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    Wittgenstein and The Inner World - John McDowell

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    Pablo Canovas
    The document discusses Wittgenstein's later philosophy of mind and how it is often misread as being hostile to the inner world. It argues that two symposium papers leave too much scope for this misreading in regards to intentional aspects of the mental. The author believes we cannot properly understand Wittgenstein unless we see that two target misconceptions issue from a common source - a conception of the inner world as a lived refutation of idealism.

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    Wittgenstein and The Inner World - John McDowell

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    Pablo Canovas
    223 views3 pages
    The document discusses Wittgenstein's later philosophy of mind and how it is often misread as being hostile to the inner world. It argues that two symposium papers leave too much scope for this misreading in regards to intentional aspects of the mental. The author believes we cannot properly understand Wittgenstein unless we see that two target misconceptions issue from a common source - a conception of the inner world as a lived refutation of idealism.

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    Wittgenstein and the inner world - John McDowell

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    The document discusses Wittgenstein's later philosophy of mind and how it is often misread as being hostile to the inner world. It argues that two symposium papers leave too much scope for this misreading in regards to intentional aspects of the mental. The author believes we cannot properly understand Wittgenstein unless we see that two target misconceptions issue from a common source - a conception of the inner world as a lived refutation of idealism.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    223 views3 pages

    Wittgenstein and The Inner World - John McDowell

    Uploaded by

    Pablo Canovas
    The document discusses Wittgenstein's later philosophy of mind and how it is often misread as being hostile to the inner world. It argues that two symposium papers leave too much scope for this misreading in regards to intentional aspects of the mental. The author believes we cannot properly understand Wittgenstein unless we see that two target misconceptions issue from a common source - a conception of the inner world as a lived refutation of idealism.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 3

    Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

    Wittgenstein and the Inner World


    Author(s): John McDowell
    Reviewed work(s):
    Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 86, No. 11, Eighty-Sixth Annual Meeting American
    Philosophical Association, Eastern Division (Nov., 1989), pp. 643-644
    Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.
    Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2027041 .
    Accessed: 26/10/2012 11:20

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    THOUGHT OF WIl1TGENSTEIN 643

    WITTGENSTEIN AND THE INNER WORLD*


    L udwig Wittgenstein'slater philosophyof mind is often read
    as hostile to the inner; but that is quite wrong, as, e.g., Philo-
    sophical Investigations' ?423 makes clear. I shall suggest
    that our symposiasts leave too much scope for this misreading, at
    least in respect of the intentional aspects of the mental: Warren
    Goldfarb in taking Wittgenstein to deny that understanding a word
    (say) is a "particular or definite state," and Crispin Wright in equip-
    ping Wittgenstein with a position according to which intentional
    states are-to put it crudely-less robustly there than nonintentional
    mental items.
    On Wright's reading, Wittgenstein's purpose, in the case of un-
    derstanding (and this goes for intentional states generally), is to
    separate it from the occurrent phenomena of consciousness, on
    jointly phenomenological and a priori grounds. I shall argue that this
    reading fails to accommodate passages in which Wittgenstein raises
    difficulties parallel to the one that shapes his treatment of under-
    standing (notably ?386); and that, as Wright understands it, Witt-
    genstein's a priori argument would defeat its supposed purpose, by
    threatening the existence of any phenomena of consciousness. The
    distinction between what is in consciousness and what is not cannot
    have the thematic significance for Wittgenstein which Wright gives it.
    The trouble is with the way Wright orchestrates Wittgenstein's
    moves. There are two obvious targets, Platonism about meaning and
    the misconception of sensations attacked in the "private language"
    dialectic. Wright has these as more or less independent temptations
    to which our thought is prone-although the first, in the shape of a
    Platonistic conception of intentions, naturally figures in defense of
    the second, when it is pressed to turn itself into a theory. But I do not
    believe we can understand Wittgenstein properly unless we see these
    two target misconceptions as issuing from a common source. I shall
    suggest that Wittgenstein's fundamental target is a conception of the
    inner as a lived refutation of "idealism"-a region where we come
    face to face with the given, that which is set over against conceptual
    schemes. This makes the grippingness of the misconception of sen-
    sations more intelligible than Wright can, and yields a satisfying

    * Abstract of a paper to be presented in an APA symposium on the Thought of


    Wittgenstein, December 30, commenting on papers by Crispin Wright and Warren
    Goldfarb; see this JOURNAL, this issue, 622-634 and 635-642, respectively.
    'G. E. M. Anscombe, trans. (New York: Macmillan, 1953).

    0022-362X/89/861 1/643/4 ? 1989 The Journal of Philosophy, Inc.


    644 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

    understanding of Platonism and of Wittgenstein's moves against it. It


    also makes available a satisfying positive picture of the inner world,
    without Wright's asymmetry between the intentional and the nonin-
    tentional; indeed, Wright's conception of the nonintentional aspects
    of mental life seems to reflect a version of the very thought that, in
    my view, Wittgenstein is fundamentally concerned to oppose.
    Goldfarb discusses material in which Wittgenstein shows that un-
    derstanding a word, say, cannot be a definite state, on a certain
    conception of what a definite state would be, namely, the kind of
    state with which science can deal. ('Cannot' fits here because science
    cannot do anything with the idea of internal relations.) One of the
    manifestations of Platonistic self-deception is missing the force of
    that 'cannot', and taking what is actually a hopeless conceptual bind
    for a merely empirical mystery ("the as yet uncomprehended process
    in the as yet unexplored medium": ?308). I have two main objections
    to Goldfarb's treatment of this material. First, he underrates the
    extent to which "central conceptual features of our notion of un-
    derstanding" are in place ahead of Wittgenstein's piecemeal investi-
    gations, fueling the misconceptions under attack and accounting for
    their philosophical resonance. Second, he does not consider some-
    thing that, given my description of the material, is an obvious next
    move, namely, "So much the worse for that conception of what a
    definite state would have to be." A lesson of Wittgenstein's philo-
    sophy of mind is that we can dislodge philosophical misconceptions,
    and reclaim the inner world, populated by definite states and pro-
    cesses, for unphilosophical common sense.
    JOHN McDOWELL
    University of Pittsburgh

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