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Remarks on Method
Mar. 13th, 2005 10:12 pm"(d) Our craving for generality has another main source: our preoccupation with the method of science. I mean the method of reducing the explanation of natural phenomena to the smallest possible number of natural laws; and, in mathematics, of unifying the treatment of different topics by using a generalization. Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into complete darkness. I want to say here that it can never be our job to reduce anything to anything, or to explain anything. Philosophy really is 'purely descriptive'. (Think of such questions as 'Are there sense data?' and ask: What method is there of determining this? Introspection?)" Wittgenstein, Blue Book, 18
"When something seems queer about the grammar of our words, it is because we are alternately tempted to use a word in several different ways. And it is particularly difficult to discover that an assertion which the metaphysician makes expresses discontentment with our grammar when the words of this assertion can also be used to state a fact of experience. Thus when he says 'only my pain is real pain', the sentence might mean that the other people are only pretending. And when he says 'this tree doesn't exist when nobody sees it', this might mean: 'this tree vanishes when we turn our backs to it'. The man who says 'only my pain is real' doesn't mean to say that he has found out by the common criteria--the criteria, i.e., which give our words their common meanings--that the others who said they had pains were cheating. But what he rebels against is the use of this expression in connection with these criteria. That is, he objects to using this word in the particular way in which it is commonly used. On the other hand, he is not aware that he is objecting to a convention. He sees a way of dividing the country different from the one used on the ordinary map." Blue Book, 56-57
"When something seems queer about the grammar of our words, it is because we are alternately tempted to use a word in several different ways. And it is particularly difficult to discover that an assertion which the metaphysician makes expresses discontentment with our grammar when the words of this assertion can also be used to state a fact of experience. Thus when he says 'only my pain is real pain', the sentence might mean that the other people are only pretending. And when he says 'this tree doesn't exist when nobody sees it', this might mean: 'this tree vanishes when we turn our backs to it'. The man who says 'only my pain is real' doesn't mean to say that he has found out by the common criteria--the criteria, i.e., which give our words their common meanings--that the others who said they had pains were cheating. But what he rebels against is the use of this expression in connection with these criteria. That is, he objects to using this word in the particular way in which it is commonly used. On the other hand, he is not aware that he is objecting to a convention. He sees a way of dividing the country different from the one used on the ordinary map." Blue Book, 56-57
