WITTGENSTEIN AND THE PROBLEM OF MACHINE CONSCIOUSNESS

Abstract

In the course of Wittgenstein's repeated attempts at a systematic exposition of his ideas, from the Blue Book to the Philosophical Investigations, it was invariably the arguments relating to meaning as use which set the stage for the rest of the discussion.It was precisely the insight conveyed by these arguments which, in 1930-31, led to an over-all philosophical breakthrough in Wittgenstein's own development -to the antimentalism and anti-essentialism characteristic of his later views."Thinking is the use of symbols", he puts down in his notebook on June 29, 1930 1 , adding, some pages later: "Thought, insofar as one can speak of it at all, must be something quite pedestrian." 2 Now the philosopher who first introduced the idea that meaning is reference, and faced the ensuing difficulties bound up with terms which are meaningful but do not, apparently, refer to anything, was of course Plato.And it is a striking fact that Wittgenstein, whose comments on earlier figures in the history of philosophy are notoriously scarce, often mentions, and indeed quotes, Plato.'In the 1930-31 •1 am indebted to the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung under whose auspices, in 1986-87, most of the research embodied in the present paper was conducted.The argument as here outlined was first presented at the International Summer School "Philosophical Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence" at Bolzano, in July 1988.I. "Das Denken ist das Gebrauchen von Symbolen", MS 108, p.201.Passages from Wittgenstein's Nachlaft are cited according to the numbering given in G.H. von Wright, "The Wittgenstein Papers", in von Wright, Wittgenstein, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982.2. "Der Gedanke, soweit man iiberbaupt von ihm reden kann, mull etwas ganz bausbackenes sein", ibid., p.216.3. "Wittgenstein", writes von Wright, "had done no systematic reading in the classics of philosophy.He could read only what be could wbolebcartedly 376 notebooks, in particular, Wittgenstein repeatedly refers to passages in Plato where the connections between a misguided theory of meaning on the one hand, and an extravagant ontology on the other, are especially conspicuous.Thus for example the important entry of July 9, 1931 -"To understand the meaning of a word means to be acquainted with, to understand, a use" 4 -is followed, on the next page, by a quote from the Crary/us on the assumed, or desirable, likeness between signs and the objects they stand forS, and, on the page after, by a quote from the Theaetetus on the particular state of affairs that anything represented must be, somehow, real.6 The latter elicits a comment from Wittgenstein: "How infinitely simple this problem is!And how strange that it could have been regarded as a problem at all"', followed, on the next day, by the remark: "I do not find in Plato to a question like 'what is knowledge' the preliminary answer: Let us try and see how this word is used".aIt is as if Wittgenstein were conscious of the fact that he has, in philosophy, to start anew at the assimilate .... [A)s a young man he read Schopenhauer.From Spinoza, Hume, and Kant he said tbebe could only get occasional glimpses of understanding.I do not think that he could have enjoyed Aristotle or Leibniz, two great logicians before him.But it is significant that he did read and enjoy Plato."("Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Biographical Sketch", in von Wright, Wittgenstein, p.33.) 4. "Die Bedeutung eines Wort es verstehen, heillt, einen Gebrauch kennen, versteben", MS 111, p.12.5. "Unsere Weise von den Wlirtern zu reden klinnen wir durch das beleuchten was Sokrates im 'Kratylos' sagt.Kratylos: 'Bei weitem & oboe Frage isl es vorziiglicher, Sokrates, durch ein ahnliches darzustellen, was jemaod darstellen will, als durch das erste beste.' -Sokrates: 'Wohlgesprochen.' " 6. "Sokrates zu Theaitetos: 'Und wer vorstellt, sollte nicht etwas vor• stellen?' -Th.: 'Notwendig.' -Soc.: 'Und wer etwas vorstellt, nichts Wirkliches?' -Th.: 'So scbeint es.' " 7. "Wie unendlicb einfach dieses Problem!Und wie seltsam, dall man es iiberhaupt als Problem konnte ansehen wollen", ibid., p.14, entry of July 14, 1931.8. "lch finde bei Plato auf eine Frage wie 'was ist Erkenntnis' nicht die vorliiufige Antwort: Sehen wireinmal nach, wiedieses Wort gebraucht wird", ibid., pp.26f.