Over two episodes, we discussed Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations,
The Investigations was published posthumously in 1953; book one was originally ready for publication in 1946 (but Wittgenstein pulled it). The book reverses many of the positions laid out in his earlier work, The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, where he conceived of language as providing a picture of reality, where in basic cases, a word directly stands for a thing we experience, and a sentence expresses relations between those things. On that conception, to understand that particular sentence fully, you only need to see which things in the world the words hook to and what relation is being asserted.
Wittgenstein argues, instead, that the meaning of a word can best be understood by its role in the actions with which it is associated. So "red" is not a raw sense datum with a word attached to it, but a property of things we deal with every day, helping us to communicate about them. A philosopher might ask whether my red is different from your red, but so long as this supposed possible difference has no effect on our practices (i.e. we both call the same things red), then it's a confused question. Wittgenstein thinks that all philosophical problems are a result of taking words out of the context in which they are established and understood in daily life and being confused by that.
So (though this is not an example he uses), "good" has a definite role in certain activities (he calls them "language games"): I communicate my approval of something to you by calling it good, and you do likewise. If we ask what good is in itself, apart from anyone's approval of something, then we've been confused by language. If we start looking at difficult moral questions far outside the range of situations for which the term was developed, then there's no reason we should expect to agree on whether the word "good" applies there or not.
Similar to the "red" case, Wittgenstein asks about the difference between pain and pain behavior. He's not saying that we don't have these private experiences, but the only reason we know to call them "pain" is that they manifest themselves in pain behaviors like crying out. We don't understand that someone else is in pain by looking at our inner experience and trying to generalize this to other people; rather we learn that the word "pain" is associated with those signs, and in that way learn to describe ourselves as in pain, even when we aren't exhibiting those behaviors. Generalizing to all mental phenomena, Wittgenstein famously denies that we could have a private language wherein we name the inner contents of our consciousness. Language is inherently public, and characterized by the fact that we can get some expression wrong and be corrected on it. If we're naming something essentially private, then how can we ensure that we have the same thing in mind every time we use that word? Linguistic meaning, for Wittgenstein, is not about "having something in mind" at all, but again, about a role in some language game.
In addition to the private language argument and his behaviorist tendencies, we got into a few tricky questions:
For instance, if language is a bunch of "language games" all stacked on each other, how do these games interact? Do we all have to be playing the same game?
Wittgenstein explicitly says that most of these games don't have firm rules--definitely not rules that cover every application (which would be impossible). So what does it mean then to play the game appropriately if this doesn't mean referencing some rule set in your head?
Wittgenstein argues that Plato and others were wrong to ask for strict definitions for words representing natural kinds: there's no reason that there should be necessary and sufficient conditions expressible for being, say, a bird, much less for words like "justice" or "knowledge" or "truth." Typically, the alternative attributed to Wittgenstein is to say that there are paradigm (obvious) cases (i.e. whatever kind of bird you likely think of when that concept occurs to you) and borderline ones (penguins, emus, things you might not even be sure if it is a bird, or pictures of birds or robot birds, etc.). However, is there really a "border" at all between such concepts?
We also spent some time relating this back to the Gilbert Ryle section of our Philosophy of Mind episode. Ryle follows in Wittgenstein's footsteps by saying that "mind" and "body" just aren't words in the same category; they're not substances whose relation needs to be determined, but each concept is used in the context of a certain set of experiences and social practices.
-Mark Linsenmayer
Law Ware Twitter: @law_ware says
April 4, 2012 at 10:31 pmWhat does Wittgenstein mean by a ‘grammatical fiction?’ I have my thoughts, but would love to hear what you guys think. One could certainly make the case that Wittgenstein is a behaviorist.
dmf says
April 5, 2012 at 7:31 amLW, I’m partial to Rorty’s take on Wittgenstein as a fellow “radical” behaviorist, roughly that language gets its meaning thru use but the Wittgenstein wars over his intentions are ongoing and bitter.
http://herts.academia.edu/DanielDHutto/Papers/310483/Getting_Clear_about_Perspicuous_Representations_Wittgenstein_Baker_and_Fodor
Law W. says
April 5, 2012 at 8:00 amYes, they are bitter. I was in a class in grad school where the two instructors had a very contentious debate in the middle of the room.
dmf says
April 5, 2012 at 9:16 amha, Moyal-Sharrock could barely bring herself to respond to a suggested reading I recently sent her on aspect-dawning, amazing how closely people come to identify with these positions, of course the related unfolding debate on Chomsky vs Everett is just as ugly:
http://www2.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/player.aspx?id=1430
Joan says
April 5, 2012 at 3:23 pmhttp://chronicle.com/article/Researchers-Findings-in-the/131260/
is this linguistic debate centered on a racism?
is it so embedded, as to not even be recognizable?
–dmf, did you see this link? i originally posted in response to a common on the race episode.
dmf says
April 5, 2012 at 5:49 pmthanks I hadn’t seen that and don’t see any evidence of racism but who knows, the debate is actually wider than this case but obviously evidence matters. That’s actually part of my interest here b/c increasingly there is a move to check out how these grand theories match up or not to how things actually play out in the world.
Wittgenstein is actually a bit tricky along these lines b/c he isn’t really talking about actual builders or shoppers or lions in his examples but in some real ways his works sends us “back to the rough ground”.
Law Ware Twitter: @law_ware says
April 5, 2012 at 6:03 pmI’m with dmf–as seems to be the case most times!
I could make a case for racism, but I fear that i would be going the Al Sharpton route–that is, seeing racism where it does not exist. However, using Wittgenstein’s thought as a prism through which we consider the power of language in shaping our perceptions is something worth examining…Joan I think I may need to work on that…thanks for the idea…
Joan says
April 5, 2012 at 6:22 pmwhen i first read the article, we were in the midst of the race discussion, so i may have been ‘primed’ to think along those lines.
keep us posted, law!
Daniel Horne says
April 5, 2012 at 2:24 amI think it would be fun if you could explicitly compare and contrast Tractatus-era Wittgenstein with PI-era Wittgenstein. Were there elements between TLP and PI that remained constant between both periods? Or do you feel he really just ripped it up and started again?
Tim says
April 5, 2012 at 9:20 amSeconded.
dmf says
April 5, 2012 at 9:22 amimportant topic but probably a show unto itself, no?
Daniel Horne says
April 5, 2012 at 10:05 amHey, if it leads to a two-part episode, I’m all for that, too!
Mark Linsenmayer says
April 5, 2012 at 10:54 amIt’s come up already, given how it went down the the Tractatus, but in this case, it would more likely be more like the Pragmatism 2 parter, where we take a break (in this case to talk about Bergson’s On Laughter, since we have our comedienne guest lined up for that) and then come back having read a bit further into the book.
I do think that despite how easy it would be to get lost in some of his individual passages in this book, the overall picture is not so difficult to convey, and to me some of the individual sticking points are somehow more trivial than in the Tractatus, where he was, e.g. inventing Truth Tables in the interstitial portions between ideas, whereas in this, he just goes on and on about, e.g. what correctly following a sequence of numbers consists in and what thought without language might be supposed to consist in. I’ve now finished the reading selection myself as well as the pages of part I between the two selections we chose, and felt like parts of that were seriously dragging ass. I’m not sure if I’ll have it in me to read to the end of Part I (another 30 pages or so) before the day comes. (Part II is much shorter; probably not worth a whole podcast on, though it does have that flipping duck-rabbit in it.)
Daniel Horne says
April 5, 2012 at 1:41 pmCool, looking forward to it! Not that you need it, but PI’s first 100 sections can be found online below, with useful comments by this unorthodox Wittgenstein scholar:
http://www.postmoderntherapy.com/Wittgenstein/index.htm
(I say “unorthodox” only b/c she is trained in psychology, not philosophy, and takes an explicitly psychologistic approach.) You or others may find it entertaining and/or elucidatory. I did.
Law Ware Twitter: @law_ware says
April 5, 2012 at 1:21 pmYeah, I agree with Daniel–that would be fun. There are deep disagreements about what he keeps and what he changes. In fact, I think Wittgenstein would like us to think that he scrapped it all and started afresh, but I do not think that is the case.
I think he still thinks a proposition is a picture and that it must correspond to reality; same with the distinction between showing and saying, and in the idea that there are internal relations between propositions that must be shown and not said.
However, he rejects the independence of elementary propositions; also, he really changed his mind about the nature of objects forming the structure of the world.
As I read somewhere (don’t remember where–but it stuck in my mind) Wittgenstein loosed himself from the shackles of logical atomism while staying wed to logic. No small feat.
Ryan says
April 6, 2012 at 12:18 amBut also not in any way inherently an achievement as nearly every response so far has supposed. As far as I can tell, Philosophical Investigations is a result of being bullied in to dropping his more contentious and sincere beliefs, in exchange for complacency and a comfortable retirement free from the requirement of performing tiring critical thought in good faith. Tractatus on the other hand is a masterpiece. My question, what is the other side to this common narrative that Wittgenstein successfully resolved his insistence on even so much as addressing metaphysics? Where did he go wrong?
Daniel Horne says
April 6, 2012 at 2:58 amHi Ryan,
I’m not sure I follow. Every biographical account of Wittgenstein shows him, if anything, more a bully to others than one who could ever be bullied. (See, e.g., Wittgenstein’s Poker.) He turned away from TLP’s thesis and methodology at the height of its popularity. It would have been much easier for him, professionally, to stick with the TLP approach, given its dominance within the 2nd quarter of the 20th century. It seems clear from W’s biography that the last thing he was looking for was a comfortable retirement. He kept working up until a few days before he died of cancer. If you feel his later turn was mistaken, let’s allow that it was his mistake, and made in good faith.
Ryan says
April 6, 2012 at 3:29 amI guess the deal about the dominance of his work is where the contention lies then, I don’t see how either of us is going to be able to provide a convincing account of the history of philosophy during the entire period from 1925-1950, but there were very many who disagreed with him vehemently. Wittgeinstein’s Poker is a parable of what some would suggest was in fact the dominant strain of philosophy at that time being so entirely contradictory as to cause him to give up on even attempting to present his own case, I’m not sure what the intent was by referencing that text? I assure you that if anything else, formal logic can not be even nearly as capitalized as pandering to folk psychology and naive realism as PI set the standard for, and by 1950 other philosophies that were not so immediately complicit with neoliberalism had began to lose all of their force.
Daniel Horne says
April 6, 2012 at 5:15 amMy intent in referencing that book is to disabuse you of the notion that Wittgenstein was likely to ever have been “bullied” out of his original theories. He gave up the earlier approach because he grew dissatistfied with it. That particular book illustrates several examples of W. tending to bully others, and not getting bullied by others. You could just as easily look to any other biographical account, such as Ray Monk’s.
So, disagree with his later approach if you like, but at least grant that it was his approach, and not some insincere move for the purpose of a comfortable retirement or avoid working in good faith.
Ryan says
April 6, 2012 at 11:25 amThat book details Popper absolutely ridiculing Wittgenstein’s beliefs in classic rhetorical style and forcing him out of a public discussion altogether. If that doesn’t constitute having been “philosophically bullied”, I can’t imagine what does. That’s not even my point though, it is just a typical example of his earlier views having been challenged rhetorically rather than proven incorrect, and is only loosely related with the fact that his earlier and more nuanced kind of formal logic was completely incompatible with the dumbed down ideologues that post WW-II neoliberalism began to require out of the humanities. I agree that he probably genuinely did grow dissatisfied with the way culture began to turn away from his work without sufficient explanation, but in hindsight we can better understand why that event took place without common recourse to utopian progress in thought that PI is often revealingly treated as having consisted in. Ironically, it’s very much only a logically inevitable product of its time, no matter how regressive. If you have disabused me of anything, it’s only that his personal intention had even less affect on his later work by comparison with the surrounding sociopolitical conditions than I had originally alleged.
Daniel Horne says
April 6, 2012 at 2:45 pmJust to put this in context:
You originally asserted that Wittgenstein was bullied out of his original beliefs, or was otherwise seeking to curry favor with some kind of “establishment”. You accuse W. of changing his approach out of bad faith. Wittgenstein has a better track record of bullying others out of their opinions than being bullied out of his. Examples abound. W. famously intimidated Bertrand Russell into abandoning his own Theory of Judgment. But there are other examples: Sraffa, Waissman, etc.
Anyway, Wittgenstein’s post-Tractatus turn had nothing to do with a 1946 run-in with Popper. The incident in which W. brandished a poker at P., and so, yes, was bullying him, took place in 1946, many years after the Blue and Brown Books were being circulated around Cambridge. And brandishing a poker at Popper was typical of Wittgenstein’s bullying, antagonistic style. But in any event, the point is that W. was never looking to curry anyone’s favor.
W’s turn came at a time when he was feeling increasingly alienated from the Vienna Circle and its logical positivist dogmas. But all this occurred at a time when the V.C. more-or-less worshipped Wittgenstein. He changed tack with the Blue and Brown Books at the height of his popularity and status, not on its wane. He had nothing to gain professionally by doing so, and in fact lost at least a little bit by doing so, judging by the resulting split from Russell.
If you think someone else pressured W. into changing his views, I’m not sure whose lead you think he eventually followed.
This is all trivial toward understanding the meat of W’s arguments, but important if you’re attacking his sincerity, and therefore the very reason to study them.
Ryan says
April 6, 2012 at 2:59 pmOkay we must have just read two different versions of the text then considering that “brandishing a poker” does not consist in “having such a dominant hold over the philosophical discourse that opposing views are forced to remove themselves from the discussion entirely,” which is exactly what happened to him during his meeting with Popper. Wittgenstein himself thought that the Vienna Circle had drastically misread Tractatus, what I would hope had mattered to him was an actual understanding of his beliefs, and not the financial success and popularity that you revealingly continue to champion as his defining feature. The lead he followed was the same one that all academics began to pidgeonhole themselves in to when universities began to have to be ever more increasingly profitable and nonsubstantial. It’s only trivial toward an understanding of his arguments if you’ve seriously convinced yourself that PI just constitutes some indisputably superior philosophy as it is usually wrongly presented as being, just take a look at all the comments on this page.
Daniel Horne says
April 6, 2012 at 4:27 pmI’m not saying PI constitutes an indisputably superior philosophy. I’m saying PI was a sincere attempt by a clever guy to work through interesting intellectual problems. The book therefore merits attention. I’m not positing “inferior” TLP vs. “superior” PI. To the contrary, I’m of the view that the two projects were not so very different. Both books have interesting things to say, and both possess value, even though both had flaws. But I will press back a bit on any suggestion that he meant what he said in one book, but not the other. We should give him that much credit.
Anyway, you brought up financial success and popularity, not I. You claimed that W. for some reason changed his views to secure a “comfortable retirement” after being “bullied” by unknown forces. There’s nothing in the historical record to support that kind of claim, and much to contradict it. You said he was “dissatisfied with the way culture began to turn away from his work without sufficient explanation.” I’m saying that the biographic record indicates that he did not care much about whether the culture accepted or rejected his work. He did have a few people he was trying to impress with TLP, but it certainly wasn’t Cambridge University, or the world at large.
Finally, “an actual understanding of his beliefs” by others was the last thing W. cared about; just see the preface to TLP. But, again, other examples abound. He pretty much assumed others wouldn’t get him, even in the TLP days. With rare exceptions, he wasn’t too interested in explaining himself. I think we can agree he’s guilty of that, at least.
David Buchanan says
April 6, 2012 at 5:07 pmAccording to John Searle, there is a metaphysical difference between Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and his Investigations. The switch from words as pictures to words as tools, as he puts it, is the difference between searching for essence of meaning and simply describing the uses of words. Sounds like a shift from Platonism to a kind of pragmatism. (Pragmatism as a consolation prize for broken-hearted positivists.) I wonder what sorts of things could survive such a shift? Which of the early ideas remained in the late work?
dmf says
April 5, 2012 at 7:38 amI would be interested in what you folks make of the infamous “”Don’t think but look!” (PI 66)”, thanks.
Scott Forster says
April 5, 2012 at 8:58 amWhat is Rule Following?
dmf says
April 5, 2012 at 9:21 amthat’s a great one, so much of analytic philo depends on cognitive-behavioral approaches to psychology.
Reminds me that maybe Kuhn, 2002, by W. Sharrock and R. Read should be on the future reading list.
Tim says
April 5, 2012 at 9:20 amAwesome! Been looking forward to this one for a while. Can’t wait.
N.N. says
April 5, 2012 at 10:24 pmHi guys, I live in Amsterdam, and I’ve been following your podcast for a while. And I must say, I really admire your rigour and intelligence in your discussions, therefore I really look forward for your upcomming discussion about PU.
Though I’m forced, due to my love and passion for W., to command you to not discuss this philosopher with regard to his interpreters (so please no carnap, hacker, mcdowell, diamond, cavell or kripke). Well, maybe cavell… You know, I just think it isn’t right to read W. in a technical matter. Rule Following Considerations, Private Language Argument, Language Games, Meaning Is It’s Use will sound very silly to listeners who are not acquaintanced with W.
I hope that you, with all your knowledge of history of philosophy, will use PU as a method of dissecting (or even deconstruction) with respect to the so called traditional philosophical problems (e.g. mind-body problem, scepticism). I think it is crucial to understand W. whenever one is aware of his need to solve all these problems,; not by giving solutions, but by dissolving the problems by some kind of a ‘grammatical method’. Definitely no metaphysics. Pragmatism is ok, but no -ism is even better.
I wish you a nice discussion you lucky bastards
dmf says
April 6, 2012 at 7:46 amit’s certainly an interesting question as to whether or not Witt was trying (perhaps like Nietzsche or Kierkegaard and certainly like Rorty) to end Philosophy unlike say Derrida and co. who clearly were invested in the future of philosophical concepts/practices. Might be useful in thinking thru not just what is properly philosophical but if anything should be.
N.N. says
April 6, 2012 at 11:17 pmI don’t think that, even for a philosopher like W., there is any need to end philosophy as an activity. Au contrair, philosophical problems as articulated in the ‘modern times’ are merely confusions that not suppose to be a problem at all! I think that the real philosophical problems are ethical problems, and to paraphrase Wittgenstein: ‘nothing is solved by writing the tractatus’
Think for example where pragmatism will lead you, and look where it actually works… there is some resemblance, but there are definitely also some troubles.
dmf says
April 7, 2012 at 7:22 amhmm, pretty sure that Witt wanted ethics to be outside of philo, pragmatism not only works fine for ethics in terms of actual practices it is the only real choice, doing (as StFish named it) what comes “naturally”.
N.N. says
April 7, 2012 at 9:31 amthere is some interesting debate about the relevance of W.’s letter to von Ficker with respect to Tractatus: ‘the book’s point is an ethical one’. And even for PU, there is a sense of ‘everydayness’ that comes naturally when one is aware of W.’s ethical point of view. Obviously, the last one is much harder to prove… but i’ll give it a try
First of all, W. did indeed want ethics to be outside of philosophy as it is practiced in a metaphysical way. So the definitive answers as ‘freedom is the love of God’ or ‘freedom is number nine’ should be meaningless (or tractarian non-sensical). But, what is wrong about me using the phrase ‘freedom is the love of God’ outside of its context or outside of its language game? (for example in feeling free to buy some ice cream)
The point is ethical. You cannot tell me that I’m being nonsensical, you cannot force me to follow a rule in using that phrase in that particular situation. I’m not even able to force myself to say something else privately, whenever I feel the urge to say ‘freedom is the love of God’ I’m using my everyday notion of freedom, which comes to me naturally in saying ‘freedom is the love of God’. In conclusion, there can be no metaphysical statement about ethical statements.
The question is then: why bother? why are we allowing ourselves to think about freedom in a universal way (i.e. independent from context)? The answer to this question needs a lot of space and time that i don’t have right now, but the fact that we have to transfer our thinking in doing makes it ethical to take our OWN everyday understanding more seriously.
Daniel Horne says
April 7, 2012 at 10:49 amAgreed. I’ve only got his lecture “Ethics, Life, and Faith” to go by, but it’s a very straightforward read. It’s in Kenny’s Wittgenstein Reader. I can’t find the essay online to link to, but here’s a fun quote:
He goes on to reference Kierkegaard in the lecture, but I get the sense that both his ethics and his religious sense were mostly taken from, or at least mostly influenced by, Tolstoy.
dmf says
April 7, 2012 at 12:01 pmthe SK reference refers to the book/metaphor (indirect communication) as a means of a con-version experience not to the content/form of the ethics.
Daniel Horne says
April 7, 2012 at 12:21 pmCorrect, I didn’t mean to imply that he looks to SK for ethics, but rather for a religious sense. But the two intertwine a bit, as I sense he needed the religious sense in part to catalyze the drive for an ethical life. E.g.:
N.N. says
April 7, 2012 at 12:26 pmdmf’s comment is exactly the whole point of doing philosophy in a wittgensteinian (or kierkegaardian) way. How should one overcome the resentment of conventionalized rule in expressing our belief and desire, while at the same time we like to think about the content of ethics in absolute and supernatural terms (at least according to W.)?
Burl says
April 6, 2012 at 10:22 amIf someone like Witt’s writing is as ambiguous and misleading that it causes people with advanced degrees in math and philosophy to misconstrue and argue over his intentions, I say there is something to be said about the value of those advanced degrees, or the occupations to which they are being put.
N.N. says
April 6, 2012 at 11:23 pmIf someone like Burl’s writing is as ambiguous and misleading that it causes people to misconstrue and argue over academic philosophers’intentions, I say there is something to be said about the value of Burl’ comment, or the occupations to which that very person is being put.
Burl says
April 7, 2012 at 7:40 amI realized my vague comment wording. I strive to be as clear and concise with words as I can be. I think it is regrettable that many philosophic works intentionally do not seek clear comprehensibility, and, just reading SEP and Wiki brought this point home viz-a-viz W’s {rivate Language thingy.
If he wanted to say language has no purpose in solipsism, but is needed in society, why didn’t he do so? In any case, what is so important here?
If PI is about working in images over linguistics, then a solipsist (and animals of all kinds) can definitely be said to be so involved – see Temple Grandin.
I cannot understand why so many bright people fawn over W. The only explanation I come up with is that his flamboyance over-impressed professional peers, kinda like for Nietzsche, so he ends up in the modern canon of phil works. I am guilty of something like this in liking Rorty.
BTW, who is N.N. anonymous for?
Burl says
April 7, 2012 at 7:43 amCase in point, My lead sentence was supposed to say “I realized my vague comment wording after I posted.”
Joan says
April 11, 2012 at 6:33 amBurl, I am not sure that I would refer to an autistic person (TG) as a solipsist. The disability may cause an inability to experience empathy or to interact in a socially inappropriate way, but does that fit the definition of what a solipsist is? TG lectures year round, and has actually taught herself how to interact in a social context.
Interesting perspective, though.
Burl says
April 11, 2012 at 7:19 amOf course you are right, Joan. I am very familiar w/ TG – she is one of my heroes. Her work in explaining how animal minds can be richly experiential w/o language is the aspect of her autism I was most focused on w/r Witt’s private language thingy. She says her slow development of spoken language resulted in developing inner mental workings largely of image associations.
I think philosophy avoids her work largely because of the effects of the linguistic excess of phil in the 20th century and the anthropocentric, speciesist bias of the field in general.
But to your point, for sure autistic folk interact w/ others in a manifold of ways as opposed to solipsism. Maybe Helen Keller’s experience would be a bit closer example of what solipsism would entail if it were possible. I do not recall how she described her thinking before her tutor wrote the names of things in Helen’s palm.
Joan says
April 11, 2012 at 8:32 ammine, too! i work with many on the spectrum, and she is an inspiration as well to them, to their families and friends. her’ squeeze box’s, used for deep pressure therapy used to soother and comfort, i have used in my own classroom, with my students who were in need of that input daily.
she also has done phenomenal things for the humane treatment of animals/cattle, as i would think you know.. i am not a vegetarian (tho i do not eat much meat, i truly enjoy a good prosciutto) and i appreciate a fine leather, so it gives me some peace to know that the last moments of that cow’s life may have been w/out trauma.
i know of one philosopher who referenced her in a book:
http://www.amazon.com/Humans-Animals-Machines-Blurring-Boundaries/dp/0791475565
i have not read it, but glen was a friend, so would expect it to be engaging.
Joan says
April 11, 2012 at 8:42 amps.
“…the anthropocentric, speciesist bias of the field in general.”:
i meant to say: i love that statement!
(and please excuse the typos)
Burl says
April 11, 2012 at 9:27 amYou sound refreshingly real!
“her’ squeeze box’s, used for deep pressure therapy used to soother and comfort, i have used in my own classroom, with my students who were in need of that input daily.”
Since I saw TG talk on this, I learned to employ it on dogs when they are nervous in the car, at the vet, or in storms. I squeeze them against me and it does seem to quickly calm them, but unfortunately, the fear comes back and they want loose of such confinement.
Joan says
April 11, 2012 at 1:20 pmat least in your case, the dogs live to be soothed another day…unlike temple’s cows.
and thanks. having taught for many years (now an LDT/C, on a Child Study Team), i have a very pragmatic perspective. most teachers truly appreciate practical input; the ones who do not need to retire anyway!
Burl says
April 11, 2012 at 2:09 pmAssuming the video about Witt are pretty accurate portrayals of what he was like, in your understanding of the disorder, could he have been a high-functioning autistic? This might explain his emphasis on communication/thought as images.
Burl says
April 11, 2012 at 3:25 pmI found this
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/beyond-understanding/
The article suggests Witt and most philosophers have Asperger’s. It also suggests that males predominate the roles of those w/ autism AND philosophy.
Autism is absence of good empathy skills – mindblindedness – inability to read another’s mind thru emotion and natural body language, much as animals in the wild must do. The function of language (origins in the male brain) is to overcome this deficit. Hence the confusion of the world of the 20th century was taken-up by males as the failed word-driven analytic movement.
(I accidentally first placed this in another thread. But it is quite appropriate there given its connection w/ PC’s story as a female philosopher.)
N.N. says
April 14, 2012 at 6:41 pmHe didn’t say ‘language has no purpose in solipsism’. In a society language has indeed grounded some level of normativity, whereas an individual has some power of reason to overrule this normativity (which is exemplified by the sceptical position that a solipsist takes).
And what is so important here?
Well, a lot. Look at the way we follow a rule. When ‘green’ stands for the color green, then how do we relate to this particular rule. Is there any such a thing as ‘meaning a word’ when we are clearly able to be solipsistic about it, for example saying green when we mean blue. At this point, the solipsist will argue that not only he can doubt his knowledge about the world, but he can also doubt all the meanings of his own words. This is however paradoxical, since that he already followed an existing rule – ‘green’ stands gor green – to be able to doubt that particular rule – ‘green’ stands for blue – , and this paradox eventually results in a new look into philosophical analysis where the cartesian (solipsistic) way becomes unattainable.
No more subject-object distinction as a philosophical tool to look into our grounds, but we are already beings-in-the-world with a given normative knowledge and meaning of the world. Look for foucault and bourdieu for some convincing ‘sociological’ arguments about the role of the individual in a society.
The wish of a solipsist is obviously to set himself free from this ‘prison’, and I think that Wittgenstein’s works are fundamental to our understanding to this ‘prison’ in order for one to become one’s self.
N.N. says
April 14, 2012 at 7:16 pmBy the way, about the obscurity of Wittgenstein’s writings. He didn’t want to write textbooks.
Wittgenstein works point toward an expansion of the idea of ‘finding the reader where he is.’ Once one has done this, then some technique must be devised for getting the reader to progress. A didactic method will not be useful, since it assumes the correctness of the speaker’s position.
N.N. says
April 14, 2012 at 7:18 pmreader’s position, not speaker’s position off course
Daniel Horne says
April 14, 2012 at 7:28 pmExcept for this one! 🙂
http://www.amazon.de/dp/320900191X
Burl says
April 6, 2012 at 10:25 amFor over 60 years!
Joan says
April 11, 2012 at 4:14 pmgreat article. thanks. i would say very high functioning asperger’s would not be beyond belief.
although, the term mindblindness would seem to refer to an absence of the ability to connect with one’s own mind.
people with asperger’s experience the exact opposite, in my opinion. well, more those with true autism. they live ONLY in their own minds.
an emotional disability would explain many things…
Burl says
April 11, 2012 at 4:25 pmJoan, I think it is blindness to others:
“Simon Baron-Cohen, for example, in his book “Mindblindness,” argues that the whole raison d’être of consciousness is to be able to read other people’s minds; autism, in this context, can be defined as an inability to “get” other people, hence “mindblind.”
Joan says
April 11, 2012 at 4:56 pmi agree then. my misunderstanding.
that is exactly what autism is/does.
i find autism, true autism, manifesting in little or no ability to connect in any meaningful way with other people, to be one of the most disabling conditions. because the kids don’t look disabled, per se, some parents have a very hard time coming to an acceptance.
the disability is very misunderstood. teachers also can be leery, wary even; they may think the kids are ‘faking’, or being ‘lazy’ or ‘noisy’ or ‘weird’, or ‘just trying to avoid work,’ etc. i do a lot of educating teachers. it’s crazy how unprepared general ed teachers are for differently-abled kids that are increasingly being included in the regular classroom, sometimes without support.
and when the new dsm-v comes out, asperger’s will no longer be a category. this change will effect many thousands who now receive services through their local school districts:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=autism-new-criteria
dmf says
April 11, 2012 at 5:08 pmnot sure if you folks have read much about Wittgenstein’s relationships to family and friends as part of your analysis, but to stick closer to the blog’s subject check out his critiques of the sorts of functionalist anthropologies of Freud and Frazer and see if your picture of him shifts a bit.
ps he also did groundbreaking work in aspect-blindness that might be of interest
Joan says
April 11, 2012 at 5:11 pmno, i have not. do you have any links?
Daniel Horne says
April 12, 2012 at 2:11 amHi Joan,
You can find W’s “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough” here:
http://libarts.wsu.edu/philo/faculty-staff/shier/GoldenBough.pdf
Burl says
April 11, 2012 at 5:31 pmThe importance of this concept [of aspect-blindness] lies in the connection between the concepts of `seeing an aspect [like a cross within an octagon perimeter that is at once all black or all white] and `experiencing the meaning of a word [for it] For we want to ask What would you be missing if you did not experience the meaning of a word?
Life is tee-jus http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9PNTCwRneY if this shit is all we got to discuss
Joan says
April 11, 2012 at 6:00 pmlol!! love it. and so goddamn true.
do i know you?? 😉
Burl says
April 11, 2012 at 6:30 pmI’ve been a poster on RV and dog forums, besides this one, if we’ve met there.
Joan says
April 11, 2012 at 8:16 pmwe would not have. hmm.
are you a philosopher, by profession?
and that goes back to a question posed here not long ago: who can call themselves a philosopher? what is the accepted criteria for that?
temple grandin writes philosophically of thinking in pictures, or from the perspective of animals. would you consider her a philosopher, as well as an expert in animal science?
Burl says
April 12, 2012 at 6:24 amProfession-wise, I am a retired professor of civil engineering. Ever since my exposure to philosophy in an intro course as a college freshman in 1974, I have harbored a big interest in the field. Since retirement a few years ago, I have spent time on the www in many areas of interest, this being one.
Most people today probably consider it necessary to have a doctorate in philosophy before being able to be self-described philosophers.
In the past, the term philosopher had such a noble and weighty tone of acknowledged profound authority in matters of wisdom. Today, I do not think many people who pay close attention to the activities of self-described philosophers or those studying to become such would be inclined to such an acknowledgement.
And while common use of the term philosophy is synonymous with high intellectual activity, such as in earning a doctor of philosophy in some field of study, X, no holder of a Ph,D. goes around saying “I am a philosopher of X.” So it goes for one holding a PhD in Philosophy; s/he does not go around saying “I am a philosopher of Philosophy.” Many today would grant that such a person is actually a philosophologist – one who studies and participates in the academic field of philosophy.
Throughout history, those who were heralded as philosophers often came from diverse backgrounds like theology and math. Many were self-taught. The term philosophy of nature best describes the activities of most philosophers of bygone days.
Today, one would certainly say Patricia Churchland is such a seeker of naturalistic wisdom. There are others who teach phil in academia who are likewise involved in profound studies of nature’s offerings, but most profound seekers of nature’s affordances are to be found in the social or ‘hard’ sciences.
It is ubiquitous for an academic with a doctorate in philosophy to self-describe and expect to be described as a philosopher. I do this as a courtesy. But, IMO, it is more the case that when the scope of someone’s work in any discipline is of such a quality that people feel compelled to refer to him or her as philosophers, this is when the term is most appropriately descriptive.
I do see Temple Grandin as a philosopher.
Joan says
April 12, 2012 at 8:18 amI agree. Her unique insight into the autistic mind truly makes her perspective profound, and invaluable.
Thanks.
dmf says
April 11, 2012 at 9:29 pmyes, g-d forbid we talk about Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language in a thread under a posting on Wittgenstein on Language, look philo isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but if it isn’t something you enjoy there is a world-wide-web out there to free associate all over
Joan says
April 11, 2012 at 9:43 pmthat was unnecessarily unkind.
no worries, dear.
David Buchanan says
April 6, 2012 at 1:36 pmFood for thought…
“This book [Russell Goodman’s ‘Wittgenstein and William James’ – 2002] explores Wittgenstein’s long engagement with the work of the pragmatist William James. In contrast to previous discussions Russell Goodman argues that James exerted a distinctive and pervasive positive influence on Wittgenstein’s thought. For example, the book shows that the two philosophers share commitments to anti-foundationalism, to the description of the concrete details of human experience, to the priority of practice over intellect, and to the importance of religion in understanding human life. Considering in detail what Wittgenstein learnt from his reading of Principles of Psychology and Varieties of Religious Experience the author provides considerable evidence for Wittgenstein’s claim that he is saying ‘something that sounds like pragmatism’. This provocative account of the convergence in the thinking of two major philosophers usually considered as members of discrete traditions will be eagerly sought by students of Wittgenstein, William James, pragmatism and the history of twentieth-century philosophy.”
James Livingston argues (2009) “that the original American pragmatists revolutionized twentieth-century European philosophy by determining or reshaping the intellectual agendas of Edmund Husserl, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Émile Durkheim, Georges Sorel, Jean Wahl, and Alexandre Kojève. I have also argued that the “critique of the subject” proposed by poststructuralist feminists—particularly by Judith Butler—becomes more coherent and consequential when we rewrite its Nietzschean genealogy to include its pragmatist antecedents.1 In this space, I want to argue that William James and John Dewey are better guides to the end of modernity than Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, who still reign as the court poets of the ..”
dmf says
April 6, 2012 at 2:57 pmhttp://www.yorku.ca/hjackman/papers/WittJames.pdf
dmf says
April 6, 2012 at 3:00 pmthe common “root” may well be Goethe’s “delicate empiricism” .
http://www.janushead.org/8-1/Root.pdf
Richard A. says
April 7, 2012 at 6:03 pmSomething else to consider as you guys do this episode is the short piece by G.E.Moore ‘Common Sense’ which W. is interacting with in a significant way. It might be profitable to read that also. 🙂
Richard A. says
April 7, 2012 at 6:11 pmThis is the first video that I think has an interesting view on W., his philosophies and his life. The whole thing is 50 minutes or so.
Richard A. says
April 7, 2012 at 6:12 pm
Burl says
April 8, 2012 at 5:33 amExquisite!
The most significant, honest 50 minutes I have experienced in association with PEL.
Seth Paskin says
April 11, 2012 at 10:31 pmSaw this a couple of months ago in a theater in Austin courtesy of the Austin Film Society. Sparse attendance, as might be expected. I and my companion who had read some W. were entertained; surprisingly no one walked out. Jarman plays up the (supposed?) homosexuality and the dramatizations make W. look like a lunatic surrounded by preppies, but worth a look from the PEL crowd.
Seth Paskin says
April 11, 2012 at 10:32 pmNow that we know Mark has a G.E. Moore fetish…
dmf says
April 8, 2012 at 9:58 amhttp://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/the-puzzlement-of-ludwig-wittgenstein/2920288
can there be a science of the social realm?
David Buchanan says
April 8, 2012 at 4:24 pmThe following comes from letter by Bertrand Russell (to Lady Ottoline Morell) written after Russell had spent a week with Wittgenstein discussing the latter’s Tractatus:
I leave here today [December 20, 1919, from the The Hague] after a fortnight’s stay, during a week of which Wittgenstein was here, and we discussed his book [the Tractatus] everyday. I came to think even better of it than I had done; I feel sure it is really a great book, though I do not feel sure it is right… . I had felt in his book a flavour of mysticism, but was astonished when I found that he has become a complete mystic. He reads people like Kierkegaard and Angelus Silesius, and he seriously contemplates becoming a monk. It all started from William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience, and grew (not unnaturally) during the winter he spent alone in Norway before the war, when he was nearly mad. Then during the war a curious thing happened. He went on duty to the town of Tarnov in Galicia, and happened to come upon a bookshop, which, however, seemed to contain nothing but picture postcards. However, he went inside and found that it contained just one book: Tolstoy on the Gospels. He brought it merely because there was no other. He read it and re-read it, and thenceforth had it always with him, under fire and at all times. But on the whole he likes Tolstoy less than Dostoyevsky (especially Karamazov). He has penetrated deep into mystical ways of thought and feeling, but I think (though he wouldn’t agree) that what he likes best in mysticism is its power to make him stop thinking. I don’t much think he will really become a monk — it is an idea, not an intention. His intention is to be a teacher. He gave all his money to his brothers and sisters, because he found earthly possessions a burden. I wish you had seen him.
This quote comes from an interesting review of James R. Atkinson’s recently published book, “The Mystical in Wittgenstein’s Early Philosophy”. The reviewer finds the book to be sorely disappointing, so that part is fun too.
http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24116-the-mystical-in-wittgenstein-s-early-writings/
Wes Alwan says
May 5, 2012 at 6:38 pmFascinating David — thanks.
Preston says
April 9, 2012 at 8:42 pmPerhaps there isn’t time, which is definitely understandable, but I highly recommend checking out a few passages from “On Certainty” (also posthumously published, this contains LW’s reply to Moore’s “Defence of Common Sense”). There are many similar ideas between OC and PI, and OC offers a look at how LW’s later philosophy can be applied to traditional philosophical problems. Huge fan of the podcast, thanks for all that you do!
Simon says
April 11, 2012 at 8:15 pmSo I’ve been reading through Philosophical Investigations, which I’ve never had a chance to do despite having owned it for a number of years. And I’m wondering, is anyone else finding many of these passages rather amusing in the way he responds to his imaginary detractor?
N.N. says
April 14, 2012 at 4:33 pmphilosophers can be funny, for real, even Kant can be hilarious sometimes.
Simon says
April 15, 2012 at 12:11 amOh, I agree. And at the very least, there’s plenty of humor to be brought out of them one way or another. Though all the humorous anecdotes that my friend and I wrote in the margin of the text we shared for modern philosophy, he has informed me, were not as funny as we thought they were at the time.
It just was a bit of a surprise, this being my first reading of the Investigations (since I didn’t complete my Wittgenstein class in college) and my previous experience only having been with the Tractatus.
Billie Pritchett says
April 27, 2012 at 8:31 amSetting aside Wittgenstein’s behaviorist or quasi-behaviorist theory of language, which itself seems to be the wrong kind of picture of language, there is a deep insight in the view that many kinds of philosophical confusions arise because the ordinary language is being taken out of context or ‘is going on holiday.’
One case I can think of is a semi-contemporary debate that John Searle was engaged in about whether or not there are desire-independent reasons for actions. Much of the argumentation that occurs about whether there are desire-independent reasons for actions is bound up with the assumption that people routinely ascribe beliefs and desires to people. But really, if you think about it, the use of these terms ‘beliefs’ and ‘desires’ are being used in special ways here that are not clearly defined. And although I have not attempted this, I bet if you look at the use of these words in an English language corpus (I haven’t done this, so this is just a hypothesis), you will not find people using the words ‘belief’ and ‘desire’ much at all, much less in the same way philosophers are using them. That leaves only one alternative, then, and that is that these words are being used in a technical esoterically philosophical way–which is fine, provided that the philosophers provide some roughshod definition for what they are talking about when they are using these terms. It does no one any good to introduce a technical notion and not tell what you mean by the term, if only provisionally.
There are similar cases in discussions of talk about ‘correspondence theories of truth’ or ‘how words refer.’ The correspondence theory of truth, whereby some proposition ‘corresponds’ to a state of affairs in the world, makes use of the term ‘corresponds’ that is in no real sense vernacular. So it seems to produce more confusion than if it were not introduced at all. I used to not take this too seriously, and I would get angry as a philosophy undergraduate when my friend, correctly I might add (as it seems in retrospect), would ask, “Okay, but in what sense does the proposition ‘correspond’?” or “What do you mean by ‘correspond’ there?” Regarding ‘theories of reference,’ these theories assume word-world connections that seem to be very confused. At least in the vernacular sense, as Peter Strawson put it, “Words don’t ‘refer’; people do.” So again, obviously this is a technical term here, but which, either as ‘refer’ or ‘reference,’ it’s not clear what is really meant.
I’m kind of thankful for this Wittgensteinian insight, and actually I think several philosophical problems can either disappear or at least the confusion can disappear when we think about a word’s ordinary usage compared to its technical usages, even though Wittgenstein himself didn’t explore the latter possibility (or at least I don’t think so).
Wes Alwan says
May 5, 2012 at 6:37 pmWell put, Billie.
Micah Linz says
May 15, 2012 at 7:29 pmSeth,
Are you a WTF podcast with Marc Maron listener?
Seth Paskin says
May 16, 2012 at 9:03 amI listened for the first year or so but have since unsubscribed. The interviews could be really interesting, but Maron’s schtick got a bit repetitive. Had similar experiences with Nerdist and Sklarborough country. Both enjoyable in bits, particularly depending on guests, but the hosts seemed to have trouble getting out of the way of their own narratives. Feel the same about Conan, FWIW.
On the flip side, Doug Benson’s “Doug Loves Movies”, Greg Proop’s “Smartest Man in the World” and Paul Tompkin’s “Pod F. Tomcast” are consistently fresh to me.
–seth
Micah Linz says
May 16, 2012 at 8:44 pmI understand what you’re saying. You can only listen to one comedian so much. I actually don’t even listen to his opening. I just go straight to the interviews.
Since that first year or so though there have been some great interviews. If you haven’t seen the Louis CK, Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Patrice O’Neal, or Dane Cook interviews, just to name a few, I suggest taking a look.
Seth Paskin says
May 16, 2012 at 9:15 pmI appreciate that. I might go back and cherry pick a few and ff to the interview.
Vasili says
May 21, 2012 at 5:25 amI just started listening to the podcasts and enjoyed them very much. I’ve listened through the Foucault, Saussure, and Wittgeinstein ones so far.
I wish you could have drawn out some of the parallels between Saussure and Wittgeinstein. They are both basically reacting against an Augustinian picture of language, or language as nomenclature as Sasussure puts it. The major difference is that while Sasussure brackets out the use (pragmatics) of language in order to get to the abstract system of meaningful difference, Wittgeinstein goes the opposite way and highlights only use (turning his back on meaning as an internal state).
A common issue with both is linguistic relativity. As an anthropologist I acknowledge the contribution of Saussure and I’m sympathetic to Wittgeinstein’s aims, if not all his conclusions. From where I stand claims that counter Chomsky’s cognitive universalism by emphasizing the social nature of language are quite established and not at all controversial. What Wittgeinstein’s argument against private language highlights is this intrinsically social and hence cultural nature of language. Different cultures play different language games, or chop up the world according to different logic, and hence even such simple sentence as “that dog lives there” can be potentially untranslatable. To give a simple example some cultures could have categories for dogs one eats and ones that are pets without a common term for both. To live or inhabit could have completely different associations in different cultures and space could be conceptualized in ways that does not allow one to say simply that and there.
A neat, if trivial, example from Saussure is the difference between the river/stream distinction in English and the fleuve/riviére one in French. In English one is bigger one smaller, while in French one flows into the sea while other flows into a river. While they seem analogous, they are actually not the same things at all.
Look forward to listening to the rest of your podcasts!
Vasili says
May 21, 2012 at 5:40 amOh, I also have to object to the idea that came up about pattern recognition forming a base of sorts for language. While this is certainly a necessary condition it’s not itself enough, since the specific forms needed for human consciousness are internalized through socialization, and hence transcended the individual. This is why individuals don’t develop individual languages however much sensory input comes their way. Meaning is not gleaned from raw empirical experience.
I think the reason why such theories (certain types of cognitive theory, evolutionary psychology) appeal to us, is their individualistic nature. Our cultural bias makes it hard for us to accept sociality as the base of language and consciousness, or sometimes even society (see common good arising from the self-interested actions of individuals, and Maggie Thatcher saying there is no such thing as society).
Sorry if this got a little ranty…
Vasili says
May 22, 2012 at 8:06 amI just noticed that you are going to continue on the topic of language. If you do Chomsky I hope you include a discussion of linguistic relativity (and not just as a dead and buried theory).
One of the great difficulties of discussing language philosophically is that many of the issues involved can only be resolved through comparative empirical study, and philosopher tend to just make up their own data. This is partially true of formal grammarians (like Chomsky) who tend to look at language not as it actually exists, but as an ideal thing (for Chomsky its the difference between internalized and externalized language), while sociolinguists and linguistic anthropologists look at how language is actually used, which tends to be a lot messier and involve all kinds of extra-linguistic considerations.
Sorry for pushing my point of view, but I hope it just demonstrates my enjoyment of and engagement with the podcasts.
“…real world is is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies lives are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels” (Edward Sapir 1929, The status of Linguistics as a Science)
Vasili says
May 24, 2012 at 4:40 amSince no one has taken the bait I’ll just low on and add a few recommendations.
It might be interesting to look at the works of Marshall Sahlins from a philosophical point of view. In the introduction to Island of History (1987) he has a nice concise theory of the interaction between structure and event or signs and the world which combines structuralism and a kind of phenomenology.
“If culture is as anthropologists claim a meaningful order, still, in action meanings are always at risk. They are risked, for example, by reference to things (i.e., in extension). Things not only have their own raison d’être, independently of what people may think of them, they are inevitably disproportionate to the sense of the signs by which they are apprehended. Things are contextually more particular than signs and potentially more general. They are more particular insofar as signs are meaning-classes, not bound as concepts to any particular referent (or “stimulus-free”). Things are thus related to their signs as empirical tokens to cultural types. Yet things are more general than signs inasmuch as they present more properties (more “reality”) than the distinctions and values attended to by signs. Culture is therefore a gamble played with nature in the course of which, wittingly or unwittingly – I paraphrase March Bloch – the old names that are still on everyone’s lips aquire connotations that are far removed from their original meaning. This is one of the historical processes I will be calling “the functional revaluation of the categories.”
“The sense of the sign (Saussurean value) is determined by its contrastive relations to other signs in the system. Therefore, it is complete and systematic only in the society (or community of speakers) as a whole. Any actual use of the sign in reference by some person or group engages only part, some small fraction, of the collective sense. Apart from the influences of the context, this division of meaning is, broadly speaking, a function of the differences among people in social experience and interest What is “a fluttering bird (of some kind)” to me is “a diseased sparrow hawk” to you (an ornithologist) and perhaps “a poor thing” to some others (members of SPCA) … Acting from different perspectives, and with different social powers to objectify their respective interpretations, people come to different conclusions and societies work out different consensuses. Social communication is as much an empirical risk as worldly referent. “
Sahlins goes on to look at how structure (system of signs for example) interacts with event (use of sign for example, calls the situational synthesis of the two structure of the conjuncture: By the structure of conjuncture I mean the practical realization of the cultural categories in a specific historical context, as expressed in the interested action of historic agents, including the microsociology of their interaction.”
This gets us into real world pushing back that is arguably left out of both Saussure and Wittgenstein. (but not Peirce). This does not, however, go against assumption of linguistic relativity, and it would be a mistake to assume that the functional revaluation of signs gradually inches them towards some kind of objective truth (in naïve empiricist sense), since intentions that direct the revaluation are always contingent on specific cultural practices and systems of value. Linguistic relativity was not meant to claim that language is a prison, especially since it is only one system of symbolic meaning among many. As Edward Sapir said: “unfortunately, or luckily, no language is tyrannically consistent. All grammar leaks.”
Other stuff from Sahlins that might be of interest is his article The sadness of Sweetnes; or, The Native Anthropology of Western Cosmology where he tackles everything from practical reason, to capitalism, and empiricism or somewhat overlapping text Western Illusion of Human Nature: With Reflections on the Long History of Hierarchy, Equality and the Sublimation of Anarchy in the West, and … on Other Conceptions of the Human Condition. Both trace intellectual genealogies in a rather care free manner (a la Foucault) and include discussions of some key figures from history of philosophy.
Vasili says
May 24, 2012 at 4:55 amPs. Sahlins is also known as an adamant critic of theories which try to posit utilitarianism, common sense, practical calculation, self-interest etc. as universals rather than culturally relative schemes of value (what is self evident to common sense and a practical mind in one culture is not the same in an other). In short he is a cultural relativist.