"Metaphysical questions are indeed misleading, for they express an unclarity about the grammar of words (e.g. of the use of ‘I’, ‘mind’, ‘space’ and ‘time’) in the form of a scientific question. Unsurprisingly, the typical metaphysical answer appears to specify a putative truth about the world. The only gold one can extract from such ore is in the form of rules for the use of words. But most of metaphysics is dross, to be discarded as nonsense. Wittgenstein’s account made it clear, as most previous critics of metaphysics had not, why metaphysical assertions — that is, assertions about the world which seem to be necessarily true — are so compelling, and what modest grammatical truths lurk behind them."
— Peter Hacker, Wittgenstein’s Place in Twentieth Century Analytic Philosophy, p118
"One of the greatest impediments for philosophy is the expectation of new, deep revelations. For the human craving for the arcane is present in philosophy no less than in other walks of life, manifesting itself in the desire for hitherto undreamt-of mysteries about the mind, thought and language. But in philosophy there are no mysteries, only the mesmerizing confusions engendered inter alia by our entanglement in grammar. Here too, as in psychoanalysis, there is often an underlying tacit motive for cleaving to error and illusion. Hence, ‘if you find yourself stumped trying to convince someone of something and not getting anywhere, tell yourself that it is the will and not the intellect that you’re up against’ (MS 158, 35)."
— Peter Hacker, Wittgenstein’s Place in Twentieth Century Analytic Philosophy, p112
"In MS 124, where, as we have seen, [Robinson] Crusoe is discussed at some length, Wittgenstein introduces the idea of a language that is not a means of communication, but rather a ‘toolbox’ for a person’s private use. This, he writes, is perfectly conceivable – as is patent in the case of a Crusoe. For the meanings of the words in this private language are manifest in Crusoe’s behaviour (MS 124, 221f.). But, Wittgenstein continues, can one not conceive of a language in which someone speaks or writes of his own private sensations, his inner experiences, for his own use? Such a language would, of course, be intelligible only to him, for no one else could know what the words of his language refer to (MS 124, 222). This sets the stage for the private language arguments proper, which are designed to show that although it may seem as if we were here dealing with a language – that is an illusion. It is an illusion to which most philosophers of the modern era succumbed, for they thought that our public languages are the confluence of all speakers’ private languages, the words of which signify (name) private ideas or mental representations."
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GP Baker and PMS Hacker, Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity p166
- A great, concise clarification of what Wittgenstein meant by a private language - so often misunderstood - only recently I read a paper in which somebody thought he was demolishing Wittgenstein by pointing out that a Robinson Crusoe type could develop his own language.
"The whole endeavour of the consciousness studies community is absurd – they are in pursuit of a chimera. They misunderstand the nature of consciousness. The conception of consciousness which they have is incoherent. The questions they are asking don’t make sense. They have to go back to the drawing board and start all over again. I doubt whether this absurd misunderstanding is stoppable. It’s too entrenched now. But I think it is a kind of intellectual fraud. I’m not accusing paid-up members of the so-called consciousness studies community of bad faith – I’m sure they are just deluded – but the result of their confusion is that we’re bringing up a whole generation of people to think in a thoroughly muddled way, to have hopes and expectations which are totally absurd, and to concentrate on things which are just incoherent. It’s literally a total waste of time. But if anyone thinks that I am completely mistaken, I’d like them to explain to me why. If they cannot show that my arguments are wrong, they should admit the errors of their ways and withdraw from the field! That’s the challenge."
— Peter Hacker - interview
"Philosophy is not an extension of science. It is not a kind of conceptual scullery maid for the sciences, as Locke supposed. Nor is it superior to the sciences – a super-science of all possible worlds, to be investigated by means of ‘thought-experiments’ from the comfort of the armchair, as contemporary revisionists suppose. (Thought-experiments are no more experiments than monopoly money is money.) It is, as Kant intimated, the Tribunal of Sense. So: back to the linguistic turn. The aim of philosophy is the clarification of the forms of sense that, in one way or another, are conceptually puzzling – for they are legion. The charge of philosophy – a Sisyphean labour, to be sure – is the extirpation of nonsense. There is, Heaven knows, enough of it, both in philosophy and in the empirical and a priori sciences. The prize is not more knowledge about anything. Rather it is a proper understanding of the structure and articulations of our conceptual scheme, and the disentangling of conceptual confusions."
— Peter Hacker, “Analytic Philosophy: Beyond the linguistic turn and back again”
"It is true to say that philosophy does not explain phenomena as the sciences do. By contrast with theories in the empirical sciences, there is nothing hypothetical about the conceptual clarifications and elucidations of philosophy. The empirical sciences may postulate entities in order to explain observed phenomena, and go on to validate such conjectures. Philosophy, by contrast, cannot legitimately postulate entities, such as simple natures, noumena, or universals, in order to explain the a priori natures of things, or the structure of our conceptual scheme, or our uses of language. Nor is there room in philosophy for deducing the existence of such entities, on the model of inferences to the best explanation in the sciences. Nevertheless, there is much that philosophy can and does explain. It explains, by description, how the various elements in the web of concepts are woven together. It explains why forms of words that at first blush appear to make sense do not, or why forms of words that appear to fulfil a given role actually fulfil an utterly different one. It explains the sources of conceptual puzzlement and confusion. And it explains how to eradicate such confusions. These explanations are logico-grammatical or conceptual."
— Peter Hacker, “Philosophy: A contribution not to human knowledge, but to human understanding”
(Source: info.sjc.ox.ac.uk)
"Does philosophy not result in conceptual truths – and is that not a cognitive achievement? That would be misleading … these conceptual truths are not statements of fact. They are descriptions of normative connections within the web of concepts that constitute our form of representation. They are said to be true. Indeed, they are often said to be necessary truths. That, of course, is correct –- but misleading. Their truth is akin to that of the proposition that the king in chess moves one square at a time. What we realize when a philosophical insight dawns on us is a feature of our form of representation. We attain an understanding of the way in which our familiar modes of description of things hang together."
— Peter Hacker, “Philosophy: A contribution not to human knowledge, but to human understanding”
(Source: info.sjc.ox.ac.uk)
