Appearance and Reality

Bernard Williams and AJ Ayer on the Philosophy of Science

Narrator: The relationship of philosophy to science has created many problems in 20
th

Century philosophy as the scientic view of the world has drifted further and
further apart from our ordinary common sense picture. This is the problem
tackled here by Professor Sir Alfred Ayer of Oxford University, who was the
major English [indecipherable 1:00] in the 1930s of the movement known as
'Logical Positivism', and Professor Bernard Williams of the University of
Cambridge.
Ayer: Would you agree, Bernard, that one of the things that distinguish philosophy
anyhow, British philosophy in the last 30 years or so has been its extreme
reverence to common sense? This hasn't generally been true. I wonder why
it's been so.
Williams: Oh I think there's been an awful lot of it, yes. I think it's taken interestingly
some rather diferent forms. I don't know whether you'd agree with this but I
think that the best way of going at this is the following way: depending on
whether one contrasts common sense with philosophy on one hand, whether
one contrasts common sense with science. Because presumably quite often
we mean by common sense is a lot of beliefs of chaps in the street and you
and me and so on, which may actually show to be wrong just by scientic and
empirical inquiry. Now, I suppose the most important way in which British
philosophy has been very reverential to common sense is that it's been very
reverential to common sense as against supposed, surprising ndings of
philosophy not of science but of philosophy.
Ayer: Well I suppose to some extent as against science too because as you take the
big gures, the people who have had most inuence - people like
Wittgenstein, Muar, Austin, Harteld the biggest gures. They all seemed to
be saying that the common sense view of the man, well the plain man belief in
chairs and tables and so on and that of observable properties was something
unquestionable even back then.
[The Limitation of Philosophy]
Williams: It seems to me that there's been a continuous and very common move in 20
th

century philosophy, and not just in the tradition we're talking about. It seems to
me even in all the ways true of continental philosophy, of certain kinds of
phenomenalogies and so on that the pretentions of certain kinds of 19
th

century philosophy, that is the metaphysical speculation could by itself
discover fundamental and large scale facts about the world, which are
unsuspected by the ordinary man and by scientists. That idea seems to me
has largely gone.
Ayer: Well in a sense I suppose that's a good thing, isn't it? I mean I think
[indecipherable 4:02] there has been greater self consciousness about
philosophy; philosophers wondering much more than they used to what they
work up to, what their methods should be, what they could hope to achieve
and with that I think a limitation of the planes of philosophy. People came to
think well you couldn't achieve all that much. All these types have their own
criteria and what's a philosopher to do?
Williams: I think that's right. There is a famous remark by Wittgenstein, Philosophy
leaves everything as it is. I think in a way what we ought to be doing is seeing
to what extent that's true and to what extent it isn't.
[Positivism]
Williams: Now positivism is a tremendously strong example of the restriction of the
power of philosophy, isn't it? Very straight forward in a sense. That is to say at
least it's a restriction of the constructive part of philosophy because people
previously claimed to nd out those truths about the universe by speculative,
philosophical methods. Positivism is saying absolute rot. The only way of
nding out anything in the universe is by the methods of science, by the
methods of positive science. That's why it is called positivism. On the other
hand, of course, it did rate rather highly the negative power of philosophy in
the sense that it thought that it could, as philosophy, persuade us that a lot of
things we knew made sense didn't.
Ayer: Well it made certain, if you like, certain philosophical assumptions to start with.
Namely that the only way to discover what the world was like was by looking
at it.
Williams: By sense perception.
Ayer: By sense perception and by the elaboration of sense perception.
[Music]
Ayer: Now I don't think the positivist wants to put any restraints upon scientic
techniques but they did insist they should always be conferrable. Then you get
to the conclusion, well if philosophy is not competing with science, what else
can it be doing? And the answer comes serving science. When you start by
saying science has no competitor, if you want to describe it well. The
assumption is that the philosophy is itself a bunch of knowledge that seeks to
advance knowledge of the world. Science does this. There's no room for
competitor so what can philosophy do? It can only serve science.
Williams: So serve and in a certain sense respect.
Ayer: Yeah.
Williams: It seems to be there are two xtures of this positivist [indecipherable 6:38],
which are very interesting. One is the idea that philosophy always follows
science. That science makes these discoveries and then what philosophy
does in the positivist picture is to pair things up, make them more obvious,
order things in a logically transparent way. Certainly great difdence about
telling any scientist what he should be up to, obviously but also a certain
respect in the following sense that positivism was very keen on saying the
world really contains just those things and no more, which gure in the
scientic description.
[Music]
Williams: When a philosopher says, all the world really contains, and so and so, which
has been across the subject of much abuse and skepticism in modern
philosophical treatments saying things like that. What he means in the minds
of many philosophers has been the world contains really just those things
which render it scientic comprehensible, but I think the positivism did that
too. It thought that all the metaphysics, all the more ambitious philosophical
notions, speculative notions of the past were rubbish sort of froth that could be
blown of the top of the glass to reveal the genuine scientic liquid below. And
this was part of positivist as I take it positivism's tremendous emphasis on
sense experience, that it thought all scientic conclusions just were
statements about observations worked up in a certain way, presented in useful
kinds of way. The idea of that normal scientic concept, so inadequate
scientic concept of the metaphysical kind could have played a positive role in
scientic thinking because I think [indecipherable 9:43] positivism, isn't it? It
therefore belongs a bit to the priests and kings kind of thinking.
Ayer: I think it's a fair criticism of the positivist that they were from the point-of-view
of that attitude to science rather unhistorical. They didn't actually investigate
how scientic data had come about and if they had investigated it I think they
would have discovered much more metaphysics in their bad sense on being
scientically useful. I mean people getting at scientic theories through
holding metaphysical beliefs. If one takes a positivist who doesn't try to restrict
the way the scientists arrive at their theories, allows them to have
metaphysical ideas, even [indecipherable 10:22] ideas in their theories but
then says, well once the theories are there we can analyze them, criticize
them, show how the concepts function, how the theory is veriable and
analyze it, and in fact carry out the positivist program. What's wrong with that?
is the conception of what positivists should be doing. What does it leave out?
Williams: It clearly does leave out a lot of, I mean, obviously leaves a lot of questions
about value.
[Crosstalk]
I think the one thing that it leaves out is an account of the relations between
what the scientist nds interesting and what he doesn't nd interesting. You
see, one of the seats of philosophical puzzlement is this some scientic
account gives us a story about what familiar objects are, if you use a rather
crude nursery phrase, [indecipherable 11:23], or what properties they have in
terms of some sophisticated physical theory.
[Everyday Experience The Manifest Image]
Williams: Everyday experience. The manifest image of things. In our everyday life we
have ordinary impressions of things about us in terms of their textures and
their colors and their surfaces and what they feel like. Moreover, we have
descriptions of them in terms of our sentiments, our uses, our purposes, our
institutions and so on. We have a whole lot of descriptions of a lot of physical
things in movement, namely animals and people, in terms of actions,
objectives and so forth. Now scientic inquiries of various kinds will tell us
quite a lot about what is going in these various aptitudes. What is the case in
the environment or setup patterns of explanation. Now scientists themselves
may well not be enormously interested beyond a certain level in how the story
he's telling relates to the complexities of the story that you tell in everyday life,
to the manifest theory.
Ayer: Part of the analysis of science, which we're relying through the philosopher on
the positivist program will be saying how scientic hypotheses are tested at
the manifest level. In this sense you will be dealing with relational
[indecipherable 12:48] because you're showing how statements at one level
supports statements at the other. Now the question is whether we're requiring
more than this.
[What is really there?]
Ayer: What is really there? Is it a set of atoms or the familiar photo that we all see? Is
there any conict between them?
Williams: What occurs to me, one thing worth mentioning there was an argument you
remember by Gilbert Ryle on this subject some odd years ago. It seems to me
to be an extremely bad argument. Language is a bad argument. It seems to
me to be quite interesting. And also to illustrate this point about the common
sense-acality of some analytic philosophy. You remember what I'm talking
about.
Ayer: I do remember, yes.
Williams: This is the one, you remember, that goes like this. We've got the descriptions
of the world around us in terms of our ordinary experience books, tables,
colors, smells, associations, emotional experiences, institutions. And then
we've got a somewhat desiccated story, which is told to us by physicists and
possibly by certain kinds of psychologists neurophysiologists and so on
about matter and motion and electric forces and reected light waves and so
on. What is the relation between these two, which has been a puzzle for
philosophy obviously since at the very least the 17
th
century, perhaps earlier.
Now Ryle said the relation between these two things is like the relation
between the books in the library and our ordinary reading of them on the one
hand, and on the other hand the accounts that are kept how the books are
bought and so on by the librarian or the treasurer or the accountant on the
other. The accountant's story, which is all in terms of numbers... an
overwhelmingly similarity between accountants and scientists in terms of
numbers. This represents merely one dimension, an abstracted element which
will be put in quantitative terms. This is of course in no way conicting with our
everyday experience of the books as objects to be possessed, read, handled,
received and so on. The idea of this analogy means, I take it, that physics just
represents a certain abstracted picture useful for certain impoverish purposes,
but in no way upsetting to or inconsistent with our everyday experience of the
world around us. I think this was the point. But of course there is an inherent
vital weakness in this analogy, which underlies Gilbert Ryle's case, isn't it
which is that nobody, from looking at the accountant's records in a library,
could predict or explain either the color or the content of the books. The
powerful fact about physics is there's actually no [indecipherable 15:40] to
predict and explain the general character of the properties of the things
around one. It's explanatory power which connects the physical explanation
with the idea that it somehow relates to what really as opposed to what it
seems to us.
Ayer: I think it is a very poor analogy of Gilbert; I quite agree with you there. But the
point it was designed to make and how inefectively it made it, was that the
scientic and common sense [indecipherable 16:11] were not competitive. Now
do I understand you hold that they are competitive?
Williams: Well I put it like this. They're competitive in the following sense. What
unreective common sense takes for granted in its descriptions of colors and
things of the world is either confused or wrong. And reection on the scientic
story may well lead one to think that in some sense in 17
th
century
philosophers were right when they said the world isn't really colored. That
being a really dramatic way of saying not what would be overdoing it a bit
maybe we're mistaken all the time when we're saying things are green. But for
instance there would be absolutely no point in talking about the color of the
world not relative to humans.
[The Causal Mechanism of Perception]
Ayer: I think one of the strongest motives for taking in the [indecipherable 17:02] you
have just been taking is our knowledge of the causal mechanism of
perception. We learn about light falling on the object and light waves, optic
nerves and so on. And so we come to think of color as something that we
contribute. But then this is equally true of the perception of the other property
of the object. I mean, the perception of its shape, perception of where it is, the
same causal story. So how are you going to distinguish between what we
contribute and what it does?
Williams: It's not just so much that there is a causal mechanism of perception but that
we have frightfully good reasons for thinking of various kinds. Again putting it
quite roughly what color things look vary enormously with the kind of
observers that are looking at them. It may be that the size of things varies
with... the size that things look varies with the observers. Look, this object
here. Now it might well be... it's actually a marvelous example of philosophy's
material object, isn't it? It's extremely solid. The color of this, if you ask me is
blue, might well appear quite diferent to a diferent person. It may be that the
size of things varies. It may well be that some small organism perceiving this
it would occupy a large part of its visual eld. It would appear large in that
sense. We can't understand any of those facts, we can't explain any of those
facts, we can't render any of those facts comprehensible to us, ourselves,
unless we have a neutral [indecipherable 18:50] in which all those situations
can be equally described and rendered comprehensible in terms of scientic
law. And that vocabulary seems to be something like the vocabulary of physics
and therefore there is something to be said for the view which was basically
very crudely thought by Locke and others in the 17
th
century.
There are certain primer qualities that things have roughly those qualities
that make them the subject of physical science, which there is some sense in
saying they really have. There are other properties that they, qualities that they
have, such as their color, taste and so their smell, which really are much more
relative to observers. If there weren't any observers there just wouldn't be any
point... in describing a world from outside without observers there wouldn't
be any point in referring to the color, taste and so on. If the world contained
anything it would undergo physical description.
Ayer: What is meant by saying and what [indecipherable 19:52] are saying that
colors, what's really there as opposed to that state of the common sense
description which tells us only in part at least the efect of what's really there
on us. What kind of statement is this that what's really there is a set of atoms?
Williams: I mean the rst thing to say is this, isn't it? Of course any statement of a
metaphysical kind about what's really there has to be approached with a
certain measure of sympathy. Austin was very good at doing this kind of thing
quite rightly poured scorn on various uses that made it the word real by
[indecipherable 20:33]. We already mentioned I think more doing the same
thing. And of course there's no inconsistency at all in something being both
really there in our ordinary way of speaking, our ordinary way of thought and
being something that's only there because I have it afects me in a certain
way. I mean for instance, the fact that I nd the girl very attractive is a relational
fact about her and me; it's not a property of her as quite independent of me.
So there's a diference between by really nding the girl very attractive and
just pretending to nd the girl very attractive, or some other contrast such as
Austin would have drawn to it really being so, her really being attractive as
opposed to her being just made up that way.
Of course you have to take these remarks, metaphysics remarks, with a certain
amount of imagination. The thought of the world is really as it's described by
physics does seem to me to be that it's the only view which in the end
systematically carries through what is an assumption of common sense,
namely that the world can and did exist independently of any observers.
[Can We Talk About The World Existing Independently Of Any Observers?]
Williams: Any description we give of it existing independently of any observers never
the less is a description which is given in our terms and our terms are all
developed from how it does look to us when we are observing. Never the less
it seems to me that one ought to be able, if one really does carry through to
the end the assumption, which is itself an assumption of common sense and
of of science, namely that the universe does exist in large part independent of
any observers. We do start the distinctions between the properties which
obviously doesn't really [indecipherable 22:35] observer.
For instance, let's take an absolutely frivolous example. Imagine the world
before any human observers. The earth. Some dinosaur falls over in an
undignied way. This could be described from us looking at that sight as
ludicrous or absurd or comic. How would you suppose that within the item
which in any deeper sense was intrinsically common called ludicrous in this
world. It means would look to us if we were there ludicrous or comic with our
standards of what's ludicrous and comic, okay? Well in this matter of
describing a world without any observers in it, we have to describe it as it were
from outside. We form an imaginative picture of a world which is unpopulated
by human beings because we may actually in forming that imaginative picture
of the world unpopulated by human beings, be as it were covertly regarding
ourselves as an observer of it. It's rather like this present situation. I suppose a
lot of people who are watching us have forgotten there was a camera here, as
it were. It is via such a camera that this scene is presented to them, and only
because it's there it can be so. In fact, we can imagine the world without any
observers but the question arises to what extent are we really writing
ourselves in as covert observers? I think it can be argued regarding certain
things like color but really we are. What we are doing is describing the world
not as it was without any observers but as it would be if we were there as
observers.
[Phenomenalism]
Williams: The thing is this. The phenomenalism and all such theories were in the view
that if every statement was to be turned into how it would look. Now, well, the
consequence of phenomenalism I'm sure you'd agree, which I think is a
perfectly consistent consequence of that way of going about it that is that
everything is dependent on the notion of what an observation would be using
the following. In the large, metaphysical way consider two universes. One's got
nothing in it at all. There's absolutely nothing or if you'd like absolutely empty
space. Are you having difculty with there being nothing at all? You just use
Hume's trick. Take everything one by one and imagine it isn't there. If you can
long enough there won't be anything at all. Now that's one universe. The other
universe consists entirely of material objects to the observers. Okay?
Now phenomenalism says the diference between those two universes is just
the following that of one it's true and the other it's false that if there were
observers they would have certain experiences. Now that notion to me is
unintelligible, that the only diference between two states of afairs lies in what
would happen if something were there, which isn't there, were there. It seems
to me unintelligible. It must be the case there's some actual diference
between them. It seems to me the only coherent way of describing the actual
way between them is in terms of a phrase that I think we've already used
perhaps, of a scientic realism. That is in the term, the minimum terms that are
required to describe what's there in order to explain the perceptions that the
observers would have if they were there.
Ayer: I don't nd this diference unintelligible I must say. I'm frankly happier with it
than I am of this notion of an entirely empty universe. I do nd that hard to
swallow.
Williams: An entirely empty area of space will do for the sake. I mean I don't have to
have a universe to make this point. The point is rather straightforward. It does
seem to me that what phenomenalists believe is something of the same form
of the following. I could have two absolutely indistinguishable, empty boxes
which are exactly alike in every respect except this. If I were to put a match
into one of them and catch re and if I were to put the same match into the
other, it wouldn't. That seems to me to use an old fashioned phrase
rebarbative to reason that there could be two things which were exactly alike;
the only diference between them being that if you did something to one of
them, something wouldn't happen to the other. We surely think that
statements of the kind, if you were to do so and so you'd see so and so, and
such, must be grounded in an actual certain thing.
Ayer: I do think that in a sense we do start with the phenomenalist position. We start
with the point-of-view of what we know, with that experience and we then
elaborate theories to explain them. I would regard both common sense and
physics as an extent for theory. Now I think what I might got from you is in my
interpretation of the question what is really there... I think that asking one that
is asking what theory are you going to accept? So long as the theory works, so
long as the theory is successful in predicting and expanding your experience, I
don't think there is a genuine question as to whether it corresponds to
something that is there. I think one's saying this is what there is, is simply
aware of saying this is the theory I'm going to stand by.
I take scientic realism simply as being opting for a physical description of the
world, for the description of the world as we get in the web of physicists as
opposed to perhaps to a common sense picture of the world. I don't think that
in the further question of this being right to distinguish something being useful.
[The Pragmatist Position, What's Useful]
Williams: Then we do have a very interesting, complicated and paradoxical relation here
I think between philosophy and common sense because there's a certain
sense in which the position that you just mentioned is in a sense more
common sensical than the scientic metaphysics, some critics would say,
scientistic metaphysics. You're saying there's no privileged sense of what's
really there of the rather more hopeful kind, as I was drawing.
Ayer: [Indecipherable 29:00] certain statements being true and I'm not going to say
there's an elephant in the room if I choose to think so.
Williams: Of course not. I think we're agreed about that. On the other hand it seems to
me your position, which you rightly refer to as a pragmatist position, lies wildly
in the face of common sense. Of course this just illustrates how ramshackle or
wobbly the nature of common sense has been in the discussion up until recent
philosophy because it does seem to me that one thing that most common
sense or ordinary people would take for granted is quite certain that there's a
lot of things there and that human beings and observers are in the world
among other things.

Ayer: Well this of course I accept. This is part of the theory that I'm opting for.
Williams: What it does follow is that our description of what's there is independently of
our arrival and our consciousness just depends on what we nd useful. The
question what's really there as opposed to our looking at it or our being there
is a question which is about us again. It's about our convenience. That doesn't
seem to me to be... I mean it may be right but it doesn't seem to be very
obvious.
Ayer: You're popping in and out of the theory in a way that I don't much care for.
Let's take it concretely. Supposing it were the case that you couldn't represent
or properly represent the scientic particles as literally parts of that object that
you're holding up. So perhaps then to choose between saying well it really is
the color that I see it or it really is colorless. Then on what basis is one going to
choose other than simply what picture of the world am I going to hold?
Williams: Eddinger said, he said there was one table which was the table of common
sense and there was another table, which was the table of physics. This was a
conict. I think that one isn't there because I mean there's a very, very shallow
and straightforward way of reconciling of that. Which is to say solid means or
given purposes not having holes in it of the size sufciently worry as it were.
Of course the common sense is obviously solid and the other isn't.
Ayer: In this sense you can't reconcile them.
[Crosstalk]
Ayer: What you say is a lot of particles are discontinuous but they're so close... I
mean the discontinuity is not perceptual by the naked eye and therefore what
is in fact not solid looks solid. Again, you went to say that this is a property of
color, those particles, that in an assemblage they form an object that is
colored. Now this route can be taken. And then there's no particular problem.
If you don't take that view then you do have to choose it seems to me, and I
can't understand on what basis you would accept [indecipherable 32:11], which
picture appeals to you more.
Williams: Well I do think, all I'll say at the moment is I do think that that consequence is
extremely paradoxical. It seems to me to undermine in a certain sense. Well
let's put it this way. It seems to me to undermine something which even
empirically, and as a matter of common knowledge we believe to be true
that is the world existing. That we are in a sense advantageous arrival.
[Indecipherable 32:42] idealism, phenomenalism, vericationism all these
doctrines is that in a curious way they're anthropocentric in the end. They
make the whole description of the world revolve around our experience. Now,
scientic realism wants to take serious and metaphysically the idea that we are
just [indecipherable 33:03] world, the world is independent of us. Can I just go
on? I think I may be able to put the protest. You see I think what a lot of other
philosophies would say is, no, this is not so. We can represent our language
perfectly well the truth that the world exists independently of observers and it
existed before we got here. All these philosophers would say is we insist on is
that the language in which we describe anyone, in which we describe anyone,
including the world without us. If you try to imagine a world without us, the
world as it were before we arrived. The language we use must be our
language and we learn it in terms of our experience and all its sense must be
in terms of our experience. I suppose the most drastic form of that in modern
philosophy is in fact the philosophy of Wittgenstein.
[The Philosophy of Wittgenstein]
Williams: It seems to me that Wittgenstein more than anybody else practically in recent
philosophy was impressed by the idea that our language has the meaning we
give it. It has the meaning, which is derived from the way it's taught and it's
implicit in the way it's taught and it can't reach out beyond the ways in which
we are introduced to it. And you combine that also with very radical and a very
interesting set of reections about the ways in which a practice or rule which
has already been acquired can or can't bind you for the future. There's
something mysteric about the idea saying as we do when we teach some rule
of behavior because you don't so and so up to this point, you must do so
and so in this next situation. You say, why am I not free? We'd constantly
come back from the thought that we found one way of continuing a practice,
one way of developing an institution or so on, a very necessary or obvious way
to come back to the idea that this was an anthropological fact. It's a fact about
human nature. It might not even be, because he didn't really distinguish very
much between as it were of psychological and anthropological level here. It
might even be a property of the group, not necessarily humanity.
Ayer: A form of life.
Williams: A form of life. In Wittgenstein's famous equation of a language with a form of
life I think enabled the form of life to be in principle at least one of a small
group of people, of a tribe a favorite example of his or indeed of humanity.
Sometimes some of his propositions seemed to be relative to humanity. I must
say Wittgenstein never does what both Hume and Kant in diferent ways did
try to do, which was to show exactly to what certainty these propositions were
relative. I mean Hume was very keen on trying to show certain sorts of ways
we had of going on were relative to the fact that we were human being. Kant
was concerned showing the various ways we had of going on relative to the
fact that we were something slightly more general, relative to something
slightly more general than human beings, namely creatures who found out
about universe serially through some kind of sensation. But Wittgenstein's
theory doesn't do that. He says just look at what we do.
Now, this means that in some, at least in its more imperative forms... I think
Wittgenstein himself [indecipherable 36:49]. It does lead to some extraordinary
results certainly. It means that in the end they can't really be wrong if
something is a going concern.
Ayer: [Indecipherable 37:03] Wittgenstein was in ones interpretation of what one is
doing. I mean he thought people were wrong to suppose that they were in a
precedence.
Williams: That's right. You had the wrong picture.
Ayer: Had the wrong picture, yes. Wrong picture and wrong behavior in a certain
sense.
Williams: You could have a wrong picture of your own behavior but that meant that
every... in fact it's a very important idea of Wittgenstein, that every fundamental
form of learning in regard to anything like philosophical learning would
necessarily be a piece of self understanding. This is what many people have
found as a Socratic or almost existentialist element in Wittgenstein. What we
come to understand, where we see where we were wrong, in some sense in
which we've deceived or misled ourselves.
Ayer: Part of ourselves. I mean misled about our use of language in fact, not misled
about our character or...
Williams: Well I think that's not altogether clear because while indeed Wittgenstein
tends to say always that what we have mistaken about is the nature of our
language his concept of our language is so generous to be mistaken about
our language is to be mistaken about our whole of life and therefore it's a
wrong picture of what one is oneself fundamentally. I think like everybody else
who is working in philosophy now and has been brought up in this tradition it
would be preposterous and wrong to deny that we've all been inuenced very
much by this work.
Ayer: Even if it's negatively.
Williams: Partly because of the enormous imaginative power.
[Crosstalk]
Ayer: Let's take it in a concrete case. Let's take the implications many people have
grown from Wittgenstein. I bet he himself would have approved of them for
religious discourse. I mean, as I understand it the idea is that religious
language is again its own form of life, its own criteria, carries out certain
practices and it can't be criticized.
Williams: I think that's probably a bit hard.
Ayer: I mean conicting two ways. One much more comforting to a religious person
than the other. It can be said it's true in its own terms or it can be said the
question of whether one of them arrives in relation to it a bit more ritual, than
the only question is whether the ritual is carried out properly or whether it
fullls its function, its emotional function. The second would be discouraging
but the rst [indecipherable 39:43] in terms would have [indecipherable].
Williams: I'm sure Wittgenstein wouldn't say either of those things because to say it's
true in its own terms sounds falsely signicant, I mean as if to imply it isn't true
really. It isn't either true or false. It would be our kind of nature [indecipherable
40:07] that standing outside and he would say rather, what do they at when
they say it's true? I think actually, I think [indecipherable 40:14] the concept of
true plays an extraordinary small part in the later philosophy. Meaning is not
connected with truth in the later philosophy of Wittgenstein. Meaning is
connected with going on. I mean it's connected with a sense, not the true.
Discover what the proposition means is to discover what elicits a sense from
the group rather than trying to transcend the whole practice on some notion of
true conditions I think.
[What Counts As True?]
Williams: Of course Wittgenstein is prepared to say these sentences, these propositions
get their meaning from the form of life in which they're embedded. Well the
form of life certainly exists. Their going on in this way is what it is to come to
understand what these religious propositions mean. And of course for the
believers and I'm not here quoting Wittgenstein but one perhaps can say
this, for the believers, their meaning was supposed to transcend these
situations in which they practice in this way.
Ayer: I think they are because this [indecipherable 41:10] meaning to approve.
Williams: Yes, well I think that that's what Wittgenstein's theory of language tends to do.
I mean I think they're about exceptions condition, conditions in which other
people say yes rather than some as it were independently conceived true
conditions.
Ayer: Do you think that he thought the question of truth couldn't be raised with part
of these propositions or just that it was interesting to raise it?
Williams: I think he thought that it meant something else in regards to these
propositions.
Ayer: Well this is what I meant by saying [indecipherable 41:43] being true in their
own terms.
Williams: Yes but true in their own terms would mean there's some way of their counting
as true. But in this case it seems to be so difcult for him or his apostles to say
that the picture so many of the earlier believers had, namely a reality distinct
from them, from this world to which these propositions correspond or fail to
correspond so difcult for the Wittgensteinians to say this was just a wrong
picture. Or let me put is this way. If this was a wrong picture what it shows is
wrong is religion, not a certain interpretation of religion. And that's the point. In
this case you couldn't say religion and all the meaning of religion really exists
in the practices of this world. Any picture of it corresponding to a
transcendental reality is just a false picture because it was the point of those
practices to correspond to a transcendental world. So once you're persuaded
that the idea of a corresponding transcendental world is nonsense then what
you do is stop engaging in the practice of it.
[Philosophy & Anthropology]
Ayer: It seems to me that just what diferentiates philosophy and anthropology does
ask you further question and it is in the Wittgensteinian program just sticks
with anthropology.
Williams: Well I think that there is something in this point and I think further that oddly
enough it hasn't come to terms with some of the genuine anthropological
problem. In a certain sense, I mean obviously it's a very one sided and unfair
remark, but in a certain sense it's true because after all a very rooted problem
in anthropology, one which methodologists and anthropologists are always
coming back to, is what sense can be attached to comparisons between
diferent cultures? I mean let's take an example of this. Start with some
simpleminded, old 19
th
century utilitarian. He goes to Mexico or Africa and he
nds people dancing in connection with the rain. He assumes that this is a
piece of bad science which was an inefective way of making it rain.
Ayer: It certainly is.
Williams: Yes, but of course it was a rather impoverished [indecipherable 43:58]
because the native's who did it and didn't think of it just as a way of making it
rain. I mean the idea, the notion of pure instrumentality belongs to a diferent
culture. The idea that it's a bad example of something we're better at is one
which is now rightly blown. On the other hand, where Wittgenstein is like an
extreme relativist who goes to the opposite pole from that, who says there's
one activity, which is dancing, in relation to the rain. There's another activity
which is seizing the clouds [?] from an airplane and they've got nothing
whatsoever to do with each other. They're diferent forms of life. They see the
world diferently. Now you've got to explain the fact that when chaps come
along and see the clouds, the people used to dance stopped dancing.
Now the 19
th
century mechanistic theorists have a rather good explanation for
that. They found a better way of doing what they were always trying to do. It
seems to me that the sheer relativists are bound to say, it seems to me, when
the people stop doing whatever they used to do and start doing whatever
these other cultures do that this was a matter of sheer conquest. The only
relations that can obtain diferent cultures seem to be this blanket hostility or
domination.
[Levi-Strauss]
Williams: What Levi-Strauss does of course is to ofer us something like diferent local
themes, compatible themes in a common vocabulary, because the way in
which the common vocabulary is unriddled by him is not very falsiable or a
scientic way. But he again is groping the problems about what common terms
can we nd for describing cultural variety and what planes can be got to meet?
It seems to me that Wittgensteinians have often just not faced that question.
They've just spoken of diferent autonomous forms of life without raising the
question of a common plane of comparison. Scientically oriented philosophy
of course has tended to transcend all that, tried to strip all this away and say in
the end the truth of our views of the world will be registered by what we can
achieve in the way that we shared, for instance, scientic understanding.
[Is The Scientic Way of Describing the World Just One Way Among Others]
Williams: I think that other forms of philosophy, for instance the ones that we discussed
earlier in terms of ones that perhaps might even be over enthusiastic the
march of science have tended to try to produce an answer to this question,
perhaps in simpleminded terms. Namely that even if diferent groups and
indeed diferent creatures see the world diferent, they have diferent point-of-
view, that is a common world they see and that the terms in which the
common world they see is ultimately to be described. Of course the more
scientic inclined philosophers would say in terms of science. Now this is
absolutely opposed to Wittgenstein. The scientic way of describing the world
is just one way among others. It represents one form of life among others
viewed to which it seems to me you expressed some sympathy to that point.
Ayer: Certainly it is one view among others; this is true. I certainly more so strongly
am inclined to say it's in some sense a better view, but now in what sense? It
has to have some criterion by which to measure if you like diferent cultures or
diferent approaches. Now, I suppose one obvious, perhaps answer is the
scientic approach is much more efcient in the sense that it enables us to
predict and explain in a way that other ones don't. I mean I have been talking
fairly relativistic throughout I've never once said that everything was all right.
In a certain sense whatever ones culture, whatever ones beliefs certain
hypotheses are resisted by the facts, even if [indecipherable 48:04]
independently [indecipherable]. It is something which limits ones theory, which
is what William James used to call brute fact.
[Brute Fact]
Ayer: I think that I want to say that primitive cultures get punished by this brute
element in the way that scientic cultures don't, or to a much bigger degree
than scientic cultures do.
Williams: Suppose that we were to agree that a scientic picture of the world came
closer to reality terrible phrase more true than certain other pictures in the
world. It wouldn't follow from that that you improve things by replacing a non-
scientic interested culture with a culture that was more interested in scientic
inquiry.
[Can Scientic Cultures Improve Things?]
Williams: Probably a lot of people who are watching this might well feel that the results
of replacing cultures that are not particularly interested in scientic inquiry by
those that are interested has often been disastrous. Then the point is that that
doesn't show, which is what a lot of people now infer, that scientic inquiry is
not the best route to nding out what the world is really like but merely shows
that perhaps human beings are better to be protected from actually nding out
what the world is really like. We have an assumption of our science that we're
never better employed in fact than in the assumption of our philosophy that
we're never better employed than nding out the truth. Perhaps there's
[indecipherable 49:53] consumption is one where present circumstances all
lead us to question.
Ayer: Well if you mean by improve things, make people happier, this can't be taken
for granted. Although I think one tends to exaggerate, romantic people tend to
exaggerate the extent to which primitive cultures are happy. On the whole I
think people are happier if they have a medicine that works rather than it
doesn't work, and happier if they provide themselves with some material
comforts than if they can't. I think one exaggerates the extent to which
material prosperity and in fact what science has brought has made people
unhappy. Certainly you can't assume that any scientic advance
[indecipherable 50:31]. And possibly there are cases in which truths should
be... I'm against this in this matter too. I believe that in the end it doesn't know
the truth because if you know how things are then you can plan better.
Williams: I think that's... when I say so shallow pragmatist justication you don't believe
yourself.
[Science & Optimism]
Williams: I think this does lead to perhaps one last point that one might make here. I
think although in a sense I think it's a rather obvious point, I think we might
readily agree on it. It's amazing it seems to me how often it's misunderstood. I
think in fact it's tended to be true that scientically based philosophies or
philosophies that have shown most enthusiasm for the natural sciences since
the 19
th
century have tended to be the more, as it were, brutally optimistic,
unimaginative perceptions on human life and values and so one, whereas
philosophies which have tended to show perhaps rather more imagination,
less brutal and cheerful optimism have tended perhaps in biased to be
somewhat anti-scientic. If you turn to Karlam [?] or indeed Russell and then
compare that with Wittgenstein just in terms of the tone of what human life is
like I think although one may well repute it, Wittgensteinian propositions,
particularly his obsession with the religious issue of suicide and similar topics,
it would be difcult to deny that the [indecipherable 52:24] depth to
Wittgenstein's logic but that's also in for instance, obviously the philosophy of
Nietzsche, which is notably lacking in philosophy...
Ayer: Again, I think that although you were saying earlier that philosophy as
developed has something of an anthropocentric background as it were. In fact
the dominant science in the early part of the century was physics and people
who took up the philosophy of science took it up from the point-of-view of
physics. This is very clearly true of Karlam [?]. Of course being so interested in
physics, they weren't so interested in human beings. This is what gives what
you call lack of depth is lack of depth in human terms whether they are
interested in human beings except as the subject of laws of physics.
[Indecipherable 53:15].
Williams: Well that's absolutely correct but even if you accepted the sorts of things that
one was going on about earlier in this conversation about the world being in
some sense really like... what it's like as depicted by a physical science without
observers. That doesn't deny the reality of the observers when they're actually
there or in fact problems of value over substance of a life as it's actually lived.
Of course very often one nds that in fact the rather skeletal metaphysical
pictures that are ofered by the scientic realists and others, and the denser
pictures emotionally and morally denser pictures of form of life, which is
represented someone like Wittgenstein are in fact or they ought to be in
some sense compatible.
Ayer: They should be compatible, yes. I think in some sense they are compatible. In
a sense that even the most complicated human behavior and so on I think is
explained in terms of physics.
Williams: That is exactly one half of it and the other half is the fact that it is. If it is
explained by physics doesn't in fact mean that it lacked the forms of
signicance that was thought to have before that was discovered.
Ayer: Clearly not.