Wittgenstein and the Social Sciences. Robert Vinten

⁸²Harkin and Read, ‘Book Review – Michael Temelini’, p. 330.

⁸³Ibid., p. 331.

⁸⁴Temelini, Wittgenstein and the Study of Politics, p. 59.

⁸⁵Winch, ‘Certainty and Authority’, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, p. 228.

⁸⁶See pp. 224–25 of Winch’s ‘Certainty and Authority’ where he explains Hobbes’s account of practical rationality and some problems with it. Winch presents us with Hobbes’s definitions of ‘command’ and ‘counsel’ and points out that ‘it is striking that, in the case of command, Hobbes cuts off the “action” from any consideration of reasons by the ostensible “agent”, whose own beliefs and projects are to be thought of as irrelevant. The difficulty raised by his definition is how the will of another person, the one who commands, can be thought of by the one commanded as on its own as reason for acting’.

⁸⁷Temelini, Wittgenstein and the Study of Politics, p. 56.

⁸⁸See Vinten, R. ‘Leave Everything as It Is: A Critique of Marxist Interpretations of Wittgenstein’, Critique, vol. 41, no. 1, 2013, pp. 21–22.

⁸⁹Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books, pp. 48–49.

⁹⁰Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §402.

⁹¹L. Wittgenstein, On Certainty, New York: Harper & Row, [1969] 1972, §37.

⁹²See O’Connor, Morality and Our Complicated Form of Life, pp. 26–33.

⁹³Ibid., pp. 63, 94.

⁹⁴Ibid., pp. 113–27.

⁹⁵Ibid., p. 146

⁹⁶I think there are further problems with Temelini’s book. I agree with Juliette Harkin and Rupert Read that Temelini misinterprets Wittgenstein’s comments about forms of life. I also think that he misinterprets what Wittgenstein says about language games and perspicuous representations. But there is not space here to go into detail on all of this. I think that enough has been said here already to distinguish my position from Temelini’s and to make it clear that my take on Wittgenstein and politics is different to his. I do also think that Temelini’s book has many virtues as well as vices. I agree with him that conservative interpretations of Wittgenstein’s philosophy are mistaken (see Chapter 3 of this book) and I think that there is something to be said for highlighting the role of dialogue in understanding and in resolving political disputes (although I also agree with Harkin and Read that too much can be made of this. They ask some rather pointed questions of Temelini – ‘Are the underclass and the superrich in need mainly of respectful mutual dialogue? Is dialogue necessarily the answer for Palestinians being driven out of their land? Should Syrian revolutionaries be invited to “listen” to the voice of their “sovereign government”?’ (p. 331 of their review of Temelini’s book).

       Part 1

       THE NATURE OF PHILOSOPHY AND OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

       Chapter 1

       IS THERE SUCH A THING AS A SOCIAL SCIENCE?

I am not interested in constructing a building, so much as in having a perspicuous view of the foundations of possible buildings. So I am not aiming at the same target as the scientists and my way of thinking is different from theirs.¹

      1.1Introduction

Action is significant in Wittgenstein’s later work and Wittgenstein’s work is significant in terms of the development of the philosophy of action. In the very first of the numbered remarks in his Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein highlights the way a shopkeeper acts in delivering goods to a customer as a way of contrasting his understanding of language with the ‘Augustinian’ picture of language. In discussing one sense of the expression ‘language game’ Wittgenstein describes a language game as consisting of ‘language and the activities into which it is woven’.² In other remarks Wittgenstein discusses the relationships between action and ostensive definition,³ the action of a machine (in connection with his discussion of rule following/the relationship between a rule and action in accordance with it),⁴ action and reasons,⁵ action/behaviour and language,⁶ acting and thinking,⁷ acting on orders,⁸ and action and the will.⁹

In his book The Idea of a Social Science Peter Winch developed Wittgenstein’s ideas about action, behaviour, language, and rules into a critique of the idea that the disciplines known as the social sciences are scientific in the manner of the natural sciences. Action appears in The Idea of a Social Science as a way of distinguishing natural sciences, which feature causal explanations prominently, from social sciences, which focus upon human actions and feature explanations in terms of reasons and motives more conspicuously. Winch distinguishes actions from habitual behaviour and distinguishes actions in terms of motives from causal explanations. Wittgenstein was notoriously opposed to scientism, that is, the attempt to bring the methods of science to bear in areas where they are not appropriate, especially in philosophy.¹⁰ Winch, following Wittgenstein, detailed ways in which social investigations differ from investigations in the natural sciences.

Phil Hutchinson, Rupert Read, and Wes Sharrock have recently defended Winch’s account of differences between natural sciences and social disciplines. In their book There is No Such Thing as a Social Science they come to the conclusion that calling social disciplines ‘sciences’ is likely to lead to confusion.¹¹ However, not all philosophers who have been influenced by Wittgenstein and Winch agree that there is no such thing as a social science. At the British Wittgenstein Society conference in 2015 (on