Preproceedings 2006 - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

158
Wittgenstein on consciousness in “Philosophical Investigations” - Kristijan Krkač / Josip Lukin
life”, because it is human beings, not minds, who perceive
and think, have desires and act, feel joy and sorrow… But
the question is what the human being is. Regarding human
nature, Wittgenstein surely rejected Cartesian (dualist) and
Humean (empiricist/behaviorist) explanations, and adopted
a quite simple reason in the famous, already mentioned
paragraph of PI.
(12) “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.” (PI 281, related to 282-287).
Regarding the interpretation of paragraph 281 we
can quote A. Kenny: “I conclude that there is good reason
to heed the warning of Wittgenstein with which this paper
began [PI 281]. The moral is not that the human-being
predicates cannot have their use extended at all, but that
they must be extended cautiously and self-cautiously, and
that if they are extended one may not argue from the
application of such a predicate to a whole human being to
the application of the transferred predicate to anything
other then the whole human being.” (Kenny 1987:133-134)
Following H. – J. Glock (1997:156) we can cite two
arguments for this claim (12).
(13) There is a conceptual (grammatical) connection
between psychological terms and forms of behavior. We
can ascribe thoughts only to those creatures which are
capable of 'manifesting them' (PI 284).
(14) Such expressions (“I am in pain”) make sense
only as a part of a complex of the form of life. “The concept
of pain is characterized by a particular function in our life…
we only call 'pain' what has ‘this’ position, ‘these’
connections.” (Z 532-533).
There are at least three possible explanations for
these arguments.
(a) In the first interpretation there is a tension between
behavioral criteria and contextualism of the form of
life.
(b) In the second interpretation there is a relation and in
it the form of life implies behavioral criteria (for a
different community it is possible to respond the
same, but that “pain” would have a different
meaning).
(c) In the third, they are compatible because without
forms of life, forms of behavior would be
unintelligible (Glock 1997:156). The point is simple.
(15) If it is correct that we can ascribe experiential
predicates (like “… in pain”) only to sentient beings, then
there (a) is no sense to ascribe them to non-material
substances like in dualism, (b) nor to ascribe them to
physical bodies or their parts like in materialism.
The first consequence (a) is nevertheless accepted
by the majority of contemporary philosophers of the mind,
and the second (b) is suspicious because some
philosophy of science informs us that “the mind is the
brain” (science of course does not tell this). As far as we
can see it, this claim that the mind is the brain is not crucial
for the argument, but rather, the answer to the question –
what cultural anthropology tells us about sentient beings.
But, what really seems problematic in Wittgenstein’s
overview of human nature is not so much the concept of a
“sentient being” or “human being”, but more fundamentally,
the concept of a “living being”.
(16) “I am inclined to speak of a lifeless thing as
lacking something. I see life definitely as a plus, as
something added to a lifeless thing. (Psychological
atmosphere)” (Z 128, see also PI 430 (comparison
between a log and living creature) /…/ “Seeing life as a
weave, this pattern is not always complete and is varied in
a multiplicity of ways.” (Z 568)
However, Wittgenstein often speaks of life
metaphorically and also literally. So, we can draw the
analogy: like “the use of a sign is its life”, (metaphorically),
so “the action of a living (sentient as well) being is its life”
(literally). And being conscious is not a part of a mental
realm nor is it a part of mere brain activity/or expressed by
bodily movement, but rather implicit in the action of a living
human being (Hacker 2001:87).
References
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