Appearance and Reality Bernard Williams and AJ Ayer on the Philosophy of Science The relationship of philosophy to science has

created many problems in 20th Century philosophy as the scientic view of the world has drifted further and further apart from our ordinary common sense picture. This is the problem tackled here by Professor Sir Alfred Ayer of Oxford University, who was the major English [indecipherable 1:00] in the 1930s of the movement known as 'Logical Positivism', and Professor Bernard Williams of the University of Cambridge. Would you agree, Bernard, that one of the things that distinguish philosophy anyhow, British philosophy in the last 30 years or so has been its extreme reverence to common sense? This hasn't generally been true. I wonder why it's been so. Oh I think there's been an awful lot of it, yes. I think it's taken interestingly some rather different forms. I don't know whether you'd agree with this but I think that the best way of going at this is the following way: depending on whether one contrasts common sense with philosophy on one hand, whether one contrasts common sense with science. Because presumably quite often we mean by common sense is a lot of beliefs of chaps in the street and you and me and so on, which may actually show to be wrong just by scientic and empirical inquiry. Now, I suppose the most important way in which British philosophy has been very reverential to common sense is that it's been very reverential to common sense as against supposed, surprising ndings of philosophy not of science but of philosophy. Well I suppose to some extent as against science too because as you take the big gures, the people who have had most inuence - people like Wittgenstein, Muar, Austin, Harteld the biggest gures. They all seemed to be saying that the common sense view of the man, well the plain man belief in chairs and tables and so on and that of observable properties was something unquestionable even back then.

Narrator:

Ayer:

Williams:

Ayer:

[The Limitation of Philosophy] Williams: It seems to me that there's been a continuous and very common move in 20th century philosophy, and not just in the tradition we're talking about. It seems to me even in all the ways true of continental philosophy, of certain kinds of phenomenalogies and so on that the pretentions of certain kinds of 19th century philosophy, that is the metaphysical speculation could by itself discover fundamental and large scale facts about the world, which are unsuspected by the ordinary man and by scientists. That idea seems to me has largely gone.

Ayer:

Well in a sense I suppose that's a good thing, isn't it? I mean I think [indecipherable 4:02] there has been greater self consciousness about philosophy; philosophers wondering much more than they used to what they work up to, what their methods should be, what they could hope to achieve and with that I think a limitation of the planes of philosophy. People came to think well you couldn't achieve all that much. All these types have their own criteria and what's a philosopher to do? I think that's right. There is a famous remark by Wittgenstein, Philosophy leaves everything as it is. I think in a way what we ought to be doing is seeing to what extent that's true and to what extent it isn't.

Williams:

[Positivism] Williams: Now positivism is a tremendously strong example of the restriction of the power of philosophy, isn't it? Very straight forward in a sense. That is to say at least it's a restriction of the constructive part of philosophy because people previously claimed to nd out those truths about the universe by speculative, philosophical methods. Positivism is saying absolute rot. The only way of nding out anything in the universe is by the methods of science, by the methods of positive science. That's why it is called positivism. On the other hand, of course, it did rate rather highly the negative power of philosophy in the sense that it thought that it could, as philosophy, persuade us that a lot of things we knew made sense didn't. Well it made certain, if you like, certain philosophical assumptions to start with. Namely that the only way to discover what the world was like was by looking at it. By sense perception. By sense perception and by the elaboration of sense perception.

Ayer:

Williams: Ayer: [Music] Ayer:

Now I don't think the positivist wants to put any restraints upon scientic techniques but they did insist they should always be conferrable. Then you get to the conclusion, well if philosophy is not competing with science, what else can it be doing? And the answer comes serving science. When you start by saying science has no competitor, if you want to describe it well. The assumption is that the philosophy is itself a bunch of knowledge that seeks to advance knowledge of the world. Science does this. There's no room for competitor so what can philosophy do? It can only serve science. So serve and in a certain sense respect. Yeah. It seems to be there are two xtures of this positivist [indecipherable 6:38], which are very interesting. One is the idea that philosophy always follows

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science. That science makes these discoveries and then what philosophy does in the positivist picture is to pair things up, make them more obvious, order things in a logically transparent way. Certainly great diffidence about telling any scientist what he should be up to, obviously but also a certain respect in the following sense that positivism was very keen on saying the world really contains just those things and no more, which gure in the scientic description. [Music] Williams: When a philosopher says, all the world really contains, and so and so, which has been across the subject of much abuse and skepticism in modern philosophical treatments saying things like that. What he means in the minds of many philosophers has been the world contains really just those things which render it scientic comprehensible, but I think the positivism did that too. It thought that all the metaphysics, all the more ambitious philosophical notions, speculative notions of the past were rubbish sort of froth that could be blown off the top of the glass to reveal the genuine scientic liquid below. And this was part of positivist as I take it positivism's tremendous emphasis on sense experience, that it thought all scientic conclusions just were statements about observations worked up in a certain way, presented in useful kinds of way. The idea of that normal scientic concept, so inadequate scientic concept of the metaphysical kind could have played a positive role in scientic thinking because I think [indecipherable 9:43] positivism, isn't it? It therefore belongs a bit to the priests and kings kind of thinking. I think it's a fair criticism of the positivist that they were from the point-of-view of that attitude to science rather unhistorical. They didn't actually investigate how scientic data had come about and if they had investigated it I think they would have discovered much more metaphysics in their bad sense on being scientically useful. I mean people getting at scientic theories through holding metaphysical beliefs. If one takes a positivist who doesn't try to restrict the way the scientists arrive at their theories, allows them to have metaphysical ideas, even [indecipherable 10:22] ideas in their theories but then says, well once the theories are there we can analyze them, criticize them, show how the concepts function, how the theory is veriable and analyze it, and in fact carry out the positivist program. What's wrong with that? is the conception of what positivists should be doing. What does it leave out? It clearly does leave out a lot of, I mean, obviously leaves a lot of questions about value.

Ayer:

Williams: [Crosstalk]

I think the one thing that it leaves out is an account of the relations between what the scientist nds interesting and what he doesn't nd interesting. You see, one of the seats of philosophical puzzlement is this some scientic account gives us a story about what familiar objects are, if you use a rather crude nursery phrase, [indecipherable 11:23], or what properties they have in terms of some sophisticated physical theory.

[Everyday Experience The Manifest Image] Williams: Everyday experience. The manifest image of things. In our everyday life we have ordinary impressions of things about us in terms of their textures and their colors and their surfaces and what they feel like. Moreover, we have descriptions of them in terms of our sentiments, our uses, our purposes, our institutions and so on. We have a whole lot of descriptions of a lot of physical things in movement, namely animals and people, in terms of actions, objectives and so forth. Now scientic inquiries of various kinds will tell us quite a lot about what is going in these various aptitudes. What is the case in the environment or setup patterns of explanation. Now scientists themselves may well not be enormously interested beyond a certain level in how the story he's telling relates to the complexities of the story that you tell in everyday life, to the manifest theory. Part of the analysis of science, which we're relying through the philosopher on the positivist program will be saying how scientic hypotheses are tested at the manifest level. In this sense you will be dealing with relational [indecipherable 12:48] because you're showing how statements at one level supports statements at the other. Now the question is whether we're requiring more than this.

Ayer:

[What is really there?] Ayer: Williams: What is really there? Is it a set of atoms or the familiar photo that we all see? Is there any conict between them? What occurs to me, one thing worth mentioning there was an argument you remember by Gilbert Ryle on this subject some odd years ago. It seems to me to be an extremely bad argument. Language is a bad argument. It seems to me to be quite interesting. And also to illustrate this point about the common sense-acality of some analytic philosophy. You remember what I'm talking about. I do remember, yes. This is the one, you remember, that goes like this. We've got the descriptions of the world around us in terms of our ordinary experience books, tables, colors, smells, associations, emotional experiences, institutions. And then we've got a somewhat desiccated story, which is told to us by physicists and possibly by certain kinds of psychologists neurophysiologists and so on about matter and motion and electric forces and reected light waves and so on. What is the relation between these two, which has been a puzzle for philosophy obviously since at the very least the 17th century, perhaps earlier. Now Ryle said the relation between these two things is like the relation between the books in the library and our ordinary reading of them on the one hand, and on the other hand the accounts that are kept how the books are bought and so on by the librarian or the treasurer or the accountant on the

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other. The accountant's story, which is all in terms of numbers... an overwhelmingly similarity between accountants and scientists in terms of numbers. This represents merely one dimension, an abstracted element which will be put in quantitative terms. This is of course in no way conicting with our everyday experience of the books as objects to be possessed, read, handled, received and so on. The idea of this analogy means, I take it, that physics just represents a certain abstracted picture useful for certain impoverish purposes, but in no way upsetting to or inconsistent with our everyday experience of the world around us. I think this was the point. But of course there is an inherent vital weakness in this analogy, which underlies Gilbert Ryle's case, isn't it which is that nobody, from looking at the accountant's records in a library, could predict or explain either the color or the content of the books. The powerful fact about physics is there's actually no [indecipherable 15:40] to predict and explain the general character of the properties of the things around one. It's explanatory power which connects the physical explanation with the idea that it somehow relates to what really as opposed to what it seems to us. Ayer: I think it is a very poor analogy of Gilbert; I quite agree with you there. But the point it was designed to make and how ineffectively it made it, was that the scientic and common sense [indecipherable 16:11] were not competitive. Now do I understand you hold that they are competitive? Well I put it like this. They're competitive in the following sense. What unreective common sense takes for granted in its descriptions of colors and things of the world is either confused or wrong. And reection on the scientic story may well lead one to think that in some sense in 17th century philosophers were right when they said the world isn't really colored. That being a really dramatic way of saying not what would be overdoing it a bit maybe we're mistaken all the time when we're saying things are green. But for instance there would be absolutely no point in talking about the color of the world not relative to humans. [The Causal Mechanism of Perception] Ayer: I think one of the strongest motives for taking in the [indecipherable 17:02] you have just been taking is our knowledge of the causal mechanism of perception. We learn about light falling on the object and light waves, optic nerves and so on. And so we come to think of color as something that we contribute. But then this is equally true of the perception of the other property of the object. I mean, the perception of its shape, perception of where it is, the same causal story. So how are you going to distinguish between what we contribute and what it does? It's not just so much that there is a causal mechanism of perception but that we have frightfully good reasons for thinking of various kinds. Again putting it quite roughly what color things look vary enormously with the kind of observers that are looking at them. It may be that the size of things varies with... the size that things look varies with the observers. Look, this object

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here. Now it might well be... it's actually a marvelous example of philosophy's material object, isn't it? It's extremely solid. The color of this, if you ask me is blue, might well appear quite different to a different person. It may be that the size of things varies. It may well be that some small organism perceiving this it would occupy a large part of its visual eld. It would appear large in that sense. We can't understand any of those facts, we can't explain any of those facts, we can't render any of those facts comprehensible to us, ourselves, unless we have a neutral [indecipherable 18:50] in which all those situations can be equally described and rendered comprehensible in terms of scientic law. And that vocabulary seems to be something like the vocabulary of physics and therefore there is something to be said for the view which was basically very crudely thought by Locke and others in the 17th century. There are certain primer qualities that things have roughly those qualities that make them the subject of physical science, which there is some sense in saying they really have. There are other properties that they, qualities that they have, such as their color, taste and so their smell, which really are much more relative to observers. If there weren't any observers there just wouldn't be any point... in describing a world from outside without observers there wouldn't be any point in referring to the color, taste and so on. If the world contained anything it would undergo physical description. Ayer: What is meant by saying and what [indecipherable 19:52] are saying that colors, what's really there as opposed to that state of the common sense description which tells us only in part at least the effect of what's really there on us. What kind of statement is this that what's really there is a set of atoms? I mean the rst thing to say is this, isn't it? Of course any statement of a metaphysical kind about what's really there has to be approached with a certain measure of sympathy. Austin was very good at doing this kind of thing quite rightly poured scorn on various uses that made it the word real by [indecipherable 20:33]. We already mentioned I think more doing the same thing. And of course there's no inconsistency at all in something being both really there in our ordinary way of speaking, our ordinary way of thought and being something that's only there because I have it affects me in a certain way. I mean for instance, the fact that I nd the girl very attractive is a relational fact about her and me; it's not a property of her as quite independent of me. So there's a difference between by really nding the girl very attractive and just pretending to nd the girl very attractive, or some other contrast such as Austin would have drawn to it really being so, her really being attractive as opposed to her being just made up that way. Of course you have to take these remarks, metaphysics remarks, with a certain amount of imagination. The thought of the world is really as it's described by physics does seem to me to be that it's the only view which in the end systematically carries through what is an assumption of common sense, namely that the world can and did exist independently of any observers. [Can We Talk About The World Existing Independently Of Any Observers?]

Williams:

Williams:

Any description we give of it existing independently of any observers never the less is a description which is given in our terms and our terms are all developed from how it does look to us when we are observing. Never the less it seems to me that one ought to be able, if one really does carry through to the end the assumption, which is itself an assumption of common sense and of of science, namely that the universe does exist in large part independent of any observers. We do start the distinctions between the properties which obviously doesn't really [indecipherable 22:35] observer. For instance, let's take an absolutely frivolous example. Imagine the world before any human observers. The earth. Some dinosaur falls over in an undignied way. This could be described from us looking at that sight as ludicrous or absurd or comic. How would you suppose that within the item which in any deeper sense was intrinsically common called ludicrous in this world. It means would look to us if we were there ludicrous or comic with our standards of what's ludicrous and comic, okay? Well in this matter of describing a world without any observers in it, we have to describe it as it were from outside. We form an imaginative picture of a world which is unpopulated by human beings because we may actually in forming that imaginative picture of the world unpopulated by human beings, be as it were covertly regarding ourselves as an observer of it. It's rather like this present situation. I suppose a lot of people who are watching us have forgotten there was a camera here, as it were. It is via such a camera that this scene is presented to them, and only because it's there it can be so. In fact, we can imagine the world without any observers but the question arises to what extent are we really writing ourselves in as covert observers? I think it can be argued regarding certain things like color but really we are. What we are doing is describing the world not as it was without any observers but as it would be if we were there as observers.

[Phenomenalism] Williams: The thing is this. The phenomenalism and all such theories were in the view that if every statement was to be turned into how it would look. Now, well, the consequence of phenomenalism I'm sure you'd agree, which I think is a perfectly consistent consequence of that way of going about it that is that everything is dependent on the notion of what an observation would be using the following. In the large, metaphysical way consider two universes. One's got nothing in it at all. There's absolutely nothing or if you'd like absolutely empty space. Are you having difficulty with there being nothing at all? You just use Hume's trick. Take everything one by one and imagine it isn't there. If you can long enough there won't be anything at all. Now that's one universe. The other universe consists entirely of material objects to the observers. Okay? Now phenomenalism says the difference between those two universes is just the following that of one it's true and the other it's false that if there were observers they would have certain experiences. Now that notion to me is unintelligible, that the only difference between two states of affairs lies in what would happen if something were there, which isn't there, were there. It seems

to me unintelligible. It must be the case there's some actual difference between them. It seems to me the only coherent way of describing the actual way between them is in terms of a phrase that I think we've already used perhaps, of a scientic realism. That is in the term, the minimum terms that are required to describe what's there in order to explain the perceptions that the observers would have if they were there. Ayer: I don't nd this difference unintelligible I must say. I'm frankly happier with it than I am of this notion of an entirely empty universe. I do nd that hard to swallow. An entirely empty area of space will do for the sake. I mean I don't have to have a universe to make this point. The point is rather straightforward. It does seem to me that what phenomenalists believe is something of the same form of the following. I could have two absolutely indistinguishable, empty boxes which are exactly alike in every respect except this. If I were to put a match into one of them and catch re and if I were to put the same match into the other, it wouldn't. That seems to me to use an old fashioned phrase rebarbative to reason that there could be two things which were exactly alike; the only difference between them being that if you did something to one of them, something wouldn't happen to the other. We surely think that statements of the kind, if you were to do so and so you'd see so and so, and such, must be grounded in an actual certain thing. I do think that in a sense we do start with the phenomenalist position. We start with the point-of-view of what we know, with that experience and we then elaborate theories to explain them. I would regard both common sense and physics as an extent for theory. Now I think what I might got from you is in my interpretation of the question what is really there... I think that asking one that is asking what theory are you going to accept? So long as the theory works, so long as the theory is successful in predicting and expanding your experience, I don't think there is a genuine question as to whether it corresponds to something that is there. I think one's saying this is what there is, is simply aware of saying this is the theory I'm going to stand by. I take scientic realism simply as being opting for a physical description of the world, for the description of the world as we get in the web of physicists as opposed to perhaps to a common sense picture of the world. I don't think that in the further question of this being right to distinguish something being useful. [The Pragmatist Position, What's Useful] Williams: Then we do have a very interesting, complicated and paradoxical relation here I think between philosophy and common sense because there's a certain sense in which the position that you just mentioned is in a sense more common sensical than the scientic metaphysics, some critics would say, scientistic metaphysics. You're saying there's no privileged sense of what's really there of the rather more hopeful kind, as I was drawing.

Williams:

Ayer:

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[Indecipherable 29:00] certain statements being true and I'm not going to say there's an elephant in the room if I choose to think so. Of course not. I think we're agreed about that. On the other hand it seems to me your position, which you rightly refer to as a pragmatist position, lies wildly in the face of common sense. Of course this just illustrates how ramshackle or wobbly the nature of common sense has been in the discussion up until recent philosophy because it does seem to me that one thing that most common sense or ordinary people would take for granted is quite certain that there's a lot of things there and that human beings and observers are in the world among other things. Well this of course I accept. This is part of the theory that I'm opting for. What it does follow is that our description of what's there is independently of our arrival and our consciousness just depends on what we nd useful. The question what's really there as opposed to our looking at it or our being there is a question which is about us again. It's about our convenience. That doesn't seem to me to be... I mean it may be right but it doesn't seem to be very obvious. You're popping in and out of the theory in a way that I don't much care for. Let's take it concretely. Supposing it were the case that you couldn't represent or properly represent the scientic particles as literally parts of that object that you're holding up. So perhaps then to choose between saying well it really is the color that I see it or it really is colorless. Then on what basis is one going to choose other than simply what picture of the world am I going to hold? Eddinger said, he said there was one table which was the table of common sense and there was another table, which was the table of physics. This was a conict. I think that one isn't there because I mean there's a very, very shallow and straightforward way of reconciling of that. Which is to say solid means or given purposes not having holes in it of the size sufficiently worry as it were. Of course the common sense is obviously solid and the other isn't. In this sense you can't reconcile them.

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Ayer:

Williams:

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What you say is a lot of particles are discontinuous but they're so close... I mean the discontinuity is not perceptual by the naked eye and therefore what is in fact not solid looks solid. Again, you went to say that this is a property of color, those particles, that in an assemblage they form an object that is colored. Now this route can be taken. And then there's no particular problem. If you don't take that view then you do have to choose it seems to me, and I can't understand on what basis you would accept [indecipherable 32:11], which picture appeals to you more. Well I do think, all I'll say at the moment is I do think that that consequence is extremely paradoxical. It seems to me to undermine in a certain sense. Well

Williams:

let's put it this way. It seems to me to undermine something which even empirically, and as a matter of common knowledge we believe to be true that is the world existing. That we are in a sense advantageous arrival. [Indecipherable 32:42] idealism, phenomenalism, vericationism all these doctrines is that in a curious way they're anthropocentric in the end. They make the whole description of the world revolve around our experience. Now, scientic realism wants to take serious and metaphysically the idea that we are just [indecipherable 33:03] world, the world is independent of us. Can I just go on? I think I may be able to put the protest. You see I think what a lot of other philosophies would say is, no, this is not so. We can represent our language perfectly well the truth that the world exists independently of observers and it existed before we got here. All these philosophers would say is we insist on is that the language in which we describe anyone, in which we describe anyone, including the world without us. If you try to imagine a world without us, the world as it were before we arrived. The language we use must be our language and we learn it in terms of our experience and all its sense must be in terms of our experience. I suppose the most drastic form of that in modern philosophy is in fact the philosophy of Wittgenstein. [The Philosophy of Wittgenstein] Williams: It seems to me that Wittgenstein more than anybody else practically in recent philosophy was impressed by the idea that our language has the meaning we give it. It has the meaning, which is derived from the way it's taught and it's implicit in the way it's taught and it can't reach out beyond the ways in which we are introduced to it. And you combine that also with very radical and a very interesting set of reections about the ways in which a practice or rule which has already been acquired can or can't bind you for the future. There's something mysteric about the idea saying as we do when we teach some rule of behavior because you don't so and so up to this point, you must do so and so in this next situation. You say, why am I not free? We'd constantly come back from the thought that we found one way of continuing a practice, one way of developing an institution or so on, a very necessary or obvious way to come back to the idea that this was an anthropological fact. It's a fact about human nature. It might not even be, because he didn't really distinguish very much between as it were of psychological and anthropological level here. It might even be a property of the group, not necessarily humanity. A form of life. A form of life. In Wittgenstein's famous equation of a language with a form of life I think enabled the form of life to be in principle at least one of a small group of people, of a tribe a favorite example of his or indeed of humanity. Sometimes some of his propositions seemed to be relative to humanity. I must say Wittgenstein never does what both Hume and Kant in different ways did try to do, which was to show exactly to what certainty these propositions were relative. I mean Hume was very keen on trying to show certain sorts of ways we had of going on were relative to the fact that we were human being. Kant was concerned showing the various ways we had of going on relative to the fact that we were something slightly more general, relative to something

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slightly more general than human beings, namely creatures who found out about universe serially through some kind of sensation. But Wittgenstein's theory doesn't do that. He says just look at what we do. Now, this means that in some, at least in its more imperative forms... I think Wittgenstein himself [indecipherable 36:49]. It does lead to some extraordinary results certainly. It means that in the end they can't really be wrong if something is a going concern. Ayer: [Indecipherable 37:03] Wittgenstein was in ones interpretation of what one is doing. I mean he thought people were wrong to suppose that they were in a precedence. That's right. You had the wrong picture. Had the wrong picture, yes. Wrong picture and wrong behavior in a certain sense. You could have a wrong picture of your own behavior but that meant that every... in fact it's a very important idea of Wittgenstein, that every fundamental form of learning in regard to anything like philosophical learning would necessarily be a piece of self understanding. This is what many people have found as a Socratic or almost existentialist element in Wittgenstein. What we come to understand, where we see where we were wrong, in some sense in which we've deceived or misled ourselves. Part of ourselves. I mean misled about our use of language in fact, not misled about our character or... Well I think that's not altogether clear because while indeed Wittgenstein tends to say always that what we have mistaken about is the nature of our language his concept of our language is so generous to be mistaken about our language is to be mistaken about our whole of life and therefore it's a wrong picture of what one is oneself fundamentally. I think like everybody else who is working in philosophy now and has been brought up in this tradition it would be preposterous and wrong to deny that we've all been inuenced very much by this work. Even if it's negatively. Partly because of the enormous imaginative power.

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Let's take it in a concrete case. Let's take the implications many people have grown from Wittgenstein. I bet he himself would have approved of them for religious discourse. I mean, as I understand it the idea is that religious language is again its own form of life, its own criteria, carries out certain practices and it can't be criticized.

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I think that's probably a bit hard. I mean conicting two ways. One much more comforting to a religious person than the other. It can be said it's true in its own terms or it can be said the question of whether one of them arrives in relation to it a bit more ritual, than the only question is whether the ritual is carried out properly or whether it fullls its function, its emotional function. The second would be discouraging but the rst [indecipherable 39:43] in terms would have [indecipherable]. I'm sure Wittgenstein wouldn't say either of those things because to say it's true in its own terms sounds falsely signicant, I mean as if to imply it isn't true really. It isn't either true or false. It would be our kind of nature [indecipherable 40:07] that standing outside and he would say rather, what do they at when they say it's true? I think actually, I think [indecipherable 40:14] the concept of true plays an extraordinary small part in the later philosophy. Meaning is not connected with truth in the later philosophy of Wittgenstein. Meaning is connected with going on. I mean it's connected with a sense, not the true. Discover what the proposition means is to discover what elicits a sense from the group rather than trying to transcend the whole practice on some notion of true conditions I think.

Williams:

[What Counts As True?] Williams: Of course Wittgenstein is prepared to say these sentences, these propositions get their meaning from the form of life in which they're embedded. Well the form of life certainly exists. Their going on in this way is what it is to come to understand what these religious propositions mean. And of course for the believers and I'm not here quoting Wittgenstein but one perhaps can say this, for the believers, their meaning was supposed to transcend these situations in which they practice in this way. I think they are because this [indecipherable 41:10] meaning to approve. Yes, well I think that that's what Wittgenstein's theory of language tends to do. I mean I think they're about exceptions condition, conditions in which other people say yes rather than some as it were independently conceived true conditions. Do you think that he thought the question of truth couldn't be raised with part of these propositions or just that it was interesting to raise it? I think he thought that it meant something else in regards to these propositions. Well this is what I meant by saying [indecipherable 41:43] being true in their own terms. Yes but true in their own terms would mean there's some way of their counting as true. But in this case it seems to be so difficult for him or his apostles to say that the picture so many of the earlier believers had, namely a reality distinct

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from them, from this world to which these propositions correspond or fail to correspond so difficult for the Wittgensteinians to say this was just a wrong picture. Or let me put is this way. If this was a wrong picture what it shows is wrong is religion, not a certain interpretation of religion. And that's the point. In this case you couldn't say religion and all the meaning of religion really exists in the practices of this world. Any picture of it corresponding to a transcendental reality is just a false picture because it was the point of those practices to correspond to a transcendental world. So once you're persuaded that the idea of a corresponding transcendental world is nonsense then what you do is stop engaging in the practice of it. [Philosophy & Anthropology] Ayer: It seems to me that just what differentiates philosophy and anthropology does ask you further question and it is in the Wittgensteinian program just sticks with anthropology. Well I think that there is something in this point and I think further that oddly enough it hasn't come to terms with some of the genuine anthropological problem. In a certain sense, I mean obviously it's a very one sided and unfair remark, but in a certain sense it's true because after all a very rooted problem in anthropology, one which methodologists and anthropologists are always coming back to, is what sense can be attached to comparisons between different cultures? I mean let's take an example of this. Start with some simpleminded, old 19th century utilitarian. He goes to Mexico or Africa and he nds people dancing in connection with the rain. He assumes that this is a piece of bad science which was an ineffective way of making it rain. Ayer: Williams: It certainly is. Yes, but of course it was a rather impoverished [indecipherable 43:58] because the native's who did it and didn't think of it just as a way of making it rain. I mean the idea, the notion of pure instrumentality belongs to a different culture. The idea that it's a bad example of something we're better at is one which is now rightly blown. On the other hand, where Wittgenstein is like an extreme relativist who goes to the opposite pole from that, who says there's one activity, which is dancing, in relation to the rain. There's another activity which is seizing the clouds [?] from an airplane and they've got nothing whatsoever to do with each other. They're different forms of life. They see the world differently. Now you've got to explain the fact that when chaps come along and see the clouds, the people used to dance stopped dancing. Now the 19th century mechanistic theorists have a rather good explanation for that. They found a better way of doing what they were always trying to do. It seems to me that the sheer relativists are bound to say, it seems to me, when the people stop doing whatever they used to do and start doing whatever these other cultures do that this was a matter of sheer conquest. The only relations that can obtain different cultures seem to be this blanket hostility or domination.

Williams:

[Levi-Strauss] Williams: What Levi-Strauss does of course is to offer us something like different local themes, compatible themes in a common vocabulary, because the way in which the common vocabulary is unriddled by him is not very falsiable or a scientic way. But he again is groping the problems about what common terms can we nd for describing cultural variety and what planes can be got to meet? It seems to me that Wittgensteinians have often just not faced that question. They've just spoken of different autonomous forms of life without raising the question of a common plane of comparison. Scientically oriented philosophy of course has tended to transcend all that, tried to strip all this away and say in the end the truth of our views of the world will be registered by what we can achieve in the way that we shared, for instance, scientic understanding.

[Is The Scientic Way of Describing the World Just One Way Among Others] Williams: I think that other forms of philosophy, for instance the ones that we discussed earlier in terms of ones that perhaps might even be over enthusiastic the march of science have tended to try to produce an answer to this question, perhaps in simpleminded terms. Namely that even if different groups and indeed different creatures see the world different, they have different point-ofview, that is a common world they see and that the terms in which the common world they see is ultimately to be described. Of course the more scientic inclined philosophers would say in terms of science. Now this is absolutely opposed to Wittgenstein. The scientic way of describing the world is just one way among others. It represents one form of life among others viewed to which it seems to me you expressed some sympathy to that point. Certainly it is one view among others; this is true. I certainly more so strongly am inclined to say it's in some sense a better view, but now in what sense? It has to have some criterion by which to measure if you like different cultures or different approaches. Now, I suppose one obvious, perhaps answer is the scientic approach is much more efficient in the sense that it enables us to predict and explain in a way that other ones don't. I mean I have been talking fairly relativistic throughout I've never once said that everything was all right. In a certain sense whatever ones culture, whatever ones beliefs certain hypotheses are resisted by the facts, even if [indecipherable 48:04] independently [indecipherable]. It is something which limits ones theory, which is what William James used to call brute fact.

Ayer:

[Brute Fact] Ayer: I think that I want to say that primitive cultures get punished by this brute element in the way that scientic cultures don't, or to a much bigger degree than scientic cultures do. Suppose that we were to agree that a scientic picture of the world came closer to reality terrible phrase more true than certain other pictures in the world. It wouldn't follow from that that you improve things by replacing a non-

Williams:

scientic interested culture with a culture that was more interested in scientic inquiry. [Can Scientic Cultures Improve Things?] Williams: Probably a lot of people who are watching this might well feel that the results of replacing cultures that are not particularly interested in scientic inquiry by those that are interested has often been disastrous. Then the point is that that doesn't show, which is what a lot of people now infer, that scientic inquiry is not the best route to nding out what the world is really like but merely shows that perhaps human beings are better to be protected from actually nding out what the world is really like. We have an assumption of our science that we're never better employed in fact than in the assumption of our philosophy that we're never better employed than nding out the truth. Perhaps there's [indecipherable 49:53] consumption is one where present circumstances all lead us to question. Well if you mean by improve things, make people happier, this can't be taken for granted. Although I think one tends to exaggerate, romantic people tend to exaggerate the extent to which primitive cultures are happy. On the whole I think people are happier if they have a medicine that works rather than it doesn't work, and happier if they provide themselves with some material comforts than if they can't. I think one exaggerates the extent to which material prosperity and in fact what science has brought has made people unhappy. Certainly you can't assume that any scientic advance [indecipherable 50:31]. And possibly there are cases in which truths should be... I'm against this in this matter too. I believe that in the end it doesn't know the truth because if you know how things are then you can plan better. I think that's... when I say so shallow pragmatist justication you don't believe yourself.

Ayer:

Williams:

[Science & Optimism] Williams: I think this does lead to perhaps one last point that one might make here. I think although in a sense I think it's a rather obvious point, I think we might readily agree on it. It's amazing it seems to me how often it's misunderstood. I think in fact it's tended to be true that scientically based philosophies or philosophies that have shown most enthusiasm for the natural sciences since the 19th century have tended to be the more, as it were, brutally optimistic, unimaginative perceptions on human life and values and so one, whereas philosophies which have tended to show perhaps rather more imagination, less brutal and cheerful optimism have tended perhaps in biased to be somewhat anti-scientic. If you turn to Karlam [?] or indeed Russell and then compare that with Wittgenstein just in terms of the tone of what human life is like I think although one may well repute it, Wittgensteinian propositions, particularly his obsession with the religious issue of suicide and similar topics, it would be difficult to deny that the [indecipherable 52:24] depth to

Wittgenstein's logic but that's also in for instance, obviously the philosophy of Nietzsche, which is notably lacking in philosophy... Ayer: Again, I think that although you were saying earlier that philosophy as developed has something of an anthropocentric background as it were. In fact the dominant science in the early part of the century was physics and people who took up the philosophy of science took it up from the point-of-view of physics. This is very clearly true of Karlam [?]. Of course being so interested in physics, they weren't so interested in human beings. This is what gives what you call lack of depth is lack of depth in human terms whether they are interested in human beings except as the subject of laws of physics. [Indecipherable 53:15]. Well that's absolutely correct but even if you accepted the sorts of things that one was going on about earlier in this conversation about the world being in some sense really like... what it's like as depicted by a physical science without observers. That doesn't deny the reality of the observers when they're actually there or in fact problems of value over substance of a life as it's actually lived. Of course very often one nds that in fact the rather skeletal metaphysical pictures that are offered by the scientic realists and others, and the denser pictures emotionally and morally denser pictures of form of life, which is represented someone like Wittgenstein are in fact or they ought to be in some sense compatible. They should be compatible, yes. I think in some sense they are compatible. In a sense that even the most complicated human behavior and so on I think is explained in terms of physics. That is exactly one half of it and the other half is the fact that it is. If it is explained by physics doesn't in fact mean that it lacked the forms of signicance that was thought to have before that was discovered. Clearly not.

Williams:

Ayer:

Williams:

Ayer: