Wittgenstein and the Social Sciences. Robert Vinten

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СКАЧАТЬ in R. Vinten, ‘Review of “Clarity and Confusion in Social Theory” by Leonidas Tsilipakos’, Nordic Wittgenstein Review, vol. 4, no. 2, 2015.

¹⁶See F. R. Leavis, ‘Luddites? Or, There Is Only One Culture’, in Two Cultures? The Significance of C. P. Snow (with an introduction by Stefan Collini), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 103.

¹⁷Ibid., pp. 101, 106.

¹⁸Ibid., p. 103.

      ¹⁹In one of the remarks published in Culture and Value Wittgenstein says,

      Our civilization is characterized by the word ‘progress’. Progress is its form rather than making progress being one of its features. Typically it constructs. It is occupied with building an ever more complicated structure. And even clarity is only a means to this end and not an end in itself. For me on the contrary clarity, perspicuity are valuable in themselves. I am not interested in constructing a building, so much as in having a perspicuous view of the foundations of possible buildings. So I am not aiming at the same target as the scientists and my way of thinking is different from theirs. (Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 7)

²⁰Leavis and Wittgenstein were briefly friends (see R. Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein, London: Vintage, 1991, pp. 42, 272, 278–79, 569; and also F. R. Leavis, ‘Memories of Wittgenstein’, in Recollections of Wittgenstein, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984, pp. 50–67).

²¹M. R. Bennett and P. M. S. Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, Oxford: Blackwell, 2003, p. 357.

²²‘Scientific Reduction’, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-reduction/, accessed 29 August 2016.

²³F. Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis, London: Touchstone, 1995, p. 3.

²⁴Ibid., p. 7.

²⁵This is what is known as ‘classical reductionism’, and the classic formulation of it is Paul Oppenheim and Hilary Putnam’s ‘The Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis’, in H. Feigl et al. (eds), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 2, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1958.

²⁶See, e.g. C. Blakemore, The Mind Machine, London: BBC Publications, 1988, pp. 270–72.

²⁷However, it is worth noting that one can be a materialist without being a reductionist and one can be a reductionist without being a materialist. Berkeley, an idealist, thought that everything reduces to minds and ideas.

²⁸This will be discussed in the following section.

²⁹Bennett and Hacker Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, p. 358.

³⁰Bennett and Hacker’s discussion of materialism leans on John Dupré’s discussion of materialism in The Disorder of Things. Dupré discusses and rejects several versions of materialism in his chapter on reduction and materialism (J. Dupré, The Disorder of Things, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993, pp. 89–94).

³¹See Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §149.

³²Ibid., §150.

³³Bennett and Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, pp. 360–61.

³⁴See Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §281: ‘Only of a living human being and what resembles (behaves like) a living human being can one say: it has sensations; it sees; is blind; hears; is deaf; is conscious or unconscious.’

³⁵Dupré, The Disorder of Things, 107–20.

³⁶Ibid., pp. 121–45.

³⁷Wittgenstein, Blue and Brown Books, p. 18.

³⁸Ibid.

³⁹P. Winch, The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy, London: Routledge, p. 60.

⁴⁰Ibid., p. 62.

⁴¹D. Davidson, ‘Actions, Reasons, and Causes’, Journal of Philosophy, vol. 60, no. 23, 1963, pp. 685–700.

⁴²See, e.g. G. D’Oro and C. Sandis, Reasons and Causes: Causalism and Anti-Causalism in the Philosophy of Action, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013; and J. Tanney, Rules, Reason, and Self-Knowledge, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013.

⁴³Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §225.

⁴⁴Winch, Idea of a Social Science, p. 84.

⁴⁵Ibid., p. 87.

⁴⁶Ibid., p. 88.

⁴⁷Davidson, ‘Actions, Reasons, and Causes’, p. 685.

⁴⁸Ibid., p. 691.

⁴⁹Ibid., p. 691.

⁵⁰Ibid., p. 692.

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