Professional Documents
Culture Documents
XXXIII
When the slaves say something happens in them, ... does this con-
firm that they have souls? ... If they say now “something happens
in my head-my soul-” t h a t only shows t h a t they use a certain
picture.’
279
William H. Brenner
I1
“Pain is to moaning what the contents of a box are t o its
outward appearance.?’This comparison is not empirical in the
way t h a t (for instance) “Gills a r e t o fish what lungs a r e t o
dogs” is empirical. This does not make it arbitrary, however, in
the sense of pointless. For comparing pain, intention, etc. t o
items in a sealed box can vividly express significant points of
280
The Soulless Tribe
(a) One person has toothache for one minute but doesn’t
show it.
(b) Two people have toothache for two minutes but don’t
show it.
(c) N people have toothache for n minutes but don’t show it.
(d) Everybody has toothache all the time but doesn’t show
it.14
I11
If we see someone writhing in pain with evident cause, we
react to her suffering, we do something. We do not think: “Her
feelings are hidden from us.”15 So disagreements in judgment
about the feelings of others have their limits.16
“But how can we be certain t h a t the ‘sufferer’ is not dis-
sembling in even the ‘most evident’ cases?” We do not look to a
knowledge of human nature for an answer to this question. We
have, indeed, no clear idea of what i t (the question) is sup-
posed to mean, for we have no clear idea of what we would
count as an answer to it.17 It is, therefore, the “question” that
appears to need grounding, more than the “certainty” it chal-
lenges.
281
William H. Brenner
282
The Soulless Tribe
283
William H. Brenner
N
Psychological words are united by a certain asymmetry be-
tween first-person a n d third-person uses. This property is
brought to light through the question “How do I know ?”
For example, we find t h a t asking oneself L L H do ~I know
~ x
believe(s) ----” makes sense when x = “he,” “she,” “they,” o r
“you”-but t h a t i t makes no sense ( o r not the same kind of
sense) when x = “I.”A comparable asymmetry will not, however,
be found in a question such as “HOWdo I know x has (have)
tooth decay?”
This asymmetry makes i t look a s if “believe” means one
thing in its first-person use and something else in its third-per-
son use. What makes us use these words in such a way? If we
recollect the role of belief in our lives, we see that the grammar
of the first-person expression of belief mirrors a fact that is co-
lossally important for us, namely that we do not normally infer
our own beliefs from our own behavior. Thus, for anyone t o say
“I must believe t h a t somebody’s at the door, judging from the
way I’m moving toward it” would normally strike us as ludicrous.26
Our children learn t o use the word “pain” of other people on
the basis of observing them, and the same word of themselves
without observing anybody. Suppose we found a language in
which one word was used for the first person and a different
for the third: this fact would be of no special interest to us once
we learned the translation. The causes and consequences of
pain, alleviation of pain and compassion for the sufferer: these
are always of special interest to us.27
Just as “I have a toothache” can stand in for a moan of corn-
plaint, though it does not mean “I moan,” s o too “He h a s a
284
The Soulless Tribe
It does not happen often that I guess your thoughts. (It could have
been t h a t everybody always m u r m u r s a n d t h a t many have a
knack for reading murmurs.)30
V
We now return to the fiction with which we began.
To say of a people that they have no souls might be part of
an effort to enslave them and use them for any arbitrary pur-
pose. These “soulless ones” might even prove useful as experi-
mental subjects i n psychological laboratories since t h e i r
reactions, including their linguistic reactions, are quite those
of their “soul-endowed” masters.35
Suppose that we are these masters, and that we have much
the same use for the sentence ”I believe he has a toothache”
when talking of our slaves as we do when speaking of our-
285
William H. Brenner
286
The Soulless Tribe
How would this be: only one who can utter it as information be-
lieves it?
And opinion can be wrong. But what would an error look like
here?39
287
William H. Brenner
Compare “slave owners who insist that their slaves are re-
ally automata” with “window manufacturers who insist t h a t
German-made windows are really without true cross-pieces.”
These manufacturers always see the cross-pieces in German
windows as swastikas, and train their workers always to refer
to them as such.
But can’t I imagine that the people around me are automata, lack
consciousness, even though they behave i n t h e s a m e way as
usual? - ... But just try to keep hold of this idea in the midst of
your ordinary intercourse with others, in the street, say! ...
288
The Soulless Tribe
VII
Compare the uses of “thinking,” “believing,” “sensing,” and
“feeling” with their associated picture. While t h e uses a r e
many and complex, the picture is of something unitary and
simple in which invisible activities are taking place. The story
of the soulless tribe is meant to show that this picture is like a
pair of glasses on our nose-something we can “take off.”
While it is neither possible nor desirable to do without “the
picture of the inner” and “the idea of the soul” in our language
a n d our lives, i t i s possible a n d desirable t o abstract from
them when we need to analyze our psychological concepts. In
t h a t context of conceptual analysis, the story of the “soulless
tribe” functions not in a description of a hateful ideology but
as a n “auxiliary c o n s t r ~ c t i o n ”in~ ~
a process of clarifying the
use of psychological predicates in our lives. I t helps us repre-
sent the variety and complexity of that use.
“Soulless tribesmen” a r e taught something like a signal
game with psychological terms such a s “I am in pain” and “I
am depressed.” In the case of pain, they are trained t o substi-
tute a language gesture for the primitive gesture of “pointing
to where i t hurts.” There is, however, nothing comparable to
this in the case of depression.
“I am in pain” is attached to certain local reactions, such as
nursing an injured knee; there is nothing like this in “I am de-
pressed.” And, though both expressions are important to us re-
garding future behavior, they are not important in the same
way. If, in the end, we are persuaded to speak of the tribesmen
as experiencing both pain and depression “within themselves,”
then the expressions of pain and depression begin look alike.
“The picture of the inner” puts a face of unity over an underly-
ing diversity.46
When we move back from our close look at the underlying
diversity, the “face of unity” re-emerges. “[Wle can’t get away
from forming the picture of a mental Why? “Not be-
cause we are acquainted with it in our own case!” Why then?
... by the fact that I can see the diverse things as together forming
a pattern, the pattern of deceit. I think of the pattern as com-
289
William H. Brenner
VIII
Think back to the firsthhird-person asymmetry. Diverse
psychological phenomena are united by this one property. But
does each psychological predicate have two meanings: one in
its first, another in its third-person use? No. What I identify on
the basis of another’s cries and moans is the very same state
he simply expresses in those cries and moans. But what is this
thing t h a t I identify and he expresses? Not something “over-
against-us” that either one of us can point at. “Something in-
ner.” So the picture of the inner again unifies a diversity.
“But does it really? I say you’re in pain because I hear you
say ‘Ouch’; you do not say you’re i n pain because you h e a r
yourself say ‘Ouch.’ Do we really mean t h e same by ‘pain’?”
What kind of question is that?
290
The Soulless Tribe
M
Inner a n d outer facts do not s t a n d t o each other a s do
plants of different species.55For, while ways of distinguishing
plant species are justified through observable similarities and
dissimilarities among plants, ways of distinguishing facts are
not justified through observable similarities and dissimilari-
ties among facts.
We say that pain is a sensation, but we cannot justify this
by reference t o a noticeable similarity between pains and
other things we call “sensations”-itches, smells, sounds, color
impressions, etc. The similarity must be in the concept; so i t
must be grammar, not experience, that tells us what kind of
object pain is.
Kinds of numbers have formal properties5‘jin common but
differ in their application. Similarly: although nothing could
be more unlike than meters and minutes, they share a formal
property-they are both measures.57
Although the terms “believes,” “intends,” “in pain,” etc., dif-
fer enormously in their application, they (and the other psy-
chological predicates) have in common t h a t , in t h e i r
first-person, present-tense use, doubt and the possibility of
mistake are ruled out. We may call the indubitability and in-
corrigibility involved here a property (or conjunction of proper-
ties) so long as we realize that in doing so we are making not
a material but a formal point. For we are not here predicating
something of something else-any more than we were when
we said t h a t 2 a n d 4 a r e numbers, or when we said t h a t
meters a n d minutes a r e measures. To “predicate a formal
property” is to make a grammatical remark. It is t o character-
ize a language game rather than to make a moue in it.
Whatever characterizes a language game belongs to gram-
mar. But grammar, as it is of interest t o philosophy, must not
be equated with rules (criteria, techniques) for the employ-
ment of words. We can see t h i s with t h e help of our story
291
William H. Brenner
X
The picture of the inner belongs t o “the mythology stored
in our language.”60Is i t a n ornament-like a king’s paper
crown in the Blue Book chess game?61It is too firmly rooted in
us and in the facts of our life t o be called that. Is i t a super-
stition? I t is a picture a t the root of our thinking and is t o be
respected as such and not treated as a superstition.62Is it be-
yond criticism? If, a s in the education of the slave masters’
children, i t is used so as to drive a wedge between pain and
its expression, then it is misused. And this, of course, is sub-
ject t o criticism.
POSTSCRIPT
I talked about Wittgenstein’s story of the slaves with Pro-
fessor J o s e Benardete in a Syracuse cafe one afternoon in the
summer of 1982. He found it troubling, as I recall, even sinis-
ter-an example of a kind of thinking t h a t threatens t o un-
dermine enlightenment a n d ethics. At t h e time, I did not
292
The Soulless Tribe
... In cases where it was obvious to us that the slaves were under-
going the keenest pain as when they “screamed in agony,” the mas-
ters would pay no heed. “Here, then,” writes [Norman] Malcolm,
reporting Wittgenstein’s position, “is a difference in ‘attitude’ that
is not a matter of believing ... different facts.” So is it not a fact
that sometimes you and I suffer pain ...?
In the margin, by the last sentence, Jose penciled: “Can you re-
fute this, Bill?” I will try.
Behaviorists would on principle deny that pain is something
inner; Wittgenstein would not. His argument is against inter-
preting “the interiority of pain” to mean “I can’t really show my
pain.”64And he suggests that misinterpretation arises from try-
ing to force “showing one’s pain” into t h e model of (for ex-
ample) “showing one’s beetle.” (Compare with t h e way
Augustine tried t o understand “measuring a length of time” on
the model of “measuring a length of ribbon.”65)
Non-cognitivism is more confusing. “IS i t not a fact,” you
ask, “that sometimes you and I suffer pain?” Of course. And (as
I understand the story) i t would also be a fact that the slaves
sometimes suffer pain, t h a t the masters know this, and t h a t
the masters make a practice of always referring t o the suffer-
ing of slaves in (as it were) sneer quotes. Is i t non-cognitivism
to say that their practice expresses an immoral attitude rather
than a mistaken belief?
Vivisectionists in the 17th-century rationalized their prac-
tices by appeal to Cartesian philosophy. Perhaps the slave mas-
t e r s of W’s fiction rationalize t h e i r practice by appeal t o
propaganda “given out by the government and the scientists.”
Converting them would be less like making them believe differ-
e n t things, more like making them do different things. We
want them to picture the subjugated people differently, and to
free them. For this we need not so much to instruct as to exhort.
“Then is Wittgenstein a prescriptivist, and so a kind of non-
cognitivist about ethics?” Let me conclude with two quotations,
293
William H. Brenner
NOTES
’ The first quotation is from Wittgenstein’s Remarks on the Philoso-
phy of Psychology, Vol. I (RPP-I), secs. 93 and 96; cf. Zettel (21, sec. 528.
The second quotation is from P. T. Geach, ed., Wittgenstein’s Lectures on
the Philosophy of Psychology, 1946-47 (LPP), 42-43.
From “Notes for Lectures on ‘Private Experience’ a n d ‘Sense
Data’,” reprinted in J a m e s Klagge a n d Alfred Nordmann, eds.,
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Occasions (PO). The full and cryptic passage
reads as follows: “‘But aren’t you saying, t h a t all t h a t happens is the
moaning, and that there is nothing behind it?’-I a m saying that there
is nothing behind the moaning” (PO, 262).
Iris Murdoch still shares this impression, to judge from her chap-
ter on Wittgenstein in Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1993). She
speaks in one place of a n “unbearable narrowness in his use of the im-
age of outer criteria” (275); in another place, of “his wish to keep the in-
dividual and value out of the picture” (278).
Cf. Noel Fleming’s suggestion that Wittgenstein was a “grammatical
epiphenomenalist” for whom t h e soul is n o more t h a n “the body itself
making faces” (Philosophy 53 [1978]: 43, 461, and Jose Benardete’s talk
of “the widespread impression that at the heart of the Philosophical In-
vestigations lies a profound darkness.” Citing sections 246 and 304,
Benardete traces this “darkness” to a n unresolved tension between
wanting and not wanting to allow factual reference to “pain.” (Philo-
sophical Studies 72 [1993]: 279-280).
Based on Last Writings, Vol. I1 (LW-111, 82 ff.
Based on “Notes for the ‘Philosophical Lecture’,” in PO, 449.
‘ Cf. Last Writings, Vol. I (LW-I), sec. 975.
Based on RPP-11, sec. 703. Cf. PI, 223.
294
The Soulless Tribe
295
William H. Brenner
296
The Soulless Tribe
297
William H. Brenner
298