more passage, for haydensphere cf. stuff we talked about last month:
Our conjecture that metaphysics is a substitute, albeit an inadequate one, for art, seems to be further confirmed by the fact that the metaphysician who perhaps had artistic talent to the highest degree, viz. Nietzsche, almost entirely avoided the error of that confusion. A large part of his work has predominantly empirical content. We find there, for instance, historical analyses of specific artistic phenomena, or an historical-psychological analysis of morals. In the work, however, in which he expresses most strongly that which others express through metaphysics or ethics, in Thus Spake Zarathustra, he does not choose the misleading theoretical form, but openly the form of art, of poetry.
But I just read one of the readings on the website: Rudolf Carnap's "The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language". Some of it is too militant for me---Carnap sets out a very rigid definition of what determines the meaning of a word, and then uses it to argue that the vocabulary of metaphysics (a category he defines very broadly, including ethics for example) is meaningless. This definition is very restrictive, though---the meaning of a word is set by its empirical criteria, or alternatively by conditions for when a particular "elementary sentence" involving the word can be asserted/verified---and I think if you take the common-language use of "meaningful" then you wouldn't say that all statements of metaphysics are meaningless.[Though there's actually an addendum remark he added 25 years later where he says explicitly that in this essay he was using the word "meaning" in a sense that ruled out the "non-cognitive (expressive) meaning components, e.g. emotive and motivative" which admittedly can be distinguished from "cognitive meaning". The thesis of the essay was "thus to be understood in the sense that they have no cognitive meaning, no assertive content."] But section 7 of the essay was really interesting to me because it set out a point of view that I've been thinking about a lot recently (after reading Wittgenstein) and leaning towards: "the (pseudo) statements of metaphysics do not serve for the description of states of affairs, neither existing ones (in that case they would be true statements) nor non-existing ones (in that case they would be at least false statements). They serve for the expression of the general attitude of a person towards life [german: Lebenseinstellung, Lebensgefuehl]."
I'm going to quote a long passage (see the link above for a reference to this translation):
Perhaps we may assume that metaphysics originated from mythology.... Primitive man endeavors to conciliate the threatening demon of earthquakes, or he worships the deity of the fertile rains in gratitude. Here we confront personifications of natural phenomena, which are the quasi-poetic expression of man's emotional relationship to his environment. The heritage of mythology is bequeathed on the one hand to poetry, which produces and intensifies the effects of mythology on life in a deliberate way; on the other hand, it is handed down to theology, which develops mythology into a system. Which, now, is the historical role of metaphysics? Perhaps we may regard it as a substitute for theology on the level of systematic, conceptual thinking. The (supposedly) transcendent sources of knowledge of theology are here replaced by natural, yet supposedly trans-empirical sources of knowledge. On closer inspection the same content as that of mythology is here still recognizable behind the repeatedly varied dressing: we find that metaphysics also arises from the need to give expression to a man's attitude in life, his emotional and volitional reaction to the environment, to society, to the tasks to which he devotes himself, to the misfortunes that befall him. This attitude manifest itself, unconsciously as a rule, in everything a man does or says. It also impresses itself on his facial features, perhaps even on the character of his gait. Many people, now, feel a desire to create over and above these manifestations a special expression of their attitude, through which it might become visible in a more succinct and penetrating way. If they have artistic talent they are able to express themselves by producing a work of art. Many writers have already clarified the way in which the basic attitude is manifested through the style and manner of a work of art.... What is here essential for our considerations is only the fact that art is an adequate, metaphysics an inadequate means for the expression of the basic attitude. Of course, there need be no intrinsic objection to one's using any means of expression one likes. But in the case of metaphysics we find this situation: through the form of its works it pretends to be something that it is not. The form in question is that of a system of statements which are apparently related as premises and conclusions, that is, the form a theory...whereas, as we have seen, there is no such content.
I wonder what sort of responses philosophers have made to this over the years. I'm also curious what people here think about it. As I said, this is basically the point of view I've been drifting towards about most metaphysics (e.g. a statement like "everything that happens, happens by grace of God" usually means roughly "I am pious", and "irrational numbers do not exist" means "I find finitary mathematics more aesthetically pleasing"). [thoughts ex post post: this parenthetical is sort of inflammatory, especially the dig about irrational number phobists. I don't really mean to be reductionist about people's reductionism -- there are other things people could mean in using the above statements. But the general claim is that when people use metaphysical language they could be doing anything *except* communicating what they purport to be. And use of metaphysical language seems to fulfil some psychological need.]
One more passage, for haydensphere cf. stuff we talked about last month:
Our conjecture that metaphysics is a substitute, albeit an inadequate one, for art, seems to be further confirmed by the fact that the metaphysician who perhaps had artistic talent to the highest degree, viz. Nietzsche, almost entirely avoided the error of that confusion. A large part of his work has predominantly empirical content. We find there, for instance, historical analyses of specific artistic phenomena, or an historical-psychological analysis of morals. In the work, however, in which he expresses most strongly that which others express through metaphysics or ethics, in Thus Spake Zarathustra, he does not choose the misleading theoretical form, but openly the form of art, of poetry.