The relation of human condition to natural world and the nature of human agency has been hotly debated not only in Philosophy of mind and cognitive science literature but also in discussions pertaining to the methodology of various social sciences. After renaissance, due to success of natural sciences in explaining natural processes and events, upholders of methodological monism, followers of unity of science movement and more recently, people seeking grand synthesis in sciences by holding mind to be 'a system of organs of computation, designed by natural selection' (Pinker, S., How the Mind Works, hereafter HMW, 21) i.e. proponents of New Synthesis Nativism, in various incarnations have endeavored to understand human condition and vocabulary characteristic of human activities either in terms of neurophysiological, physiological, biological and physical behaviour (including the behaviour of chips in the computers) or they have taken it to be referring to objects and events in the mind.
Introspectionists - following dualist traditions of cartesianism - have endeavored to understand mentalistic categories as referring to inner, subjective, private objects, qualities, events and processes in the realm of mind ; Behaviourists seek to analyse them in terms of actual or possible bodily behaviour (observable behavioural dispositions); Mind-Brain Identity theorists identify them with states and processes in the nervous system -particularly in the brain ; and New Synthesis Nativism -applying the current model of computer programming in conjunction with Neo-Darwinian evolutionary psychology- considers them to be referring to 'information, incarnated as configuration of symbols', where 'symbols are the physical states of bits of matter, like chips in a computer or neurons in the brain' (HMW, 25) with which mind makes various computations through its modular architecture.
These proponents, in various avatars, concede that at present their proposals have certain shortcomings. They, however, insist that with the passage of time the tools of enquiry will improve, new facts will be discovered and the difficulties will be overcome. The differences in the views of various upholders within a tradition are seen by them as steps in the direction of overcoming these difficulties. It is important to notice the nature of these shortcomings and to see whether they are results of technological deficiencies and inadequacies of information, or the problem lies somewhere else. In Wittgensteinian terms, they tend to reduce complexity, multiplicity and heterogeneity of the phenomena to a few simpler phenomena and in doing so they fail to look at the phenomena as they are. The trouble does not lie where they are locating it, but in the initial move itself, namely in trying to explore the psychological realm on the model of events and processes with which we are well familiar in the field of natural and computer sciences - the problem is conceptual, not empirical. The problem lies with the basic assumptions and conceptual doctrines which form the backdrop of their researches.
One of the major sources of disagreements over the adequacy and validity of mutually conflicting approaches has been concerned with the significance of mentalistic categories, and what they are claimed to be referring to, in the description and explanation of human activities. When we start looking for the referents of mentalistic categories used in the narratives of human actions we are caught in a dillema - of making a difficult choice between something inner or outer. Wittgenstein has provided a way out by showing fallacious nature of the assumption common to the approaches seeking inner or outer something as referent of these categories. He contends that mental categories do not refer to 'things' - things which are either 'inner' or 'outer'. He points out that "It [pain] is not a something"(Philosophical Investigations, hereafter PI, sec. 304), and "joy designates nothing at all, neither any inward nor any outward thing" (Zettel, sec. 487). This, however, does not mean that they are meaningless - their meaning• is their use in language. They are interlinked with life activities of human beings and acquire all the significance that they have as a result of this relation. This becomes evident if we look at the ways in which we acquire and learn to use such words. Take the instance of "anger". We are not taught the word through definitions, but learn it in connection with certain forms of behaviour as expressing anger and certain kinds of situations calling for such a feeling. For example, when people are thwarted, insulted, humiliated, cheated, etc., they react to retaliate, try to hurt the other person, get red in the face, etc. We heard the word used in such cases and connecting it with some instructions we went on to apply it in other new cases, going beyond the given examples. And everyone of us does the same. We, therefore, learn and use the word in connection with the life activities of human beings and in correlation with the non-verbal accompaniments of the words, such as occasions, circumstances, facial expressions, gestures, ete. . Although we cannot exhaust and enumerate all the possibilities in advance but we always recognise an instance of a behaviour (or not behaving) in certain circumstances as an instance of anger.
So, although there is no common essence which ties all the situations in which we use a mental predicate, the meaning of the term is bound to the situations. For example, "Pain behaviour and behaviour of sorrow - These can only be described along with their external occasions..... behaviour and kind of occasion being together"(Zettel, sec. 492). This interrelation with situation and circumstances plays a very significant role in recognising and differentiating psychological phenomena. For example, in case of a child who is crying, it is the circumstances which tell us whether the child is crying because of sorrow or pain. "If a child's mother leaves it alone, it may cry because it is sad; if it falls down, from pain" (Zettel, sec. 492).
Behaviourists commit the mistake of divorcing the meaning of mental predicates from the circumstances and occasions in which they are used. For example, "joy" is often manifested in joyful behaviour, but as Wittgenstein points out, "Joy is not joyful behaviour" (Zettel, sec.487). For if same behaviour occurs in different circumstances, it will mainfest something else and can even be symptom of madness. Similar is the case with Mind-brain identity theorists. Take the instance of a person who leans against the walls of what at one time was a temple, and starts wailing. The identity theorists' contention that matter in his brain is in such-and-such configuration alienates mentalistic talk from circumstances and occasions and fail to convey what we get if we are told that the person is a Jew and is praying to God by wailing at the wailing walls of what was once the temple of solomon. Likewise, New Synthesis Nativist approaches are alienating mentalistic talk from the circumstances, occasions and life activities while taking them to be either input information or computations arrived at by modular processes of the mind. Cartesian thinkers too commit the mistake of divorcing the meaning of mentalistic categories from the activities and circumstances in which they are used by taking them to be referring to inner objects, events and processes.
For Wittgenstein believing, hoping, wishing, thinking, understanding are characterstics of our being human. But they can neither be reduced to any external episodes nor to inner processes. Such views of mentalistic categories prevent us from observing the situations, activites and contexts to which they belong and which give them all the significance that they have.
Take for example, the use of word 'remembering'. There is diversity in the use of the word 'remembering'. Remembering a word, remembering a face, remembering a sensation, remembering that someone was a neighbour, remembering an incident, remembering a rule, and so on, are all different from one another. A multitude of phenomena in certain situations are called remembering and the word remembering is tied up with human life and activites. Everyday mentalistic concepts do not have precise definitions. Attempts to give precise definitions by operational techniques by defining them in terms of observable phenomena have been made by the upholders of various scientistic traditions. Any such attempt is bound to fail as the imprecision is not a result of carelessness rather it reflects the variability inherent in the phenomena itself. Such words have multifarious connotations and are of mutually overlapping and intersecting character. But when used in the proper context, mentalistic terms are quite meaningful and unambiguous. It is true that sometimes we are confused by a word but the remedy does not lie in the misplaced efforts to construct operational or precise definitions but in carefully looking at the occasions and contexts in which the term is used.
In the process of rushing for precise definitions, we tend to reduce complexity, multiplicity and heterogeneity of the phenomena and fail to look at the phenomena as they are. Wittgenstein points out that an effort should be made to see the interrelations between different categories and it should be seen how certain categories and phenomena are similar to one another and how they differ. He contends that there are different levels and types of psychological categories.Take for example, sensations and perception. Both have genuine duration, a begining and an end but sensations are primarily bodily responses, e,g. even when one does not know why one is feeling cold, one starts shivering. Perceiving, on the other hand, is a definite intentional response and includes identification, e.g. 'I see a knife', 'I see a snake'. There are cases of perception in which, while looking at a thing, the thing does not change but we start seeing it differently. For example, we might pass from seeing a puzzle picture as mere lines to seeing it as containing a human face, from seeing ambiguous duck-rabbit picture as a duck-picture to seeing it as a rabbit-picture, from merely seeing two faces to seeing them as resembling faces, and so on. These are cases where a new aspect of a picture dawns on us. Wittgenstein points out that "the flashing of an aspect on us seems half visual experience and half thought" (PI, 197). It is 'seeing-as', and an interpretation is involved in the act; we see things as we interpret them. It cannot be reduced to any other phenomena -physical, physiological, biological or neurophysiological.
Similar is the case with hoping, wishing intending etc. They have similarities among themselves but are neither reducible to one another nor to any other phenomena. They are "embedded in human life, in all of the situations and reactions which constitute human life'' (Remarks on philosophy of psychology, Vol II, hereafter RPP II, Sec. 16). "The word "hope" refers to a phenomena of human life" and is peculiar to it just like "A smiling mouth smiles on a human face" (PI, sec. 583). Fogelin points out that "hoping is a manifestation of complicated forms of life, involving complex propositional attitude towards future" (Wittgenstein, 188) and only a being that has mastered the use of language can hope. Likewise intending and wishing too involve the envisaging of a future state of affairs.
Similarly, the concept of understanding or sudden understanding cannot be reduced to any process, either inner or outer. As Baker and Hacker point out "Processes take time (go on) and so have beginning, middle and end consisting of various phases". (Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning hereafter WUM, 608). But we know from everyday-life-situations that understanding the multiplication table is not a process with beginning, middle and end but gradually acquired ability to operate a calculus" (WUG, 608-9). Some 'inner' or 'outer' processes may accompany understanding but they are not indentical with understanding. A pupil understands a word if he/she goes on to apply it to new cases, no matter what accompanies his/her correct performance. It is the ability to do many things with a thing that one understands. It is the mastery of a technique or a practice and involves the idea of following the rules as the practice of understanding a thing consists of observing the rules of its use in different situations.
The phenomena of 'seeing-as' (or dawing of an aspect), hoping, wishing, intending, understanding, rule-following and interrelated phenomena of language-use are such phenomena which cannot be explained or reduced to any physical, biological, physiological or neuropsychological phenomena or processes. These "phenomena" belong to "the natural history of mankind" (RPP II, sec. 26) and are "as much a part of our natural history as walking, eating, drinking, playing" (PI, sec. 25). They "are modes of this complicated form of life" (PI, 174). Clarifying the concept of forms of life, Wittgenstein says, "What has to be accepted, the given is - so one could say - forms of life' (PI, 226). What belongs to natural history of mankind and form of life needs no further justification. He, therefore, observes that, "If I have exhausted the justification I have reached the bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: This is simply what I do" (Pl, sec. 217). He says "Our mistake is to look for an explanation where we ought to look at what happens as 'proto-phenomena' " (PI, sec. 654). "The question is not one of explaining", "but of noting" (PI, sec. 655) them. They explain and justify other human activities. Human activities have their own independent nature and, cannot be reduced to and explained as events.
The differentia of human actions from mere movements is the goal, purpose or intention of the agent. The description of actions cannot be considered complete by merely citing what happens, rather they have a necessary reference to what the agent tries to bring about. In envisaging the future state of affairs, language plays a crucial role ; it is through language that agents try to make sense of their surroundings and formulate their purposes and goals. So in case of actions, language is used not only by onlooker attempting to describe or explain actions, as is the case with events, rather it is a pre-requisite for the agent to engage in action. In this context, it is relevant to mention here that sometimes the operations of computers are also said to be dependent on language. In present era, when computer science is threatening to become almost an orthodoxy of the times and workings of mind and human activities are sometimes sought to be explained on the model of working of computers, it would be pertinent to note - in order to avoid conceptual confusions - that computer operations are not dependent on language but on algorithm provided by the programmer. Computer languages are deviced as symbols to help us understand the flow of negative and positive charges between various components of the circuit - i.e. capacitance, resistance, transistance, ICs ete. - that takes place in accordance with the algorithm determining computer's operations. In other words algorithms are programmed for the computer-operations and computer languages are deviced for us to make sense of those operations - meaning thereby that language is not a pre-requisite for the computer's operations in the sense in which it is a pre-requisite for humans to engage in action. Coming back to actions the necessary dependence of actions on language makes their understanding radically different from explaining the interactions of objects, events and processes as pursued by natural and computer sciences. As opposed to the extentionalistic vocabulary of physical movements and changes used in the description of objective facts the intentionalistic vocabulary used in characterisation of language dependent experiential aspects has a necessary reference to the beliefs, values, motives, intentions etc. of the agent.
An account of beliefs, values, goals, purposes, motives, intentions, attitudes, preferences, self-images etc. is essential to make an individual's actions intelligible. These general features of human condition illuminate the specificities that are unique to each individual. The Individual acquires this uniqueness as a participant in social practices. An individual's self-understanding is formed within a set of social relations and it is in interactions with others that one learns language and other dimensions of social life. The context of shared practices forms the basis for the possibility of communication and understanding in the field of actions. Human beings, unlike physical phenomea are cabaple or innovations and violations. They are capable of revising, modifying, changing and discarding rules and practices. This relation between general features and individual instances is unique to the human realm and is radically different from the corresponding relation obtained in the physical world. Human beings make choices and take decisions about their purposes, goals, aims, projects etc and also about rules, norms, values and conventions which form the backdrop of thier actions. This ability to choose between different alternatives gets echoed in peculiarly human phenomena such as conflicts, responsibility, anguish, dread etc. These phenomena and other phenomena of human life such as hoping, wishing, aspiring, intending etc. cannot be reduced to physical phenomena and cannot be put into the terminology of physical movements and changes (including the terminology of computer hardware and software) as it fails to capture the richness of human condition.
The intentionalistic, vocabulary of human actions cannot be reduced to extensionalistic vocabulary of physical episodes as peculiarly human activities are distinguished by the linguistic and symbolic character. They are viewed as meaningful and intentional both by the agent as well as the observer. It is this feature which requires that any adequate account of human realm must take note of meanings and goals of the persons involved in various projects within the framework of complex social institutions and practices. As long as one is reluctant to admit this it would not be possible for him/her to provide an adequate account of human condition. The conceptual reduction of human condition to the physical, biological, physiological or neurophysiological will invariably result either in false difficulties or in false solutions.
References
'Baker, G.P. and Hacker, P.M.S. (1980). Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning. Oxford : Basil Black well.
Fogelin, R.J. (1976). Wittgenstein. London : Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Pinker, S. (1998). How the Mind Works. London : Allen Lane.
Wittgenstein, L.(1967). Zettel. Oxford : Basil Black Well.
(1972). Philosophical Investigations. Oxford : Basil Black well.
(1980). Remarks on Philosophy of Psychology (Vol. I & II) Oxford : Basil Black well.