Antonio Calonego
The metaphysical myth of everyday language as "immaturity of Thought"
In the forthcoming paragraphs I’ll try to
sketch what I’ve called the metaphysical myth of everyday
language as "immaturity of Thought", showing what
difficulty gives rise to it and what is the historical source of
it. But, since from the same source I’m speaking of (i.e.
Descartes) also comes the more traditional problem of "the
limits of Thought", which, under many respects, could be
mistaken with the former, my first step will be to outline the
latter, in order to distinguish the two and prevent us from
giving the one what belongs to the other.
From a historical point of view, both the problems deepen their
roots into the same context, which is the context of the
beginning of modern age and the born of science. Making use of
its peculiar procedures of abstraction, the science yielded a new
picture of the world, which, on one hand, was quite different
from the one that could be attained by language and thinking
resources of everyday man, and on the other hand, could not leave
the traditional conceptions concerning the powers of human
intelligence and the place of God, as they were before.
[1] A mysterious cause from outside ?
Given a series like, for instance: 1, -1/3,
+1/5, -1/7, +1/9, -1/11, +1/13, -1/15 … , when we understand
what term comes after the last one written (+1/17), we grasp
which step brings from n to n+1 and so we
understand the law of it as if we could now take in at one
sight the infinite numbers which belong to it. Mental processes,
we need of to get hold of what seemed but a set of different
elements, may easily find their way or require a more difficult
working; in both cases, once the target is hit, their output
reveals a new texture of the datum, which appears now to
be an interwoven complex made up out of form – its
concealed order - and matter – its appearance of a
dispersed plurality of individual atoms.
We have three choices to account for all that: (a) we can treat form
and matter as they were two separate entities and conclude
that the first one doesn't depend on us, while the second one
consists but in "filters" or "codes" we make
use of to elaborate on it (different codes would give forth to
different results); (b) we can treat form and matter
as two separate entities and imagine that neither the first one
nor the second one depend on us; (c) we can conclude that it is
within the same "mental act" by which we
apprehend the object, as an object of knowledge (having that
special value of stability it actually has), that the distinction
between a form and a matter can be generated as a
product of human intelligence in its efforts to represent the
world.
The options (a) and (b) give rise to the questions: what is the
origin of those entities ? Where do they come from? Does matter
consist in unknown messages coming from a mysterious source
outside? Is the form, whose notion always involves the
infinity, the footprint of the superior mind of God ?
According to Cassirer, both the interpretations (b) and (c) can
be detected in Descartes, who, at the end, brings back to an
augustinian and medieval frame of thoughts (matter and form
are separate entities created by God) the whole novelty of his
conception. To face these problems and investigate the same
meaningfulness of the questions above, was, as it is known, one
of the major jobs of the Philosophy which came afterwards.
[2] Are there two suns?
The same Descartes’ writings, which
delivered the "thing in itself" problem to the history
of modern Philosophy, give rise to another question, which is
there clearly formulated, though under two distinct versions.
First version. Of the sun, we have two different ideas,
Descartes’ says (Meditation III, § 11): "I
find in my mind two wholly diverse ideas of the sun; the one, by
which it appears to me extremely small draws its origin from the
senses, and should be placed in the class of adventitious ideas;
the other, by which it seems to be many times larger than the
whole earth, is taken up on astronomical grounds, that is,
elicited from certain notions born with me, or is framed by
myself in some other manner. These two ideas cannot certainly
both resemble the same sun; and reason teaches me that the one
which seems to have immediately emanated from it is the most
unlike". First, Descartes stresses the problem, pushed
into prominence by the new science, which concerns the difference
between the world as we commonly apprehend it and the one
portrayed by the rationally (and mathematically) based thought;
secondly, he puts forward his argument: since the "two
ideas cannot certainly both resemble the same sun",
"reason teaches me that" the one drawing its
origin from what immediately appears, has to be included into the
category of what is "the most unlike".
Answering the Gassendi’s objections - reflecting on the same
problem, Gassendi had tried to show that, when we assume that all
we know always comes from what experience teaches, the alleged
difference becomes much less dramatic and can be reduced but to a
difference of grades within a unique process of elaboration of
the same material – Descartes is much more explicit: the
difference between the two ideas is the difference between the
true and the false .
Second version. In the famous piece of wax example (Meditation
II. § 11), the above difference (between the two ways of
portraying the same object) is explained as a difference between
two species of mental resources which are within the
sphere of our powers: the ones belonging to everyday thinking -
not only senses, but also a kind of "imagination" which
allows us to represent a certain limited numbers of changes of
the matter - and the ones belonging to rational thought, whose
superiority consists in its being able of going beyond those
limits and encompassing an infinity of those changes. What the
wax is, Descartes says, can be only established by an "intuition
of the mind (mentis inspectio)", as soon as we
avert our attention from all the aspects of the thing which make
the representation of it "imperfect and confused".
Here, Descartes makes use of the pair "imperfect and
confused"/"clear and distinct": the
intervening of a mens freed of any interference coming
from senses and imagination, allows it to shed light on what
seems to be already present within our mind, though still faintly
visible trough the vapors of everyday thinking.
[3] Two interpretations and one paradox.
From the two Descartes’ versions of the problem, we have above outlined, two corresponding interpretations have also derived: 1) everyday thinking is mostly a chaotic place where errors and prejudices easily lurk and are often masters; reason is so committed to shape it, illuminate it and reform it; 2) everyday thinking is not to be judged or condemned, but comprehended because of the truth which is bore by it, though still in embryo, and which must be "brought to light" and "elicited" by labour of Philosophy. All immersed within the sphere of the empirical facts her determinate existence is made of, the "common conscience" can’t see what they presuppose, the same way a child can’t see the general conditions of his family life, he gives for granted. It is, to go on employing an organic metaphor, a still immature phase of the philosophical conscience.
The point of view we intend to uphold, here, is
as follows: though the second interpretation (mostly belonging to
hegelian and marxist tradition) claims it can definitively put an
end to that pedagogical attitude toward everyday thinking and
language, which is so peculiar to the first interpretation, it
isn’t really a shift from it and the paradox, this second
interpretation can’t avoid to meet with and in which it
remains entangled, clearly reveals what an ambiguity lies
concealed in it.. The paradox is this: once the philosophical
truth has been "brought to light", it can be
"immediately recognizable" as such (as the true
meaning of our determinate existence) or not. If it is "immediately
recognizable" (i.e. recognizable to the "common
conscience" presupposing but those "spiritual
resources" immediately available to her), it must
completely coincide with what the "common conscience"
takes up for ultimate evidence. It is very difficult that such a
truth could go beyond the "dominant ideology"
(in marxian sense) and be something more than an empiricist
theory of the kind criticized by philosophers of rationalist
tradition. If, on the contrary, it is not "immediately
recognizable", it will be recognizable only by those who
have already taken in the fundamental steps of the theory. In
this case, when those who have already taken in the fundamental
steps of the theory claim that their theory has "brought
to light" etc. etc., that will amount to just a way to
express no more than the obvious fact that they accept the theory
and, therefore, what the theory says about everyday language.
To escape the paradox, as far as I can see, there is no other
route to go than that one which consists in turning away from
both the two interpretations, when they purport to be able to fix
what everyday language is, and admitting that everyday language
has, if I am allowed to use once again the organic metaphor, an its
own personality.
[4] A final question.
In his "How I see Philosophy"
(Macmillan, London; see cap. V. § 5), F. Waismann widely argues
against those thinkers who believe that "ordinary
usage" can be fixed and taken as paradigm of correctness:
they can’t see how changeable ordinary language is and how
much it often owes to the work of Philosophy, Science or
Literature (what Waismann says describing the creativity of the
artist, who elaborating new terms find out and make us know new
aspects of our life, calls to mind some pages of Bergson’s Le
rire).
But speaking of everyday language as having an its own
personality, we didn’t mean to endorse the thesis Waismann
attacks. This thesis was not even at issue. We were not concerned
with what everyday language is, but with what philosophers
claim it is.
Shall we draw the conclusion that everyday language is without
the reach of our reason or, as Wittgenstein’s Philosophical
Investigation suggests, and as I think, in need of a quite
different kind of rational research ?