Preproceedings 2006 - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

understands the patient's worldview and simultaneously
judges it from the outside. An empathetic prediction-maker
can only be someone who once considered me as a free
agent, then shifted to a mechanicist view of mine. Such a
person started by playing a common language-game with me
(and obeyed the same rules as I did) and ended in a metagame
(in which s/he obeys not the rules I obey, but metarules,
meant to discover which rules I obey). Wittgenstein
discusses the example of a game of chance:
Two people play roulette. "Suppose someone says 'this is
not a game of chance at all'. What makes us think it is a
game of chance is our ignorance'. I could contradict him
and say: 'No. It is a game of chance now that we are
ignorant; if in the future we were no longer ignorant, it would
no longer be a game of chance" (LFW, p. 443)
The moves in the roulette game cannot be
predetermined as long as they are considered
"empathetically", from the standpoint of the roulette-players,
and it makes no sense to tell them that the development of the
game is predetermined – unless we want them to stop playing
roulette.
If we generalize from roulette to language-games, lack
of predetermination requires playing the same languagegame.
And playing a language-game requires First Person
Authority (FPA). Let's imagine a person devoid of FPA – call
him The Psychotic. When the Psychotic avows "I feel pain",
we contradict him: "No, you don't". When the Psychotic says
he desires to eat a cake, we answer "You don't want to eat a
cake; perhaps you want something else or nothing at all". The
Psychotic cannot be sure of what he believes – let alone
whether his beliefs are true, since he is systematically told
"You don't really believe this"- he cannot be sure even of his
second-order beliefs: when he says "I believe that p" we may
not grant him any propositional attitude involving p at all.
Correcting the Psychotic would be pointless, since we don't
reasonably think that the Psychotic can understand how to
correct his mistakes. If we are reasonable, we must treat the
Psychotic paternalistically and describe – rather than discuss-
his utterances in our language (which becomes a metalanguage
whose object is his language) and perhaps explain
why he utters them: The Psychotic's words don't have their
usual meaning. We never truly contradict the Psychotic and
never truly refuse to fulfill his wishes, since we never have
what to disagree about. To have FPA is to have the privilege
to utter certain sentences without being asked for grounds: the
right to use words without justification (PI 289). Justification is
public, and doubts can only be removed by public debate; but
justification may be required only for what is believed without
doubt.
It makes no sense to say that the Psychotic is free as it
makes little sense to say that he is a voluntary agent.
Whenever he wants something and receives it, he must be
surprised that he receives precisely what he wanted (or
"wanted"). It is a central tenet of Wittgenstein's discussion of
will and intention – throughout all his work - that we are not
surprised that we reach what we intend; that our words mean
their usual meaning..
The Psychotic is unfree because he lacks FPA and
does not play our language-game. Our interest is to
scientifically predict his actions, and if our predictions fail, to
devise better theories, until a successful forecast. People's
actions are unpredictable not for lack of adequate theories, but
because their normal attitude towards their fellows is reacting
to them and influencing their actions by providing good
grounds and not predicting them. Grounds can be provided
and understood only on the basis of what is not grounded. It
would be wrong to say that the Psychotic is metaphysically
142
On Freedom to Predict - Laurian Kertesz
free but only politically unfree: such a person would have his
beliefs contradicted and his desires rejected; but we saw this
is not the Psychotic's case.
I suggest that one of the most radical consequences of
Wittgenstein's philosophy is that the distinction between
voluntary and involuntary actions is itself linguistic. I shall only
point here that the Philosophical Investigations claim that an
intention is embedded in its situation, in human customs and
institutions (PI 337); that will is not an experience (PI 621).
It can be replied that "voluntary" is not the same as
"intentional". But what is an unintentional voluntary action?
Someone arrives into a foreign country and utters
blasphemous words, ignorant of their meaning. It will be said:
he should not be punished because his action was voluntary
but not intentional. The foreigner is surprised to discover that
he uttered a blasphemy, and this proves that he did not intend
this. As long as his action was voluntary, he was however not
surprised that he uttered his words: his action was intentional,
although in another language-game or (a la Davidson) under
another description. But can there be a voluntary action that is
not, would not be, intentional in any language-game, under
any description? I have a hard time thinking so: such an action
would surprise its agent no matter how it is considered.
Let's imagine a tribe whose members believe that the
stars occupy their places on the sky because the shaman
wants so. If we ask them: "How do you know this?", they
answer "If a star ever falls from the sky, we will punish the
shaman". Do we have any ground to contradict them? The
typical Westerner will probably point that there is no causal
connection between the shaman's desires and the position of
the stars on the sky; but such a route is not available to
Wittgenstein since he did not believe that the will (as a mental
event) causes the action; (PI 613); he did not consider causal
relations as ontologically primitive, but rather dependent on
the framework of a language-game. (PI 325).
That's why I suggest that the distinction between
voluntary and involuntary makes no sense outside a
language-game, as FPA makes no sense outside of a
language-game. If freedom is voluntariness cum
responsibility, the possibility that my actions are predicted, or
have sufficient causes does not undermine my freedom as
long as prediction comes from outside my language-game
and is thus unrecognizable by me as an accurate prediction;
causal relations are not recognized as such. Determinism
threatens freedom if I abandon my original language-game
and start playing a language-game whose participants are
interested in predicting my behaviour (they play a meta-game
about my games). A person who is absolutely unfree is a
person who plays no language-game, like the Psychotic in my
example. To be free is to be granted first-person authority: the
right to speak and act without doubts. At the same time, to be
free is to risk to make mistakes. We are free insofar as we
play language-games with other free people, and our actions
are not predicted because the attitude of the other participants
of the games towards us is not to predict our actions, but
rather to motivate us to choose them. But eyes which I know
to look at me from my back change my behaviour, even when
they claim to be its mere spectators.
I am helpful to Hagar Banai, Hagit Shakarov and
especially to Hezi Arnavon for their help with writing this
paper.