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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 June 2010
One of the most powerful weapons which recent writers have managed to direct against the view that ‘thought’ is a process that can be validly distinguished from its expression or articulation in language is the well-known infinite regress argument. The argument itself has had a very long and fruitful career and has proven to be highly adaptable. I believe, however, that its application in this context is illegitimate and contains a serious error.
1 Wittgenstein, L., The Blue and Brown Books. Blackwell, Oxford, 1958, pp. 11–12.Google Scholar
2 Translated and edited by London, A. Wolf.: Adam and Charles Black,1910Google Scholar.
3 See, for example, his interesting remark in the Short Treatise, pp. 107–108: “…since the Will…is only an Idea of our willing this or that, and therefore only a mode of thought, a thing of Reason, and not a real thing, nothing can be caused by it… And so … I … think it unnecessary to ask whether the will is free or not free”.
4 The Chief Works of Spinoza. Translated by Elwes, R. H. H.. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1955, Vol. II, p. 119Google Scholar (Ethics, Part II).
5 Ibid., p. 109.
6 Letter II.
7 Short Treatise, p. 109.
8 P. 137.
9 Short Treatise, p. 114.
10 “Conscience and Moral Convictions”, Analysis, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1940Google Scholar. Reprinted in Philosophy and Analysis (ed. Margaret Macdonald. New York: Philosophicalibrary, 1954, p. 164). This assault upon ‘thought’, not only by Ryle but also by the other analysts, seems to be modelled after Hume's classic demolition of the Argument from Design in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
11 “Thinking and Meaning', Inaugural Lecture. London: H. K. Lewis & Co., Ltd., 1947Google Scholar.
12 P. 21.
13 S P. 22.
14 Ibid.
15 P. 23.
16 Pp. 24–25.
17 Or as Ayer has put it in his ‘Introduction’ to British Empirical Philosophers, since “some symbols must perform their function without the intervention of other symbols”, to make words the signs of ideas or thoughts is simply to introduce unnecessary duplication. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952, p. 18)Google Scholar.
18 In his chapter on the Infinite Regress in Philosophical Reasoning (London, Duckworth, 1961)Google Scholar John Passmore makes a somewhat similar suggestion. The same may be said, perhaps, of his remarks regarding how an Infinite Regress can be evaded—viz. by what he calls “a claim of privilege”. But about this I am somewhat less certain, for his discussion here is, unfortunately, so sparse and tersethat it is difficult to know just what he has packed into this notion of ‘privilege’, or how he would, by means of it, solve the problem here under discussion.
19 Vol. II, p. 13.
20 And since this ‘arranging’ or knowledge is not equivalent to or identical with the final product, it makes no sense to argue, as one perhaps might be tempted to—and as Spinoza himself in fact did in connexion with desire—that if we must know before we can know, then we already know it and there is no need in knowing it (i.e., in getting to know it). What this argument would, of course, prove is that knowledge is impossible. But while asimilar argument was used by Spinoza to prove that free will is impossible, he explicitly rejects it here as in any way proper. Why he did so is, for the moment, what I am trying to explore here.
21 Ibid., p. II.
22 Ibid., pp. 11–12. It is interesting that Ayer should make use of an almost identical example to prove that there can be no such thing as “mind” (conceived as a kind of instrument or faculty): “For if it is to be assumed”, he remarks, “that every activity requires an instrument to set it going, then the instrument will itself require a further instrument, and so ad infinitum; while if we do not make this assumption, ther e is no need for th e faculties in th e first place”(Inaugural Lecture, p. 7).