METAPHILOSOPHY Vol. 5, No. 4, October 1974

AN OBSERVATION ON WITTGENSTEIN’S USE OF FANTASY’

JAMES E. BROYIES

I

When Wittgenstein and Austin are compared, as they seem in- evitably to be these days, we often hear it said that Wittgenstein was perhaps the more imaginative of the two. D. F. Pears,* for example, writes that “Wittgenstein is always imaginative . . . Austin, on the other hand, keeps down to earth”. Pitchers draws a similar contrast m terms of different basic attitudes or tempera- ments. He sees Wittgenstein as poet or artist, Austin as scientist. I doubt if anyone would wish to quarrel with such apparently innocuous biographical remarks. It may be, however, that they tend to obscure something rather more important for one of the ways in which Wittgenstein was more imaginative than Austin reflects a difference in methodology and concern, not just a dif- ference in style. I t points to a dimension of Wittgenstein’s thought that is largely absent in that of Austin.

Certainly both Wittgenstein and Austin frequently call on us to exercise our imagination and to picture things other than they actually are. Perhaps this is done most often in asking us to imagine situations or circumstances under which it would be appropriate to use a particular expression, a now standard move. But when Austin asks us to make use of our imagination he has in mind primarily that we make use of it with regard to situations which might have arisen in the past or might arise in the future given the way the world is. Thus characteristic of Austin’s great gift are his unforgettable donkey stories designed to show us the difference between doing something by accident, shooting a donkey, and doing it by mistake. And though Wittgenstein does his share of this sort of thing as well, he also sometimes does something else. He asks us to imagine how our language would be modified or affected if the world were fundamentally different in some respect. Suppose “that all human bodies . . . looked

1This is an abbreviated version of a paper, “Wittgenstein’s Use of Fantasy”, read

a“Wittgenstein and Austin”, British Analytical Philosophy, Williams, B., and

3The Philosophy of Wittgenstein, (Englewood Cliflk 1964), pp. 325-6.

at the M A , Pacific Division meeting, March 27, 1970.

A. Montefiore, eds., (London 19661, p. 17.

MPH B 291

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alike, that on the other hand, different sets of characteristics seemed, as it were, to change their habitation among these bodies’’ (Blue Book, p. 61). “Imagine a man whose memories on the even days of his life comprise the events of all those days, skipping entirely what happened on the odd days” (Blue Book, p. 62). What would we say “If a man’s bodily expressions of sorrow and joy alternated, say with the ticking of a clock” (PhiZosophicaZ Investigations, Part 11, i) and so on.

We can see that what we regard as imaginable covers two sorts of cases and that the request to use our imagination may be taken in a wider or in a more restricted way. We may imagine that the world is different from the way it just happens to be at ,this time, that is, different in certain particulars, such as that a grizzly has just poked his head into our tent or that a powerful earthquake is devastating the area. But we can also imagine that the world is a different sort of world, a world in which different sorts of things happen, where the relative size of objects fluctuates rapidly, or human fetuses grow on shrubs. No doubt the distinction we are alluding to is a vague one but it is essentially the difference be- tween realistic fiction and fantasy. It is the difference between the play of the imagination that is displayed in say Robinson Cruesoe as opposed to The Wizard of Oz.

Let us call the latter radical or fanciful imagination. It is re- lated in an important way to what is perhaps the most funda- mental sense of the word possible. The sense of ‘possible’ that I have in mind is that which involves implicit or explicit reference to some body of knowledge or fact. We say that certain things are possible “given the way the world is”, or possible “for all we know”, or possible “if certain things are true”, or “were true”, or “become true”, and so on. Thus when we consider what is pos- sible in this basic sense (the only sense that I will be concerned with in what follows), our grounds for judging that something is possible or impossible are to be found in what we know or accept as true about the world. It is not possible, for example, that I should now reach out, extending my arms further and further until I can finally clasp my hands together on the other side of the earth and embrace the world. Of course, it is imaginable in the radical sense. We can picture it, and quite literally do picture such things in the fantasies of the comic strip and the Saturday morning cartoon. It is not possible, however, because i t is con- trary to what we know about the comparatively rigid structure of our limbs, the size of the earth relative to our span of reach, and so on. The factual dependency of such claims about the

AN OBSERVATION ON WITTGENSTEIN’S USE OF FANTASY 293 possible and impossible cannot be disregarded. Suppose, for ex- ample, that we were to consider for the first time the suggestion that our world is the best of all possible worlds. On the face of it, it is not at all clear what this means, for while we know some- thing about the sorts of things that are possible and the sorts of things that are impossible within our world, we have no clear idea of what is meant in saying that one world is possible and another impossible. We have no clear idea of what is meant be- cause as yet we have no idea what body of knowledge, what facts, are supposed to be the basis or grounds for such a judgment. We might well have said, on the other hand, that our world is the best of all fanciful worlds, for fantasy or what is imaginable in the widest sense, does not depend in any comparable way on specifi- able facts. Each imaginable world, of course, brings with it new possibilities, things that are possible in that world.

I t would seem then that we can express the difference between the imagination displayed by Austin and that displayed by Witt- genstein as follows. For the most part Austin asked us to imagine what is possible, in lieu of the actual which would have done just as well for his purposes. For example, apropos of the stories Austin devised about the donkeys, a Montana paper carried an article reporting that a local veterinarian had vac- cinated a patron, rather than his horse, by mistake. Austin might well have made use of the fact that a correct report would ob- viously have read that he vaccinated him by accident. (No doubt the horse kicked at precisely the wrong moment or something of this sort.) Wittgenstein, on the other hand, sometimes asks us to imagine what is impossible or fanciful where this contrasts with both the possible and the actual.

I1 The fact that Wittgenstein makes use of fantasy, however,

might be regarded as a mere stylistic embellishment unless that use is philosophical in character. Does Wittgenstein himself say anything about the use of fantasy? Well, as one might suspect, he uses fantasy much more often than he talks about fantasy, just as he uses the appeal to criteria more often that he talks about criteria. Nevertheless there are a few widely scattered passages in which he rises to the more reflective level. But let us first turn to section 142 of the Philosophical Investigations where Wittgenstein appears to employ one fantasy and then illustrate it with another.

294 JAMES E. BROYLES

If things were quite different from what they actually are- if there were for instance no characteristic expression of pain, of fear, of joy; if rule became exception and exception rule; or if both became phenomena of roughly equal frequency-this would make our normal language-games lose their point. The procedure of putting a lump of cheese on a balance and fixing the price by the turn of the scale would lose its point if it frequently happened for such lumps to suddenly grow or shrink for no obvious reason. In a note at the bottom of the page Wittgenstein reflects on

what he obviously takes to be an important task in philosophy. He says :

What we have to mention in order to explain the significance, I mean the importance, of a concept, are often extremely general facts of nature, such facts as are hardly ever men- tioned because of their generality.

In part 11, section xii, Wittgenstein returns to this topic and speaks of the important relationship between “concepts and very general facts of nature”. Here he explicitly connects the use of fantasy with the recognition of these very general facts. H e suggests that if a person imagines “certain very general facts of nature to be different from what we are used to , . . . the forma- tion of concepts different from the usual ones will become in- telligible to him”.“ The passage in question is negative in thrust in that it stresses the point that fantasy can make the possibility of other concepts intelligible, but he also holds that it can illuminate our own concepts. Thus in section 350 of the more recently published Zettel he says :

It is as if our concepts involved a scaffolding of facts-that would presumably mean: If you imagine certain facts other- wise, describe them otherwise, than they are, then you can no longer imagine the application of certain concepts, because the rules for their application have no analogue in the new circum- stances. The picture that Wittgenstein presents us then, is that fantasy

can be employed in revealing certain very general facts of nature,

“He also says that “we can invent fictitious natural history for our purposes”. The expression “fictitious natural history”, however, need not imply fanciful natural history and in fact his “builder” examples of primitive language games do not generally involve fantasy.

S e e also On Certainty, section 63.

AN OBSERVATION ON WITTGENSTEM’S USE OF FANTASY 295 which by virtue of their generality are difficult to apprehend. These facts make it possible to use certain concepts and thereby give point or importance to the language games within which these concepts have a role.

We might attempt to put this in clearer focus by introducing a distinction between two types of fact. Following the metaphor of the Zettel paragraph6 let us refer to the one as scaffolding facts and to the other as situational facts. (These are not intended to be exhaustive, as we shall see.) A situational fact is a fact which contributes to the situation being what it is, a fact that would be mentioned in a description of the situation, e.g. a snake is loose in the ladies’ room, the rent will soon fall due, a player on the field has broken his leg, a vow has been taken long ago, and so on. When situational facts alter, the situation changes, though of course a great many other facts may change without altering the situation or without altering it essentially. A situation is no arbitrary sum total or aggregate of facts (whatever that would be). ,It is comprised rather of those facts that are regarded as relevant or germane, which of course means germane given certain purposes or interests. Situations can be described, they can be foreseen or unforeseen, but they can also be tragic, hope- ful, embarrassing, and all the rest. Situations make up a sort of basic reference system by which we understand human action including our own. For to know what one is doing is very often just to be aware, to be cognizant of the situation. Now the only aspect of this that concerns us presently is that the situation and hence the situational facts are of immediate practical importance. They cannot be ignored nor overlooked for if we are to act in- telligently we must correctly assess the situation. Consequently situational facts are a t the center focus of our attention and concern in everything we do.

Now scaffolding facts, on the other hand, are obscured not merely by their generality but also by the fact that they are ever- present, They are relatively stable and unchanging features of our world. Typical of the various different scaffolding facts to which Wittgenstein draws our attention are the following : ‘What we call measuring is partly determined by a certain constancy in results of measurement” (Philosophical Investigations, section 242). “Mathematicians do not in general quarrel over the result of a calculation” (Philosophical Investigations, Part 11, p. 255). “Our actual use of the phrase ‘the same person’ is based on the

6This favored metaphor is found also in On Certainty. section 211.

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fact that many characteristics which we use as the criteria for identity coincide in the vast majority of cases” (Blue Book, p. 61).

Facts like these, according to Wittgenstein, stand behind our practices and are their “real foundation” (Philosophical Znvestiga- tion, section 129). But even if our practices depend upon these facts in some sense, they do not depend upon our awareness of them, as is the case with situational facts. We rely on these facts only as we rely on gravity or on the support of the bones in our body, or the earth beneath us, that is, without for the most part ever reflecting upon this reliance. Or at least so it is as far as the practical affairs of life are concerned. In doing philosophy, if Wittgenstein is correct, it is often important to bring these facts to consciousness and to recognize the role they play. Indeed we can see that this is what Wittgenstein is trying to do in his dis- cussion of the characteristic manifestations of emotional states in the passage quoted earlier. We are not interested merely in the situational facts which on this occasion justify us in saying that a person is angry and on another justify us in saying that a person is sad. We are also interested in the general facts which make it possible for us to ascribe emotions and feeling to people at all. In this case we are interested in the fact that there are typical cases of anger, sadness, and so on. Now the natural or characteristic expressions of such emotions are just what Wittgenstein means by criteria and these criteria are arrived at by reflecting upon the typical cases. Commentators have been bothered by the fact that criteria are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for the phenomena in question. But to say that criteria need not be ex- hibited on each and every occasion when a person is sad or angry is just to say that all cases need not be typical cases. The scaffolding fact that there are typical cases involving natural and characteristic expressions is fully compatible with the situational fact that a given person on a given occasion may show no indica- tion at all of his anger or sadness.

To sum up then: Fantasy can be employed in promoting an awareness of scaffolding facts. Indeed fantasy is required if we are to supply the contrast in bringing these facts before the mind, for this contrast involves what is not possible, but only fanciful. Thus often by reflecting on how the world might have been, or how other worlds might be, we are led to see, or can bring others to see, how the world in fact is. It is not clear that any mere compilation of actual or possible situations, and thereby of situa-

AN OBSERVATION ON WITTGENSTEIN’S USE OF FANTASY 297 tional facts, is at all likely to perform a similar function, even if this compilation were done with Austinean thoroughness. It would seem then that the difference between the imagination frequently displayed by Wittgenstein and that characteristically’ displayed by Austin is rather more than a difference in style. On the contrary it reveals an important dimension of Wittgenstein’s thought. To understand a language is for him to understand a practice, and to understand a practice is to understand also “the psychological and physiological (facts) that make it possible (and) those that make i t a useful activity” (Remarks on the Founda- tions of Mathematics, V, section 15), that is, those that give it point. Thus of the many strands in the weave of Wittgenstein some like the one we have been discussing seem to deserve to be called metaphysical, in the best sense of that term.

WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY

‘Austin makes many brilliant reflective moves such as noticing the role played by the “distance at which one normally sees ants” in the use of expressions like ‘They look like ants” Sense and Sensibilia, pp. 40-1. The normal distance at which one sees ants would appear to be a general situational fact rather than a scaffolding fact since it could be altered rather easily by our returning to all-fours or develop- ing a more intimate relationship with ants. There is no doubt, however, that there are a host of intermediate and difficult cases between thii and the apparently genuine scaffolding fact that the human body is jointed in certain w a p (as opposed that of a snake, say) which allows us to employ our present concept of sitting or sitting down.