Abstract
In principle, I support any effort to explicate and expose ‘latent cognitivism’ in the humanities and social and behavioral sciences. But I think V. P. J. Arponen (2013) is wrong to apply the label to the renowned Wittgenstein scholar and philosopher Peter Hacker and my purpose in this commentary is to argue why. For the sake of brevity, I will restrict my comments to just a few paragraphs of Arponen’s article that target Hacker and not go into Hacker’s scholarship at large. As a preliminary, we should remind ourselves of what Arponen means by ‘latent cognitivism’. It means that … notions such as knowledge of criteria … effectively function as the mental source of individual and collective action. The details may vary, but fundamentally (latent) cognitivism explains social reality by appeal to collectively held beliefs, mastered concepts, internalized norms and values and the like which act as the mental engine, the source, of human (collective) action. (2013: 6)
Why does Arponen think that Hacker slides into latent cognitivism, despite evidence that Hacker explicitly rejects cognitivism? It is because Hacker characterizes ‘concept-possession as knowledge of the criteria for its application’ (2007: 9). Arponen tries to cobble together support for this view by examining a handful of quotes from Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity (Baker and Hacker, 2009). 1
The first quote is from a 6-part explication of ‘familiar features of rules and rule-governed practices’ (Baker and Hacker, 2009: 50–2), subsections of which are about what we do (or get done) with rules. Arponen (2013: 9) quotes partially from the following: ‘In making connections between rules (e.g. in stipulating that compliance with a given rule is an operative fact relative to another rule) we are engaged in concept-formation, introducing criteria for the application of concepts’ (Baker and Hacker, 2009: 51). Instead of attempting to explicate this sentence – which is anything but straightforward – he immediately jumps to a passage that is 80 pages removed from it and is part of an exegesis of § 202 of Philosophical investigations (Wittgenstein, 1953). It reads: ‘So there are public criteria in behaviour for whether an act accords with a rule or not’ (Baker and Hacker, 2009: 131). Now it is significant that Arponen (2013) precedes his quoting of this sentence with ‘The criteria are collectively known in that …’ (2013: 9; emphasis added); such that his entire sentence reads: ‘The criteria are collectively known in that “there are public criteria in behaviour for whether an act accords with a rule or not”, Hacker says (ibid.: 131)’ (Arponen, 2013: 9). I say it is significant because the quote in question by Baker and Hacker – in addition to the text that surrounds it – does not even mention knowledge of any kind. So, to emphasize, the idea that ‘criteria are collectively known’ is Arponen’s idea, not Hacker’s. Now, in fairness, I do not think Hacker would deny that persons exhibit behavior expressing ‘knowledge’ of criteria. He just does not say it in the passage in question. In any case, to my fundamental question, Is there anything here that indicates Hacker believes knowledge of criteria is a mental source of human action?: no.
Next, Arponen says that ‘According to Hacker, to understand a concept is to be able to use it’ (2013: 9). In support of this claim, he quotes partially from a passage that is part of an exegesis of Philosophical investigations § 185 (Wittgenstein, 1953), which reads: ‘They [the criteria of understanding] are constituted by the speaker’s correct applications, and these exhibit the ability in which understanding consists’ (Baker and Hacker, 2009: 68). There is no need to take issue with Arponen’s apparent interpretation of this quote. (I do not think it just says ‘to understand a concept is to be able to use it’.) Rather, I want to say again that there is nothing here that must be taken as the equivalent of Hacker’s saying that the criteria of understanding – or, if we want to take it a step further, understanding as a kind of ‘knowledge’ – are a mental source of human action. In fact, in the sentence preceding the quote in question, we find the following: ‘But the criteria of understanding are not criteria for the presence of an inner state’ (Baker and Hacker, 2009: 68). It seems to me that for two reasons, this sentence is inconvenient for Arponen’s mini-thesis on Hacker. First, once more there is no mention of ‘knowledge’ of criteria. Second, it suggests that criteria of understanding are not criteria for anything mental at all! If they are not criteria for the presence of an inner state, they are not criteria for anything mental; if they are not criteria for anything mental, then they cannot be criteria for mental sources of human action and as yet there is no indication that Hacker maintains criteria function thus.
At the next step, we find the following: ‘Laying down such criteria of correctness is necessary to delineate the scope and content of any technique’ (Baker and Hacker, 2009: 144). Arponen sums this up by saying ‘The criteria define the concept’ (2013: 9). But this is too simplistic. Hacker is actually suggesting that criteria provide us with – or express – information as to what counts as a technique of a certain type, properly or improperly performed, to some level of skill. I ask yet again: Is there anything here that indicates Hacker is sliding into latent cognitivism? Not in my view. What is needed is a way to tie everything together in order to make it seem so. Arponen tries to make it seem so by concluding: ‘Therefore, on Hacker’s view, understanding comes out as knowledge of the criteria for correct concept application which is exhibited in use’ (ibid.). But, as noted already, in this and in previous passages Hacker has not even suggested that rules, criteria (including criteria of understanding), or knowledge – again, the latter being a word (with its cognates) glaringly absent in the quotes attributed to him – are potential mental sources of human action. Yet despite complete lack of evidence for his mini-thesis, Arponen insists that … at the heart of Hacker’s view of concepts is the subject’s knowledge or understanding of criteria which is, I think, naturally cast as her mental possessions, possessions that underlie her exhibition of this knowledge and understanding as abilities – or how else are we to understand her grasp of criteria if not as something that she has and on the basis of which she acts? (2013: 9)
Coming from a scholar with a strong, positive interest in Wittgenstein, there is something like a glowing ember of irony in Arponen’s asking ‘or how else are we to understand [the] grasp of criteria if not as something that [the subject] has and on the basis of which [the subject] acts’ (2013: 9)? Is not a main thrust of Wittgenstein’s ‘later’ philosophy – and Hacker’s exegeses and extensions of Wittgenstein’s work – to show the (misguided) bases for such questions? Essentially, Arponen’s question resembles the sort of question posed by Wittgenstein’s interlocutor in Philosophical investigations. Does Arponen want us to believe that Hacker is under the spell of such questions? I hope not because he is not and Arponen simply has not shown that he (Hacker) is. Nevertheless, the misguided question is a good one in the sense that it segues to considerations on how ‘an explicitly cognitivistically oriented thinker’ might adopt Hacker’s views (ibid.). Of course a cognitivistically-oriented thinker could readily adopt his views, so long as a preliminary of such adoption would be gross misinterpretation of those views!
If I am right, a number of subsequent comments by Arponen in the remainder of his article only extend the problem. He says, for example, that ‘it seems there is nothing to stop the cognitivist from giving a cognitivistic spin to Hacker’s views on criteria and associated notions’ (2013: 10). Well, who needs a cognitivist to do that when a Wittgensteinian (Arponen) will do it? He adds that cognitivists might take Hacker’s view as functioning ‘as an account of human sociality precisely because of its latent cognitivism’ (ibid.). Well, they might if they misread Hacker along the lines that Arponen has misread him. But also, like Arponen, cognitivists might incorrectly attribute to Hacker an empirical account of anything. In his exegeses of Wittgenstein and extensions of Wittgenstein’s work, Hacker does not present an empirical view of human sociality or anything else. His ‘notion of criteria’ is not intended to ‘do any work in explaining human action’ (ibid.; emphasis added). Hacker is not about the empirically testable and discoverable. He is about the logic of our language (or grammar) that is there in plain sight, but of which we lose sight easily when we seek to explain. Still, Arponen obliquely attributes a cognitivist ‘conception of human action’ to Hacker by saying that ‘a consistently non-cognitivist conception’ would tie human action and sociality ‘not inwards to the subject’s grasp of criteria … but outwards to the subject’s accomplishment in the process of human interaction’ (ibid.; emphases added). It is as grossly unfair to suggest that Hacker wants to tie human action and sociality inwards (to persons’ grasp of criteria) as it is to blame ‘the terms Hacker chooses’ for creating any such impression. Hacker’s terminology is not at fault. At fault is that very conception of language Hacker is at pains to combat.
To conclude, I want to indicate some agreement with Arponen by saying that any scholar with an extensive record of publication (like Hacker) is bound to use words in ways that might encourage misinterpretation. Hacker has done this, but not in ways that Arponen suggests. For example, I do not like Hacker’s (2007: 7) use of ‘norms of representation’ because ‘representation’ is such a problematic commonplace in the cognitive sciences. Nevertheless, I think I have put together a pretty good defense of my thesis that Arponen has not shown that Hacker’s notion of criteria qualifies him as a latent cognitivist. In summary, there are two reasons for this. First, it is a non sequitur to say that if Hacker posits persons as having knowledge of criteria – which, in the quotes addressed by Arponen, he does not – Hacker thinks criteria are mental sources of human action. The latter simply does not follow from the former. Second, even if the heart of Hacker’s views on concepts is the person’s knowledge or understanding of criteria (as Arponen claims), Hacker does not ‘cast’ these as ‘mental possessions’ that underlie exhibition of knowledge and understanding in the form of abilities. In the decades I have been reading Hacker’s work, I have never seen him give any indication that he takes this position.