ludwig wittgenstein, logical behaviorism and the meaning of sensation-language

8/11/2019 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Logical Behaviorism and the Meaning of Sensation-Language

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Ludwig Wittgenstein, Logical Behaviorism and the Meaning of Sensation-Language

A Thesis

Presented to

The Division of Philosophy, Religion, Psychology, and Linguistics

Reed College

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Bachelor of Arts

Reed S. Arroyo

December 2013


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Approved for the Division

(Philosophy)

Mark Hinchliff


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Acknowledgments

First of all, I must thank Mark Hinchliff for providing constant help throughout

which strengthened my thesis. I would like to thank Ricardo and Dree for supporting me

and showing me the love that has inspired my passion for learning and intellectual

culture. Also, I would like to thank Professor Robert Paul for introducing me to the

writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Trig Johnson for providing enlightening

conversations. And finally, I am indebted to my girlfriend Serena for providing moral

support and all-around encouragement.


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Table of Contents

Introduction: The Meaning of What We Say ................................................................. 7

Chapter 1: BehaviorismSpecifically, of the Logical Variety ................................... 11

Logical Behaviorism ..................................................................................................... 15

The Verificationist Backbone of Logical Behaviorism ................................................ 19

Some Objections ........................................................................................................... 23

Chapter 1 Conclusion .................................................................................................... 24

Chapter 2: Wittgenstein's Proof of the Irrelevancy of Private Mental-States to

Meaning ........................................................................................................................... 27

More Counter-examples to the Classical View ............................................................ 33

Wittgenstein's Theory of Observable Meaning ............................................................ 36

Chapter 2 Conclusion .................................................................................................... 48

Chapter 3: Wittgenstein as a Type of Behaviorist ....................................................... 51

The Similarities ............................................................................................................. 51

The Differences ............................................................................................................. 54

Objections ..................................................................................................................... 56

Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 65

Bibliography .................................................................................................................... 67


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Introduction: The Meaning of What We Say

358. But isn't it our meaning it that gives sense to the sentence? (Andhere, of course, belongs the fact that one cannot mean a senseless

series of words.) And 'meaning it' is something in the sphere of the

mind. But it is also something private! It is the intangible something;

only comparable to consciousness itself. How could this seem

ludicrous? It is, as it were, a dream of our language.1

A younger version of myself used to think, It is strange that each person lives a

private life, and yet people use language to bridge the gaps between each other. When I

say something about my private experience, only I know the meaning of what I am

saying, and it is only an unexplainable happy fortune of ours that we sometimes

understand each other. It is a very lucky and strange chance event, when somehow

someone is correct in thinking they understand the meaning of my words. That is to say,

I believed that it was only by some unexplainable miracle that my school counselor

understood what I meant when I said something like, The sadness I feel from my going

to a new school. The counselor would say something, and I would think either Yes!

That's exactly what I'm thinking or No, she failed to understand what I was actually

saying. Perhaps, I thought, they understand that I am saying something and what I am

saying, but not why I am saying it. Or something along those lines; but what I know for

1Ludwig Wittgenstein,Philosophical Investigations, trans. and ed. G. E. M. Anscombe,

P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte, 4thed. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 120.


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certain, is that I thought that behind every thing I said, there was always some remainder

of meaning that other people could not gather from what I was saying. In this sense, the

true meaning of my words, I thought, was exclusively available to me.

Like many people often do, I did not think about how the failure on part of other

people to understand my mind, depended not on there being something which only I

understood and that no one else knew, but on the failure of the utterances I had chosen to

express myself in order to produce in other people the reaction I desired. In other words, I

was so sure that the words I was using meant exactly and only what I wanted them to

mean, and not something irrespective of what I wanted them to mean. As a consequence,

I thought of the problem as irresolvable, and that I was doomed never to meet another

person for whom my words meant the same thing as what they meant for me. Not until

much later, did I start to think that what I chose to say as a means to express myself,

meant something irrespective of my personal caprice. Not until later, did I realize that

language was like a set of tools available to all, and that I just had to learn how to use the

right tools in the right circumstances. Before, it was like I was using a saw when I needed

to use a hammer; and yet since I felt so sure that the saw I was using was actually the

hammer I needed, I thought that other people must somehow be fundamentally

disconnected from the dreams and desires of my mind; or, I thought not that the tool was

the same one in the same toolbox everyone had, but that it was my tool fashioned

exclusively for my purposes. In reality though, as I now realize, the meaning of what I

convey to others consists in the specific tools I use, but which everyone has access to.

Therefore, it is not a question of an irresolvable gap between people's minds, but of the

choice of tools we use in particular circumstances. If what I want is for a person to


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understand me as meaning X, well then naturally I have to choose the tool which

effectively means Xand that there is such a tool will be an observable fact of our

language. If I fail to use the right tool, then naturally I will feel misunderstood.

When many people encounter Behaviorism for the first time, they immediately

and violently rejected it because they think it is absolutely misguided. People like this

tend to believe there are two relevant facts: people's private lives and the language people

use to mediate between their private lives. People accuse Behaviorism of completely

forgetting about the essential private side of individual existence, which some think make

interactions through language necessary in the first place. I, myself, used to have such a

reaction to Behaviorism also.

It was not until I encountered Wittgenstein, that I began to see how Behaviorism

seemed more sensible. I realized that, it was not that we had to deny certain entities, since

we had already defined those entities as unobservable and therefore not in need of any

sort of observable disproof. Rather, it was that we should see the meaningfulness of what

we talk about in terms of what we canobserve. This much more subtle point, seemed

irrefutable to me. I no longer was even concerned with hypothetical private mental-states,

since such things were now clearly excluded from the realm of meaningful things to talk

about. Whereas I had once believed that the private aspect of my experience entered

meaningfully into the things I said, I now thought that no such thing occurs, and so I was

freed to abandon the pretense that my private experience somehow constituted the

meaning of the things I said. The nonsense, which had me under its spell, was no longer

disguised, and so it no longer seemed to threaten my understanding.


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The reason, I think, an encounter with Wittgenstein is conducive to a new

understanding of language about mental-states and sensations, is simply that he presents

the argument in a way which somehow manages to escape most immediate rejections on

the part of popular biases. When one first reads his discussion of sensation and

knowledge of sensation, one entertains his scenarios until, almost unwittingly, one begins

to see how easily his argument convinces. The argument is successful because it makes

clear the exact sense of 'private mental-state thatis being denied as a necessary condition

for meaningful talk of sensations. My claim is that when a person has been thoroughly

convinced that Wittgenstein's theory is correct, she implicitly becomes a type of

Behaviorist. This is because I see in the argument of Wittgenstein that has convinced me,

essentially the same argument as a certain type of Behaviorism that had previously not

convinced me. Perhaps my understanding of the original Wittgensteinian position is

wrong, and therefore my understanding of the Behaviorism that I take to be similar to

Wittgenstein is also ill founded. I plan to show this is not the case, by first giving an

overview of Behaviorism in Chapter One, and then giving an explanation of the

interpretation of Wittgenstein that I endorse and which I claim is similar to Behaviorism

in Chapter Two. In Chapter 3, after I have presented both Wittgenstein and Behaviorism

separately, I will argue for their affinity. I will argue that both Wittgenstein and Logical

Behaviorism reject any theory that claims private mental-states necessarily enter into the

meaningfulness of language about sensation; and finally I will propose a preliminary

point of departure for future research into the subject.


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Chapter 1: BehaviorismSpecifically, of the

Logical Variety

In this chapter, we will give a general overview of Behaviorism, and specifically

focus on Logical Behaviorism. The latter, will serve to give us a rigorous and logical

perspective on certain issues concerning the nature of language. Although, arguably,

there are many affects and poetic experiences that can deepen our awareness of

language's formal complexity, such things do not have any definitive thesis and therefore

cannot yield certain knowledge in a regular way. If our goal is a systematic explanation

of language, we require something more tractable; and apart from the research projects of

linguistics, there are questions which warrant a more philosophical and general approach.

Logical Behaviorism is potentially one coherent and systematic approach to certain

aspects of language, in that it has well-formulated and fundamental axioms meant for the

parceling out of linguistic meaning. Between three emblematic versions, or camps, of

behaviorism--logical, methodological and psychological--it is only logical behaviorism

that directly addresses questions of language and meaning. Directly, in the sense of it

tackling our most ordinary and typical use of language; and as opposed to 'indirectly' in

the sense of only concerning a theoretical discourse and not plain and ordinary language.

Unlike the other versions of behaviorism, the implications stemming from logical

behaviorism strike at the heart of meaning in its most general form, the language we use


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every day. It is primarily the semantic theory at the heart of logical behaviorism that

concerns us.

There is much more to be said specifically about logical behaviorism, but first, we

should understand what is meant by behaviorism more generally. One concise definition

that can serve our purposes is put this way:

Behaviorism is any psychology that sees its mission as the explanation

of behavior and accepts stimuli (more generally, situations) and

responses as its basic data...Science aims at understanding publicly

observable happenings in the world, and the only such eventsavailable to psychology are responses and the situations in which they

occur.2

In other words, behaviorism is the theory that says animal behavior (of course, this

includes human verbal behavior) can and should be explained without any reference to

unobservable mental states that an individual might or might not possess, simply by

reference to the observable forms of behavior within given environmental circumstances.

This theory therefore restricts psychological data to include only observable stimuli-

response patterns, and not any hypothetical mental states. Even more broadly put,

behaviorism chooses a 'stimuli-response' model of psychology as opposed to a 'stimuli-

mental state-response' model.3The reason for this choice is that any supposed intervening

mental state is in principle unobservable, and is therefore not at all appropriate for the

determination of behavioral theories and experiments. This is not at all yet to say that

behaviorism necessarily denies the being of private subjective experiences, only that it

does not deem them relevant to an explanation of behavior, since it views the sources of

2Gregory A. Kimble, Behaviorism and Unity in Psychology, Current Directions in

Psychological Science 9, no. 6 (2000): 208.3Kimble, Behaviorism and Unity in Psychology, 209.


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behavior to exist essentially onlyin observableenvironmental and physiological

conditions:

According to this principle, the observation sentences needed to

provide the basis for an empirical science of psychology cannot beintrospective protocols describing the private experiences of a singleindividual. What are needed in order to put psychology on a proper

scientific footing are objective records of publicly observable

behavioral events--supplemented where appropriate by objectiverecords of the associated physiological events occurring beneath the

skin.4

It is not the case in behaviorism that mental states are necessary explanans of behavior,

and behavioral principles alone are sufficient for the task of explanation. The question, of

whether behaviorism denies mental states in totois not important for our immediate

purposes, since what is important is that behaviorism certainly does not say such states

are relevant to a psychological explanation of human behavior.

To be clear, and in order to not be accused of misrepresenting behaviorism in all

its vastness, there are strands of behaviorism that allow for inferences that use theoretical

concepts such as that of the 'intervening variable'. In other words, there are behaviorisms

which have practically 'S-I-R' models whereI issome intervening variable like a mental-

state.2But, nevertheless, these are still types of behaviorisminsofar as the intervening

variables are acknowledged as 'abstractions without material existence' 3unlike the

observable environmental stimuli and behavioral responses which are essential. These

abstractions, apparently, are used as explanatory ornaments even though they are, strictly

speaking, irrelevant to behaviorism's practice.

4U. T. Place, A Radical Behaviorist Methodology for the Empirical Investigation of

Private Events,Behavior and Philosophy20, no. 2 (1993): 30.


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There are several major types of behaviorism, one of which ismethodological

behaviorism. This version of behaviorism is most basic, in that it is simply a normative

view concerning the way psychologyshouldbe done:

Methodological behaviorism involves a widely accepted professionalorientation towards how one should conduct psychological research

in general.5

According to this theory, psychologists shouldn't use concepts which are in principle

supposed to reference unobservable mental-states, since they add nothing to explaining

human behavior, and at worst they only add confusion:

According to methodological behaviorism, reference to mental states,

such as an animal's beliefs or desires, adds nothing to what psychologycan and should understand about the sources of behavior. Mentalstates are private entities which, given the necessary publicity of

science, do not form proper objects of empirical study.6

As a consequence of this view, behavioral science is seen as absolutely and exclusively

concerned with observable things like animal behavior and environmental circumstances,

and not with things that subsist only in and through conjecture. By extension, this

program is also a way to regulate what sort of language is acceptable in psychological

explanation.

Another major type of behaviorism ispsychological behaviorism. The

distinguishing characteristic of this theory is that it claims that the sources of human

behavior can be exhaustively explained without reference to mental states. This theory is

5Willard Day, On the Difference between Radical and Methodological Behaviorism,

Behaviorism11, no. 1 (1983): 91.6George Graham, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,s.v. Behaviorism, ed.

Edward N. Zalta, accessed December 4, 2013,

http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2010/entries/behaviorism.


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similar to methodological behaviorism, but it is construed on positive grounds as a claim

about what behaviorism cando unlike methodological behaviorism's focus on what

behavioral scienceshould notdo.

Logical Behaviorism

The last, and most pertinent for our purposes, version of behaviorism is logical

behaviorism. Logical behaviorism is a thesis about the meanings of mental terms and thus

of sentences in which mental terms occur. Logical behaviorists claim that the meaning of

mental-state sentences can be reduced to the meaning of equivalent sentences that only

mention observable behavioral phenomena. For example, according to logical

behaviorism, any sentence in which a mental term occurs such as Wittgenstein believes

that going out into the cold is bad can be accurately translated into a sentence like It is

the case that Wittgenstein rarely or never goes outside when it is cold and when he does

so, he reacts negatively. In other words, logical behaviorism is a theory about the

meaningandsemantics of mental term containing expressions, in that it claims that such

expressions can be reduced to expressions equivalent in meaning, and that this can

happen without any loss of semantic information. The theory therefore claims that this

translational work can be done correctly without sacrificing anything which is not

capturable by the newly translated sentence; the two expressions (the one with mental-

predicates and the other without) are semantically identical such that they are

interchangeable without any significant difference in what they actually express; and, an


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analytical reconstruction of the two sentences would yield the same meaning. Similarly,

although the sentences are different, they express the same proposition since they are

both true in the same exact circumstances. Put very simply, for any expression or

sentence X that contains mental terms, there is an equivalent sentence Y that does not use

those terms yet means exactly (if translated correctly, of course) what the original

sentence meant:

According to this standard interpretation...statements containing

mental terms can be translated, without loss of meaning, intosubjunctive conditionals about what the individual will do in various

circumstances. So Ryle (on this account) is to be construed as offering

a dispositional analysis of mental statements into behavioral ones.7

Logical behaviorism does not simply claim that it is possible to give such an equivalent

translation, rather it claims that since one version of the expression contains only explicit

behavioral terminology, the other version must be seen as expressing this meaning and

not the other way around; and so, although there is a type of equivalency between the

two, the direction of the reduction is always from 'with mental-terms' to 'without mental-

terms'. This is to say that, even though the two expressions can be used interchangeably,

it is the one that is behavioral which is primary, and the other is seen as alternately

expressing the same thing as the behavioral expression; the expression withmental-

predicates is a shorthand way of saying thesameas the expression withoutthe mental-

predicates:

It says that the very idea of a mental state or condition is the idea ofa behavioral disposition or family of behavioral tendencies, evident in

how a person behaves in one situation rather than another. When we

attribute a belief, for example, to someone, we are not saying that he

7Julia Tanney, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. Ryle, Gilbert, ed.

Edward N. Zalta, accessed December 4, 2013,

http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2009/entries/ryle/.


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or she is in a particular internal state or condition. Instead, we are

characterizing the person in terms of what he or she might do in

particular situations or environmental interactions.8

What must be extremely precise in order to be clear is the point that the mental-term

version of a proposition does not represent a unique type of 'mental' proposition and it

does not indicate the existence of any unobservable mental entity, rather, it expresses

exactly what is meant by the version containing only behavioral principles. Whatever else

we might think these expressions mean, according to logical behaviorism, they must

actually mean what is paraphrasable in only observable behavioral principles.

Although behaviorism as a whole is admirable as one framework among others, it

is in logical behaviorism that we find the most controversial claims, if only because it is

logical behaviorism which makes not only a normative claim, but a theoretical claim

about the actualmeaning of mental-term sentences:

[T]he meaning of a psychological statement consists solely in thefunction of abbreviating the description of certain modes of physical

response characteristic of the bodies of men and animals.9

What this means, put more directly, is that logical behaviorism claims that, in essence,

mental-term language expresses nothing else than what the very same equivalent

sentences in behavioral language express; and being that behavioral language obviously

only references observable behavior, it follows that mental-term language only indexes

8George Graham, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,s.v. Behaviorism, ed.

Edward N. Zalta, accessed December 4, 2013,http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2010/entries/behaviorism.9Carl Hempel, The Logical Analysis of Psychology, inReadings in Philosophy of

Psychology, ed. Ned Joel Block (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1980-

1981), 19.


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that very same behavior and not another type of phenomena. In this way, logical

behaviorism is first, a theory about the actual or real meaning of mental-term language:

In its simplest form, logical behaviorism holds that terms in

psychology can't be taken to refer to mental phenomena per se becausethe mental phenomena aren't directly, publicly observable.Consequently, they can't be measured using the instruments of physics

for purposes of verification. Therefore, logical behaviorism advocates

the semantic thesis that psychological terms must be taken to refer toeither (a) publicly observable behavior, (b) physiological states

correlated with publicly observable behavior, or (c) dispositions to

engage in publicly observable behavior...10

And secondly, an implicit philosophical critique of the scientific illegitimacy of assuming

the existence of immaterial, or private, mental entities based solely off the superficial

form of mental-term language.

Practically, the way one would proceed to think correctly in light of logical

behaviorism, is rather straight forward. For example, with reference to the sentence 'Jones

is vain', we can understand its meaning by thinking of it as expressing a proposition about

Jones' habits of behavior which we can perceive, like his tendency to behave arrogantly

or boast in front of others. In essence, such a sentence makes an indicative statement

about his behavior up until the point of the utterance, and it implies that he has a

disposition to act this way again. It does not express anything about a hidden cause of his

behavior:

The utterance, 'Jones is vain,' to laymen, is no contradictory invitationto an invisible cartesian peep-show, but the formulation of a law-like

statement about one of Jone's tendencies, which has been inductivelyarrived at by observing Jones and can be tested for its truth or falsity

by further observations...Jone's vanity is his actual or possible

10Jay Moore, On Psychological Terms that Appeal to the Mental, Behavior and

Philosophy29 (2001): 167.


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boasting, encouraging conversations about himself, etc., and not the

epistemically sealed cause of them.11

The Verificationist Backbone of Logical Behaviorism

At some point, any analysis of logical behaviorism will lead one down a path

towards verificationism. The doctrine of Verificationism is closely influential on the

motivating factors and underlying strategies apparent in Logical Behaviorism. For

example, it is through a type of appeal to verificationism that logical behaviorism

concludes the real meaning of mental-term language:

In psychology, verificationism underpins or grounds analytical

behaviorism, namely, the claim that mental concepts refer tobehavioral tendencies and so must be translated into behavioral

terms.12

Put succinctly, Verificationism is the idea that a non-analytic sentence is only genuinely

meaningful if there is an empirical way to verify its truth or falsity. In other words, a

statement only has determinate meaning (as opposed to associative significance[The

sentence expressing it may be emotionally significant...but it is not literally significant"13])

insofar as there is a relative circumstance or observation that would affirm or negate the

11Morris Weitz, Professor Ryle's Logical Behaviorism,The Journal of Philosophy48,

no. 9 (1951): 298.12George Graham, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,s.v. Behaviorism, ed.Edward N. Zalta, accessed December 4, 2013,

http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2010/entries/behaviorism.13A. J. Ayer,Language, Truth, and Logic (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England:

Penguin, 1991), 16.


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truth of the statement. Therefore, according to verificationism, a sentence such as 'God is

both nothing and everything',is without literal meaning since it is not clear what relevant

observation there could possibly be for the confirmation of the sentence's validity:

The central idea behind verificationism is linking some sort of

meaningfulness with (in principle) confirmation.14

To be clear, the relevant observation might not be actually possible for any given reason,

so long as it is theoretically possible. So, for example, the sentence There is a cat in the

center of the moon might as of yet have no actually observable relevant circumstance,

yet we can at least know what experience wouldconfirm or disconfirm its truth; going to

the moon's center would definitively affirm or negate the truth of the sentence. This is all

to say that, the condition that there be a relevant observation or experience does not

require that such an observation be practically realizable in the present moment, only that

it be theoretically observable under the appropriate circumstances. Therefore, the

difference between 'There is a cat in the center of the moon' and 'God is both nothing and

everything' is that the latter is not even verifiable in principle, while the former is, given

the possible relevant observation. Such observations and possible experiences, when

relevant to any given indicative statement, serve as, or function like, necessary

coordinates for the proper parceling of meaningful content. Within philosophy, there are

many things that could be called versions of verificationism, which vary in the degree to

which their interpretation of 'verifiability' and 'verification' are either more strict or less

strict, more lenient or less lenient etc. What unites all of these types of verificationism is

14Richard Creath, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. Logical Empiricism,

ed. Edward N. Zalta, accessed December 4, 2013,

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logical-empiricism/.


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that they all assert the fundamental necessity of there being observable circumstances

that inform the meaning of any truth-bearing sentence; and such that if these criterial

circumstances are absent, the sentence is meaningless even if it has the form of a genuine

proposition:

We say that a sentence is factually significant to any given person, if,

and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition it purports toexpressthat is, he knows what observations would lead him, under

certain conditions, to accept the proposition as being true or reject it

as being false...15

As for the set of sentences considered 'meaningful' and the other set of those considered

'meaningless', there is a clear distinction operative. The criterion of verifiability can be

stipulated in a very inclusive way, so that even fantastical sentences are allowed;

something like There is a Pink Unicorn in a cave under Lake Michigan is completely

fine, since it is obvious what sort of experience would provide verification. On the other

hand, a sentence like There is a completely undetectable and ancient entityin the room

is not fine; this example in particular is very pertinent, since it shows how at first glance

it looks like the sentence represents a verifiable statement to the effect of 'There exists a

thing X', but because the thing in the sentence is described as 'completely undetectable',

the sentence precludes having determinate meaning. This point is very subtle, in part

because the type of meaningfulness verificationism concerns itself with is itself very

particular, but according to verificationism, any sentence that asserts the existence of

something-- which is also at the same time claimed to be something in principle

unobservable-- is meaningless. Hopefully, these examples make the verificationist

delineation between sense and nonsense more apparent.

15A. J. Ayer,Language, Truth, and Logic, 16.


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It should be clear by now how exactly verificationism plays a role within logical

behaviorism. We have shown earlier that logical behaviorism concludes that mental-term

language must actually be nothing other than talk about simple and complex behavior,

since any genuine proposition must be verifiable in terms of relevant observations; and

anything that we can observe, and that is also relevant to propositions which entail

mental-ascriptions, is a type of behavior, not some unobservable hypothetical

circumstance:

For mental conditions, like all others, get the meaning they have from

the circumstances in which we can know it is correct to apply

them...Mental descriptions, like all descriptions, claim that theconditions criterial for their application obtain; hence they do not, andcannot, refer to private events but to tendencies for there to be public

and physical events. To suggest otherwise is incoherent, for on the

alternative which construes mental descriptions as analogous to bodilyones, there will be no criterial conditions for the mental words, so they

will have no meaning at all.16

While we see that Verificationism adapts verifiability as a criterion for meaningfulness,

Logical Behaviorism shows that when faced with a proposition involving some sort of

mental-ascription, it is sufficient to talk only about behavior if we wish to determine the

sentence's meaning. The message of Logical Behaviorism is that indexing or representing

unobservable objects or relations is notnecessary for determining the meaning of mental-

term propositions; and by essentially asking the same question that is posed by

Verificationism, it determines that only behavior is included in the set of relevant

circumstances for mental-ascriptions:

We cannot conclude, because mental terms are not dispensable, thatthey describe something spiritual beyond the body and its

behavior...Behaviorism rejects the idea that the mind is a spiritual

16Keith Campbell,Mind and Body, (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame,

1984), 68.


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thing, and rejects it principally because there can never be the public

human experience of spirits upon which alone the idea and knowledge

of such things could be founded. Behaviorist theory has no place for

[hypothetical] mental objects.17

Some Objections

There are two popular counter-examples often used to refute behaviorism.18They

each represent an extreme, and I will call one the Zombie scenario and the other the

Intelligent Rock scenario. In the first scenario, you are supposed to imagine a body of

some sort, moving and acting as humans do, but which does not have any mental life. In

the second scenario, you are supposed to imagine an inanimate object, like a rock, that

nevertheless has a vibrant mental life. Both scenarios are meant to show the implicit

disconnection between observable behavior and unobservable private mental-experience.

It is obvious why both scenarios fail though, in that they are not even clearly sensical. For

example, if I imagine the Zombie is observably identicalto the person I call my mother,

then I have no reason to think it has any less of a mental-state than my mother. Or, if the

intelligent rock has never spoken to me, or moved, or made any other observable

difference in its surroundings, then I am clearly not justified in thinking that it is any

different from a normal rock. For either counter-example to succeed, we are implictly

supposed to think that the Zombie does differ from a human in some observable way, or

17Keith Campbell,Mind and Body,61.18Alex Byrne, Behaviourism, inA Companion to the Philosophy of Mind, ed. Samuel

Guttenplan (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 132-140.


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that the Intelligent Rock doessomehow behave differently than a normal rock. But this is

no refutation of behaviorism. No, rather, it only proves the point that we require

behavioral criteria to differentiate between categories of mental and non-mental.

Chapter 1 Conclusion

The facet of Logical Behaviorism that concerns us can be summarized by saying

it is a behaviorist view which provides a semantic theory for the meaning of expressions

which involve ascriptions of mental-predicates. Unlike other types of behaviorism,

Logical or Analytical Behaviorism offers a theory of what mental terms actually mean, as

opposed to just stating how we should view them in light of a certain scientific pursuit.

Other types of behaviorism might only offer a normative positionhow things should be

doneor they might attempt to exclude certain terms from their practice completely, but

Logical Behaviorism does not attempt to exclude or regulate any terms so much as it sets

out to describe them in their unperturbed actuality. In fact, Logical Behaviorism describes

these terms by appealing to their conditions of assertability and/or truth, and to their

usage; and in doing so, ventures to describe their real nature. Closely tied to the method

of verification and the notions of truth and assertability conditions, is the concept of

'usage' most often associated with the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. As we will see

later in Chapter 3, Wittgenstein's theory of the meaning of so-called mental-terms or,

'sensation-language', is very similar to Logical Behaviorism's theory. We will see how

they can be compared in light of their similar conclusions, and how they can be


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contrasted in light of their different methods for reaching the conclusions. But first,

before we speak about the theoretical affinities between Wittgenstein's theory and

Logical Behaviorism, we will proceed in Chapter 2 to give a description of Wittgenstein's

theory of sensation-language.


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Chapter 2: Wittgenstein's Proof of the Irrelevancy

of Private Mental-States to Meaning

This chapter will focus exclusively on the Wittgenstein of thePhilosophical

Investigations. Specifically, the questions that we will set out to answer include: what

was Wittgenstein's theory of the meaning of terms and expressions that involve mental-

state ascriptions? How does he construct his argument? What opposing view did he

respond to? Was he right? And ultimately, does our interpretation of Wittgenstein imply

that he had views that were similar to Logical Behaviorism?

The classical view regarding the meaning of sensation-language to which

Wittgenstein responded, was the view that expressions like I have a pain or Serena has

an ache refer to mental-states or sensations which are the private experience of the

subject of the attributed property; it is not the mere claim that the experience is a token

example of a generic type, rather it claims that the experience is itself essentially private

and only available to a single observer. Put another way, the classical view took the terms

'pain' and 'ache' to refer to private sensations, or private experiences of mental qualities.

So, under the classical view, 'pain' would refer to a thing which we all might experience

individually, but which we only ever experience in isolation from others. Therefore, I can

speak of knowing that another person is in pain, but not of knowing the pain itself which

only she is privy to. Or, if we think of each person's body as a box, and the pain as a

thing, we can say that only the person who has the box can experience the thing inside;


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and, by extension under the classical view, when a person expresses that she has a

sensation, the meaning of her utterance is determined by the thing inside of the box which

only she can observe.

To sum up the Wittgensteinian position, which this chapter explores, and that

refutes the classical view, we can say that it is the position which denies that such things

in the private domain of individual experiences have any causal or logical connection to

the meaningof mental-terms. In other words, the meaningof expressions that we might

wrongly take to be dependent on private mental-states, is actually never determined by or

dependent on any sort of private mental-entity. We will show that this position really has

nothing to do with the denial of any set of entities in toto, but rather with the denial of

any causal or logical connection between a particular hypothetical set of things and the

meaning of certain terms and expressions. We can call the set of terms and expressions,

the set of sensation-languagewhich is to say the set of all terms and expressions we

take to be relevant to propositions about 'mental-properties'; and, we can call the set of

hypothetical private entities, the set ofprivatemental states. The theory which this paper

endorses, as a Wittgensteinian theory of sensation-language, denies that there is any

logical or causal connection between the elements of the two separate sets described

above; specifically, it denies that there is a connection between the meaning of the

elements in the first set and the being of the objects in the second set.

Before we set out to describe the theory we endorse in more detail, let us quickly

and preemptively clarify some possible misunderstandings. The first question one might

have is, why do we choose to deny both a causal andlogical connection? Of course, these

are different types of connection, and therefore cannot just be explained by the same


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reasoning: a causal connection is one such that it expresses an empirical relation between

an antecedent event and a consequent event; and a logical connection is a conceptual

relation, such that one concept figures into the definition of another. What we mean to

say in including both types, is that first, there is no function that the private mental state

fulfills in the logical determination of the sentences' meaning; and second, the private

mental state does notact as a cause of the meaning such that, the meaning of the

expression alters according to whether or not the private mental state is actual. One

might, under some influence from the classical view, still argue that the private

experience occasions the utterance of the expression, and so acts as a cause of the

utterance-event. But our question is not what causes you to say 'apple' over 'orange', but

how is it that either 'apple' or 'orange' can mean anything effectively in the first place.

We are not concerned with some hypothetical entity that causes the subject to utter an

expression; we are concerned with the meaning of the utterance and the observable facts

about the world that determine our understanding of the meaning.

Another foreseeable objection to the view we just expounded, is that people

obviously do experience things as individuals first and foremost; for example, it is true

that we each have our own sense-organs, which operate for and within a particular

human bodyand some would argue that there are events which only that body

experiences. But the key point is altogether different; to the extent to which it is truly a

private experience, we cannot speak about it. If we can speak about it, it is not a

categorically private experience. The difference hinges on the distinction between a

privateexperience which is in principle only applicable to oneperson, and numerically

distinct applicationsof a certain mental description to particular persons. Two objects


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can be qualitatively identical if they are of the same type (i.e 'This rock and that rock; this

tree and that tree.'), and they can be numerically non-identical if they are separate

instantiations of the same object-type. The theory we offer as the right one claims that

anypossible experience we cantalk about is, in principle, one that could have

qualitatively identicalbut numerically distinctinstantiations, and hence not be private in

the sense which the classical view supposes.

For example, one might say something like 'We all agree that we're looking at a

rock, but how can we tell our experiences of the space within the outer-limit that defines

the rock, are not different? What if, for me, there is a slight impression of blurriness

within my experience of the rock, which you do not have?' And we could respond: 'Well,

perhaps the thing which we agree is definitely a rock looks different to youbut different

in what sense? In whatever sense you explain the difference,I still understand the sense

in which they are different:

294. If you say he sees a private picture before him, which he is

describing, you have still made an assumption about what he hasbefore him. And that means that you can describe it or do describe it

more closely. If you admit that you haven't any notion what kind of

thing it might be that he has before himthen what leads you into

saying, in spite of that, that he has something before him? Is it not asif I were to say of someone: "He has something. But I do not know

whether it is money, or debts, or an empty till."19

And so, the experience you have described is in no way representative of something

'private'; rather, it shows only the degree to which and way in which your experience is

different. And it does not prove that you are talking about a private phenomenon, so

much as it proves you are talking about a public phenomenon that you in particular

19Ludwig Wittgenstein,Philosophical Investigations, trans. and ed. G. E. M. Anscombe,

P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte, 4thed. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 107.


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happen to be experiencing in the present moment. If there was some feature of your

experience that was wholly private, then we could not talk about it; because, if we could

truly talk about it, then we would be talking about things that in principle do not depend

on some categorically private experience. We now see how the person who claims that no

one but he can know his own pain, mistakes a simple convention of our language such

that what is incorrigible is the use of 'know' instead of 'believe' in reference to one's own

pain, for some sort of deep incorrigibility about private mental-states:

303. "I can only believe that someone else is in pain, but I know it if I

am."Yes: one can make the decision to say "I believe he is in pain"

instead of "He is in pain". But that is all. What looks like anexplanation here, or like a statement about a mental process, is in truthan exchange of one expression for another which, while we are doing

philosophy, seems the more appropriate one.20

Perhaps we should re-state the dilemma: the classical view would think it sensible

to believe we can talk about experiences that are categorically private. The opposing view

which we offer, claims that anything categorically private would be impossible to speak

about ever; and that, no matter the complexity or seeming particularity of an experience,

it is in principle an experience which anyone who understands the meaning of the words

in the relevant statements could experience. It might be said, I do not know what it is like

to be a female, since I do not have the proper biological make-up or I am not embodied in

the appropriate way. Nevertheless, I know the defining differences in terms of biology,

and I know what it is to have something, and to be something, or to feel sad and

discriminated against etc. So, the experience 'typical' of being female is not something

categorically undisclosed to me, so much as it just is not my experience. The key

20Ludwig Wittgenstein,Philosophical Investigations, 108.


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distinction here, perhaps, is that since I know the meaning of the words comprising the

description, does not imply that the description applies to me; by the same token, given

my understanding of the words describing the experience, I understand what the

experiencewhich is not mineis. This is just like if a person were to tell me that I

cannot understand his experiencethe experience he describes to me with languagebut

I obviously can in a sense, since I understand what they are telling me I cannot

understand. We must be careful not to equivocate the different senses of 'understand'

which we are using. The fact, which we really mean to reiterate in such circumstances, is

simply the fact that it is or is not the actual experience of a particular person at a given

moment in time. This is all to say, whatever a truly and wholly private experience would

be, it is not something that we can talk about; what we can talk about, is what we can

agree we are able to simultaneously experience, given the right conditions. The

precondition for any word having meaning, would be that there be at least one other

person who has had the same experience and can agree that the word refers to that

experience; and so, this would already violate the condition that the experience be wholly

the possession of a single person. Therefore, there is absolutely no such thing as a private

experience that we can also talk about. The extent to which we talk at all, is the extent to

which we agree with others over the presence or absence of a thing in the shared

circumstances; the extent to which we can mean anything, is the extent to which there is

an experience which we share with someone otherthan ourselves.


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More Counter-examples to the Classical View

There are many more obvious counter-examples to the classical view, one is

evident in this anecdote: A neuroscientist wants to isolate the neurological basis for

experiencethat is to say, she wants to find the definite part of the brain without which a

person cannot have experiences. But how will she do this? Perhaps she will selectively

shut-off different parts of the brain, and then perform certain tests, like asking the patient

different questions about his condition, or monitor certain physiological data. But what

will this prove? Perhaps, at any given point in the process of research, she might

permanently have destroyed the capacity for private experience, but just in such a way

that all behavioral capacities and operations remain the same. How will the scientist

become aware that she has crossed that limit? There is no conceivable way through which

she could. Or, vice versa, she might only disable the behavioral capacity but retain the

experiential capacityas if she had paralyzed the patient completely; but in general, in

cases like these, what warrants us to say that 'the lights are still on' so to say, if not for

behavior anyway? Perhaps certain brain activity we associate with experiencebut we

only came to associate it after its correlation with other behavior. It seems that the only

criteria for the supposed difference between experience and non-experience is behavior

itself (including internal physiological behavior), and yet many of us refuse to admit that

the meaning of such distinctions isjust a distinction between different forms of behavior.

The whole confusion hinges on the neuroscientist thinking that by 'experience', she means

some sort of unobservable thing, and not some complex of observable phenomena; if this


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behavioral terms. To these worries we offer two responses. First, there certainly is a

difference between things with consciousness and things without it; after all,

'consciousness' and terms like it have a use in our language, and we do not use them with

reference to just any object whatsoever. In other words, we do notpropose the thesis that

sensation-language means nothing. On the contrary, we assume that such aspects of our

language have a use, and proceed to explain the conditions under which such use is

effective. Second, we might believe that the things we ascribe mental-states to differ in

kind and not in degree from those we do not. From the outset though, this is a misleading

perspective, since it is actually a difference bothin kind and in degree. Certainly the

sensation/non-sensation distinction issui generis in the sense of us thinking it necessary

and useful, but we say that insofar as it expresses a difference in kind it is a distinction

that depends solely on a threshold within a continuum. The continuum we speak of is the

fact of observable behavior, and the threshold is a point on that continuum past which we

are warranted to speak of 'consciousness', 'experience', 'sensation', 'mental-state' etc.:

284. Look at a stone and imagine it having sensations.One says tooneself: How could one so much as get the idea of ascribing a

sensation to a thing? One might as well ascribe it to a number!And

now look at a wriggling fly and at once these difficulties vanish andpain seems able to get a foothold here, where before everything was,

so to speak, too smooth for it. And so, too, a corpse seems to us quite

inaccessible to pain.Our attitude to what is alive and to what is dead,is not the same. All our reactions are different.If anyone says: "That

cannot simply come from the fact that a living thing moves about in

such-and-such a way and a dead one not", then I want to intimate to

him that this is a case of the transition 'from quantity to quality'.21

Hopefully, this perspective we now propose as the correct one, makes it obvious why we

do not say a rock has consciousness, but we are sometimes almost tempted to say so of



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things like dynamic, self-regulating and self-adjusting complex systemssuch as

computers, social movements and cultural memes.

Wittgenstein's Theory of Observable Meaning

What we will now call the Theory of Observable Meaning is not something that

Wittgenstein explicitly mentioned or endorsed. At our discretion, we propose it as the

theory implicit in his ruminations on sensation-language inPhilosophical Investigations.

The most pertinent passage from the investigations that we will now look at is the

passage containing the 'Beetle in the Box Experiment'. This thought-experiment is the

best and most direct example of Wittgenstein's conclusive refutation of the classical view.

In it, he paints a picture which contains so-called private mental-states, but that offers

them no relevant causal position for what else goes on in the picture. That is to say, he

entertains the classical views notionof a private mental-entity, only to show how no

such thing really matters at all. In section 293, Wittgenstein wrote the following:

Well, everyone tells me that he knows what pain is only from his own

case!Suppose that everyone had a box with something in it whichwe call a 'beetle'. No one can ever look into anyone else's box, and

everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle.

Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something

different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantlychanging. But what if these people's word 'beetle' had a use

nonetheless?If so, it would not be as the name of a thing. The thing

in the box doesn't belong to the language-game at all; not even as aSomething: for the box might even be empty. No, one can 'divide

through' by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is. That is

to say, if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on


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the model of 'object and name', the object drops out of consideration

as irrelevant.22

Let us examine the structure of the argument. First, he asks the audience to entertain the

idea that a word 'beetle' refers to the thing in the box of each person. Then, he supposes

that the things in the boxes are all different from each other, or that the things are

constantly changing in nature. Finally, he supposes that theword 'beetle' still has a use

despite all of these previous suppositions; and by making this last supposition, he has

already shown that the word 'beetle', insofar as it has such a use, does not depend on the

object which we at first thought it referred to. In what sense does it not depend on it? In

the sense of the hypothetical object within the box being completely irrelevant to the

actual useof the word 'beetle'; and what is to differentiate the word from the mere

utterance if not for its conformity with patterns of established convention? There is not

even an indirect connection in such cases, since the thing in the box doesn't even

remotely influence the actually possible usages of the word.

It should be obvious how the Beetle in the Box scenario is illustrative, and

analogous to the circumstances of all expressions of sensation. Knowing that all the

expressions contained within the set of sensation-language are not meaningless (they

have a sufficiently definite use), we have shown that they are meaningful despite any fact

about the supposed thing in the box. The word 'pain' is just like 'beetle', in that it has a

use-determined meaning; but if we think of its function as that of referring to a private

knowledge or experience, we realize its actual use happens to be apparently very

different. If we still assume it has such a function, and that we are just confused as to the



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facts about its actual usage, then howshouldwe positively think of it? There is no answer

to such a question, and if we tried to describe the meaning of sensation-language

according to such a pretense, we would be left describing nothing or being unable to

describe anything.

Wittgenstein shows that words such as 'pain', like the word 'beetle' in the thought-

experiment, do not mean anything about private experience or knowledge. What he

doesn't do in the experiment though, is say what such words do mean. We can only gloss

over this question now, but a promising beginning is offered in this supplement to the

scenario: Suppose a person in the imagined scenario has a thing X in their box, and

suppose this thing requires water. Obviously, the person cannot just show other people X

in a way which would directly communicate facts about X. Also, suppose the people in

the scenario have a card-system, much like language except with cards instead of words

and combinations of cards instead of sentences. In this card-system, the expression 'I

would like some water' has a direct translation in terms of an analogous combination of

different cards. Now finally, imagine that the person with X used card sequence 'Y' to

express to other people that she would like water. We know that the card-expression has a

definite use, since in all relevant cases in which it is used the same kind of events almost

always followi.e another person retrieves water for the person who presented the card-

sequence. One possible cause of our confusion with sensation-language might be that we

think, because the hypothetical thing X required water, and the possessor of X eventually

received water, that there is some causal connection between the two. When, in actuality,

the relevant causal relation obtains between the water-retrieval and the person, not as the

possessor of X, but as the utterer of Y. The effect of the water being retrieved has as its


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cause the presentation of the card-sequence; and the causal power of the card-sequence

has only as its cause the established fact of its usage being determined by conventions of

behavior. The supposed fact that object X required water is entirely irrelevant in relation

to the fact of the card-sequence causing such a possible change in the environment of the

card-presenter. To be precise, what we are saying is that object X has no necessary role as

cause in relation to what is caused when a person utters an expression or presents a

sequence of cards; and, conversely, if we assume that sensation-language does

something, even if that something is expression, then we can say that it doing so is

sufficiently explained by observable (non-private) facts about the world. In other words,

we could understand the meaning of the card-sequence entirely separate from knowing

anything about X; we could in fact know nothing about X, but still know everything

about the card-sequence Y. The supposed sensation that is the object of 'thirst', for

example, is construed through the grammar of the word 'thirst'. We do not confirm that a

person knows the meaning of Y by confirming anything about X; rather, for example, we

might observe how the utterer reacts once the water-retrieval has been completedif

they react a certain way, we say they understand the meaning of what they uttered,

otherwise we say they do not:

296. "Yes, but there is something there all the same accompanying mycry of pain. And it is on account of that that I utter it. And this

something is what is importantand frightful."Only to whom are

we telling this? And on what occasion? 23

And,

298. The very fact that we should so much like to say: "This is the

important thing"while we point privately to the sensation is



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enough to show how much we are inclined to say something which

gives no information.24

If a person utters 'I am so thirsty', and we want to know if they understand the meaning of

their own utterance in the relevant language, we do not search for an unobservable object

in vain, but actually observe how they behave once they have obtained a beverage; if they

react in a certain unconventional way, to a sufficient degree, we will be forced to

conclude they simply do not know the meaning of what they ostensibly uttered as a

means of expression. One might also object and say that the person is not using the word

wrongly, he is just using the word to refer to a thing only he can possibly know is being

referred to. If this is the objection, then it will require Wittgenstein's refutation of private

language to defend his theory. For our purposes though, it can be simply said that a

person has no standard of knowing whether she is actually referring to her own private

experience and not something else, and that the 'private language' required for such a feat

would be practically impossible. For one reason, simply because proof of a private

experience would not only require that a person privately claim he has such an

experience, but also that he confirm that other people do not have it; and this would

require that he use language to describe his experience, and therefore nullify the assertion

that he is describing something wholly private. Hopefully it cannot be any clearer that,

things within the domain of 'private' knowledge like 'object X' have no relation to the

understanding and explanation of how expressions we actually are ableto use mean

things in the first place.



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What we have outlined now is the theory, which we call the Theory of Observable

Meaning, which claims that sensation-language does not involve private mental-states.

The 'classical view' believes the essence of communication lies in people understanding

each others' private mental experiences:

363. But when I imagine something, somethinggoes on, doesn't it?

Well, something goes on and then I make a noise. What for?Presumably in order to communicate what went on. But how, in

general, does one communicate something? When does one say that

something is being communicated? What is the language-game of

communicating something?

I'd like to say: you regard it much too much as a matter of course that

one can communicate anything to anyone. That is to say, we are soaccustomed to communicating in speech, in conversation, that it looks

to us as if the whole point of communicating lay in this: that someone

else grasps the sense of my wordswhich is something mentalthat

he, as it were, takes it into his own mind. If he then does somethingfurther with it as well, that is no part of the immediate purpose of

language. 25

We have shown this is not the case since, first, the extent to which we can speak about

something is the same extent to which it is in principle notprivate; and second, we have

shown that the power of communication hinges on the grammar of different patterns of

usage, which in turn hinge on the observable or public features of the world. It is not the

case that we 'read off the facts' from some private mental object and think of the

expression which bests represents it; no, rather, the object of the expression is construed

on the basis of the grammar associated with its usage, including its connection to other

expressions and contexts:

371.Essenceis expressed in grammar.26

25Ludwig Wittgenstein,Philosophical Investigations, 121.26Ludwig Wittgenstein,Philosophical Investigations, 123.


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And,

373. Grammar tells what kind of object anything is.27

Language is not a circuit with a private picture on one end, and an expression which best

approximates the picture on the other end. The objects which we speak of have their

character made explicit in a circuit which only involves grammar and facts of the

observable world. By 'grammar', Wittgenstein meant the shared experience of any given

language's conventions of usage28i.e. When do we use a word or phrase? What occurs

before its employment? What follows its employment? Etc. For example, when do we

use the word 'dead'? In certain contexts only of course, like when an animal no longer

exhibits certain physiological characteristics. This is what we mean by grammar.

Wittgenstein resolutely denied the view that sensation-language operates

according to a split between private mental-states, and their representative expressions.

He proposed the opposite view, that if we speak of an object, it is an object which has its

logical origins as a definite thing in the grammar which defines the contours of its

relations to other objects and relations-between-objects:

374. The great difficulty here is not to present the matter as if therewere something one couldn't do. As if there really were an object,

from which I extract a description, which I am not in a position to

show anyone.And the best that I can propose is that we yield to thetemptation to use this picture, but then investigate what the application

of the picture looks like.29

27Ibid.28Anat Biletzki, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v."Ludwig Wittgenstein,"

ed. Edward N. Zalta, accessed December 4, 2013,

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/.29Ludwig Wittgenstein,Philosophical Investigations, 123.


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In other words, it's not like a person uses language in an attempt to describe some

indescribable private object for everyone to understand, but rather it is that the only

object logically available ever is the one everyone can access on equal-footing by

understanding the original set of expressions which defined the supposed object's

particular presenceWhich object? The one with features x,y,z.....

Another objection to the Theory of Observable Meaning goes like this: what

about cases where only a single person discovers a new thing, and then reports back to

others. For example, when an explorer discovers a new geographical location, he might

go back to his society and describe his experiences to others. One might say he is

describing something that everyone else can understand, but that he also actually has an

image before his mind that he cannot put completely into words. In other words, he has

an image that can be partly put into words, and partly not. In this case though, how can

we say anything about what he still cannot put into words? It's not even obvious that he

still hassome such part that he cannot put into words. One might also say that the

explorer's words mean for him something over and above what anyone else can

understand from the words; as if everybody else only understood the picture through bits

and pieces, and the explorer understood the singular thing that the whole description

applied to:

280. Someone paints a picture in order to show, for example, how heimages a stage set. And now I say: The picture has a double function:

it informs others, as pictures or words dobut for the informant it isin addition a representation of another kind: for him it is the picture of

hisimage, as it can't before anyone else. His private impression of the

picture tells him what he imagined, in a sense in which the picturecan't do this for others. And what right have I to speak in this


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second case of a representation or piece of information if these

words were correctly usedin thefirstcase? 30

But our question concerns the meaningof the words, and these are not dependent on

some private image in the explorer's mind. Imagine that it wasn't our explorer 'James'

who discovered the new island, but some other explorer 'Frank', and that our explorer this

time was in the position of hearing the words he would of otherwise used were he in the

same position as before. In this way, we see how the description, as it were, stands alone;

its meaning not determined by a private picture before the mind of any particular utterer.

The classical view looks everywhere except where the obvious answer lies. This

why Wittgenstein says:

464. My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised

nonsense to something that is patent nonsense. 31

What generates the classical view is an insistence on keeping the nonsense disguised as a

real problem. In short, the classical view turns a blind-eye to the relevant facts, and

focuses instead on some hypothetical and ambiguous process or entity:

308. How does the philosophical problem about mental processes and

states and about behaviourism arise?The first step is the one that

altogether escapes notice. We talk of processes and states and leavetheir nature undecided. Sometime perhaps we shall know more about

themwe think. But that is just what commits us to a particular way

of looking at the matter. For we have a definite concept of what it

means to learn to know a process better. (The decisive movement inthe conjuring trick has been made, and it was the very one that we

thought quite innocent.)And now the analogy which was to make

us understand our thoughts falls to pieces. So we have to deny the yet

uncomprehended process in the yet unexplored medium. And now it



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looks as if we had denied mental processes. And naturally we do not

want to deny them. 32

As Wittgenstein puts it, the classical view from the outset commits itself to

particular idea that leads nowhere. It insists there is a process or a mental state essential

to sensation-language, and yet leaves the nature of the supposed key element completely

unexplained:

426. A picture is conjured up which seems to fix the sense

unambiguously. The actual use, compared with that suggested by the

picture, seems like something muddied. Here again, what is going onis the same as in set theory: the form of expression seems to have been

tailored for a god, who knows what we cannot know; he sees all of

those infinite series, and he sees into the consciousness of humanbeings. For us, however, these forms of expression are like vestments,

which we may put on, but cannot do much with, since we lack the

effective power that would give them point and purpose.

In the actual use of these expressions, we, as it were, make

detours, go by side roads. We see the straight highway before us, but

of course cannot use it, because it is permanently closed. 33

In the passage just presented, Wittgenstein is speaking directly to the classical view's

mistaken view that the actual usage of the expression is somehow derivative of or

dependent on some other private mental essence. Let us elaborate by using the particular

example of silent readingthat is, reading, not aloud, but only to oneself. When do we

say a person can 'read silently'? We do so, for example, when we provide new material to

a child, observe them for a period, and then ask them questions about the material.

Assuming they had no prior knowledge of the material, we say, that because they

obviously did not read aloud, there must have been some otherprocess that accounts for

their competency in the material. But we cannot leave this mysterious process so vaguely



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language-game of 'remembering'. And neither is the process of remembering nor the

thing remembered categorically private.

We can speak of a word or expression, and the thing to which the word or

expression refers; the meaningof the word, can be given in terms of the being of the

thingi.e the meaning of 'dog' can be explained in terms of the objects that are called

dogs. The connection between the two, inheres within the established usage of the

linguistic community:

383. We do not analyse a phenomenon (for example, thinking) but a

concept (for example, that of thinking), and hence the application of a

word. 35

And,

384. You learned the concept of 'pain' in learning language. 36

In other words, for example, when speaking of the word 'tree', we can speak of the

concrete objects trees. But when we speak of pain, we cannot point to an object when we

supposethat the object is private. So, we canspeak of the concept of pain, but that just

leads us to speak of the application of the word'pain'. We suppose the cases are not

analogous, since in one case the word refers to an observable object and in the other to an

unobservable. But they really areanalogous, since what actually happens is we do use the

word to refer to observable facts like: verbal reports, crying, cringing etc. If we abandon

the presumption that 'pain' necessarily refers to an unobservable object, we can see the

actual properties of the world that are essential to its application just like we can with

trees! The appropriate circumstances for the use of the word 'tree' involve the observable

35Ludwig Wittgenstein,Philosophical Investigations, 125.36Ibid.


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tree-objects, just like the appropriate circumstances for the use of the word 'pain' involve

the observable pain-objects, like crying, wincing, moaning and reports. It would be

absurd to say that 'tree' doesn't refer to trees, but to something unobservable that we know

after observing trees, but which is not a tree. Yet this is exactly what we do with 'pain'.

We should not, in the case of sensation, want to turn a blind eye to what is actual and

instead imagine some non-actual circumstance.

Chapter 2 Conclusion

For the ending of this chapter, we now move on to some 'deconstructive' passages

from Wittgenstein, which will serve as excellent diagnostic tools for finalizing our lasting

abandonment of the prejudices' of the classical view. Also, as we set out to answer at the

beginning of this chapter, we will intimate some of the similarities between Wittgenstein

and Logical Behaviorism.

Notice, in these passages, the similarities between Wittgenstein and what we

already know about Logical Behaviorism. They both beg the question, of, what are the

criteria? They both insist on the necessary and sufficient role of observablefacts in

ascriptions of sensation. Wittgenstein is adamant in showing that the ascription of a

sensation does not happen in a vacuum, as if we were just spiritual minds telepathically in

contact with each other and without need of the observable world's mediation:

391. I can perhaps even imagine (though it is not easy) that each of

the people whom I see in the street is in frightful pain, but is adroitlyconcealing it. And it is important that I have to imagine adroit


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concealment here. That I do no simply say to myself: Well, his mind,

is in pain: but what has that to do with his body? or After all, it need

not show in his body. And if I imagine thiswhat do I do? Whatdo I say to myself? How do I look at the people? Perhaps I look at one

and think, It must be difficult to laugh when one is in such pain, and

much else of the same kind.

37

In this passage, first it is proposed we think of people in pain, but not acting typically like

those in pain usually do, and instead having to conceal their normal reactions. We do not

therefore conclude, since the typical pain-behavior is absent, that the pain is something

unobservable to which no observable fact can be related. Rather, we say something about

their disposition to react to another stimuli, given the fact that they are repressing their

usual reaction; in other words, we say that their 'adroitly concealed pain' consists in, not

the regular display of pain, but a modification of it, such that, for example, the person

would have a hard time laughing and still maintaining their adroit concealment. The

example of laughing while also trying to conceal pain, is just one way we can identify the

criteria to which the particular ascription refers to. More simply, we do not just say a

person is concealing her pain, and then assume that therefore she is essentially acting as if

there were no pain at allif this were the case, there would be no difference between the

absence of pain and the pain which is adroitly concealed. There still has to be some

criteria to ensure the ascription is meaningful; perhaps not the same criteria as regular

pain, but still something which differentiates the person adroitly concealing his pain from

the person without any pain. One might still object, 'What if they are just amazing at

concealing their pain, and they never showed any sign of it, as if it were actually not

there.' But who told us they are in pain? They did notin fact they act in every way to



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Chapter 3: Wittgenstein as a Type of Behaviorist

In this final chapter, using what we already know from the two preceding

chapters, we will compare and contrast Wittgenstein's theory with Logical Behaviorism.

First, we will look at the similarities between the two. Then we will look at some

important differences. Finally, we will engage with some objections to either view, and

provide some possible answers. The main goal of this paper has been to convince the

reader that Wittgenstein, when judged according to his thoughts on sensation-language,

was a type of behaviorist. It has not been our goal, to show that either theory denies

private mental-states; one is mistaken to draw that conclusion. In actuality, we have only

shown that both theories categorically deny that private mental-states can be

meaningfully spoken about. That is to say, we have shown that both theories deny that

the meaning of sensation-language relies on private mental-states. It is in this sense, that

Wittgenstein was a behaviorist.

The Similarities

Since we have already explained both of the theories separately, we know that

both Wittgenstein and Logical Behaviorism deny that the meaning of sensation-language


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thing, which is that they do not think private mental-states matter when discussing the

meaning of mental language.

Some might argue that the connection between Wittgenstein and behaviorism is

tenuous at most. Admittedly, it seems Wittgenstein evaded answering the question

altogether:

307. Aren't you nevertheless a behaviourist in disguise? Aren't you

nevertheless basically saying that everything except human behaviour

is a fiction? If I speak of a fiction, then it is of a grammatical fiction.41

Rather than give a direct answer to the question of whether he is a behaviorist, he

qualifies the sense in which he believes everything except human behaviour is a

fictionhe calls it agrammatica

ludwig wittgenstein, logical behaviorism and the meaning of sensation-language

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