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Perfect Pitch and Austinian Examples: Cavell, McDowell, Wittgenstein, and the Philosophical Significance of Ordinary Language

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 48; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00201750510022853

1502-3923

Martin Gustafsson,

Philosophy and Theoretical Science

Abstract In Cavell (Citation1994), the ability to follow and produce Austinian examples of ordinary language use is compared with the faculty of perfect pitch. Exploring this comparison, I clarify a number of central and interrelated aspects of Cavell's philosophy: (1) his way of understanding Wittgenstein's vision of language, and in particular his claim that this vision is "terrifying," (2) the import of Wittgenstein's vision for Cavell's conception of the method of ordinary language philosophy, (3) Cavell's dissatisfaction with Austin, and in particular his claim that Austin is not clear about the nature and possible achievements of his own philosophical procedures, and (4) Cavell's notion that the temptation of skepticism is perennial and incurable. Cavell's reading of Wittgenstein is related to that of John McDowell. Like McDowell, Cavell takes Wittgenstein to be saying that the traditional attempt to justify our practices from an external standpoint is misguided, since such detachment involves losing sight of those conceptual and perceptual capacities in terms of which a practice is understood by its engaged participants. Unlike McDowell, however, Cavell consistently rejects the idea that philosophical clearsightedness can or should free us from that fear of groundlessness which motivates the traditional search for external justification. Notes 1. Cavell (Citation1994), p. 21. All future references to Cavell (Citation1994) are made parenthetically in the text by means of PoP and the appropriate page number. 2. McDowell (Citation1998), pp. 61, 207. All future references to McDowell (Citation1998) are made parenthetically in the text by means of MVR and the appropriate page number. 3. Cavell (Citation2002), p. 52, note omitted. All future references to Cavell (Citation2002) are made parenthetically in the text by means of MWM and the appropriate page number. 4. Cavell (Citation1979), p. 109. All future references to Cavell (Citation1979) are made parenthetically in the text by means of CR and the appropriate page number. 5. McDowell (Citation2002), p. 294. 6. Wittgenstein (Citation1978), paragraph VI‐35. 7. Austin (Citation1979), p. 185, n. 1. 8. Affeldt's criticism is in Affeldt (Citation1998). 9. Mulhall (Citation1998), p. 40. 10. I take my point here to be closely related to what Affeldt says about Cavell's notion of criteria in the following passage: "To speak of our sharing an order of criteria is to speak of an order in our judgments (and conduct). Eliciting criteria reveals the fine‐grained structure of our agreement in judgment. It does not reveal a separate order under‐girding and controlling that agreement. […] It would be a philosophical distortion of what is involved in our being, as Cavell puts it, initiates of language, to imagine that we somehow always have or possess (perhaps only tacitly) a catalogue of criteria which we use in speaking and making judgments. One central reason for Cavell's insistence that our agreement in language and our agreement in criteria are the same phenomenon differently described is precisely to fend off this, philosophically tempting, idea" (Affeldt (Citation1998), p. 15). 11. Perhaps the difference between the two tasks is not very different from Kant's difference between formal and transcendental logic: whereas the former takes the application of rules for granted, the latter constitutes an investigation into the conditions for the possibility of such application (Cf. MWM, p. 168). 12. One might want to argue that the term "objectivity" is misplaced here, since this term is too ingrained with philosophical prejudices of the sort which both McDowell and Cavell are concerned to reject. But McDowell would disagree. He freely admits that the notion of objectivity involves the idea of inquiry as answerable to something other than ourselves, but argues that this is a perfectly intelligible idea that does substantial work within our familiar practices. What needs to be rejected, according to McDowell, is not the familiar notion of objectivity, but the idea of a gap between the world and us. (See, for example, McDowell (Citation2000), pp. 110–111.) I take Cavell to ascribe a similar view to Wittgenstein, for example in the following remark which alludes to Kant's conception of things‐in‐themselves: "For Wittgenstein it would be an illusion not only that we do know things‐in‐themselves, but equally an illusion that we do not (crudely, because the concept of 'knowing something as it really is' is being used without a clear sense, apart from its ordinary language game)" (MWM, p. 65). As the parenthetical remark makes clear, the point here is not that Wittgenstein takes the concept of "knowing something as it really is" and its cognates to be somehow illegitimate. Rather, Cavell is arguing that Wittgenstein thinks those concepts have familiar uses, uses that are perfectly all right. What Wittgenstein is said to react against is the philosophical attempt to remove those concepts from that stream of life within which they do their work. According to Cavell, it is precisely that sort of attempt which makes it seem as if a gap opens up between familiar practices and reality. 13. McDowell (Citation1996), p. 70. 14. What follows is a free rendering of the discussions in CR, pp. 197ff., and MWM, pp. 249ff. Thanks to Stina Bäckström for a good conversation about these passages, and to David Finkelstein for a stimulating discussion about the philosophical significance of ball shells. 15. I am disregarding the case when the object is made of some transparent material, such as glass. In this sort of case, the scheme, as specified above, does allow us to say that we "see the whole object" even if the object consists of something more than a front surface. In fact, reflecting on the phenomenon of transparency may have far‐reaching consequences for the epistemologist, and cause considerable modifications of his original scheme. For example, he might conclude that the very idea of a third dimension is foreign to our visual sense, arguing, perhaps, that before they are conceptualized by us visual impressions are inherently two‐dimensional. It is not necessary to consider these complications in further detail here, however. 16. Of course, getting to see the backside of something might in some cases be quite cumbersome. Consider the moon. 17. The epistemologist might try to leave room for the fact that we can move around in the world by saying that what establishes the identity of the parts of an object is not just their position relative to an observer, but also certain other properties that are independent of the geometry of the situation. That would seem to allow for the possibility of seeing new parts of an object: even if I always see a front surface, the front surface I now see might be distinguished from the one I saw, say, two seconds ago. This, however, has another weird consequence. For let us suppose that the front surface I now see is not the same as the one I saw two seconds ago. Given this assumption, it seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that the front surface I saw two seconds ago no longer exists, and, conversely, that the front surface that I am seeing right now did not exist two seconds ago. For everything that exists now differs from the front surface I saw two seconds ago in ways that are relevant to its identity: either with respect to its position relative to me, or with respect to some of the other criteria of identity. After all, the only thing that now occupies the same position as the front surface I saw two seconds ago is the front surface that I am now seeing, and we were assuming that these two surfaces are not identical. Analogously, the front surface I now see did not exist two seconds ago, since what occupied its position relative to me was the front surface I then saw, and, again, the two surfaces were assumed not to be the same. (Cf. CR, p. 202.) 18. For a penetrating discussion of Cavell's conception of the point of an utterance, see Baz (Citation2003). 19. Cavell (Citation1989), p. 57. 20. I am presupposing that the aim of serious revolutionaries within art or science is not limited to the mere overthrowing of old conventions (if their aim were thus limited, their endeavors should not be characterized as projections at all.) According to Cavell, what a serious revolutionary wants to do is often to regain the original significance of an art form or a science. In the eyes of such a revolutionary, the reason for replacing old conventions is that, under new circumstances, they have come to obfuscate rather than promote this original purpose. Cavell says, "deep revolutionary changes can result from attempts to conserve a project, to take it back to its idea, keep it in touch with its history. […] It is because certain human beings crave the conservation of their art that they seek to discover how, under altered circumstances, paintings and pieces of music can still be made, and hence revolutionize their art beyond the recognition of many. This is how, in my illiteracy, I read Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: that only a master of the science can accept a revolutionary change as a natural extension of that science; and that he accepts it, or proposes it, in order to maintain touch with the idea of that science, with its internal canons of comprehensibility and comprehensiveness, as if against the vision that, under altered circumstances, the normal progress of explanation and exception no longer seem to him to be science" (CR, p. 121). 21. What I am saying here and in the rest of section 5 is meant to address the worry that ordinary language philosophy, as conceived by Cavell, must be impotent as a mode of criticism. This worry is perhaps reinforced by a misunderstanding of the intimate connection between, on the one hand, the impossibility of flat repudiation, and on the other, the first person plural character of the investigations of ordinary language philosophy. Cavell writes, "the way you must rely upon yourself as a source of what is said when, demands that you grant full title to others as sources of that data—not out of politeness, but because the nature of the claim you make for yourself is repudiated without that acknowledgement: it is a claim that no one knows better than you whether and when a thing is said, and if this is not to be taken as a claim to expertise (a way of taking it which repudiates it) then it must be understood to mean that you know no better than others what you claim to know. With respect to the data of philosophy our positions are the same" (MWM, pp. 239–40). Isn't the consequence that the conflict between the ordinary language philosopher and his interlocutor is exactly like the earlier imagined conflict between people who used to have perfect pitch but who no longer agree in their identification of pitches? If so, it seems as if all the ordinary language philosopher can do is to insist that his own "everyday" way of talking is the appropriate one. And that would not convince his opponent, who we may expect to be an equally staunch defender of "philosophical" usage. According to the sort of reading I present here, however, a main purpose of Cavell's criticism of Austin and other ordinary language philosophers is precisely to show them a way out of this kind of stalemate. According to Cavell, to argue that "philosophical" usage constitutes a demonstrably inappropriate deviation from everyday language is dangerous, precisely because the real consequence of such belligerence is impotence: the ordinary language philosopher and his opponent will be talking past one another, and each one will be as convinced as before that he is (demonstrably) right. (See, for example, CR, p. 146.) 22. For an illuminating discussion of what Cavell thinks it means to lapse into meaninglessness, see Witherspoon (Citation2002). 23. McDowell (Citation1996), p. 177. 24. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at workshops at Uppsala University and at The University of Chicago. I thank the audiences for thoughtful discussions. In particular, I wish to thank Zed Adams, Steven Affeldt, Avner Baz, Stina Bäckström, Stanley Cavell, James Conant, David Finkelstein, Stephen Mulhall and Lisa Van Alstyne for helpful comments and criticisms. I am, of course, solely responsible for any remaining mistakes and misinterpretations. Work on the paper was financed by The Swedish Research Council.