Charles Taylor, Philosophical Arguments (1995)
Notes, Questions & Answers #4: "Heidegger & Wittgenstein"

T. writes that "the dominant rationalist view has screened out this engagement [Dasein, pragmatism, &] has given us a model of ourselves as disengaged thinkers." Can we ever be "disengaged thinkers" (63)? This model can be traced back to the Enlightenment, specifically to David Hume. Descartes popularized an epistemological model having four steps. 1) Presumably there is a world of material objects, which (in part) causes 2) perceptions. These are imagined to be atomic bits/bytes of unrelated data (alphabet soup). 3) The mind (20^th c.: grammar/language) associates or links the bits/atoms to spell words, to write sentences, resulting in 4) discourse or explanation/theory. The empirical tradition (David Hume, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Roger Bacon) minimized the transformational power of step 3. "Locke treats simple ideas as analogous to the materials we use for building," bricks, 72. Instead of recognizing that a concept/definition adds meaning to a sensation/perception, they sought to make the two equivalent; because if this can be done, then step 3 becomes insignificant (not transformational or creative) & discourse can be seen as a simple arrangement of perceptions, which can be empirically tested. If the discourse pattern (hypothesis) is true, there will be empirical confirmation (the effect happens).

"This offers us the picture of agents [physics lab observers] who in perceiving the world take in 'bits' of information from their surroundings, & then 'process' them in some fashion, in order to emerge with the 'picture' of the world they have; who then act on the basis of this picture to fulfill their goals, through a 'calculus' of means & ends," e.g., utilitarianism, 63. The (pragmatic) question is whether this epistemological model is plausible. T. identifies this as the model of modern notions of self. So the short answer is, yes it is evidently plausible. Next question, does it survive analysis?

Notice how Descartes redefined metaphysical presumption (or replaced metaphysics with epistemology): "the modern conception, starting with Descartes, focuses on procedure [process/processing as in data processing]. Reason is not that faculty in us which connects us to an [objective, Platonic or Aristotelian] order of things . . . ," 64. That absolute order of things constitutes a whole, of which perceptions & concepts are parts. In a pre-modern outlook, we do not have to assemble the parts. Perceiving various parts & analyzing them will lead us to various recognitions of the whole.

A large part of the modern (Western) notion of self came into focus when "The disengaged perspective [the physics lab: how does this disassemble; how does it assemble?], which might better have been conceived as a rare & regional [i.e., appropriately confined to the physics lab, medical diagnosis, etc.] achievement of a knowing agent whose normal stance was engaged [in less formally structured activities/communities], was read into the very nature of mind," 66.

66: Descartes wax. If wax is a set of perceptions (feel, color, shape, etc.), as Locke & Hume said it must be (any "real" thing must be empirical), then what happens when it is melted? The set of perceptions becomes entirely different. Therefore it cannot be (or indicate) the same thing. Descartes said this is nonsensical precisely because Locke & the empiricists are wrong: concepts/ideas are not reducible to perceptions. Wax is not a set of empirical properties or measurements. It is a conceptions or idea which organizes various empirical properties.

1. Can we ever be "disengaged thinkers"?

Pragmatists (including Heidegger) would say no. There is always a horizon or context for thought. In the Newtonian disengaged model, the horizon is unrecognized or buried or denied in order to promote the claims that the model makes, viz.: This model can be traced back to the Enlightenment, specifically to David Hume. Descartes popularized an epistemological model having four steps. 1) Presumably there is a world of material objects, which (in part) causes 2) perceptions. These are imagined to be atomic bits/bytes of unrelated data (alphabet soup). 3) The mind (20^th c.: grammar/language) associates or links the bits/atoms to spell words, to write sentences, resulting in 4) discourse or explanation/theory.

"This offers us the picture of agents [physics lab observers] who in perceiving the world take in 'bits' of information from their surroundings, & then 'process' them in some fashion, in order to emerge with the 'picture' of the world they have; who then act on the basis of this picture to fulfill their goals, through a 'calculus' of means & ends," e.g., utilitarianism. The (pragmatic) question is whether this epistemological model is plausible. T. identifies this as the model of modern notions of self. So the short answer is, yes it is evidently plausible. Next question, does it survive analysis? Obviously the pragmatists believe that it does not & that their epistemological model is correct.

Newton casts the other long shadow here. ". . . the underlying belief was that we need to attain this [disengaged, objective] perspective in order to do justice to a mechanistic universe." But what is evidence for the belief that the universe is a mechanism/machine? The success of physics & its technological implications. And what about life outside the physics lab? Isn't the answer, "don't leave the lab"? "To the extent that we understand our thinking mechanistically, we have to understand it outside any context of engagement" except for the assumed role of investigator in the physics lab. This is the posture [the voyeur] & context [laboratory, morgue] acceptable to the Enlightenment. Life in other categories is, at best, entertainment; at worst, delusional.
"The very relationship [the whole/gestalt] to something defines a 'world shaping' . . . can't be stated in a mechanistic perspective" as a discrete/atomic step or part, 67. Descartes wax cannot be replaced/reduced to an empirical property. Yet this is what reductive materialism demands. The program can play each atomic note in a sequence, but it can't comprehend the whole as music.

2. But what is the evidence for the belief that the universe is a mechanism/machine? To restate the question: what about life outside the physics lab? Isn't the answer, "don't leave the lab"?

Yes: scientism - the reductionistic fundamentalism that believes that any area of life that the mechanistic vocabulary (axioms) don't recognize are not important. This is the posture [the voyeur] & context [laboratory, morgue] acceptable to the Enlightenment. Life in other categories is, at best, entertainment; at worst, delusional.

3. What are the two elements in T.'s reciprocating models of modern epistemology? 1) ". . . that it [some human event] all has to be explained mechanistically on a more basic level" in order to make sense & at this level the clock/machine model is accepted as what it means to make sense. 2) "we 'know' that thinking is all information processing . . . so surely some computer-based explanation [mechanical assembly of atomic, meaningless bits] must hold in the last analysis," i.e. make sense, 68.

". . . that it [some human event] all has to be explained mechanistically on a more basic level" in order to make sense & at this level the clock/machine model is accepted as what it means to make sense. 2. "we 'know' that thinking is all information processing . . . so surely some computer-based explanation [mechanical assembly of atomic, meaningless bits] must hold in the last analysis," i.e. make sense, 68.

4. What do Heidegger & Wittgenstein think of these issues? Of self as disengaged; of what thinkingmeans or how it occurs?

Notice that pragmatism is not a return to Plato/Aristotle's transcendentals. Instead of talking about an a priori or transcendental whole, pragmatists talk about performance (e.g., spatial orientation of up & down) & context, which "stands as the . . . horizon within which . . . the experience [performance] can be understood," 68.

Pragmatism: "they marshaled such powerful arguments, in each case in favor of a view of human agency as finite or engaged," 68.

"The background is what makes certain experiences intelligible [&/or meaningful] to us. * * * Remember that the background is what arises with engaged agency [intentionality; purpose]. It is the context of intelligibility or experience [cf. gestalt] for this kind of agent," 69.

On p. 69 T. suggests that foreground always emerges from a background (or global horizon); that explicit knowledge is distilled or induced from tacit knowledge. In one sense background is throw-away, meaningless, the noise or silence against which the message is heard. This is a mechanist meaning of background. How does T. define background? Is the mechanist definition plausible? See p. 70-1.

Read the last paragraph on p. 71 carefully. T. says that recognition of this point by Kant was "a final laying to rest of a certain atomism of the input [that perceptions are initially meaningless atoms/bytes to be assembled by the mind] that had been espoused by empiricism." T. says, "Kant undercuts this whole way of thinking by showing that it supposes" a background or horizon; a larger process or goal, so that "each particulate impression is . . . taken [judged to be] as a bit of potential information" aiding in the movement toward the goal. The atomic bit is not truly neutral or meaningless; "It purports to be about something." In our model in ques. #1 above, one cannot really move from #3 (ideas/judgments/values) to #2 (the atomic, meaningless bits). The bits are never truly random, they are relevant toward some end. Grammar is escaped only at the price of silence or static. P. 72. If this were the case - nothing but static - how can order/message emerge? It cannot. Parmenides' recognition of the contradiction in "non-being" holds. Order is not randomness. Perceptions form gestalts - they are about something - because the mind is intentional.

"The modern disengaged picture itself " provides a model/goal & syntactical order "for the operations it describes to be intelligible," to be about anything.

5. How does T. define background? Is the mechanist definition plausible? See p. 70-1.

". . . We are always drawing on a background understanding that gives intelligibility [purpose] to our experience; then even my account of the knowing agent in terms of the disengaged picture must draw on such a background to be intelligible to me," 70.

"It [necessity of background to foreground] undermines the picture [of mechanistic disengaged observer] by bringing out the background we need for the operations described in the picture [foreground] to make sense," 71

6. In place of "the atomism of input" in the mechanist's model of perception, pragmatists put:

"totality of involvements"; various discourse communities within which I have various identities, purposes, & skills.

Instead of imagining that human inhabit a mechanical world in which events are meaningless, pragmatists replace the notion of neutrality with the notion of:

"that things are first disclosed in a world ready to hand," 73.

7. "To think" that order is "something we project onto [a mechanical universe of random atomic] things which are first perceived neutrally is to make a fundamental mistake," 73. What error is this?

Substituting the part (a particular view) for the whole: "grasping things as neutral objects [the mechanist view] is one of our possibilities [refined or abstracted from] . . . the background of a way of being in the world in which things are disclosed as ready to hand," i.e. having a place in a pattern or gestalt relating to use/purpose, 73.

8. Why does Wittgenstein claim that the notion of language as assigning sounds/names to things & events is nonsensical; that language cannot be built from such atomic bits?

To understand the part (foreground), you must tacitly know the whole (the background of grammar, parts of speech, syntax, etc.): "The idea that the meaning of a word consists only in its relations to the object it names [thus being an atom] . . . comes to grief on the realization that each such relation draws on a background understanding & doesn't make sense without it" 74-5.

This essay partially explains a pragmatic epistemology. One interesting area of application is AI (artificial intelligence) models in computer science. This argument is already historical, but like all powerful metaphors it has a life history which requires decades, if not centuries, to wear out. Hubert Dreyfus' (UC--Berkeley) book, What Computers Can't Do is one of the best at giving a pragmatic view of this angle. Trust T. to explicate the social/political entailments of the metaphor he has analyzed: "I mentioned 3 features above: atomism, processing, neutrality. But there is a fourth, which has been of enormous significance . . . monological. It situates [or construes] thought & knowledge within the mind of the individual," 76. This is especially true of utilitarianism, which specifies that all values are personal possessions.

Notice the pragmatic middle road between absolutism & atomism. In Plato's outlook, pattern/order was an objective absolute. "When that became incredible," each atomic human was considered to be a mechanic/engineer who constructed an independent interpretation of her experience. Cf. Wittgenstein's Adam independently deciding what to name all the animals. Pragmatism rejects both models in preference for a recognition of our being-in-the-world along with other human beings who inhabit/create various contexts (discourse communities/games) . The pragmatic model licenses neither fascism (Plato, Catholic Church, royalty, etc.) nor anarchy (Oprah, Nietzsche's will to power). Nor can being-in-the-world be construed as gravitating to either pole: to become an absolute or an individual project/will-to-power. It is an objective reality (the world) that is paradoxically only knowable subjectively through experience.

On to #5: The Importance of Herder
Oct. 96