As Dewey and Berger find the relationship between the collective and the individual, so does Wittgenstein. This shows up in what can begin to be seen as the central problem with the concept of Geist. Dewey finds his concept of Organic Structures prone to the question of question begging. Our ability to know the consistency of the Organic Structures with which we ourselves are structured can only be resolved by saying "there is consistency." Dewey does this by, in the end, drawing his circle back to Organic Structures. With Wittgenstein the relationship between the collective and the individual revolves around the forms of life.
While Dewey inherits the problem by his acceptance of Hegel's solution to Kant's "thing-in-itself," Wittgenstein inherits the problem through his study of Schopenhauer and Dewey. Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation separates Will from Representation just as the early Wittgenstein separates the ethical from all that can be spoken about. For Schopenhauer, Will is the "thing-in-itself." Forms of life is Wittgenstein's version but, perhaps, through Dewey's influence, the later Wittgenstein comes closer to Hegel's Geist. Forms of life must be experienced. They can be shown but not described. For Schopenhauer, all that is representation can not represent what is Will. Will can only be experienced. But so too, for Hegel, Dewey and Berger; Geist, Organic Structures, and Social Structure must be experienced. One cannot prove that there is Geist, or Organic Structures, or Social Structure. One must know it. When Wittgenstein faces the central problem of our ability to know the consistency in forms of life, he adopts a solution similar to Dewey's.
Wittgenstein explains that different forms of life have their own special language-games in which things are known. But he never clearly defines a language-game (at least he says he never did.)
...someone might object against me: You take the easy way out! You talk about
all sorts of language-games, but have nowhere said what the essence of a language-game,
and hence of language, is: what is common to all these activities, and what makes them into
language or parts of language. So you let yourself off the very part of the investigation
that once gave you
yourself most headache, the part about the general form of
propositions and of language.
And this is true. - Instead of producing something common to all that we call language,
I am saying that these phenomena have no one thing in common which makes us use
the same word for all, but that they are related to one another in many different ways. And
it is because of this relationship, or these relationships, that we call them all 'language.'[1]
The terminology of games and "family resemblance" may be new with Wittgenstein but Dewey and Berger have similar concepts. Dewey uses the conceptions of habit and communities of action and Berger uses the conceptions of habitualization and typification. As Berger explains:
Habitualization provides the direction and the specialization of activity that is
lacking in man's biological equipment, thus relieving the accumulation of
tensions that result from undirected drives.[2]
Language also typifies experience, allowing me to subsume them under broad
categories in terms of which they have meaning not only to myself but also to my fellowmen.[3]
Using Wittgenstein's terminology, it is in the individual language-game that certainty finds its meaning. For example:
Am I less certain that this man is in pain than that twice two is four? - Does this
show the former to be mathematical certainty? - 'Mathematical certainty' is
not a psychological concept.
The kind of certainty is the kind of language-game.[4]
While certainty is thus centered in a language-game, and so must follow the rules pertaining to that language-game, it still is to be shown how the rules of the language-game are connected with the forms of life. In On Certainty Wittgenstein's position becomes much clearer on this point. Interestingly enough, there can be no certainty without the possibility of doubt. This point is brought out somewhat in the Philosophical Investigations where he says: "'I know...'may mean' I do not doubt...' but does not mean that the words 'I doubt...' are senseless, that doubt is logically excluded."[5] But this is brought out better in On Certainty: "'I know' seems to describe a state of affairs which guarantees what is known, guarantees it as fact. One always forgets the expression 'I thought I knew.'"[6]
Knowledge is most importantly associated with the language-game.
'I know' often means: I have the proper grounds for my statement. So if the other
person is acquainted with the language-game, he would admit that I know. The
other, if he is acquainted with the language-game, must be able to imagine
how one may know something of the kind.[7]
Wittgenstein says, "Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement."[8] The acknowledgement is the acknowledgement of a rule, that the rule works in practice. In the same way Dewey's warranted assertion is a rule that works in practice. Berger says "Only when my maxims fail 'to deliver the goods' in the world to which they are intended to apply are they likely to become problematic to me 'in earnest.'[9]
Concerning the nature of rules, Wittgenstein says: "Not only rules, but also examples are needed for establishing a practice. Our rules leave loop-holes open, and the practice has to speak for itself."[10] In fact, there can be no doubt until we are aware of the system of rules in the particular language-game. And the rules we must simply accept in order to take part in the game. "Doubt comes after belief."[11] As a result, "I know = I am familiar with it as a certainty."[12]
Dewey's concept of generality has many of the same characteristics of Wittgenstein's rules. The two terms are both used with respect to generalized propositions expressing useful procedures commonly accepted. For Wittgenstein rules are what we learn from others already fluent in the language-game including such simple, useful items like calling a particular object "a table" to a guiding principle built on inquiry. Most especially, they are always propositional. For Dewey, "generality" is the propositional, the logical form responsible both for "recurrence" of objects and universal propositions.[13] Both objects and universal propositions are the results of previous inquiry. They are the objectives, so to speak, of inquiry. While they are always subject to further inquiry, they are only subject to further inquiry either when the previous inquiry was not satisfactory or when they are being used in a "new problematic situation" in which they may not function in the same way.[14] In their use in reaching some other warranted assertion they are the context of a continuous problematic situation.
There is continuity in inquiry. The conclusions reached in one inquiry become
the means, material and procedural, of carrying on further inquiries. In the
later, the results of earlier inquiries are taken and used without being
resubjected to examination. In uncritical reflection the net outcome is
often an accumulation of error. But there are conceptual objects, and
objects of perceptual experience, which have been so instituted and
confirmed in the course of different inquiries, that it would be a waste
of time and energy in further inquiries to make them objects of
investigation before proceeding to take and use them.[15]
For Wittgenstein, "certainty" is meaningless unless the word "doubt" is in some context applicable to the situation. So with Dewey, there is no certainty (as absolute) since in some other context what is considered warranted may no longer be justified.
Further, along with Wittgenstein, Dewey, based on an acceptance of continuity of nature, would argue that a good deal of what we accept as a warranted assertion can be justly used in further inquiries.
There must be some meaning present or the word could not fit it; there must be
something which accounts for the disposition to use names as a medium of
fossilization. There is, in truth, a certain real fact - an existent reality -
behind both the word and the meaning it stands for. This reality is social usage.[16]
Dewey then, resolves his problem with the consistency of Organic Structures by a process which in the end turns on simply insisting that there is consistency in Organic Structures. Wittgenstein resolves his problem with certainty by claiming certainty is based fundamentally in forms of life. Berger places consistency in the Socially Constructed Reality, or social structure. So the problem of the relationship of the individual to the collective is at root the problematic for Dewey, Wittgenstein, and Berger. This is the central problem with the concept of Geist.
Since Dewey, Wittgenstein, and Berger have conceptions similar to Hegel's concept of Geist the importance for understanding Hegel, for understanding contemporary Western thought, can be seen. It is not necessary to enter into many contemporary issues to see the tremendous importance of this central problem.[17] One major article can be briefly mentioned to show that this is indeed the case. Willard Van Orman Quine's article "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" is a good example.[18]
Quine discusses the problem of analyticity.[19] Analytic statements are those that one can consider necessary, i.e. the statements of which one may be certain. The trouble, says Quine, is that, even in strictly restricted, artificial languages, "a boundary between analytic and synthetic statements simply has not been drawn."[20] In short, we are not certain of what we consider certain. Quine's reason for this, as with Dewey, Wittgenstein, Berger, and Hegel, is that "The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges."[21] For Quine, then, the individual does not know for certain what the collective considers certain because what the collective considers certain is subject to possible change, even by that individual himself. As a result, Quine says, "The unit of empirical significance is the whole of science."[22] And that is as Hegelian as Geist itself!
[1] Wittgenstein. Op. cit. p. 31e #65
[2] Berger. Social Construction of Reality p. 53
[3] Ibid. p. 39
[4] Wittgenstein. Op. cit. p. 224
[5] Ibid. p. 221
[6] Ludwig Wittgenstein. On Certainty trans. Denis Paul and G.E. Anscombe (J and J Harper Editions, 1969) p. 3e #12
[7] Ibid. p. 4e #18
[8] Ibid. p. 49e #378
[9] Berger. Social Construction of Reality p. 44
[10] Wittgenstein. On Certainty p. 21e #139
[11] Ibid. p. 23e #160
[12] Ibid. p. 35e #272
[13] Dewey. Logic, The Theory of Inquiry p. 248
[14] Ibid. p. 141
[15] Ibid. p. 140
[16] John Dewey. Essays in Experimental Logic p. 186
[17] Some issues are the Private Language Argument; Grice's concern with the issues of meaning and intension with respect to audience and speaker; the Ordinary Language program itself; all are based on studying the relationship between individual and collective.
[18] Willard Van Orman Quine. "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" From a Logical Point of View (New York, 1953) pp. 20-46
[19] Ibid. p. 24
[20] Ibid. p. 37
[21] Ibid. p. 42
[22] Ibid.