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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2010
I. Ian Hacking asks an intriguing question, and answers it in an interesting way. Why, he asks, does language matter to philosophy? It is a simple question. But his answer is not quite so simple, though its main feature is simple: Language matters to philosophy today for the same reason that ideas were important to philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Each in its time has been the “interface” between the knower and the known. There is much truth to this answer of his, though we may note that it is somewhat incomplete: we would still like to know how ideas then and language now have come to occupy this position.
1 Hacking, IanWhy Does Language Matter to Philosophy? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).CrossRefGoogle Scholar I am grateful to Ian Hacking for his comments on this critical notice which have helped me rectify some of its mis-statements.
2 ibid. Preface p. ix.
3 ibid. p. 1.
4 his, Cf.Logic of Statistical Inference (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1965).Google Scholar See also The Emergence of Probability (London, Cambridge University Press, 1975).Google Scholar
5 op. cit. p. 6.
6 ibid. pp. 6–7.
7 Although I endorse this principle, the particular way in which Ian Hacking understands it seems to me to be suspect, as I indicate later in this critical notice.
8 ibid. pp. 44–49.
9 Or, if they do not mark the beginning of the need for any interface at all between the knower and the known, then whoever else might mark it.
10 ibid. See, for examples, his remarks on p. 170 “With the exception of Frege nothing else about meanings has established itself as manifestly classical.” It might be worth noting, in this respect, that the divide between the first and second heydays seems fundamental, that between the second and third a fanciful prophesy of Hacking's a fact of which he indicates some awareness on p. 180. “…one cannot confidently announce the death of meaning…”
11 ibid. Chapter 6, pp. 57–69.
12 ibid. Chapters 7–10 pp. 70–103.
13 ibid. p. 84.
14 ibid. pp. 84–85.
15 ibid. p. 101, quoted from “The Empiricist Criterion ofMeaning” reprinted in C.G. Hempel Aspects of Scientific Explanation (New York, Macmillan, 1965).
16 ibid. p. 174.
17 The readeris urged to read the author's remarks in chapter 1 on Strategy in which one set forth some reasons for the choice of the case studies. It is entertaining to play with this puzzle - namely why Hacking studies those whom he does, and not so many others he might have done.
18 ibid. p. 190.
19 Cf. Against Method (London: NLB 1975).Google Scholar
20 op. cit. p. 186.
21 This offers a partial solution to the puzzle mentioned in footnote 17 of this critical notice.
22 Aristotle De. Anima Book II. Vol. HI of W.D. Ross The Works of Aristotle esp. II. 5.
23 ibid. Book III. 7 431a “Actual knowledge is identical with its object” and following; I am obliged to R. Allan Cobb for some textural clarification.
24 “The Apology of Raymond Sebond”, in Zeitlin, Jacob ed., trans., The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1935).Google Scholar
25 Not that there is no place for error in Aristotle's scheme. He finds that the “perception of the universal attributes …” are those in respect of which “the greatest amount of senseillusion is possible.” op. cit. III. 3428b 22–25, which anticipates Bacon.
26 These are perhaps better known as the Idols of the tribe, of the cave or den, of the market place and of the theatre, respectively Cf. 27 below.
27 Bacon, The New Organon p. 19 and p. 56. ed. Anderson, F.H. (New York, Bobbs Merrill, reprinted 1960).Google Scholar
28 ibid. p. 156 Book Two, XX.
29 That this is an attempt to refute scepticism is not to challenge the possibility that he is not a sceptic “malgre lui” Popkin, cf. R.The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes(New York, Harper Torchbooks, 1964.)Google Scholar
30 Descartes Principles of Philosophy pp. 255Google Scholar, Principle IV The Principal Philosophical Works trans. Haldane, L.S. and Ross, G.R.T. (Cambridge, University Press, 1972).Google Scholar
31 ibid. p. 265 Principle XXIII.
32 It is interesting, however, that biology has come around to explain how something like Aristotelian organisms are possible, and how our perception may be in some sort of harmony with our ecological niche - a partial restoration of the Aristotelian harmony. But it is a partial harmony, because it is an evolutionary product, and so it holds only so long as we stay within our evolutionary stamping grounds.
33 This is what I take to be the import of Newton's final General Scholium of the Principia. The Principia itself is so Cartesian a work, written in classic geometric style, that one cannot take Newton's “experimental philosophy” to mean the same thing that Bacon meant. Koyre's, Cf. AlexandreNewtonian Studies (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
34 op. cit. p. 169.
35 Kant, I.The Critique of Pure Reason p. 45ff trans. Smith, Norman Kemp, , Abridged (New York, Random House, 1958).Google Scholar
36 ibid. p. 46.
37 ibid. p. 269ff “Transcendental Dialectic”.
38 Kant argues, in effect, that reality is phenomenal - which is what makes him an idealist. But matter, self and God remain, but in an unknowable ghostly sort of way.
39 Russell, B. and Whitehead, A.N.Principia Mathematica V-1-3 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1910Google Scholar, 1912, 1913).
40 Reprinted p. 31 Ayer, A.J.Logical Positivism (New York, Collier-Macmillan, 1966)Google Scholar.
41 Wittgenstein, L.Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London: Kegan, Paul 1922).Google Scholar
42 Carnap, R.Der Logische Aufbau Der Welt (Berlin: Weltkreis-Verlag, 1928).Google Scholar
43 op. cit. p. 170.
44 ibid. p. 187.
45 ibid. p. 190.
46 I should add, though, that Foucault has transcended Marx, by now. In any case Hacking gives us no reason to think that these two diagrams have anything to do with social structures: The Cartesian ego I found these diagrams more confusing than helpful, but the reader may judge for himself on pp. 165 and 181.
47 In fact where do Brouwer, Heyting, et al. fit in Hacking's grand scheme?
48 The difference is between ideas as objects of thought and as vehicles for perceiving reality. Hacking's diagrams leave little room for such details.
49 G. Leibniz pp. 6-46 in Leibniz ed. Philip P. Wiener (New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1951). Hacking is fully aware of this and has written an elegant and suggestive piece, “Leibniz and Descartes: Proof and Eternal Truths”, Proceedings of the British Academy(1973).
50 K. Gödel “Russell's Mathematical Logic” in The Philosophy of BertrandRussell ed. P. A. Schilpp (The Library of Living Philosophers, 1944).