Talks

Friday 11th November

David Chandler (UCL)

Meaningfulness in Social Conventions

Wittgenstein, in the Philosophical Investigations, tells us that “[w]hat has to be accepted, the given is—so one could say—forms of life.” (Wittgenstein 1953, 226e). As a direct advancement of this, Winch claims that “if I make a mistake in, say, my use of a word, other people must be able to point it out to me.” (Winch 1990, 32) The point, I feel, is that an adequate account of correctness, one that is consistent with our treatment of the notions of right and wrong in non-philosophical environments, implies that individuals must provide an established standard that is both externally recognised and enforced. In more precise terms, Witherspoon insists that if the claim that others are necessary to engage in meaningful activity is compelling, then Wittgenstein’s contributions represent a radical departure from traditional conceptions (Witherspoon 2003, 214). The result of this is that there can be no such thing as a language which is only understood by one person: otherwise known as the private language argument. Because of this, I want to address the Winchian account of the importance of meaningfulness in social conventions. As Pettit summarises, such an account consists of two sets of theories: “one set bearing the individual-level understanding of human beings, the other on the society-level understanding of the regularities and institutions to which human beings give rise.” (Pettit 2000, 63) In this paper, I bring Winch into correspondence with Kripke’s comments on rule-following; in particular, his mentioning that “if one person is considered in isolation, the notion of a rule as guiding the person who adopts it can have no substantive content” since we belong to a community that enforces mathematical rules (Kripke 1982, 88-89). From this, I turn to Gilbert’s formulation of a simple fiat: “[t]his word is to go with this sense.” (Gilbert 1989, 386). I conclude with some limited albeit informed remarks on the nature of social facts.

David Chandler is a graduate student at University College London. He recently obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from King’s College London. His current research interest include the work of both the early and later Wittgenstein, contemporary metaphilosophical considerations, and the history and philosophy of colour.

Martin Magnus Petiz (São Paulo)

Peter Winch's Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to the Concept of Law

The influence of Peter Winch’s book “The idea of a social science and its relation with philosophy” (1958) about the methodology of the social sciences is notorious. Based on the then recently published Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “Philosophical investigations” (1953), Winch shows in his work how the social sciences cannot be reduced to the
method of the natural sciences because the observer, when analyzing social practices of which he is not a practitioner of, must rely on the reasons given for action by its agents, instead of describing the causes that explain these events physically. The agents of the practices justify their actions and their criticisms of others’ actions on the basis of these reasons. And these reasons for action are given, normally, on the basis of the rules fixed
by a practice. This theoretical framework was explicitly followed by H.L.A. Hart's famous book “The concept of law” (1961), which renewed the methodological debate in legal theory. Following Winch’s idea of a social science, Hart showed how the concept of law cannot be given in terms of causes, but only through the reasons given by the
social rules of the legal practice. These legal reasons justify the action of the agents and of the official authorities that enforce legal rules. The aim of this paper is to show how the methodological debate of legal theory can take advantage of the connection between Winch and Hart’s ideas, based on Wittgenstein’s latest theory. This discussion was not explicitly continued by the main critics of Hart’s work, such as John Finnis and Ronald Dworkin, who could have explored some of Winch’s arguments to subsidize their own thoughts. Therefore, it will be shown why it is relevant that legal theory revisit Winch’s legacy on the methodology of social sciences to gain new insights on the matter.

Master student of Legal Theory and Philosophy of Law at University of São Paulo (USP). Bachelor's degree in Law from Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS).

Keynote: Racheal Wiseman (Liverpool)

Degrees of Understanding: Winch and Midgley on Rules, Reasons, and the Limits of Sense

Lawrence Espino (UP Diliman)

Three Different Research Paradigms in Social Research: Why We Ought to be Critical Realists

In Peter Winch's The Idea of a Social Science, he explicitly describes good social research as one that is ‘philosophical in character’. Winch argues that both the philosopher and social scientist aim to elucidate the conditions for understanding a given social phenomenon. Winch’s conception brings with it its own presuppositions. Three important themes in Winch are the (i) logical distinction between natural and social phenomena, (ii) the assertion that human behaviour is necessarily rule-following, and (iii) the implication that social research is aimed towards the production of understanding rather than the discovery of causal regularities.

As a point of comparison to Winch’s conception, there are two other research paradigms in social science that I would like to consider. Pragmatists such as Rorty and Dewey have their doubts about the importance of epistemology and metaphysics. One theme shared by pragmatists and Winch is their skeptical stance towards a substantive account of social ontology. They rarely give explanatory importance to social structures as the underlying cause behind social phenomena.

As a contrast to the pragmatist tradition, critical realism is hostile towards Winch’s assertion that the social sciences’ primary function is not the search for causal regularities. In opposition to Winch, critical realists such as Bhaskar have insisted that social structures and beliefs are as much part of the world as the phenomena studied by the natural sciences.

This talk can be outlined into two sections. First, I will give a brief description of the three approaches to social research and how they may share or differ in certain elements. Next, I will argue that the critical realist framework is the more favorable paradigm amongst the three. Whilst Winch is correct in asserting that the concepts of social research are constrained by social factors (i.e. Winch appeals to the notion of a rule), Winch fails to provide both an adequate account of reality and a thorough distinction between the notions of ‘rule’ and ‘cause’.

Lawrence Espino is a second-year student currently taking their MA in Philosophy in the
University of the Philippines Diliman.

Friday 11th November

Stephen Welch

'Look and See': Wittgensteinian Implications for Interpretivism, Social Constructionism and Positivism in the Social Sciences

Keynote : Nigel Pleasants (Exeter)

The Idea of 'Wittgenstein and the Idea of a Social Science'

As the well-known expression of his philosophical method (Philosophical Investigations, §§ 66, 93, 578) quoted in the title suggests, Wittgenstein’s arguments do not have the fatal implications for empirical methods of investigation, for instance in the social sciences, that are often made out. His was, the paper argues, an empirical philosophy, and an empirical mode of argument. This does not necessarily validate the empiricism, sometimes called positivism, of mainstream social science, still less its actual findings, but there are good reasons for doubting arguments such as Winch’s that derive a foundational critique of empirical social science from Wittgenstein’s work.

This paper surveys two bodies of argument in the philosophy and methodology of social science which have generally positioned themselves against positivism, namely interpretivism and social constructionism, both of which have sought support from Wittgenstein. I argue that their critical inferences from Wittgenstein are unjustified. But Wittgenstein’s arguments do not, to cite another well-known phrase of his, leave empirical social science ‘as it is’ (Philosophical Investigations, § 124). There are critical implications, though not the ones inaugurated by Winch and developed by many others. The paper illustrates, from the field of political culture research, the potential empirical
fruitfulness of Wittgenstein’s famous argument about rule-following. It demonstrates how this argument raises questions for some of the methods currently used in the field, and establishes its potential compatibility with prominent recent findings in social psychology that posit various forms of psychological duality or ‘dual process’. These considerations motivate a significant restructuring of political culture research.

Stephen Welch was previously Lecturer in Politics, and is currently an Honorary Fellow, in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University. He is the author of The Concept of Political Culture (Macmillan, 1993), The Theory of Political Culture (OUP, 2013), and Hyperdemcracy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

First I will seek to explore why / how the idea that Wittgenstein's philosophy is of substantial relevance and usefulness for the social sciences, or thinking about the social sciences, gets off the ground (if it does). I will also offer some thoughts on the peculiarities I see in the idea of philosophy of social science more generally. Second, I will offer some pointers towards what I myself find most suggestive in Wittgenstein's philosophical writings for illuminating or bringing into focus issues in contemporary social thought and social science. In my own writing on the relevance of Wittgenstein's philosophy for ethics and moral philosophy I have drawn on his last great work, _On Certainty_. It is here, rather than the more usual and more familiar engagement with _Philosophical Investigations_, that I find the greatest potential for ideas and perspectives to help our reflections on the problems in thinking about the social sciences.

Michel Le Du (Aix-Marseille)

Are Beliefs Social Realities?

Wittgenstein has recurrently insisted that belief is neither a clear-cut, nor a univocal concept. He brought out, among other things, that calling a belief a mental state is confusing. In fact, there are only very few situations in which a belief can be identified with a state, let alone a mental state. Nevertheless, an incautious use of the word “belief” is recurrent among psychologists, social scientists and philosophers of mind and this incautiousness consists not only in treating beliefs as states of mind but also in overlooking that the very word “belief” is ramified in meaning. In his “Lecture on religious belief” Wittgenstein introduces the idea of an “extraordinary” use of the word (which he illustrates by the belief in the Last Judgment). His point is to establish that: (1) the verb “belief” covers various things and (2) thinking that all these things fall under the same model is mistaken. This line of thought has been furthered by Peter Winch in his controversial paper “Understanding a Primitive Society”. Winch’s concern is with the Azande and their belief in oracles. Such a belief is not an opinion, nor a hypothesis. As Giddens points out, both Evans-Pritchard and Winch aim at showing that the Azande “do have good reasons for acting as they do in the context of their traditionally-established beliefs.” (Central Problems in Social Theory, London, Macmillan, 1978, p. 214). But what does “having traditionally-established beliefs” exactly mean? Winch doesn’t provide us with a full answer to that question. Some actions seem to be undertaken “in the light of beliefs which in the situation [one] could not help but have” (Kenny, Freedom and Responsibility, Oxford, Oxford UP, 1978, p. 20). Such beliefs (like the belief in oracles) are part of the fabric of social life and, for that very reason, deserve to be called “social realities”. Norman Malcolm underlined that “the meaning of an expression is independent of me or of any particular person” (Wittgensteinian Themes, Ithaca, Cornell UP, 1995, p. 164). The same could be said of the kind of belief we are drawing attention on: if I was a Azande, the belief in oracles would not be mine (in the way my opinions are mine) and would be independent of any other Azande individual as well. Such a belief is an institution, so to speak. The aim of this paper is to further Wittgenstein’s and Winch’s reflections in order to elucidate, among other things, the ethical consequences involved in acting according to such a belief.

Michel is full Professor, Department of Philosophy, Aix-Marseille University (AMU) since 2017. Fields of interest: philosophy of social science, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, Wittgenstein. A few papers in English: “Peter Winch on Norms and Convention”, Philosophical Investigations, vol 35-3-4, 2012, p. 303-316; “Collective Thought and Collective Trust” in Extending Hinge Epistemology”, edited by Constantine Sandis and Danièle Moyal-
Sharrock, London, Anthem Press, 2002, p. 149-162; “The Myth of the Thinking Brain”, Wittgenstein-Studien, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2019, Band 10, p. 201-210. Co-editor: Emotions, Cognition and the Intuition of Language Normativity, London, Palgrave, 2022 (coming soon).

Amadeusz Just (Warsaw)

Anything but Rules? Jaeggi and the Concept of Social Practice

In The Idea of a Social Science (1958) Peter Winch claimed that all meaningful human behaviour is rule-governed. Critical social theory inherited from Winch this picture of rule-governed ontology of social life (Pleasants 1999). Recently, Rahel Jaeggi in her Critique of Forms of Life (2018) championed a view in which rule-governed social practices constitute the internal texture of forms of life. According to Jaeggi, explicit or immanent rules
embedded in practices are the necessary condition of normative significance of social life.

My talk consists of three parts. Firstly, I shall reconstruct Jaeggi’s argument for the rule- governedness of practices. She claims that observable regularities are bereft on their own of any normative significance. It appears to her that there is a gap between a regular sequence of actions and its normative determination. Therefore, there must be something that bridges the gap, namely, rules. I shall argue that Jaeggi’s reasoning resembles the Platonic stance of
Wittgenstein’s interlocutor in the rule-following sections from the PI and exhibits similar confusions. Secondly, I will discuss an actual case of a deaf-mute Ildefonso who acquired his first language at the age of 27. Drawing on Susan Schaller’s (2012) account, I aim to show that despite being languageless, he was able to engage in various practices. His actions were both meaningful (contra Winch) and normative (contra Jaeggi). Finally, I shall draw some conclusions from Ildefonso’s example pertaining to meaningfulness and normativity of practices. In particular, I shall argue that if a languageless human being can act in a meaningful and normative way (and perceive actions of others as meaningful and normative), then meaningfulness and normativity of practices cannot be necessarily rule-dependent.

Amadeusz Just (Warsaw) is a PhD candidate in philosophy at the University of Warsaw. His primary area of interest is Wittgenstein and social philosophy, but he also has active interests
in German idealism (specifically, Schopenhauer), philosophy of mind, and animal studies.

Keynote: Arif Ahmed (Cambridge)

Social Dimensions of Meaning

I argue, first, that nothing in Wittgenstein's so-called 'rule-following' arguments forces us to think of meaning as inherently social. On the contrary, the 'customs' that are supposed to provide an essential context for meaning are in principle achievable by an individual. But second, I argue that there are aspects of both thought and meaning that do depend on social circumstances and relations for other, equally Wittgensteinian reasons to do with family resemblance.