Mind Association

Wisdom: Twelve Essays. by Renford BambroughReview by: Godfrey VeseyMind, New Series, Vol. 85, No. 337 (Jan., 1976), pp. 124-126Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2253266 .

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124 BOOK REVIEWS

the plain man is a direct realist), but again the question arises what this should be taken to mean if it is to reproduce the plain man. If 'without any causal intermediaries', then it is very doubtful whether the plain man does believe it. If it means that perception gives us certain knowledge of the existence and nature of objects then, provided the import of that is left fairly vague, I tend to think that perhaps he does, but it has now be- come a belief about the product of the perceptual process, not about the details of its nature. And as to what the connection may be between the nature of the product and the nature of the process, it is most unlikely that the plain man has any view at all.

In other words, it is mistaken to suppose that the 'plain man's' or 'common sense' view of perception is anything like clear or systematic enough to constitute an alternative to other theories. To regard it as such, and to imagine that because, in one mood or another, we are all more or less plain men, we naturally know what it is, has had a stultifying effect on the theory of knowledge, and I fear that some features of Tipton's book, especially in the earlier chapters, may tend to perpetuate the tradition. But it is only fair to say that this does not hinder him in his principal aim, which is to show the divergence between Berkeley's theory and our natural beliefs. For this purpose our main requirement is to know something about what those beliefs are not-a rather easier question, and one which Tipton has well under control.

Were this review to end on a note of criticism, however mild, its reader might be left with the wrong impression. Even one who attaches more ,weight to the disadvantages and less to the advantages than does the present reviewer will have to agree that Tipton is now to be regarded as being amongst the leading experts on Berkeley's philosophy. All those with a serious interest in that topic should proceed to their booksellers. CHURCHILL COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE E. J. CRAIG

Wisdom: Twelve Essays. Edited by RENFORD BAMBROUGH.

Oxford: Basil Blackwell, I974. Pp. x + 30I. C4.50.

This collection is 'an expression of gratitude' to John Wisdom, who taught philosophy at Cambridge from 1934 until he left for the University and horse-riding countryside of Oregon in I968. One of the twelve papers in it is a reprint: 'The Philosophy of John Wisdom' by D. A. T. Gasking (Melbourne). The rest are new. They are: 'Moore's Technique Revisited' by Judith Jarvis Thomson (M.I.T.); 'The Virginian Lectures' by D. C. Yalden-Thomson (Virginia); 'Paradoxes and Discoveries' by Ilham Dilman (Swansea); 'Reason and Psycholinguistics' by M. R. Ayers (Wadham, Oxford); 'Incorrigibility, Behaviourism and Predictionism' by George W. Roberts (Duke); '"This is a visual sensation"' by J. M. Hinton (Worcester, Oxford); 'The Texture of Mentality' by Keith Gunderson (Minnesota); 'John Wisdom and the Problem of Other Minds' by R. W. Newell (U.E.A.); 'The Relevance of Wisdom's Work for the Philosophy of Science' by Ardon Lyon (City University, London);

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BOOK REVIEWS 125

'Shared Guilt' by Herbert Morris (Professor of Law, U.C.L.A.); and 'Literature and Philosophy' by Renford Bambrough (Cambridge). There is a superb frontispiece photograph of Wisdom, looking puckish, taken by Judith Jarvis Thomson; a short foreword by Renford Bam- brough; a chronological list of Wisdom's publications, i928-72, compiled by John Linnell; but no index. The only misprint that matters is on page 273: simply omit line 8.

Three of the essays are mainly expository: those by Gasking, Yalden- Thomson (on Wisdom's unpublished lectures at the University of Virginia in I957) and Newell. In all but one of the others (the Wisdom- like exploration by Morris of the paradoxical remark that 'everyone is really responsible to all men for all men and for everything') there are references to Wisdom's treatment of the Other Minds problem, or to his metaphilosophical views about the role of paradoxical utterances, or to his relationship with Wittgenstein. A reviewer without space to comment on all the essays must be selective. I select the topic of Wisdom's relation- ship with Wittgenstein, because I think some Wisdomites, if that is the word, and even Wisdom himself, may have done an injustice to both philosophers by not being clear about how they differ.

Gasking quotes Wisdom: 'At last Wittgenstein gave tongue, and the quarry went away to the notes of "Don't ask for the meaning (analysis), ask for the use".' In the case of subjective and objective statements Wisdom means by 'use' such things as whether or not Smith is prepared to support his statement 'There's a dagger in the air' by reference to other people's reports of what they see, etc. (Other Minds, pp. 42-44, I49-I57.) The subject of a subjective statement is in a unique position with respect to its verification. Hence Wisdom's aphorism, quoted by Gunderson and Newell, 'The peculiarity of the soul is not that it is visible to none but that it is visible only to one'. One insight to which this under- standing of the 'use' of subjective statements leads is described by Newell as follows: 'In his premise a sceptic is disclosed as assuming it to be necessarily true that other people are not in the same position as myself when it comes to verifying statements about my state of mind; and that, accordingly, if I can be sure about another person's state of mind I cannot, at any rate, be sure of this in the way in which the other person can. And this expresses the principle that statements about mind have an asymmetrical logic. Should this principle be accepted? Wisdom answers: "The asymmetrical logic of statements about the mind is a feature of them without which they would not be statements about the mind, and that they have this feature is no more a subject suitable for regret than the fact that lines if truly parallel don't meet." If Wisdom is right the principle of asymmetry must be acknowledged if discourse about mind is to be possible at all.'

This is a valuable insight. But it is not the same as Wittgenstein's insights, which spring from a different understanding of the 'use' of subjective statements. Wittgenstein said in his I933-35 lectures, subse- quently published as The Blue and Brown Books, that there is no sharp line between the natural and the linguistic expression of emotion. This leads to two insights. The first is that, as Wittgenstein said in his I946-47

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I26 BOOK REVIEWS

lectures, 'If "I've got a pain" replaces, as it does, a moan, then knowing I've a pain doesn't come in. Nor does doubting. You can say "I can't doubt I've got a pain" if that equals something like "I can't score a goal at chess". In this case there is no knowing and no doubting'.

Wittgenstein's second insight is the one developed at length in the Philosophical Investigations and Zettel. A child grows up in a community in which people moan and cry when they are in pain (as he does himself); in which they also use expressions like 'It hurts' and 'I've got toothache'; in which others naturally react sympathetically to their linguistic, as to their non-linguistic, expressions of pain; and so he comes to use the linguistic expression himself in the place of the natural expression. All this gives the word 'pain' the meaning it has, and makes the question 'How can I mean anything by "There exist pains I don't feel, pains in other minds"?' a non-starter. It is a starter-in fact it is a sure winner in the Unanswerable Question stakes-if one thinks of having leamed the meaning of the word 'pain' by some sort of internal ostensive definition. But to think that is to forget our actual use of the word 'pain'.

Heeding the prescription 'Don't ask for the meaning, ask for the use' in their different ways, Wittgenstein had insights Wisdom did not have, but, equally, Wisdom had insights Wittgenstein did not have. Happily, this is recognized by some of the contributors to Wisdom: Twelve Essays.

THE OPEN UNIVERSITY GODFREY VESEY

The Liberal Theory of Justice: A Critical Examination of the Principal Doctrines in A Theory of Justice by John Rawls. By BRIAN BARRY. Clarendon Press: Oxford University Press, I973. Pp. x + I68. ?3.25 (boards), Ci.oo (paper).

Brian Barry has produced a very useful commentary on John Rawls' A Theory of Justice. The writing is crisp-perhaps a little flip in places -and the lines of argument are, for the most part, clear and to the point. Barry's overall judgment on Rawls' work is that his theory of justice 'does not work' (p. xi). But I gather that Barry nevertheless thinks the effort of working through Rawls' long book involves energy well spent.

The commentary proceeds in sixteen short chapters: a first group of which is given over to exposition, a second to criticism of Rawls' system of thought, and a last to remarks on international relations, economics, and other features or applications of the system. In what follows I focus on Barry's critique of Rawls' liberalism. To present such a critique is a main purpose of Barry's commentary, but not the only purpose. There is much other detailed and interesting cirtical work in Barry's examination -some of it a matter of reworking and refining Rawls' own arguments- which I cannot represent in this short discussion.

In Barry's view Rawls' liberalism is 'archaic' (p. 32). In one place he writes that, indeed, Rawls turns out to be 'an unreconstructed Gladstone' (p. 50). What Barry intends by this is not that Rawls' conclusions are somehow half-baked, but rather that the moral and political position they

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