Wittgenstein's criticism of the cultural fall-out of Cartesian dualism

In this paper, I'm going to argue that Cartesian dualism and its progeny impede our understanding of what it is to be human, marshalling some resources from the later Wittgenstein to do so. To a lesser extent, I also use some themes from Hegel and Spinoza.

I'm also going to argue that modernity is practically influenced by Cartesian dualism and I will attempt to show that the criticism easily opens out into a criticism of a number of important features of our 21^st century Western mode of life. But firstly: a brief description of Cartesian dualism.

For Descartes, the human mind and body are two separate things. They are also different kinds of thing in that the mind has no extension in space and is immaterial (res cogitans), whereas the body occupies space and is material, having the same kinds of properties as other physical objects like mass and density and so on (res extensans). Mind and body are (in Descartes words) “primitive ideas or notions” , that is, they are not definable in terms of anything else. Furthermore, the ways of coming to understand mind and body are also different. The former is known through what Descartes calls “metaphysical reflection” and “meditation” by which he means the kind of introspection and speculation he describes in the famous Meditations. The latter is understood through “the study of mathematics” by which Descartes means the newly emerging mathematical physics which enables prediction of the motion of physical objects and which he himself helped to elaborate. Mind and body are further distinguished in that events in a person's mind are private, that is, known immediately only to that person, whereas the body is publicly observable. Though separate, mind and body are clearly intimately connected in a living person and Descartes views this interconnection as being a causal interaction. Thus, an event in the mind such as a desire may cause the body to move: I want an apple so I take it from the tree. Conversely, events in the body, (perhaps caused by the impact of the physical world on the body), may cause events in the mind. For example, I drop a brick on my toe and the mental event of the experience of pain ensues.

This view of the mind/body distinction suffers from profound incoherence. The first problem arises when the common sense view, (that of ordinary “ordinary life and conversation” [Descartes' words]¹), that mind and body are one thing, is taken into consideration and we attempt to reconcile it with the sharp Cartesian distinction between mind and body. Descartes was well aware of this difficulty, noting that such a reconciliation “requires our conceiving them [mind and body] as a single thing and simultaneously conceiving them as two things, which is self-contradictory”. A second problem arises when the exact nature of the interaction between body and mind is considered. This interaction is supposed to be causal, but then the awkward question arises of how an immaterial thing such as the mind is supposed to be able to causally effect a material thing such as the body is supposed to be, and vice versa. Both of these difficulties are evaded by Descartes on the grounds that the issues involved are essentially mysterious and beyond the capacities of the human understanding. Cartesian dualism, then, does not give us a coherent picture of what it is to be human.

What alternative view is possible? One strategy for overcoming the incoherence of Cartesian dualism is to simply deny the reality of one side of the duality or another. Denying the reality of the body and, by extension, of all matter is a position not much favoured in the contemporary West, though Descartes himself passed though this position when he tested the limits of radical doubt. (I don't think Bishop Berkeley has too many fans at the moment!) Denying the reality of mind has found more favour. For example: Watson and Skinner, the originators of psychological behaviourism, claim that only the study of “observable” bodily behaviour rather than mind can enlarge our understanding of human beings. In a similar vein, mind-brain identity theorists claim that all mental events are really brain-states. Both theories fall into the category of mind-denying reductionism. They do, however, remain parasitic on Cartesian dualism since they attempt to rectify its undoubted problems. But mistakenly, they both assume that the mind-body distinction can be dispensed with altogether.

For both Wittgenstein and Descartes' immediate critic Spinoza, the mind-body distinction is meaningful and necessary. For Spinoza, the distinction is conceived wrongly by Descartes. Descartes' mistake, according to Spinoza, is to regard the mind as a thing thereby producing the problem of mind-body interaction. If however, Spinoza asserts, mind and body are treated as two “attributes” or aspects of a single thing, the human being, then the problem of interaction dissolves. There are now no two things to interact. Rather, we have two ways of explicating a single phenomenon. Consider, for example, the case of appetite. “Under the attribute of the mental”, we may speak of appetite in terms of decision or intention or desire to eat: “under the attribute of the material”, we may speak about appetite in terms of the physiological state of the stomach, the electro-chemical state of the vagus nerve, and so on. There is no question here of any interaction between different entities: only one entity is involved. The problem for the enquiry into mind and body is now that of identifying criteria for choice between modes of speaking. Spinoza's theory is clearly superior to Descartes' on the grounds of simplicity, coherence and elegance. But whatever the merits of his theory, (or whatever the possibility of the success of any systematic account of the human being), Spinoza has brought into sharp relief the assumption at the centre of Descartes' theory which is responsible for its incoherence, an incoherence in turn responsible for the modern attempts to render the use of mentalistic terms or “mind-talk” redundant (Young).

For Wittgenstein, attempting to reduce mind-talk to scientifically interesting brain-states is a mistake deriving from a misunderstanding of the nature of language. Language, according to Wittgenstein, is irreducibly a social activity, deeply embedded in culture or a particular “form of life” (Wittgenstein (a) PI 19 & 23). Wittgenstein underscores this point by arguing that the notion of a private language is incoherent. (And this is a notion we are likely to conceive within the Cartesian framework with logical priority ascribed to the private subject rather than the social) (See Dilman: 116 & PI 269 ff.) A private language in which the meaning of the terms were known only to the originator of the language could not be possibly be used to communicate and on this count would hardly be a language at all. Moreover, the originator would not be able to express her own private experiences to herself in the private language either. This is because each sensation is unique and in the absence of outer, public criteria for subsuming a number of unique sensations under a single term like “blue”, each sensation would have its own name. Language would then be nothing but a sequence of meaningless names.

In any case, language has far more functions than naming, and indeed new functions can be invented. Naming is only one amongst many actual and an infinity of possible “language-games” (ibid: PI 23). Just like real games, language-games have their own aims and purposes within their own sphere of activity and their own rules. Thus besides the language-game of naming, there is the language-game of natural science which is attached to the activity of predicting and controlling the natural world, and the language-game of mind talk, whose sphere of activity I shall presently attempt to elucidate. The analogy also holds good in that the outcome and form of a particular instance of a game is not rule-determined. Within the rules of chess, for example, each game is unique.(The analogy is not so apt in that the rules of a language-game can change, and indeed it is the point of some language-games – such as that of modern art – to change the rules of the game.) Attempting to reduce the language-game of mind-talk, therefore, to the language game of science as in mind-brain identity theory either fails to recognise the purpose of the mind-talk language game as different from that of the science language-game and dispenses with it unconsciously, or does recognise it but assumes that it can be dispensed with.

So far, it might seem that the arguments dealt with are of no practical consequence, and belong to that academic “world of make-believe” which R.G. Collingwood identifies as the natural habitat of much discussion of the mind-body problem (Collingwood: 12). However, if this reading of Wittgenstein is cogent, much is at stake: we ignore or discard the purpose of the mind-talk language-game at our peril. Yet this is precisely what those champions of modernity who seek to abolish or subsume mind-talk are engaged in. What then is the purpose of mind-talk that it is so important? Consider the following passage from Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology:

Do I believe in a soul in someone else, when I look into his eyes with astonishment and delight (Wittgenstein (b): 3)?

What Wittgenstein is drawing our attention to here is the fact that ( at least some) human interactions are not theoretically mediated (by, for instance, hypothesising a soul as cause of behaviour in the other in Cartesian dualist fashion, or by reducing the animation in the other's eyes to brain states or anything else). Instead, interactions like that just given in the example are a spontaneous matter in which we engage with the other as a subject like ourselves. I look into his eyes: I am delighted; he is clearly not the object of my scientific scrutiny. This is, rather, a social activity and a part of it is a particular language-game. Perhaps as I look into the other's eyes, I say something like, “ I adore you more than sky”. I am revealing my feeling about the other to the other. There would be little point in making such a confession to anything other than another subject, since I desire to be understood, and only subjects understand. I give recognition but also seek the recognition only another subject can give. In this way I constitute myself and help the other to constitute himself (Hegel). In keeping with the possibilities of the game, I am hopefully expecting the other to deal with me in turn as a subject, and a response like, “I love you too”, or equally, “ I don't return your feelings”, would fulfil my expectation. The language-game associated with this particular sphere of activity, that of intimate human interaction between subjects, is used to facilitate that activity and, clearly, a language-game enmeshed in some entirely different sphere of activity will not do as well or indeed at all. If we appreciate the unique purpose of this human interaction language-game and value the sphere of activity attached to it, then we will realise that reducing one language-game to another is a mistake. And not only a technical misunderstanding of the nature of language: it is also a devaluation of human mutuality. That in turn, as Wittgenstein's initially mysterious question reveals, is a miserable repudiation of much “delight” and “astonishment”.

The abolition of mind-talk by reduction to some version of the scientific language-game would be a misfortune for any pair of individuals seeking the pleasures or practical advantages of human solidarity. But at the level of culture in general, it is the disaster of scientism. If mind-talk is to be abolished or severely devalued, as it must be to overcome the difficulties of Cartesian dualism through a behaviourist or materialist reduction, then the scientific language-game (in its behaviourist or materialist modes) must be regarded as privileged, that is, nearer to the “truth” than the language game it would replace. In this way the materialist manoeuvre is legitimated.

Again though, the nature of language is being misunderstood. Language consists of language-games which are radically different in purpose from each other, rather than essentially similar attempts to state “the truth” differing only in their success, with the supremely successful language-game, science, acting as adjudicator of all the others. Yet this latter characterisation describes the core of modernity. Science as conceived of scientistically can claim to tell us what “I am in pain” “really “ means. As Wittgenstein notes:

Science: enrichment and impoverishment. One particular method elbows all the others aside. They all seem paltry in comparison, preliminary stages at best (Wittgenstein (b) 15) .

That science has undoubtedly produced an enrichment, particularly of material well-being for many people, partly accounts for the way it has come to occupy a privileged position in our culture. But in what sense is it also an impoverishment? Wittgenstein is clear here: not only is the privileged language-game status of science unwarranted (ibid 14), but it silences other valuable voices and our culture is narrowed and so therefore are we. The effect of this scientism on our culture can be characterised thus:

People nowadays think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians etc., to give them pleasure. The idea that these have something to teach them – that does not occur (ibid 8).

Wittgenstein here is indicating a gross misunderstanding of what it is to be human, especially of the possibilities of self-understanding open to human beings through the arts, which is logically connected to those reductionisms in turn dependent on Cartesian dualism. To speculate, following Hegel and regarding Cartesian dualism and its descendants as products of specific historical contexts: perhaps saving the Cartesian problematic by sacrificing its dualism was a way of saving the scientism that motivated Cartesian dualism's original formulation. Following Marx, we might then ask, “Who benefits?”

In the previous paragraphs, I have concentrated on the misunderstandings of what it is to be human that arise from the attempts to abolish the mind-body distinction. But it is also interesting that Wittgenstein was alert to the consequences of misconceiving that distinction. Particularly, Wittgenstein arrives at a similar insight to Spinoza regarding the incoherence of the Cartesian reification of the mind. Thus when Wittgenstein reminds us that “The human body is the best picture of the human soul”, he is emphasising the connection between the human body and mind that proves so conceptually awkward for the notion that the mind is a thing (Wittgenstein (a): PI 178). Furthermore, he is questioning the nature of the privacy of the mind as conceived by Cartesian dualism. We get a “picture” of a specific “human soul” by interacting with another. In this interaction, mouths move to utter sentences, faces are alive with expressions, bodies gesticulate and adopt communicative stances: we are not battling theoretically with the problem of the privacy of the other. It seems indeed that this sphere of activity provides the means which render the soul almost visible and palpable. On the Cartesian view, by contrast, the soul is utterly private, and best known, (with the most certain knowledge possible), by introspection. Wittgenstein counters this latter point also: introspective knowledge is not particularly privileged for, “Nothing is so difficult than not deceiving oneself” (Wittgenstein (b): 6).

None of this is to say that the public-private distinction has no basis, and indeed Wittgenstein pays it considerable attention. He refines the distinction by considering “psychological verbs” (Anscombe: 60). For this class of verb, the third and first person singular of the present indicative are “asymmetrical”. So for example, the grounds for believing “He's got a headache” or “He believes that story” are observational, that is, public (ibid: 61). But this is not the case for “I've got a headache” which requires no grounds for belief; one simply has a headache. Nor is it the case for “I believe that story” which though there are grounds for belief in the story, is not judged by me to be a true assertion on the basis of (publicly available) observation. Indeed, there is no need for me to judge it at all. To make this point clear, note the symmetry between “I have a wart on my wrist” and “ He has a wart on his wrist” (ibid: 61). The upshot here is that the Wittgensteinian subject is private, but not necessarily condemned to a solipstistic hell, at least so long as people can still master the sphere of activity of human interaction as between subjects and play its language-game.

The fact that we can engage in this activity has ramifications for how we understand the human subject. The Cartesian subject as an ahistorical, asocial entity which exists prior to everything else, has to struggle (on a metaphysical “plane”) to renounce solipsism: its existence is affirmed by doubting not only the reports of others' subjectivity, but the very existence of others. If this is what it is to be human, then we may indeed meaningfully ask of another “Is he an automaton?”, but we cannot engage in the trusting and spontaneous interaction in which the body pictures the soul (Wittgenstein (b): 38). Instead, the soul causes the movements of the body and is known to us only in the most leaden fashion through inference; inference, moreover, the conclusions of which are always dubious. The Wittgensteinian subject, by contrast, is constituted in interaction; her existence is not given but arises out of interaction with others; she understands herself through language which is intersubjective; she finds solipsism absurd because the very manner of her constitution depends on the recognition of (and by) others as subjects. This characterisation is much closer to the ordinary experience of mutuality that Wittgenstein repeatedly points to. It is true that this subject can doubt the pain of another, though not her own pain; but through pain-talk and pain behaviour, she is often well aware of others' pain and others of her own pain (ibid: 20). This is an ordinary part of ordinary social interaction which Cartesian dualism cannot theoretically encompass without the implausible suggestion that we know that another is in pain by inferring a cause for the behaviour we observe on the basis of our own utterly private experience. This suggestion is incoherent, not least because the supposedly private and self-contained inference cannot possibly take place without the “external” support of shared language which enables inference and the categorisation of experience (Wittgenstein (b): 23).

Again, this is not merely a matter of academic debate. When the subject is conceived of as utterly private, rather than constituted through interaction with other subjects, doubt about the feelings of the other is the inevitable starting point for all interactions; at the outset we have no information on which to base our inferences. Doubt is always likely to persist as the interaction continues because the behaviour we observe is caused, that is, controlled, by the other from the fastness of his privacy. How easy then, since the eyes are not after all the windows of the soul, nor the body its picture, for us to be deceived and manipulated! And in this fearful situation, how necessary to deceive and manipulate. Interaction is now a matter of calculation. We cannot extend our trust to the other or accept the trust of another on the basis of such a conception of human beings. And as Bruce Young points out, the corollary of this generalised doubt is the reification of others. What then would a form of life look like whose mode of interaction was determined entirely by the Cartesian conception of the human being? Wittgenstein imagines it:

(Imagine) a tribe: the people often pretend, they lie in the road looking ill and in pain; if someone comes to their aid, they attack him. For this behaviour the tribe has a particular word.

Instead of 'it is uncertain whether he is in pain' one might say 'Be mistrustful in the face of his manifestation of pain'. - And how does one do that (Wittgenstein (b): 3)?

It is not too fanciful to suggest that that the tribe described by Wittgenstein is to some extent our own as it was just after World War II, and as it continues to be. The confidence trick described in the first paragraph is paradigmatic of the deception found in much modern commerce and politics, and probably private life too. The rhetorical question at the end of the second paragraph can be answered thus: “One cannot trust his manifestation of pain, so one ignores him in the interests of self-preservation. Or to be really safe, one attacks”. In this culture of Cartesian suspicion, we withdraw from solidarity with others. Real calls for help go unheard. In the absence of the mutuality which enables us to relate to others as subjects, by now corroded by the mistrust natural to terribly isolated souls, others are treated as mere objects. “And how does one do that?” Writing in 1946-7, Wittgenstein must have been well aware that very many ordinary people had found the answer to this question in the immediately preceding years, and not only those who manned the ovens at Auschwitz.

In conclusion: Cartesian dualism and the reductionisms which are parasitic upon it impede our understanding of what it is to be human in a number of ways. Firstly, the theory itself is incoherent leading to a misconception of the mind-body distinction. Secondly, it leads to a false understanding of the nature and purposes of human interaction. Thirdly, it leads to scientism. Fourthly, it leads to a misunderstanding of the nature and origins of the human subject. None of this would matter if the language-games which use Cartesian dualism were not attached to a ubiquitous form of life. As I hope I have shown, the practical results deriving logically from these misunderstandings are a narrowing of culture with an attenuation of the possibilities for human joy, and a reification of people. Moreover, these consequences are to some extent actually manifest within modernity. Our impeded understanding is on the way to becoming our total understanding, and in that event, “what it is to be human” as we are now able to understand it will be at most a dim nostalgia or a utopian dream. None of this would matter either, except “what it is to be human” as Wittgenstein recommends it to us, is of inestimable value. Fortunately, despite the encroachment of modernity that I have described, we are still in possession of that good, or else we could not recognise Wittgenstein's description of it. Do we then develop a form of life that cherishes, nurtures and uses the possibilities of human interaction as between subjects, or do we perfect those reductionist projects that feature so large in modernity? The former option entails dropping the Cartesian problematic in all its manifestations, and very much more besides.

Bibliography [Apologies for the poor references]

Anscombe, G. E. M. Events in the Mind

Collingwood, R.G. (1942) 'The Relation between Body and Mind', The New Leviathan. Oxford: The Calrendon Press

Descartes, René Letter to Princess Elizabeth

Descartes, René Meditations

Dilman, Ilham Can Philosophy Speak about Life?

Wittgenstein, Ludwig Philosophical Investigations

Wittgenstein, Ludwig Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology

1We happily use the terms “I”, “me” and “mine” to refer as much to our limbs and organs as to our thoughts and feelings. This notion of the unity of mind and body is also “primitive”.