Wittgenstein and Psychology: A Practical Guide (review)

Wittgenstein in his later writings comments perceptively on what he describes as the philosophical grammar of psychological terminologies in ordinary language and metaphysical theorizing about psychological phenomena. If we agree with his methodology and certain of his conclusions, then we may find it fruitful to consider how a later Wittgensteinian cognitive psychology might be developed.

That seems to be the motivation behind this new study of Wittgenstein and Psychology by Rom Harré and Michael Tissaw. The book is subtitled by the authors as 'A Practical Guide,' and is divided into three main parts: Origins, Insights, Applications. Part 1 discusses contemporary psychology and its theoretical needs and offers essential historical background to Wittgenstein's later writings, including a refreshingly in-depth consideration of Wittgenstein's intellectual background in Vienna and a necessarily superficial sketch of major themes in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Part 2 offers an account of Wittgenstein's later concepts and methodology, including language games, family resemblance, the praxeological point and purpose of language games as essential to understanding meaning in rule-following for language game playing, and therapeutic aspects of Wittgenstein's later view of the proper role and limitations of philosophy. Part 3 examines implications of Wittgenstein's ideas in their own right and in relation to modern scientific psychology in such areas as cognition, thinking and understanding, subjectivity and expression in light of Wittgenstein's private language argument, thinking about the past and future, intending, willing and acting, emotions and perception.

Historians of philosophy turning to this work are likely to be surprised by some of Harré and Tissaw's interpretations. I cannot offer more than a handful of examples here, but I was struck on page 146 by the characterization of Wittgenstein's Tractatus as "positivistic." This is an attribution that runs counter to much of the commentary on Wittgenstein's early treatise, to Wittgenstein's own disavowals, to anecdotal evidence concerning his attitude toward positivism, and to many of his explicit pronouncements that the authors elsewhere rightly insist upon in understanding his disaffection for this originally Austrian scientific movement in the history of philosophy. More importantly, I found the discussion of Wittgenstein's private language argument lacking in context. The authors do not seem to regard the argument as essential to Wittgenstein's ongoing attempt in the Investigations to criticize "internal definition" by means of private naming as an alternative to the Augustinian behavioral model of ostensive language teaching that Wittgenstein attacks from the beginning of the book. This, I have always thought, is made most clear in §36, having rejected the bodily approach to meaning in Augustine's Confessions as underdetermining intended reference, and turning immediately thereafter to the potential for spirit (Geist) as a way of understanding how a name refers. When the private ostensive definition of sensations has been disposed of by the private language argument, Wittgenstein is free to develop as a third possibility a generically pragmatic theory of meaning in terms of rule-following in language games defined with respect to an implicit point and purpose, exemplified (among other places) in §567.

More worrying is the impression I received that there is something missing in the authors' sense of just how the later Wittgenstein could assist practicing experimental and theoretical psychologists in their research. There are numerous examples scattered throughout the book of reputed conceptual confusions in contemporary psychology, though there is no documentation of the psychologists themselves recognizing that they are at any sort of disadvantage in this regard. Clarifying concepts used in psychology is undoubtedly a worthwhile task. Why, however, should researchers in psychology look to Wittgenstein's Investigations in particular for guidance here, especially when some historians have argued that, near the end of his life, Wittgenstein was preparing to undertake yet another philosophical revolution that would have brought him closer to some form of Platonic realism? Why not seek greater clarity for scientific psychological concepts and reasoning in the work of other philosophers interested in the problem of meaning relevant to...