Injustice

 

 

Injustice directed towards an individual creates a specific psychological response. This response includes anger at the perpetrator, moral indignation, resentment, a sense of futility, a desire for revenge, disillusionment, and general malaise. It can shape a person’s entire life, and destroy his or her wellbeing permanently. The injustice can be of two kinds: retributive and distributive. The victim can be blamed and punished for something he or she has not done, or punished disproportionately, or not given due process; or the victim can be subject to unfair distributions of goods to which he or she is entitled, by natural right or contract. Though both types of injustice occasion the psychological response mentioned, the former is apt to occasion it more strongly and deeply. A person wrongly blamed for something, especially where the blamers show bias or negligence, or basic disregard for justice itself, is liable to induce a state of extreme agitation and outrage. In addition to the unjust treatment the victim has received, he or she must also deal with the sense of anger, outrage, resentment, and so on. Clearly, to treat someone unjustly is the very height of culpability, and anyone guilty of such injustice must be held accountable, especially if they have been placed in a position of authority and power over others. This is why we rightly deplore corruption in the judicial system or in quasi-legal tribunals, as well as negligence and plain stupidity. Hatred of injustice is both necessary and unavoidable.

            We don’t feel the same way about other crimes against the person. If someone steals from you or strikes you or breaks a promise to you or lies to you, then you may well be upset and angry, but you don’t experience the same degree of psychological upheaval. The reaction to injustice is in a class of its own, sui generis, and not so easily shrugged off. The psychological impact is more profound and enduring. It creates a feeling of pointlessness, deep distrust, and personal isolation. This is particularly true if the injustice is repeated and systematic—if it is sustained over time in numerous unjust acts (racial discrimination, especially embodied in the law, is the obvious example). It is bad enough to blame and punish an innocent person once, but to keep on doing it is exponentially worse, especially when opportunities for just restitution arise. Then the victim is apt to feel that the system is stacked against him, that there is no escape from injustice, and that life is not worth living in such conditions. Suicide can then seem like the only possible escape from systemic injustice. This is a profoundly terrible thing to do to someone—very different from the normal run of crimes and misdeeds. While it is possible to forgive someone for stealing, lying, hitting, and so on, it is extremely difficult—perhaps impossible—to forgive someone for blatant and repeated injustice. A sense of injustice destroys personal relations between people. You cannot remain friends with someone who has treated you unjustly, nor can you respect him or her thereafter.

            I take it these points are obvious, if painful to contemplate. One of the less obvious consequences of injustice is that it becomes almost impossible to treat the person who has been unjust to you in a just manner. You feel that your unjust persecutor has sacrificed the right to just treatment from you. Here injustice differs from other crimes: you don’t feel that being lied to or stolen from or struck justifies doing the same thing to the person who has done these things to you. But you do feel that injustice justifies injustice in return: “Why should I be just with you when you were so unjust with me?” Is this just psychological weakness or is it something more profound—more conceptual? Is it just “hitting out” or does it reflect something about the nature of injustice? True, you may manage to set aside your (correct) sense of injustice and treat the perpetrator justly; but you feel that this requires a special, almost superhuman, effort—as if the other person does not deserve just treatment from you. Their right to justice from you has been undermined by their own manifest injustice towards you. That is why they must be judged by someone other than the person they have wronged—by an impartial judge: because the victim of the injustice simply cannot be expected to treat them justly. Everyone has the right to be treated justly by me, but not if they have treated me unjustly; then someone else must be brought in to serve the cause of justice (hence no vigilante justice). No one can be left at the mercy of those they have treated unjustly. But the victim of an act of theft, say, is not likely to steal from the thief, or to suppose that it is morally permissible to do so. Acts of injustice, however, are affronts to morality itself—a rejection of the demands of morality—and we feel that such actors deserve special condemnation. The corrupt judge is worse than the guilty criminal, because the judge is charged with, and accepts, the role of arbiter of justice. To imprison a person unjustly is the ultimate crime; and the person imprisoned is not expected to deal leniently, or even fairly, with his unjust judge. Injustice thus breeds injustice in the victim, even if he or she tries to “rise above” it.

            But there is a further consequence that is even more disturbing: the tendency to generalize injustice. If a person has been made the victim of injustice, especially if it is repeated, systematic, and unrepentant, then he or she is apt to abandon justice as a general rule of conduct. The victim thinks: “I have been treated unjustly, so why should I treat others justly?” By contrast, the victim of theft does not think: “I have been stolen from, so why should I not steal from others?” It is not entirely clear why there should be this asymmetry, but it seems to exist and to be entrenched. It may have to do with the general sense that injustice is itself a rejection of morality, not merely a violation of it. We say of the grossly unjust agent that he or she “doesn’t know right from wrong”, but we don’t tend to say that about other miscreants. We take injustice to be a more profound moral failing—and rightly so. It brings morality more fully into question, so that an unjustly treated individual feels less constrained by it.

And here I think is where the special evil of injustice shows itself—the thing that sets it apart from other crimes and misdeeds: it creates chains of injustice. Suppose A is unjust to B and that B forms the psychological response I described; then B will be apt to be unjust to C, even when C has not been unjust to B. But then C has become the victim of injustice, and will in turn be likely to be unjust to D; and so on. One act of injustice (or a series of acts directed against a particular individual) will generate a chain of unjust acts, all mediated by the psychological response I described. It doesn’t work like this with stealing, lying, and so on. Injustice has the power to propagate itself through a population, like a contagious disease, hopping from one person to the next. Previously just people are thus turned into unjust people by being themselves treated unjustly—all because at the beginning of the chain an innocent person was treated unjustly. Injustice begets injustice, while theft does not beget theft. Of course, if the theft is felt to involve injustice, then theft will generate the same kind of chain; but not otherwise. If a rich man steals from you, you feel an injustice that does not apply to a poor thief—though you may still deplore the poor thief’s action. We do not hate the thief qua thief, as we hate the unjust agent—he or she we regard as morally bankrupt. Is there anything worse than a “hanging judge” who blatantly ignores evidence and follows discriminatory policies? What about a judge who knowingly sentences innocent people to death for kickbacks from the makers of electric chairs, or because she wants to look “tough” for political reasons? That is evil of a stunning magnitude.

            Chains of injustice ramify and proliferate. They can spread through a whole population. They can be transmitted down the generations. And they may be triggered by a single isolated act of injustice. The injustice chain is particularly dangerous in the case of children. If the parents have been treated unjustly, they will be apt to treat their children unjustly; but children will experience the injustice in a sharp and undiluted form, without any possibility of rising above it. It will inform their entire worldview: the world will be seen as an inherently unjust place, with talk of justice meaningless and pointless. And so injustice gets passed down the generations. How many unjust acts in the world are explained by the existence of one of these chains? Here we should distinguish between the instigator of a chain and a link in a chain. If A is not himself a victim of any injustice, and yet acts unjustly, for reasons of self-interest or political expediency, say, then A is an instigator—he or she sets the chain in motion. Such a person is far more culpable than one who is a mere link in a chain instigated by someone else—the link merely inherits injustice without creating it ab initio. The link is a victim of injustice as well as a perpetrator of it, and he is the latter because (or partly because) of the former. The instigator, however, has brought a potentially endless chain of injustice into the world: not just the initial unjust act, but also all its ramifying consequences. The instigator has created the disease, not merely been one of its carriers. 

            The evil of injustice therefore far outweighs the evil of other kinds of immoral act, not just because of its intrinsic evil (though that is considerable), but also because of its tendency to grow and spread. You can see how it could infect an entire population, as well as succeeding generations. It deserves the name “Original Sin”: it is a sin that begets other sins. Those guilty of it, especially the instigators, deserve special condemnation, special contempt. Everyone should, of course, be conscious of the burdens of justice, and employ every means possible to ensure that justice is done. All unjust acts should be rectified fully and promptly. Restitution should be mandatory. There is simply no excuse for injustice, as there can be for other kinds of immoral act. Injustice should not be tolerated or excused, but rigorously punished (not only by law but also by social censure). The shame attaching to injustice should be unique and profound. No one should turn a blind eye to it. Ever.

            What can be done to prevent chains of injustice from forming? Don’t instigate them, obviously: but what do we do if some people insist on being injustice instigators? It is all very well to exhort people not to make the same “mistakes” as those who have treated them unjustly; but that may not be very effective advice for someone who has been made bitter and cynical by the injustices done to them. You can’t expect people to be saints if they have been systematically abused. A person who has been sent to jail, knowingly and cynically, for a murder he did not commit is not likely to view the world kindly. Someone who has known nothing but injustice is unlikely to treat others justly. What is necessary is firm public support for justice, above all other values, and an intolerance of injustice—people should be rewarded and punished according to their capacity for justice. No one should be left in a position of judicial power that has acted unjustly. Also, it is necessary for justice to be seen to be done, not merely to bedone: justice must be celebrated and recognized, spoken of in hushed and reverent tones. Injustice, for its part, should be despised and reviled for what it is. The word fair should be on everyone’s lips, and be the (or a) basic moral word. The nerve of justice should be forever taut.

Utilitarianism has a lot to answer for here: it shifts moral praise and blame from justice to consequences, so that an unjust individual can always plead that he or she was just trying to maximize the good—this being regarded as the ultimate aim of morality. An unjust act is thus excused by claiming that it will likely lead to greater happiness all round. This is an insidious way of thinking, almost bound to lead to corruption, and anyway ignores the ramifying effects of injustice—and hence is not defensible even on utilitarian grounds. Fairness is what matters, not the expectation of generalized happiness. If people feel that they will not be treated fairly, perhaps precisely because they have not been, then this will rot everything from the inside out. The psychological effects of injustice, and the resulting chains of injustice, are so damaging that injustice must never be allowed to stand. Injustice is the worst of moral failings.

 

C

                                               

 

 

 

Infinite Metaphysics

 

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.” (William Blake)

 

As Spinoza noted, we must not let metaphysics be shaped by the human perspective; we must maintain a resolutely objective stance. The human perspective favors the finite, mainly because of the limits of our senses—they are not geared to the infinite. We can conceive the infinite but we can’t perceive it. Thus we tend to think of the infinite as the finite stretched, extended or continued, instead of viewing the finite as the infinite condensed or truncated. We are skewed towards the finite, to the point of finding the infinite baffling. But that has nothing to do with ontological issues about the infinite—with its position in nature. Viewed objectively, nature has the infinite written into it at every turn; it hums with infinity. Space and time are infinite, both in their extension and their continuous structure. Matter may not be infinite in extension but it too has an infinitely divisible mathematical structure. Mathematics is par excellence the home of the infinite. Minds too are infinite in scope: consider the infinite potential of language and thought with their combinatory powers. Less obviously, meaning itself is infinite, as rules in general are, because it applies to indefinitely many cases. God is infinite (if there is such a being). Laws of nature are infinite, given that they extend over arbitrarily many natural events. The world is really the totality of infinities. We don’t tend to acknowledge the ubiquity of the infinite, owing to our perceptual and cognitive biases, but attention can be drawn to it: reality is steeped in the infinite, up to its neck in it.

            Blake is thus right that the infinite is written into the finite: there is always a deep structure of infinity in the most finite of things. Take that grain of sand: it is both part of an infinite spatial and temporal manifold and also infinitely divisible spatially. It does not stand apart from the infinite but incorporates the infinite into its being. Likewise we hold the infinite in the palm of our hand whenever we pick up an object, since every object is both a constituent of something infinite (space, the universe) and also a container of the infinite. What we call the finite is the infinite as it presents itself to us—a reflection or token of the infinite. Without the infinite the finite is nothing, something far less than a grain of sand. Pan-infinitism is true. When Berkeley speaks of “finite spirits” he perpetrates a falsehood: our minds may not be up to the level of God’s mind but there is plenty of infinity in the human mind both as to content and architecture (whatever may be said of animal minds). Even to speak of grains of sand as finite objects, by contrast with the infinity of the universe, is misleading, because grains are imbued with infinity too. It is not that infinity is cordoned off at the margins of things; it is woven into things.

            We tend to mystify the infinite, regarding it as somehow supernatural or awe-inspiring. We speak reverently of it, as of the divine. But really it is as natural and humdrum as anything else in nature. Nature simply is an infinite object. Only a misguided empiricism could blind us to this fact—a desire to reduce the real to the perceptible. Ontology cannot be dictated by epistemology. Even if infinity is beyond our cognitive capacities in some way, that implies nothing compromising as to its robust reality. In fact, it lies at the foundation of things. We might say that infinity is the most basic law of nature—what nature most fundamentally is. We are skewed away from it, but it is indifferent to that limitation. To a more discerning eye the universes swells with infinity, stretching out in every direction. Even if we had no conception of it at all, living in a totally finite conceptual world, it would still form the scaffolding of reality. To be infinite is to be to no more ontologically suspect than to be finite. Indeed, one can imagine a metaphysical system that regards the finite as merely the appearance of the infinite (Spinoza’s system is like this).  The infinite is a little bit like consciousness: mysterious from our human perspective but really a natural phenomenon like any other. After all, it is merely a question of size. The infinite is an ingredient of reality in good standing.

            We can raise ontological questions about infinity. How many kinds of infinity are there? Are some types of infinity abstract and some concrete? Did the big bang create infinity or did the universe already contain it? Does it play any explanatory role in the universe? Is there any possibility of defending a projective view of infinity? How is infinity related to necessity? Is there something inherently paradoxical about infinity?  Could there be a completely finite world? Are the things that are actually infinite necessarily infinite? Is all infinity really of one basic kind? Is the property of being infinite a unitary property (as opposed, say, to a family resemblance property)? Can infinity be destroyed? Can it be caused? Why does it exist? That is, we can undertake traditional metaphysics with respect to infinity. We don’t have to leave it to the mathematicians or be cowed by its majesty.         

            Blake’s lines raise an interesting question about perception. I said that we don’t perceive infinity, but Blake speaks of seeing the world in a grain of sand and holding infinity in one’s palm. What kind of seeing and holding might these be? It might just be metaphor, but I think the poet intends more. A natural suggestion is that Blake is speaking of a kind of seeing-as: we can see the grain as a world and feel something in the palm as infinite. But this strikes me as stretching the concept of seeing-as, because there is no experience of such things in the act of seeing a grain or holding a ball (say). Nor does Blake use the locution “seeing as”. What would it be like to see a grain as a world?  [1] What Blake says is that we might see a world in a grain of sand (or perhaps feel infinity in a ball). Presumably he means something like this: we can use our imagination to supplement what we are seeing or feeling. Given that the infinite is present in the finite object, we can strive to find it there. We can bring our understanding to bear on our senses in such a way that it is as if we are seeing or feeling the infinite—what we might call “seeing as-if”. Blake is stressing the proximity of the observable world to the world we are apt to think transcends it: these are not two realms cut off from each other, but closely intertwined. The infinite is woven into the fabric of observable reality not remote from it. It ought to be perceptible—even though it is not (literally). The grain of sand is an emblem of the infinite, a manifestation of it; the distinction between finite and infinite is not an ontological distinction. A finite segment of space, say, is not opposed to the infinity of space; it is a part of infinite space and it contains infinity within its boundaries (in the form of infinitesimal points). Similarly for an hour of time: finite but enmeshed in the infinite.

            It is an interesting fact that the question of the reality of the infinite is neutral among standard metaphysical systems: idealism, materialism, dualism, pluralism. All these systems are consistent with the full reality of the infinite. The infinite does not favor mind over matter or matter over mind; the world could be material and infinite, or mental and infinite, or both and infinite. Infinity has no ontological preferences. But a dualism of the finite and the infinite is quite misguided: the two are much too closely connected for that to be plausible. Each presupposes the other; they are not independent. A double-aspect theory suggests itself.

 

Coli

  [1] It is not as if the grain is ambiguous between a unit of sand and an entire world, like the duck-rabbit drawing, presenting one aspect and then the other; nor is there any sensory impression of a world when looking at a sand grain.

                                   

 

 

Hume, Wittgenstein, and Kripke

 

 

 

In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Hume writes as follows: “It must certainly be allowed, that nature has kept us at a great distance from all her secrets, and has afforded us only the knowledge of a few superficial qualities of objects; while she conceals from us those powers and principles, on which the influence of these objects entirely depends. Our senses inform us of the colour, weight, and consistence of bread; but neither sense nor reason can ever inform us of those qualities, which fit it for the nourishment and support of a human body. Sight or feeling conveys an idea of the actual motion of bodies; but as to that wonderful force or power, which carry on a moving body for ever in a continued change of place, and which bodies never lose but by communicating it to others, of this we cannot form the most distant conception. But notwithstanding the ignorance of natural powers and principles, we always presume, when we see like sensible qualities, that they have like secret powers, and expect, that effects, similar to those which we have experienced, will follow them…. It is allowed on all hands, that there is no known connexion between the sensible qualities and the secret powers; and consequently, that the mind is not led to form such a conclusion concerning their constant and regular conjunction, by anything which it knows of their nature.” (Section VI, [16])

            Later he writes: “When we look about us towards external objects, and consider the operation of causes, we are never able in a single instance, to discover any power or necessary connexion; any quality, which binds the effect to the cause, and renders the one an infallible consequence of the other. We only find, that the one does actually, in fact, follow the other.” (Section VII, [6]) Again: “The scenes of the universe are continually shifting, and one object follows another in an uninterrupted succession; but the power or force, which actuates the whole machine, is entirely concealed from us, and never discovers itself in any of the sensible qualities of the body.” (Section VII, [8]) And again: “And experience only teaches us, how one event constantly follows another; without instructing us in the secret connexion, which binds them together, and renders them inseparable.” (Section VII, [13]) More: “Can there be a more certain proof, that the power, by which this whole operation [voluntary motion] is performed, so far from being directly and fully known by an inward sentiment or consciousness, is, to the last degree, mysterious and unintelligible.” (Section VII, [14]) Also: “We are ignorant, it is true, of the manner in which bodies operate on each other. Their force or energy is entirely incomprehensible.” (Section VII, [25]) As a result of our ignorance “so imperfect are the ideas which we form concerning it [causation], that it is impossible to give any just definition of cause, except what is drawn from something that is extraneous and foreign to it.” (Section VII, [29]) Referring to his own attempts to define cause, he confides: “But though both these definitions be drawn from circumstances foreign to the cause, we cannot remedy this inconvenience, or attain any more perfect definition, which may point out that circumstance in the cause, which gives it a connexion with its effect. We have no idea of this connexion; nor even any distinct notion what it is we desire to know, when we endeavour at a conception of it.”(Section VII, [29])

            Hume’s position seems clear enough, being a conjunction of three main theses: (a) causation consists in the objective presence of causal power (“necessary connexion”) in the objects; (b) we have no direct knowledge of the nature of such power (no “impression” of it); and (c) all we know of causation is constant conjunction, which is “extraneous and foreign” to causation itself. It is constant conjunction, combined with our natural instinct to project it into the future, that furnishes us with the only notion of causation that we possess—a notion that fails to capture the actual nature of the causal relation. Causation essentially involves necessary connexion between individual causes and effects, but our knowledge of it is confined to a mere symptom of such connexion, viz. constant conjunction. We don’t grasp what causation objectively is, though we have causal beliefs as a result of natural propensity—as do children and animals. As Hume sometimes puts it, we don’t reason from cause to effect, but merely find ourselves inferring effects from causes as a result of our innate disposition. His position might be put this way: God has knowledge of the objective nature of causation (those actuating powers dwelling in objects) and can therefore reason a priori from cause to effect, but we have no such penetrating knowledge and hence no basis from which to reason in this way. We rely in daily life on causal inference but we have no understanding of the nature of that on which we rely—we just blindly follow the regularities we have observed.

            Now I don’t wish to go into a defense of this interpretation of Hume here (others have done so), though I think it is clearly correct; my aim is to use it in application to Kripke’s discussion of Wittgenstein’s views on meaning.  [1] Kripke compares what he takes to be Wittgenstein’s view of meaning with what he takes to be Hume’s view of causation, hoping thereby to illuminate Wittgenstein’s tantalizing discussion. I disagree with both of his interpretations as interpretations, but that is not my current concern; I want to develop a new and better comparison between Hume and Wittgenstein. Kripke contends that Wittgenstein’s position is that there is no individual fact of meaning but that meaning ascriptions have social assertion conditions. Analogously, Hume is said to hold that there is no individual fact of causation—nothing in the cause-effect pair considered intrinsically that could constitute causation—but that causal statements have assertion conditions that pertain to constant conjunctions, so that causation is a “social” matter. Thus there cannot be purely individual rule following and there cannot be one-off causal relations: meaning and causation are not located in individuals but in collections—societies of speakers or groups of events. We are tempted to believe that meaning is an individual matter and that causation resides in the particular events that are causally connected, but in reality there are no such localized facts—both things involve wider collections of speakers or events (via assertion conditions). They are extrinsic and plural.

            Obviously the interpretation of Hume that I gave earlier contradicts these ideas: there is an individual fact of the matter about causation—actual local necessary connexion—but we have no cognitive access to it, no knowledge of it, and no definition of it. It exists all right but it doesn’t “discover” itself to us—so we can’t form an “adequate idea” of it. All we can do is follow our natural instinct to make causal inferences based on constant conjunction, even though this is “extraneous and foreign” to causation in itself. Our notion of necessary connexion, such as it is, arises through this natural instinct (what Hume calls “custom”) and not through any kind of rational examination of individual causes and effects—for we have no “impression” of necessary connexion as it exists in objects. The question I want to ask is what an analogous theory of meaning would look like: What should we say about meaning if we model it on what the real Hume says about causation? Is there anything to be said in favor of such a theory? What if we become Humeans (real Humeans) about meaning?

            A real Humean about meaning accepts the following three propositions: (a) there is an objective individual fact of meaning, involving “normative connexion” (cf. necessary connexion); (b) we have no direct knowledge of this fact, no “impression” of it, and no adequate definition of it; and (c) our notion of meaning, such as it is, derives from our observation of symptoms of meaning that are “extraneous and foreign”. Meaning is thus something that undoubtedly exists in the objects (human speakers), but it doesn’t present itself to us; our idea of meaning is solely derived from circumstances merely associated with meaning. Meaning as it is in itself is “mysterious”, “incomprehensible”, and “secret”. Nature “has kept us at a great distance” from meaning, which counts among its many secrets; yet we do mean things and we can even talk about meaning. We just don’t have the kind of knowledgeof meaning that we have of other things: our idea of it is not derived from acquaintance with it—we believe in its existence but we can’t comprehend its inner nature. It is objectively real but hidden.

            Hume thinks that constant conjunction results from necessary connexion—indeed, necessary connexion is the cause of constant conjunction. Constant conjunction, however, is all we are acquainted with and all that we know of causation—yet it is “extraneous and foreign”. What is the analogue in the case of meaning? Here we cannot do better than to follow Kripke’s discussion: external linguistic behavior, inner states of consciousness, and dispositions. None of these can be said to constitute meaning, though they are certainly closely “associated” with it. This is all we directly know of meaning, which lies “behind” these symptoms, and it is what enables us to talk meaningfully about meaning—but it is not what meaning is. We don’t know what meaning is, as we don’t know what causation is. We may have sensations associated with meaning, as we have sensations associated with causation—inner and outer sensations in both cases—but they are not the essence of meaning. Observing someone’s linguistic behavior over time is no more observing their meanings than observing constant conjunctions over time is observing causation. Meaning and causation transcend such observable matters. Behavior is to meaning as constant conjunction is to causal power—related but not constitutive. You can examine behavior from dawn till dusk and you will not see meaning there; and the same is true of mental images, sudden feelings of understanding, or sensations of hesitation (as the meaning of “or”). Meaning is simply not given in this way, as causation is not: it cannot be seen with the inner eye any more than causation can be seen with the outer eye.

            We can compare this view of meaning and causation with another issue discussed by Hume: the self. A analogous Humean about the self holds (a) that the self undoubtedly exists as one and the same entity over time, despite psychological fluctuations; (b) that we have no direct knowledge of the self, no “impression” of it, and no definition of it; and (c) that we talk of the self by adverting to what are merely extraneous symptoms (the body, mental states). Our natural instincts lead us to believe in a continuing self, even though we have no “impression” of such continuity and no real conception of that of which we speak; our idea of the self, such as it is, doesn’t come from up-close confrontation with the self, or from a priori reasoning, but just from a natural tendency to assume personal continuity beneath psychological fluctuation. We are ignorant of the inner being of the self, but we compensate for that ignorance by blindly following our instinctive inclinations. Similarly, the real nature of meaning is hidden from us, because of what Hume describes as the “surprising ignorance and weakness of the understanding” (55). Our ignorance should on no account be confused with non-existence: there is a hard fact of meaning, as of causation and the self, but it happens not to be presented to the (“weak”) human understanding. Hume’s question was how we could have an idea of causation if we have no acquaintance with it, and this is what led to his “skeptical solution” in terms of custom and instinct. In the case of meaning we have the same question, and the analogous answer is that we are acquainted with the symptoms of meaning, though not with the thing itself, which allows us to possess a working concept of meaning (inadequate as that concept is).

            It is an interesting question whether there is more than an analogy between causation and meaning. Might we not think of meaning as a kind of inner causal power? What we mean governs how we use words—the ability to mean is an ability to speak. Linguistic competence is a power to produce certain kinds of effect—meaningful utterances appropriate to the occasion (“performance”). So it is a special case of a causal power; and we don’t grasp the nature of causal power, according to Hume’s view of causation. Meaning is a kind of norm-governed potentiality—a source of unlimited linguistic use. How meaning is able to achieve this remains difficult to fathom, but it does. So maybe we should think of use (performance) as effect and meaning (competence) as cause, and then note that causal relations are ultimately impenetrable. And in addition to that general opacity, there is the problem of understanding the nature of semantic norms—how use conforms to meaning. In virtue of what is one use correct and another incorrect?

            Why might we jib at this Humean picture of meaning (a form of agnostic realism)? I think it’s because we have a tendency to suppose that we know more about meaning than we really do, as Hume remarked regarding causation—we overestimate our degree of insight. But why is that? In the case of causation we have been long drilled in the practice of following constant conjunctions: that works fine for most purposes, so we don’t notice how shaky are its foundations (until someone like Hume brings up the problem of induction). We have adequate practical knowledge, and (as Hume also remarks) nothing can disrupt our instinctive tendencies. We therefore suppose that we understand more about causation than we do. In the case of meaning the source of complacency is simply that we have first-person knowledge of meaning: I know what I mean by my words. But that doesn’t imply that I know the nature of meaning in its deep essence. It is just the reflection of a practice that works and which is underpinned by instinct. I cannot gaze at my meanings and drink in their essence—as I can gaze at my pains and grasp their nature. As Wittgenstein insisted, meaning and understanding are nothing like experience and sensation—they are not “contents of consciousness”. Meanings are elusive, slippery, hard to pin down. Hence they baffle us—and hence there is an inclination towards skepticism about their very existence. Just as many people see in Hume’s reflections about the impossibility of sensing necessary connexion a reason to doubt that necessary connexion exists, so many people find the elusiveness of meaning a reason to doubt the existence of meaning. In both cases they are illicitly drawing a metaphysical conclusion from an epistemological premise—something that Hume himself emphatically does not do.

            What goes for meaning presumably goes for concepts: these too are intrinsically unknowable (directly), though they are real enough, and we form ideas of them by recourse to their symptoms. What are their symptoms? Chiefly, they are thoughts: we ascribe concepts to ourselves by ascribing thoughts to ourselves; and we never encounter a concept except in the context of a thought. Thoughts are to concepts as constant conjunction is to causation—and as use is to meaning. Concepts are what make thought possible, as causation is the foundation of regularity: but both are elusive to direct detection. When was the last time you introspected a concept?  [2] Concepts bear an obscure relation to thought, as meaning bears an obscure relation to use: in neither case should we try to reduce the one to the other. We can’t inspect our concepts per se (have “impressions” of them), though we know they are there, just as we can’t inspect causal necessity, though we don’t doubt its existence.

            A Humean view of certain facets of reality is evidently consistent, but is it attractive? It is certainly radical, as Hume recognized with respect to his view of causation; it is not what we naturally assume. We tend to think that we can observe necessity in the objects, or else we suppose that if we can’t that must prove non-existence, leaving only constant conjunction. The idea that causal necessity is real but inaccessible, and that our causal inferences arise from animal instinct not reason, is repugnant to us. Similarly, we tend to assume that meaning is open to introspection, or can be heard in words as sounds are heard. Once this naive position is called into question there a tendency to lapse into skepticism about meaning. The idea that meaning is real but inaccessible, and that our talk of meaning is derived only from extraneous symptoms of it, is also repugnant to us. The same is true of the self, where again it is hard to accept inaccessible realities combined with a non-rationalistic account of our discourse about selves. Still, there is a lot to be said for this kind of view, especially in the light of the troubles occasioned by other views. The idea that our practice might be sustained by something other than direct knowledge of the thing in question, something merely instinctual, is particularly striking. Constant conjunction is quite far removed from the real nature of causation, and mere custom is not what we expect from causal inference; but that is what our ideas of causation ultimately involve, if we follow Hume. This is what he calls a “skeptical solution”—“skeptical” because it finds no rational basis for ordinary belief (hence the problem of induction) and a “solution” because it tells us where our concept comes from and why the practice works. An analogous view of meaning has it that our practice of speaking of meaning is one step removed from meaning itself, which remains elusive, hidden, and mysterious; instead we go by observable symptoms extraneous to meaning. This is a skeptical solution because it suggests that our talk of meaning does not result from rational insight into the nature of meaning but from non-rational natural facts.

            Hume believes that causality (“in the objects”) is fully present in individual instances, so that the effect could be inferred from the cause alone had we the requisite knowledge of the cause. Constant conjunction does not create causal connexion, and indeed can never establish connexion as opposed to mere conjunction. There is, for Hume, nothing to prevent a single instance of causation that is never repeated. And yet we have no knowledge of causation except by experiencing constant conjunctions and feeling the tug of instinct to venture beyond them. In the case of meaning an analogous view would insist that meaning is present whole and entire in every act of meaning, with regular linguistic use a mere contingent accompaniment. And yet we cannot form an idea of meaning except by recourse to what is contingent and dispensable (behavior or states of consciousness), and then letting nature do its work. Meaning in itself is real, singular, and inherent, but our knowledge of it perforce relies upon symptoms that don’t do justice to its nature. If causal powers could look at constant conjunctions, they would not recognize themselves therein; likewise, if meanings could look at linguistic behavior and states of linguistic consciousness, they would not recognize themselves therein. Causation is really nothing like constant conjunction, and meaning is really nothing like its symptoms (inner or outer); yet we are condemned to conceive of them both in terms “extraneous and foreign”.  [3]

 

  [1] Saul Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Basil Blackwell: Oxford, 1982). I discuss this book in Wittgenstein on Meaning (Basil Blackwell: Oxford, 1984).

  [2] I mean a concept in isolation, not connected to other concepts. It is true that we can try to analyze a concept, but when we do we position it within a thought—we can’t just gaze at it independently of the thoughts in which it might occur. Concepts come to us as constituents of propositions (this is a version of Frege’s context principle). We can’t be conscious of concepts as pre-propositional units.

  [3] The same thing cannot be said of consciousness or typical conscious states: here we do have an “adequate idea” of that of which we speak. In Hume’s language, we understand the nature of “impressions and ideas”—these are not hidden like causation or the self.

                                               

 

 

 

How Mysterious?

 

We distinguish problems and mysteries: questions that we can in principle answer and questions that exceed our cognitive capacities. It is natural to interpret this distinction ontologically: some things are mysterious while others are merely problematic. The world divides up into entities that are mysterious and entities that are merely unknown. Thus it may be supposed that mind is mysterious but matter is not. But this may be underestimating the pervasiveness of mystery: perhaps everything is mysterious—everything physical, everything mental, and everything abstract. To be sure, there exist mere problems, many of which have been solved or will be solved, but these relate to aspects of things not the thing itself. For example, there are problems of calculating the motions of bodies that can be solved, but the origins of motion and the nature of what moves may be irresoluble mysteries. Perhaps nothing is totally mysterious, but then nothing is totally non-mysterious either.  Everything presents both problems and mysteries. Some aspects of consciousness are not mysterious, such as the kinds of conscious state there are, but there are also mysterious aspects of consciousness, such as its relation to the brain. Accordingly, science (the human kind) might apply to some aspects of everything but not to all aspects. Newton’s theory of gravity combined these two features: he gave us a science of motion with predictive mathematical laws but he left the origin and basis of motion a mystery—gravitational force is thus both intelligible and unintelligible. Might this be the general state of things—understanding combined with incomprehension? A single thing has both mysterious and transparent aspects; it is not that some things are mysterious and other things transparent. The two properties are intertwined not exclusive. We live in a generally mysterious world but certain aspects of it yield to our understanding. That is presumably the position of other animals: they can solve many problems but the world is generally mysterious to them. Hume thought that all causation is mysterious, and causation is everywhere, so everything has a mysterious aspect—but other aspects of things are intelligible to the human mind. Physics provides intelligible theories (more or less) but it doesn’t plumb the mysteries of matter; it limits itself to certain aspects of matter. Mathematics presents an ideal of intelligibility but the nature of numbers remains obscure. Psychology enables us to understand each other (to some degree) but its constructs are baffling. We have only a partial understanding of everything we understand: some aspects of things remain mysterious.  At any rate, we should distinguish this view from the view that some things in nature are mysterious while other things merely present soluble problems. Mystery might thus be universal but not total. To put it differently: for any problem there is a correlated mystery.  [1]

 

Colin McGinn

  [1] These brief remarks are not intended to persuade anyone of the mysterian position; they are only for the initiated. There are many interesting questions about the nature and types of natural mystery and about its extent once one has become persuaded of the general truth of the position.