A Note on Wittgenstein as an Unwilling Nominalist

A NOTE ON WITTGENSTEIN AS AN UNWILLING NOMINALIST W AS WITTGENSTEIN a Realist or a Nominalist in pistemology? Wittgenstein considered himself to be neither. If you are a Realist you maintain that the " thing" and relation words people use have extramental, objective counterparts in one way or another. If one is a strict empiricist and holds the preeminence of particulars the Realist position is unacceptable because it would seem to necessitate the extramental existence of something simultaneously both universal and particular. But such a combination is impossible. If you are a Nominalist " thing " and relation words have no outside counterparts but instead are entirely the work of the human knower who arbitrarily sets up ideas and names for the particular things and particular situations he experiences. To an objectivist in epistemology such an approach is unacceptable because the subjectivist approach makes knowledge empty and hollow. It reduces meaning to the arbitrary whim of the one who creates the idea or name. For ages philosophers have struggled with the so-called problem of universals, and more recently scientists, especially biologists , have had to face the issues squarely.1 The thought of Wittgenstein, which is one long epistemological dialogue spread out over many years, represents one of the more modem attempts to escape between the Scylla and Charybdis of this problem. That some escape is needed seems to have finally become clear to both Wittgenstein himself and his disciples. That the " second " Wittgenstein remained empiricistically inclined and so rejected Realism outright requires no defense. What marks him as different from his empiricistically inclined 1 See, e. g., F. F. Centore, " Neo-Darwinian Reactions to the Social Consequences of Darwin's Nominalism," The Thomist, 85 (1971), 118-142. 76~ WITTGENSTEIN AS AN UNWILLING NOMINALIST 763 predecessors (including himself) , however, is that he also rejected Nominalism.2 As he matured Wittgenstein became more and more concerned about the dangers of the various forms of extreme subjectivism . Nominalism represented an extreme subjectivism. How does one ever manage to escape his own little private inner world and achieve communication with the great outside world? Wittgenstein devotes a great deal of space to the problem in his Philosophical Investigations. The topic is usually referred to today as the " private language problem." 3 "But could we also imagine a language in which a person could write down or give vocal expression to his inner experiences-his feelings , moods, and the rest-for his private use.... So another person cannot understand the language[?]," asks Wittgenstein.4 His answer is an emphatic no. An affirmative answer to the question would mean that a " language," which would always involve at least one communicator and one receiver, could be had even though there was nothing common between the speakers of the language. That is to say, "If language is to be a means of communication there must be agreement not only in definitions but also (queer as this may sound) in judgments." 5 There must be some way of determining when a word means the same thing. But in a strictly private series of sounds (they cannot really be called a language) this would be strictly impossible . How, for instance, would one ever know that another person was " in pain " if there were not some public, extramental , non-subjective way of telling? There would be no way of knowing. As Malcolm has put it, "On the private-language hypothesis, no one can teach me what the correct use of ' same ' is. I shall be the sole arbiter of whether this is the same as that. What I choose to call the ' same ' will be the same." 6 In other • On the earlier and later Wittgensteins see G. Pitcher, The Philosophy of Wittgenstein (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1964) . 8 See, e. g., J. T. Saunders and D. F. Henze, The Private-Language Problem (New York: Random House, 1967). • Philosophical Investigations (translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, 2nd ed., Oxford: Blackwell, 1958), #~48. 5 Ibid., #~4~. 6 N. Malcolm, "Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations," Wittgenstein: The 764 F. F. CENTORE words, there would be sheer arbitrariness with respect to the relationships between ideas and names and those extramental realities for which they are supposed to...