Wittgenstein’s Two Builders and the Criteria of Successful Theories
I’m becoming increasingly concerned that philosophy, at least as it goes on today in the analytical tradition, is simply a matter of definitions or language games, as Wittgenstein (W or Dubya) said in his Philosophical Investigations (PI).
A bit of background here - the main contribution of PI (in my opinion) was that it introduced the concept of a “language-game” (sprachspiel). As an example of such a game, W shows us a very basic language game involving two builders:
“Let us imagine a language for which the description given by Augustine is right. The language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B. A is building with building-stones: there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass the stones, and that in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose they use a language consisting of the words “block,” “pillar,” “slab,” “beam.” A calls them out;–B brings the stone which he has learnt to bring at such-and-such a call…” (ยง2)
So when A yells “Slab!”, this is a complete meaning in this language.. and B will be expected to respond by passing over a slab for A to work with. Words such as “hammer”, “shovel”, etc are meaningless in this language, as there is no usage of those words.
What’s the big deal? Why does it make so much trouble for philosophy itself? Well, what if someone (B) is presenting their moral theory to another person (A). Presumably B wants their theory to be successful. But here is where W comes back to haunt us - we now ask “what does it mean for a theory to be successful”? W would say that this depends on our meaning of “what it is to be successful,” and meaning is just the usage of the word in our language. On this view, the meaning of “what it is to be successful” is perfectly analogous to “Slab!” in the simple language. All B has to do is present a theory that succeeds at whatever “it is to be successful” by meeting the self-imposed criteria. What I mean by “self-imposed criteria” is the real problem of the matter here - in our much more sophisticated language-game, we have (consciously or unconsciously) created a criteria of what it is to be a successful theory, and a criteria of what it is to be a successful moral theory.
So we have:
1. A definition is the usage or meaning of a phrase in our language.
2. P is the definition of what it is to be a theory.
3. A theory S is successful iff it meets the criteria P.
And I suppose the criteria P would ordinarily be something like: 1) the theory sufficiently answers the counter-examples raised against it, if any; 2) the theory seems intuitive and most people would agree with it, etc etc.
So what does it mean to be a successful moral theory? Whatever criteria we’ve invented for a successful moral theory. (W makes philosophy into something that begins and ends by consulting Merriam-Webster’s…)