Abstract
In ‘Correspondence to Reality in Ethics’, Mario Brandhorst examines the view of ethics that Wittgenstein took in his later years. According to Brandhorst, Wittgenstein leaves room for truth and falsity, facts, correspondence and reality in ethics. Wittgenstein’s target, argues Brandhorst, is objectivity. I argue (1) that Brandhorst’s arguments in favour of truth, facts, reality and correspondence in ethics invite similar arguments in favour of objectivity, (2) that Brandhorst does not recognize this because his conception of objectivity is distorted by a Platonist picture, and (3) that he misinterprets the passage which he takes to support a Wittgensteinian case against objectivity.
De Mesel Benjamin. 2017. Wittgenstein and Objectivity in Ethics. A Reply to Brandhorst. Philosophical Investigations 40: 40–63. Published by Wiley-Blackwell. See http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/phin.12129/abstract.
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Notes
- 1.
In this respect, Brandhorst refers to Wittgenstein (1977: III-§311f.).
- 2.
See also B 233 (‘what it is for such an expression to be true or false can be very different from case to case’).
- 3.
See also B 234 (‘in an entirely different way’) and B 241 (‘a different idea of “a correspondence” or “responsibility” to “a reality ”’).
- 4.
Brandhorst uses these words in a discussion of mathematical expressions. But as we shall see in Sect. 5.2.6, he thinks that his suggestions with respect to truth , etc. in mathematical expressions naturally extend to ethics.
- 5.
- 6.
See also Ripstein (1993: 359): the problem for objectivity is not that moral judgments always depend in many ways on personal standpoints, characteristics, reactions, etc., but that they sometimes inappropriately depend on them.
- 7.
See also Wiggins (1998: 101): ‘[…] a matter that is anthropocentric may be either more objective or less objective, or (at the limit) merely subjective ’. Sabina Lovibond (1983: 40) quotes David Pears (1971: 171), who ascribes to Wittgenstein the idea that ‘objectivism, in its only tenable form, collapses into anthropocentrism’.
- 8.
See Crary (2007a: especially Chapters 1 and 2) for a full-blown defence of this point.
- 9.
Leich and Holtzman claim that ‘Objectivity, on one well-established use of the term, is located in the distinction between appearance and reality ; to maintain that it is an objective matter whether or not a certain speaker’s claim is true is, on this use, to maintain that there is a clear difference between the claim’s merely seeming to be true to the speaker and its actually being true’ (Leich and Holtzman 1981: 2).
- 10.
Wittgenstein seems to link the objective to what is not a matter of decision in Wittgenstein 1974: §§270–271.
- 11.
For another link between objectivity, truth and correspondence, see Ripstein (1993: 360–361).
- 12.
For another link between objectivity, truth and knowledge , see Lovibond (2002: 15–16).
- 13.
Although some commentators have read him as if he did. Crispin Wright (1980) is an example. For a good discussion of Wright’s Wittgenstein and objectivity in logic and mathematics, see Diamond (1991a). Diamond shows that Wittgenstein’s later philosophy of logic and mathematics is ‘distorted if seen in anti-realist terms, and does not involve the denials of objectivity Wright sees’ (Diamond 1991a: 217). Another example of a commentator who reads Wittgenstein as if he denied that there is objectivity in logic and mathematics is Michael Dummett (1959). Diamond discusses ‘the impression, given to Dummett and others, that Wittgenstein denies the objectivity of proof. It looks as if Wittgenstein is saying that it is all really subjective , after all, only what characterizes it is that we say it is not. But Wittgenstein is not denying that there is all the difference between what is really an objectively valid proof and one which only appears valid’ (Diamond 1991c: 256). See, in this respect, Wittgenstein 2009b: §348 and Baker and Hacker 2009: 297.
- 14.
- 15.
According to Brandhorst, another target of Wittgenstein is realism (B 21). In the light of Brandhorst’s own arguments, this is a strange claim. Does he not ascribe a form of realism to Wittgenstein when he says that, according to Wittgenstein, a reality corresponds to ethical expressions? Brandhorst seems to think that we can only speak of realism when the reality that we appeal to is of a particular kind, more specifically the kind of reality that corresponds to expressions in physical theory . He says that realism is Wittgenstein’s target because ‘claims to truth and objectivity that are the hallmark of the realist perspective cannot be maintained’ (B 21). In this chapter, I argue that claims to objectivity can be maintained, if only in a particular sense. But that just means that the realism we can ascribe to Wittgenstein in the light of Brandhorst’s arguments will be a particular kind of realism, not that realism as such (rather than Platonist forms of it) was his target, as Brandhorst claims. With respect to truth, Brandhorst seems to think that realists cannot understand truth as Wittgenstein understands it. But that is not true. As Brandhorst himself acknowledges early in his article, a Wittgensteinian deflationary conception of truth ‘does not by itself rule out the idea that there is an objective reality of one kind or another [my italics] to which a given true proposition corresponds’ (B 6). A deflationary conception of truth is perfectly compatible with realism .
- 16.
And, one should add, if what is not objective is thereby subjective . That may seem obvious, and it is clearly obvious for Brandhorst, but see Wiggins (2006b: 377).
- 17.
Although it is probably more accurate, within a Tractarian framework, to say that it makes no sense to speak of ethical truths or facts or objectivity in ethics or correspondence of ethical language with an ethical reality . It does not follow from ‘it makes no sense to say that ethics is objective ’ that ‘ethics is subjective’ or that ‘ethics is essentially subjective ’. What follows is that it makes no sense to say that ethics is subjective either. For the sake of the argument, however, I grant that Brandhorst is right in saying that, for the early Wittgenstein, ethics is subjective.
- 18.
See also B 245: ‘[…] a “quality” as the objectivist conceives of it’.
- 19.
One could object here that perhaps Brandhorst sees the objectivist not simply as someone who believes that there is objectivity in ethics, but rather as someone who believes that there is a particular kind of objectivity in ethics, more specifically the kind of objectivity that we find in physics . In that case, the belief that there is objectivity in ethics would not make one an ethical objectivist, as the belief that ethical expressions correspond to a reality does not make one an ethical realist in Brandhorst’s view (see footnote 15), and the objectivist would indeed require ‘something more substantial’. However, if this were the reading that Brandhorst favours, then what he says about the objectivist could not support his case, on behalf of Wittgenstein, against claims to objectivity in ethics. At most, it could support a case against a kind of Platonist objectivism. However, Brandhorst makes it clear that he thinks that Wittgenstein is not just arguing against ‘overly ambitious forms of Platonism ’, but that realism and objectivity are his targets, and that that is what he wishes to make plausible (B 21–22).
- 20.
The analogy is meant to clarify a point about our use of ‘appear’, and nothing more. I do not want to suggest that the analogy between seeing that something is good and seeing that something is red holds throughout. See, on this point, Chap. 6.
- 21.
- 22.
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De Mesel, B. (2018). Wittgenstein and Objectivity in Ethics. A Reply to Brandhorst. In: The Later Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy. Nordic Wittgenstein Studies, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97619-8_5
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