Wittgenstein on Sensations and Subjectivity

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Wittgenstein's treatment of sensations and subjectivity is a central element in his philosophy. His discussion of sensations and 'private language' has long been recognized as a key element in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. It sets the agenda for his extensive late work on philosophy of psychology, and its development can be traced through Wittgenstein's writings of the 1930s. Understanding Wittgenstein's treatment of sensations is crucial for understanding his philosophy as a whole. And understanding its development is central to understanding the development of his views more generally.The aim of 'Wittgenstein, Sensations, and Subjectivity' is to develop a new account of Wittgenstein's treatment of sensations and subjectivity, and a new account of its development in Wittgenstein's writings of the 1930s. The project will also offer a fresh perspective on the relation between Wittgenstein's view of subjectivity and contemporary views in philosophy of mind. These aims will be pursued through three interrelated lines of research, each leading to a single-authored paper. The first line of research, 'Sensations and Subjectivity: Philosophical Remarks and The Big Typescript', will consider the treatments of sensations and subjectivity that Wittgenstein offers in Philosophical Remarks (1929-30) and The Big Typescript (1933-37), and explore the place of these writings in the development of Wittgenstein's views. In these early writings, Wittgenstein considers an alternative terminology for ascribing experiences to oneself and others - a terminology in which 'I am in pain' is replaced by 'There is pain', while 'A is in pain' is replaced by 'A is behaving as I behave when there is pain'. The project will examine how best to understand the lessons Wittgenstein draws from this imagined alternative terminology. It will examine the relation between these early discussions of sensations and the treatment of sensations in Wittgenstein's later work. And it will explore the plausibility of an interpretation that brings the treatments of sensations in Philosophical Remarks and The Big Typescript much closer to Wittgenstein's later treatment of the topic than they have generally been seen as being.The second line of research, 'Wittgenstein, Phenomenal Concepts, and Knowing What It's Like', will develop a new account of Wittgenstein's treatment of sensation concepts - discussing, in particular, the role that is played by a person's own possession of sensations in Wittgenstein's account of her grasp of sensation concepts. Many contemporary writers hold that having sensations of a given kind equips one to grasp a phenomenal concept of those sensations: a way of thinking of such sensations that is available only to those who know what it is like to have them. Advocates of phenomenal concepts have generally held their views to be sharply at odds with Wittgenstein's. The project will demonstrate, through detailed discussion of the texts, that Wittgenstein's view of sensation concepts is in fact compatible with the idea that there are phenomenal concepts, even if Wittgenstein rejects some of the other views of modern proponents of phenomenal concepts.The third line of research, 'Wittgenstein on Experience and the Behavioural Expression of Experience', will offer an account of Wittgenstein's treatment of the relation between sensations and the behavioural expression of sensation, defending an interpretation on which the relation Wittgenstein proposes is much less extreme than has often been thought. Wittgenstein is often read as holding that it is essential to any kind of sensation or emotion that it has the kind of behavioural expression it does. On this view, a world in which there was no characteristic expression of pain, fear, or joy, say, would be a world in which there was no pain, fear, or joy. It will be shown that Wittgenstein's actual view is much weaker - and much more plausible - than that.