Strengths of Realism

 

 

Realism and anti-realism are conventionally presented as dichotomous: you must be either one or the other with nothing in between. This is supposed true across the board, from material objects to moral values. But on reflection the dichotomy is too simple—there are finer distinctions to capture. We can approach the matter by examining the paradigm case: realism and anti-realism about the external world. What is it to be a realist about material objects? Several points might be mentioned: propositions about material objects must be logically independent of propositions about sense experience; material objects must be the cause of sense experiences; material objects cannot be mental constructions of any kind; material objects must differ in their intrinsic nature from sense experiences; material objects must exist in a different space (or region of space) from that occupied by sense experiences; material objects must pre-exist and post-exist sense experiences; material objects must have properties that sense experience does not reveal or perhaps cannot reveal. These points affirm that material objects in no way reduce to or depend upon sense experiences; and they are precisely what is denied by someone who cleaves to an anti-realist view of them. So realism here consists in a conjunction of separate claims that are not necessarily jointly true. Consider Berkley’s idealism: he regards so-called material objects as ideas in the mind of God that can exist whether we have corresponding ideas or not, but he does not suppose that they have an intrinsically different nature from sense experiences, since that is what they are. He also believes they exist in a space separate from that occupied by human minds, but he doesn’t think they pre-exist existence in God’s mind. Nor does he hold that propositions about material objects are logically independent of propositions about God’s mind. So is Berkeley a realist or an anti-realist? The question has no sensible answer: he accepts some of the claims of the cluster I mentioned but not all. It seems right to say that he is not so strong a realist as someone who accepts all the claims of the cluster but that he is also not an outright anti-realist who rejects all of them. We might say (not very illuminatingly) that he is a weak realist about material objects, and then go on to specify exactly what claims he accepts and what he rejects. The traditional dichotomy is just too crude to capture the full range of metaphysical opinion in this case.

            Or consider realism and anti-realism about the mind itself. You can hold that there is nothing in the mind except what shows itself in actual behavior; or you can weaken this to maintain that mental states consist in dispositions to behavior; or you can identify mental states with brain states that underlie such dispositions; or you can hold that it must be at least logically possible to manifest a mental state behaviorally. Correspondingly, you can assert that mental states exist in a separate immaterial substance that is logically independent of the body and behavior, or you can weaken this position in various ways. The result is a spectrum of possible positions not a simple dichotomy. Some positions are intuitively more realist than others. The closer the position gets to the analogous position with respect to material objects the more or less realist it becomes (existing in a separate space and having a different intrinsic nature make the position strongly realist). But it is artificial and distorting to try to force a position into one or the other of two categories, realist or anti-realist. Someone might reasonably maintain that he is moderately realist about X but not mad-dog realist about X —soft-core but not heavy-duty. On a realism scale of 1 to 10, he might describe himself as a 7.

            Much the same pattern is discernible with respect to mathematical realism. You can be an extreme platonic realist holding that numbers exist in a separate sphere difficult to reach from the human point of view, eternal and unchanging, far from the madding crowd of empirical particulars; or you can weaken this position in various ways, holding (say) that numbers are constructions from sets of particulars combined with logic, or even concrete aggregates of particulars. Again, there is room for manoeuver in articulating a position deserving the name of realism, with some positions stronger than others. An anti-realist might accept nominalism or some form of psychologism, where again different strengths of position might be distinguished (for example, numbers are nothing but actual inscriptions in contrast to possible inscriptions). There is a wide spectrum of possible positions that may be adopted and it would be procrustean to try to force all of them into one of two categories. Similarly with scientific realism: one might hold that unobservable entities are real and causal while also holding that they consist in potentialities not actualities; or one might accept particles as real but jib at fields. There is room for half-hearted scientific realism as well as the full-throated kind.

            I have made these points as a preparation for considering moral realism. For here there are difficult questions of formulation and it is helpful to have a clear view of the full range of options. We don’t want to lapse into anti-realism just because we have a limited view of the varieties of moral realism. If we want to keep the analogy with the external world, which gives the issue clarity and bite, we need to identify features of the moral case that match the features I listed earlier—such as intrinsic difference of ontological kind or separation in space. Thus moral values may be said to exist at some remove from the moral subject and to differ in kind from any fact about that subject. They must also pre-exist recognition by the subject and be logically independent of anything she might believe, feel, or experience. Presumably they will not be said to act as causes, but that view is logically available under some ingenious conception of causation. Moral values might exist and yet not be discoverable by moral agents, and they may be quite other than what is generally believed. Again, it is possible to endorse some of these claims but not others: for example, one might hold that what is morally right cannot be inferred from what people believe but that morality must be in principle accessible to moral believers—belief-independent but not completely mind-independent. One might believe in Plato’s Form of the Good or in Moore’s indefinable non-natural property of goodness; but it would also be possible to style oneself a moral realist while rejecting such views, opting instead for a view in which the existence of objective reasons constitutes the sole content of a reasonable moral realism. There is no point in fighting over labels, which is a temptation if the issue is conceived dichotomously; better to accept a plurality of possible views each inviting the label “realism”. Some types of moral realism will be stronger than others, i.e. closer to the paradigm of realism about material objects. To insist that certain views are not really realist is to be in thrall to binary thinking, though no doubt certain views will count as anti-realist if any view does (emotivism, for instance).  [1]

            One response to these observations would be to abandon all talk of realism and anti-realism as misleadingly simplistic; and that response is not without its merits. But then there is the question of what might be put in its place—what other terminology could we use? And the current terminology is not without intuitive force, especially in conjunction with the paradigm supplied by the external world. To be a realist is definitely to be an identifiable kind of thing—to adopt an intelligible position. The concept is not empty. It is just that it is not quite as black and white as it has seemed from traditional debates. We need to make room for the partial, qualified, and week-kneed realist—as well as the modest and lukewarm anti-realist. Certainly, we must avoid pinning caricatures on positions that attract the label “realist”, as if anything so called must be of the most extreme and implausible kind.                

 

  [1] In ethics we find a contrast between subjectivism and objectivism, as well as between relativism and absolutism, but we don’t find these contrasts in the case of the external world and other subject matters. It is an interesting question why this is so, but it must surely be connected to the fact that there is a strong tendency in ethics for people to believe that thinking it makes it so, which is not the case for the external world. Thus moral realism is often framed as the denial that moral belief implies moral truth (suitably relativized). I would prefer to label this position “moral objectivism” and keep the label “moral realism” for views that model ethics more closely on the external world: but this is all a matter of words (not that words can’t be philosophically important).

 

 

 

Skepticism About the Conceptual World

 

 

I will describe a startling new form of skepticism, to be set beside more familiar forms. It lurks beneath the surface of recent work on meaning and reference. Consider “water”: it has both a meaning (sense, connotation) and a reference (denotation, extension). Suppose its meaning is equivalent to “tasteless transparent liquid found in lakes and flowing from taps”. These are the properties a typical speaker associates with the word (its “stereotype”). Combining these words with “water” produces an analytic a priori truth. They provide an analysis of the concept we associate with “water”. Yet they are not epistemically necessary: it could turn out that water is none of these things, as it could turn out that water is not H2O. Perhaps we have all been under a giant illusion about these properties of water: by some quirk of our nervous system a yellowish lemony-tasting liquid has appeared to be transparent and tasteless, and what fills lakes and flows from taps is some other liquid than water. These possibilities are not beyond the powers of an evil demon to contrive. We cannot be certain that water has the properties we typically associate with it—mistakes are possible, illusions conceivable. Water might turn out to have none of the properties included in its stereotype, i.e. its meaning or connotation. Yet we would still be referring to water by “water”, whatever water is. The reason this is possible is that we fix the reference of “water” in a certain way, namely by pointing to a sample of a certain natural kind and saying, “Let ‘water’ designate whatever natural kind underlies these appearances”—whether those appearances are veridical or not. We might thus have successfully referred to a certain liquid and yet acquired quite false beliefs about its properties. Reference is independent of opinion: appearances can be inaccurate even as reference succeeds. If we adopt a causal theory of reference, we can say that the reference-establishing causal relations are logically independent of whatever beliefs we form about the extension of the term. What this means is that the sentence “Water is a tasteless transparent liquid found in lakes and flowing from taps” is both analytic and conceivably false. It could be false because water might actually have none of these properties and yet the meaning we assign to the term includes them: they are contained in the connotation but the denotation lacks them. Thus we have an analytic but false statement—it makes a false ascription of properties to thing we refer to.

            Now consider skepticism. Hearing about the semantics of natural kind terms the skeptic will seize his chance: he will insist that all our natural kind terms are vulnerable to a skeptical doubt, namely that propositions formed from them are not knowable with certainty, even when analytic. We might be wrong that water is tasteless and transparent, that lightning is bright and precedes thunder, or that gold is shiny and malleable. These are characteristic skeptical claims, but the extra turn of the screw is that analytic truth does nothing to preserve them from skepticism. The semantics of the terms combines demonstrative reference with fallible descriptive stereotype, so that the reference could succeed while the stereotype is inaccurate. Sense (descriptive content) doesn’t determine reference, but it can generate analytic truths nonetheless. Since the descriptive content of sense is possibly erroneous, we can generate fallibly known analytic truths—we can’t be certain that these are truths. Water might turn out not to be what we suppose, however much what we suppose fixes its meaning (one aspect of it at least). In the extreme, water might be a bitter tasting dark-colored solid that has presented a totally misleading appearance to us all these years—so the skeptic will contend, and he is notoriously difficult to thwart. What we have been designating by the term is quite different from the way it appears (if one day the scales fell from our eyes, we would exclaim “So that’s what we’ve been drinking all this time!” while beholding a mud-like substance).

            How far can the skeptic push it? Consider knowledge (the word, the concept, and the thing): we customarily suppose that the meaning of “know” includes belief, truth, and justification—that is its sense or connotation. It also refers to a specific mental state of a person. We take it that this reference instantiates the properties contained in the meaning of the term—that it involves belief, truth, and justification. That’s what we mean and it instantiates. But the skeptic wants to know what makes us so sure that the thing we refer to has the properties we ascribe to it: why assume that the nature of the mental state that “know” refers to actually includes the properties we ascribe to it? Why couldn’t it be like the case of water? Suppose we are confronted by a sample of a certain mental kind and we announce, “Let ‘know’ refer to the mental state before us”, while believing that the state in question is an instance of true justified belief—maybe that’s just the way the sample happens to strike us. But suppose that, contrary to our impression, none of this is true: the state in question is unjustified belief in a falsehood, or not even belief at all but disbelief (the sample is being insincere in its assertions). Then the skeptic maintains by citing the semantics of natural kind terms we can say that knowledge is not true justified belief—the state we are referring to is unjustified false belief! Now the question is what we can say to rule this possibility out in our case: might it not turn out that knowledge is not true justified belief at all but false unjustified belief? This is epistemically possible, the skeptic contends, given the way the term “know” was introduced and given the facts of the case. So we should admit that it might turn out that knowledge is not true justified belief, because the term designates something quite different from what we supposed—we had false beliefs about the extension of the term as it actually was at the moment of reference-fixing. But that implies that the analytic truth “Knowledge is true justified belief” might turn out to be false, simply because the state originally designated lacked the properties we thought it had. Our false ideas entered its meaning, but reality failed to confirm these ideas. The proposition might be analytic but false, and the skeptic wants to know what we can say to rule out this possibility. Of course, it is also epistemically possible that knowledge is true justified belief, but the skeptic is asking why we prefer that alternative to his skeptical possibility. We should be agnostic.

            Or consider “bachelor” and suppose that the initial sample is quite other than what the introducers of the term think: they think they are confronted with a bunch of unmarried males but in fact they are confronted by a group of married females. These individuals are masquerading as unmarried males while being just the opposite. The fooled introducers then stipulate, “Let the word ‘bachelor’ designate the marital and gender status of thisgroup”. They fix reference to the property of being married and female while mistakenly believing that the group in question is male and unmarried. Then the sentence “Bachelors are unmarried males” is false for these speakers, despite their firm belief in its truth. It may indeed be analytic in their language, but it is still false. And now the skeptic asks how we can rule this out in our own case: couldn’t it turn out that bachelors are married females? Maybe our ancestors introduced the term in the way described and thereby fixed its reference to married females; their beliefs were false of these individuals, but so what? Thus we today refer with “bachelor” to the natural kind of married females, even though we think we refer to married males. Or suppose all the people we have ever met who called themselves “bachelor” and gave every appearance of being male and unmarried were really married women in disguise—wouldn’t that tie down the reference to that group, not the group we thought we were referring to? If this is the way reference works in general, then such skepticism would seem indicated. It might turn out that bachelors are married females! It is not epistemically necessary that bachelors are unmarried males, despite the analyticity of the corresponding sentence. The skeptic thus extends his doubts to knowledge of analytic truths.

            Let us make explicit what is going on in this argument. On the one hand, we have the concept, an item in the mind; it contains various components, which fix the set of analytic truths with respect to that concept. On the other hand, we have the extension of the concept, an item in the world; it has a certain objective nature, which fixes its de re essence. We normally suppose there is a correspondence between these two levels: the components of the concept actually capture the objective nature of the thing designated. In the water case it is easy to see how this correspondence could be disrupted, because we can be wrong about the properties of the natural kinds we are referring to. The skeptic then seeks to extend this point to other concepts by adopting the same type of analysis: there is the concept we have of knowledge, and there is the fact of knowledge itself; but the former might not correspond to the latter—knowledge itself might not have the properties the concept ascribes to it. What guarantees that the objective thing has the properties we think it has? It might be like the case of water. Similarly, the concept we have of a triangle implies that triangles have three sides, but the skeptic conjures a scenario in which we introduce the term “triangle” in reference to things that are actually four-sided, thereby referring to such things with the word “triangle”. Then “Triangles are three-sided” would be analytic for us, given our beliefs, but actually false. And the skeptical question is how to demonstrate that our present use of “triangle” is not like this: maybe we actually refer to four-sided figures with the term “triangle”! Might we not one day discover that triangles have four sides, contrary to what we now believe? We might discover that we are brains in vats, and we might discover that we refer to quadrangles with “triangle”. That would be strange, to be sure, but not logically impossible.

            How could we respond to the skeptic? Gap closing is the obvious manoeuver: don’t let the concept and the property diverge. Then there will no logical space between what we think and what is. Thus we might identify the property with the concept: for x to have P is just for x to have C (correctly) ascribed to it. But this gives rise to an idealism that destroys objectivity—as is typically the case with this kind of counter to skepticism. Clearly there was water before there was the concept of water, and similarly for knowledge, triangles, and bachelors. At the other extreme we could try going radically externalist and make the concept nothing more than the property: then what is in the mind will not be separate from what is in the object. The trouble is that this will entail that we can’t be misled about the nature of water, or mistaken about what knowledge involves, because our concept will simply bewhatever these things are objectively. A more realistic suggestion is that there is a kind of pre-established harmony between the concept and the property: the constituents of the concept necessarily correspond to the constituents of the fact (the nature of the property). But again, this fails to allow both for error and for incompleteness: our concept may misrepresent the property and it may fail to exhaust its nature. For example, there may be more to knowledge than we think, and our conception of knowledge may be inaccurate in some respects. This is precisely what the skeptic is capitalizing on by pointing out the epistemic possibilities: water may not be as we suppose it to be, no matter how central to our concept a certain feature is; and similarly for other natural kinds. His point is that analytic containment in the concept is no proof against the possibility of such errors about reality. The world contains various phenomena and we are trying to capture them in our concepts, but we may fail; so it might always turn out that things are not as we take them to be. Water might not be transparent, knowledge might not be true, triangles might not have three sides. Of course, if these things have those properties, then it is plausible that they have them necessarily; but the question is whether we know with certainty that they do, and the skeptic finds reason to doubt this. Metaphysical necessity does not imply epistemic necessity.

            It might be said that the underlying semantics presupposed by the skeptic applies to semantically simple expressions like proper names and natural kind terms but that not all terms fit this mold. The former terms denote by mechanisms independent of their descriptive content, which forms a separate component of meaning; but terms like “knowledge” and “triangle” and “bachelor” don’t work like that—here the descriptive content is active in fixing reference. Thus the meaning of “know” must imply truth in knowledge itself because that is simply how the term determines its reference—“know” refers by definition to what is believed and true (etc.). It is semantically complex and works as a logical conjunction of conditions, unlike a proper name. This, however, is all very debatable and anyway faces an obvious retort: what about the simple elements that make up the meaning of the term? These will be subject to the same skeptical argument that we started with: maybe “believe” and “true” denote properties other than we suppose because they were introduced under conditions of fallibility. We announce “Let ‘believe’ denote that mental state” in front of a sample, convinced that we are referring to a state of internal assent, but in fact our sample is in a state of suspended assent or outright dissent. We don’t have infallible access to other minds! Same for triangles (so we can’t wriggle out of the problem by appealing to introspective authority): we suppose there are three-sided figures in front of us and we stipulate that “triangle” refers to that geometrical form, pointing at the sample; but in fact we are suffering from a visual illusion and four-sided figures constitute the sample. The skeptic is saying that we can always misrepresent the properties of the sample that forms our semantic anchor, which is why it may turn out that we have actually done so. Analytic containment in the concept is no protection against this possibility. Skepticism about the external world thus generalizes to skepticism about what we regard as definitional. That is to say, we can be wrong about the essence of things as well as about their accidental properties, even when that essence is supposedly contained in our concepts. Since complex concepts resolve into simpler ones, the skeptical problem can always recur at the basic level.

            This skeptical problem deserves to be called a skeptical paradox because whether or not I know anything I surely know what it would be to have knowledge—I surely know that I cannot know what I disbelieve or what is false! Similarly, I may not know whether there are any triangles in nature but I surely know what a triangle is—I know it’s not a circle! But the skeptic is denying, startlingly, that I do have such knowledge; his claim is that it is epistemically possible that knowledge is not of truths and doesn’t require belief. We just don’t have that degree of apodictic insight into the nature of the things in question; we merely conjecture that this is the nature of what we refer to. We may be profoundly ignorant of the objective nature of the kinds of which we speak. Philosophers took it for granted that knowledge of analytic truths is free from skeptical doubt, but it turns out that they are swallowed up too. How far can this skepticism go? What about our knowledge of what “red” means, or “plus” or “and” or “ought”: can we conceive of scenarios in which people are radically mistaken about what these terms designate? Could it turn out that genocide falls into the extension of “good”? Could “red” turn out to designate blue? Could “and” mean disjunction? These would be paradoxical results indeed, so any skepticism that implied such things would deserve that label.  [1]

            The skepticism I have been expounding doesn’t apply to our knowledge of our concepts as such: we canknow with certainty what our concepts contain. We know with certainty that our concept of water includes being transparent and tasteless, and similarly for our concept of knowledge in relation to truth. The skeptic questions the move from this to our putative knowledge of the reference of our concepts—whether we know that water itself is transparent and tasteless, or that knowledge itself involves truth. What holds of the concept is not the same as what holds of the object it refers to. Thus I can be certain of analytic truths in so far as they concern what is true of my concepts, but I can’t (with certainty) infer from this anything about the essence of what I am referring to with these concepts. Hence (according to the skeptic) water might turn out not to be transparent and knowledge might turn out not to be true and triangles might turn out not to have three sides.  [2]

 

Colin McGinn

                                       

 

 

 

 

 

  [1] Note that the skepticism I am considering does not contend that there is no fact of the matter about what words mean, only that we cannot know such facts. We could be radically mistaken about what words actually do mean.

  [2] I have said nothing here about skepticism concerning rule following, as expounded in Saul Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (1982), but that is certainly a useful comparison point for the skepticism presented here (they are not at all the same thing).

                                   

 

 

Selfish Genes and Selfish Beasts

 

 

It is sometimes supposed that selfish gene theory implies that animals are always biologically selfish—that all animals carry “genes for selfishness”. That is a misunderstanding because the whole point of the theory is to allow for kin-related altruism: an animal will act against its own individual interests in order to further the interests of its offspring (or other relatives), since they carry its genes. The selfishness of the genes ensures the unselfishness of the beasts whose genes they are. Of course, some degree of selfishness is built into the theory because an animal must preserve itself if it is to propagate its genes—it needs to survive long enough to reproduce, hopefully several times. But the thrust of the theory is that animals always act to ensure the survival of their selfish genes, which can be either in them or in other animals. Selfish genes are not “genes for selfishness” but genes for altruism—granted that other animals share their genes.

            To drive this point home, consider the following thought experiment. Suppose an animal were to transfer all of its genes into its offspring, leaving none behind. The DNA is physically transferred from parent to offspring—not merely copied but itself sent elsewhere. After reproduction the parent is left with no DNA and so cannot reproduce again. Nothing like this happens on earth, of course; we are imagining a mere logical possibility. What would selfish gene theory predict about the behavior of the parent in relation to the child? Well, there is no need for the parent to conserve any resources for further acts of reproduction, so it will not neglect its offspring in order to save up for future offspring. Will it behave selfishly in relation to itself? No, because there are no selfish genes in it to program such behavior—from their point of view the animal is now quite useless (if it behaves selfishly). What the genes will program is total altruism in relation to the animal’s offspring, because that is the only place where its genes reside now. This hypothetical species will lay down its life for its offspring, no questions asked, because the genes program behavior that serves their interests: genes for anything else will not survive given the competitive realities of animal life. That is, selfishness in any form or measure will not exist in animals that lose their genes at reproduction to their offspring. So the theory predicts a complete lack of selfishness in beasts of the type described. The parent will always provide dinner for its offspring even if that means starvation for itself (unless its staying alive is in the interests of the offspring). That is the logic of the theory, not concern for the interests of the individual. Selfish genes make unselfish beasts.

            Of course, genes are not really selfish—that is just a dispensable metaphor used to sum up the underlying structure of natural selection. Only beasts can be selfish—beings with desires, needs, interests. But they aren’t selfish according to the selfish gene theory; and indeed you would be hard put to find an instance of an actual animal that behaves selfishly in relation to its offspring. If it did, its genes would be less likely to survive into future generations: selfishness within families would be strongly selected against. So there is nothing, according to the theory, in the biological world that is really selfish: not the selfish genes and not the beasts they construct and program. Selfishness only arises in relation to genetically remote animals: here the genes will program selfish behavior because they have no interest in preserving other genes. But this is not because animals care only for themselves; on the contrary, they care for any animals with which they share their genes. In the imaginary case this can go so far as to make animals act without any regard at all for their own wellbeing. If we came across a planet populated by animals of the kind described, we would marvel at the daily feats of extreme altruism performed on that planet—no matter how “selfish” the genes are there. Given the underlying principles of biological evolution, it is only a contingent fact that animals ever behave selfishly, i.e. in their own best interests. Altruism is the basic rule.  [1]

 

Colin McGinn      

  [1] I should emphasize that the altruism in question is confined to cases of genetic overlap; it does not extend to strangers. However, it would be possible to imagine whole populations that act altruistically in relation to each other if they were sufficiently genetically related. The logic of the theory is always that genes program behavior that favors their survival prospects—it doesn’t matter who contains those genes. The correlation between family membership and altruism is itself contingent: if strangers had more genetic overlap with an animal than its own family members, then the strangers would be the recipients of that animal’s altruism (remember we are here dealing only with imaginary cases).

                                   

 

 

Remarks on Metaphysics

 

 

What kind of statement expresses the results of metaphysical inquiry? Wittgenstein famously begins the Tractatusthus: “The world is all that is the case” (1), “The world is the totality of facts, not of things” (1.1.), “The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts” (1.11). The use of the phrase “the world” is conspicuous, intended to announce a thesis of metaphysical proportions, but what does it refer to? What does Wittgenstein mean by “the world”? Presumably he means the actual world, though he could certainly be taken to include other possible worlds—they too are constituted by facts (in that world). But what in the actual world is he referring to? Not ethics, because he denies that value is in the world, and not philosophy since its results can only be shown. Not the self either: “The philosophical self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limit of the world—not a part of it” (5.641). The facts are what can be stated by means of true propositions, but Wittgenstein doesn’t think that everything (real?) can be stated. He means to exclude some things (if the word “thing” may be permitted). We could take him to be distinguishing the world from our attitudes to the world, including our ethical attitudes. Thus he might say that while the world is the totality of facts the mind is the totality of attitudes to facts. This would be to oppose mind and world (as in the title of a well-known book: Mind and World); the mind is not intended to fall within the denotation of “the world”. This is the narrow interpretation of  “the world” to be contrasted with the wide interpretation that includes the mind within the world.

            Two pieces of evidence may be cited for the narrow interpretation. The first is that in a later section Wittgenstein says the following: “Similarly the possibility of describing the world by means of Newtonian mechanics tells us nothing about the world: but what does tell us something about it is the precise way it is possible to describe it by these means. We are also told something about the world by the fact that it can be described more simply with one system of mechanics than with another” (6.342). Assuming that he refers to the same thing in both places by “the world”, he must be referring to what might be called “the physical world”, since he is not supposing that the mind can be described by mechanics. This certainly fits the general tenor of the book. Second, he construes facts as “combinations of objects”, and there is no reason to believe that he understands the mind that way: how is being in pain or feeling angry a combination of objects? There is no developed philosophy of mind in the Tractatus and it would be merely speculative to suggest that he understands the mind as a totality of facts constituted by combinations of objects. It is true that at one point he speaks of a speck in the visual field, musical notes, and “objects of the sense of touch” (2.0131), but these are not mental phenomena; they are the objects of mental phenomena (not sensing but thing sensed). It is also true that he may be committed by the picture theory to regarding thoughts as combinations of (symbolic) objects, since they have to be isomorphic to external facts; but there is no reason to suppose that he regards everything about the mind in this way. In any case, it seems clear that he intends the narrow interpretation in the passages cited, so that it includes neither ethics nor the mind nor the self nor philosophy: the world is contrasted with these other domains, not taken to include them. Perhaps we could paraphrase him by saying “the objective world”. That would make sense of his remark that “the world is independent of my will” (6.373), which would make no sense if the will were part of the world. He is quite happy to assert, “The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists—and if it did exist, it would have no value” (6.41). So he has no trouble excluding things from the world that don’t belong there, in the realm of reportable fact. He is speaking always of what may be mentally represented, not the representing itself. And his point is that the world in this narrow sense consists of facts not things, states of affairs not merely the objects that occur in them. The structure of the world is the structure of facts not objects (particulars, universals).

            But now, having settled on the denotation of “the world”, we have the question of the logical form of Wittgenstein’s pronouncements. We know what he is talking about, more or less, but what is he saying about it—and how is he saying it? On the face of it the sentence “The world is the totality of facts” has the form of an identity statement combining two definite descriptions: “The F = the G”. It is not an identity statement joining two proper names, as in “a = b”, though we might substitute a name for one or both of the descriptions, calling the world (say) “Winston”, so that we have “Winston is the totality of facts”. The question then would be how to analyze these descriptions: would Russell’s theory do the job? That gives the decidedly peculiar, “There is uniquely something xsuch that x is a world and x is identical to the totality of facts”, which might also yield its second description to Russell’s analysis. The truth is that the alleged description “the world” is by no means a term of ordinary language but a philosopher’s invention; semantically, it is hard to know what to make of it. In any case, the statement in question purports to identify one thing with another—the world with the totality of facts. Elsewhere we read: “The totality of existing states of affairs is the world” (2.04) and “The sum-total of reality is the world” (2.063)—again, apparently, identity propositions employing definite descriptions.  Metaphysics thus characteristically issues in statements of the form, “The world is (identical to) X”, where “X” is to be replaced by some description that purports to tell us the general nature of things.   

            What is notable is that Wittgenstein’s own statement falls short of what most metaphysicians aim to supply, since he is neutral as to the kind of fact that constitutes the world. All he tells us is that facts make up the world, not what these facts might be (similarly for his talk of “objects” and “states of affairs”). So far as his statement is concerned, these facts might be physical or mental or abstract or divine or unknowable. His theory is merely structural (logical), not substantive: it gives the form of the world not its substance (as he no doubt intends). Still, his statement provides a canonical formulation of a metaphysical thesis—a thesis about the general nature of reality. If we add to it the claim that all facts are physical facts, then we get metaphysical materialism. If we say that all facts are mental facts, we get metaphysical idealism. If we say the world consists of two types of substance, material and immaterial, we get metaphysical dualism. Schopenhauer wrote a book entitled The World as Will and Representation, clearly aiming to make a metaphysical statement (the book was known by Wittgenstein). Plato’s metaphysics can be expressed as, “The world is the instantiation of universals by particulars”. Hegel maintains, “The world is spirit”. David Lewis might say, “The world is the totality of all worlds”. Quine could opine, “The world is what science tells us it is”. The positivists might assert, “The world is what is verifiable”. All these views make use of the general notion of “the world”, and all could agree with Wittgenstein’s structural thesis. The metaphysician is telling us what the world is—its nature, its manner of being. Hesperus is Phosphorous, and water is H2O, and the world is spirit or matter or both or neither. We are offered a very general identity statement purporting to enlighten us about something called “the world”.

            It is reasonable to be suspicious about such metaphysical statements. This is not because they are unverifiable or that ordinary language has gone on holiday but because the conditions of reference may not be met. Does the term “the world” really refer to anything determinate as used by the would-be metaphysician? It isn’t much like a regular definite description with uniquely identifying descriptive content, or an embedded demonstrative; and “world” is hardly a regular sortal noun that carries criteria of identity and counting. What kind of entity is the world? What predicates does it satisfy? How is it to be picked from among other things? How can we speak about it as concrete particular with a specific nature? Is it an object? Can it be named? To what end? Sentences containing this pseudo-description, such as “The world is the totality of facts”, are semantically anomalous, though perfectly grammatical; certainly, we can’t just assume they are meaningful, possessed of determinate truth conditions and reference. They seem parasitic on other types of sentence in which the word “world” appears doing more humdrum things (“I’ve searched the world for her”), and thus derive apparent sense from their humble origins. But metaphysical sentences sonorously beginning, “The world is…” are up to something beyond the normal routines of the words they contain: for they purport to refer to the whole of reality—whatever that might mean. Hence the lack of clarity about Wittgenstein’s use of the phrase: does he include value in the world, or logical form, or the mind, or the fact that the world is the totality of facts? (Is this fact also a combination of objects, the world being one of them?) In fact Wittgenstein excludes various things from the reference of “the world”, so the phrase can’t just be a variant of “everything”: but then we need to be told exactly what he does intend to refer to. The phrase trips easily off the tongue, to be sure, but it may still fall flat—it may fail to single out a specific entity. Similarly for “the totality of facts” or “the sum-total of reality”: do we really know what these phrases mean? Presumably they are not intended to include the non-existent or merely fictional (but what about Meinong?), but there are true propositions about them too—isn’t it true that Sherlock Holmes is a detective or that unicorns don’t exist (hence all the problems about whether the world contains negative facts)? It is just not clear that we have hold of a well-defined concept here. What if a common sense type of chap were to protest, “I have no idea what you mean by ‘the world’, though I’m perfectly happy with phrases like ‘the cat in the corner’ or ‘the queen of England’—what is it exactly that you have in mind?” Grammatically, it looks as if we have an identity statement flanked by definite descriptions that pick out entities in good standing, but appearances can be misleading—in which case the standard products of metaphysical inquiry are lacking in sense. At the least we are owed some kind of account of how such sentences work. To put it bluntly, isn’t “the world” a meaningless abstraction, however sublime it may sound—just the kind of thing on which the later Wittgenstein would pour scorn? Isn’t it suspiciously like “the holy spirit” or “the ether” or “the force”—in fact, worse than these because they at least contain relatively well-defined words? Just because I can say, “You mean the world to me” doesn’t imply that I can talk meaningfully about what kind of the thing the world might be. Certainly we cannot begin a sentence with, “The world is…” and expect automatic semantic propriety; we need to say more about what precisely we have in mind.

            Because the sense of such sentences is unclear, we are apt to interpret them by whatever means comes to hand. And here I think semantics gives way to mental imagery: we form various pictures of what might be meant. These pictures may vary from individual to individual, but they are introduced in order to pin down the import of the proposition we are struggling to grasp. Metaphysics thrives on emergency imagery, particularly spatial imagery. Thus when I hear the sentence, “The world is the totality of facts”? I picture a heap of facts—a mountain of them, what with the world being so large. Wittgenstein tells us at one point, “The world divides into facts” (1.2), and we duly picture a divisible something—something with spatial parts. The world is an assemblage of smaller entities (“facts”) that combine into a larger whole, as rocks may form a mountain. Wittgenstein’s use of “totality” is interesting: not “set”, which might prove not concrete enough, but the more tangible idea of a spatial grouping of some sort—a pile, a stack, a pyramid maybe. The world is an agglomeration of lesser things, where these things are themselves conceived as spatial particulars (like atoms or molecules—atomic and molecular facts).  Such imagery courses through our mind as we study Wittgenstein’s enigmatic text and gives us an illusion of understanding—I know what a heap is! I conjecture that metaphysical discourse is unusually prone to this kind of imagery, as a kind of substitute or crutch. It would be interesting to do some empirical work on such imagery: how frequent is it, are there any universals, what happens when it is absent? Wittgenstein had an engineer’s mind and was fond of the notion of picturing, so it is possible that he had unusually strong imagery when composing the Tractatus: this will have encouraged him to think he was talking sense. And partly he was—but was it complete sense?  Language can carry us away, as he recognized in the Investigations, but so can the mental imagery it provokes: it can provide dubious abstractions with concrete credentials. Isn’t the Tractatus a very visual work, reliant on the reader’s complicity in visualization?

            The same is true of other metaphysical visions (!): they are apt to come with pictures attached. What do you think of when you think of dualism? I imagine two entities side by side, one extended and concrete, the other wispy and amorphous (compare the image of consciousness as steam emanating from a steam engine). When I think of materialism I imagine an accumulation of geological strata: at the base we have atoms in the void, with chemistry and biology and psychology laid on this base, like bricks laid on a foundation (and just think of the imagery associated with that word!). I don’t think of the facts of the world as separated in space, like islands, but as built one upon another—vertically not horizontally. Idealism puzzles my imagination because the mind is not so readily imagined spatially, but my imagery is something like a cloud of feathers or a ghostly gathering—a weightless assembly of formless nothings. Plato tried to give imaginative expression to his theory of forms by the parable of the cave, which is full of spatial imagery, but the theory taken neat suggests (to me) nothing so much as a colony of splendid birds of paradise. Frege likened his theory of sense and reference to the optical image in a telescope, in order to make the metaphysics palatable (intelligible), with space explicitly invoked; without this analogy we struggle with mental pictures of free-floating simulacra of things (those elusive “modes of presentation”). Much of the charm of metaphysics derives from these flights of imagination: we contrive to render elusive abstractions mentally manageable. Without this we might flounder in incomprehension, with only words to play with (“the world”, “totality”, “substance”, “immaterial”, “hierarchy”, “supervenience”, etc.). When Wittgenstein remarks, “Objects make up the substance of the world” (2.021) we reach for familiar ideas of substance and think we know what he means, as in “Flour makes up the substance of the cake”. Imagery abets metaphysics—maybe makes it humanly possible. What makes metaphysics meaningful to us is the imagery we bring to its pronouncements: but this is a suspicious gift, intoxicating though not necessarily illuminating. It may simply provide spurious protection from the verbal haze (or blaze). Or it may bias us in favor of views that interact better with our imagination—that provide us with more appealing pictures. Wittgenstein spoke of being held captive by a picture—well, in metaphysics there may be no alternative. In normal discourse we can rely on words to carry us along, but when discourse turns metaphysical words struggle to keep up, and then imagination takes up the slack, or tries to. We find ourselves dependent on pictures of many kinds: of heaps, webs, steam, railway tracks, shadows, lenses, ghosts, exotic animals, shimmering mirages, tools, chess games, light, magic tricks, building blocks, cement, blank slates, sentences—all the tricks of the philosophical trade. In this way we try to give sense to what we are inclined to say. When you read the words, “The world is…” your imagination is activated: you start to form pictures of what might be meant. You would be lost otherwise, or perhaps just not interested.  [1]

 

Colin McGinn          

           

  [1] I don’t want to give the impression that I am against all metaphysics (on the contrary), but I think certain ways of proceeding are fraught with linguistic peril, particularly pronouncements of the general form “The world is X”.