As the title of his latest book on Wittgenstein
suggests, for John W. Cook, over fifty years after Wittgenstein’s death, and
despite the rivers of ink that have been spilt in interpreting it,
Wittgenstein’s philosophy remains largely ‘undiscovered’ and ‘misunderstood’. 
The Wittgenstein Cook discovers here is first and foremost a ‘neutral monist’ (combining
a thoroughgoing phenomenalism with the idea that sense-impressions are not
essentially private).  That possibility, Cook claims, is one that has been
largely overlooked in the literature, and it is one that brings hand-in-hand
with it a host of other claims.  Thus, Cook’s Wittgenstein is also, and among
other things, what Cook calls a ‘Metaphysical Ordinary Language Philosopher’
(p.134), a phenomenologist (p.23), a behaviorist (p.51), a verificationist
throughout his life (p.100), and a conceptual relativist (p.173).  Some of
these are charges that have long been leveled at Wittgenstein; what
differentiates Cook’s account is that here these positions have their
foundation in a more basic commitment on Wittgenstein’s behalf to neutral
monism.

The book itself is divided into
three main parts, each consisting of several chapters, plus an introduction and
an appendix on ‘some misunderstood features of Wittgenstein’s neutral monism’. 
The aim of the book is to correct some ‘very common misconceptions’ (p.16)
about Wittgenstein’s work and in so doing to make the case for attributing to
Wittgenstein the views listed above.  So too, Cook aims to subject the views thus
attributed to Wittgenstein, and which Cook takes to be ‘mostly wrong’ (p.16),
to a rigorous critique.  These objectives take up the bulk of parts I (‘Who Was
Wittgenstein?’, chapters 1-4), and II (‘Investigating Wittgenstein’s Practice’,
chapters 5-9).  Part III (‘Belief, Superstition and Religion’, chapters 10-14)
turns to Wittgenstein’s view of religion and of superstition and its
interpretation by the likes of Peter Winch, D.Z. Phillips and O.K. Bouwsma. 
The focus in this final part is more squarely on criticizing Wittgenstein’s
views and those of his followers, and so undermining Wittgenstein’s influence
in the philosophy of religion, than on uncovering some hitherto undiscovered
interpretation.

Chapter 1 begins with the idea that
Wittgenstein was a neutral monist — essentially, phenomenalism (roughly, the
idea that there is nothing more to physical objects than sense-impressions),
but minus the idealist’s notion that sense-impressions are logically ‘private’
or can be known only to ourselves.  That Wittgenstein is a phenomenologist has
often been missed, Cook claims, because philosophers have not seen how that
view can be reconciled with Wittgenstein’s attack on the idea of (essentially)
private objects or impressions, and on the idea of private ostensive
definitions.  But that attack, Cook argues, is aimed only at idealist versions
of phenomenalism, and the idea of a logically hidden mental ‘inner’, and not at
the neutral monist variety.  Wittgenstein’s repeated insistence that he is not
putting forward, that there is something confused about the idea that one could
put forward, doctrines or theses in philosophy, is then reduced to a belief
that his (neutral monist) philosophical view is the correct one, that it
accords with common-sense and is or was ‘the only creditable alternative to the
other views that were then in favor’ (p.21).  Attributing to Wittgenstein these
views then seems to motivate the attribution to him of a form of behaviorism
too, and this thought is pursued in chapter 2.  Chapter 3 then argues that
Wittgenstein was a Metaphysical Ordinary Language Philosopher, holding that ordinary
language is alright just so long as it accords with the (empiricist)
metaphysical picture Cook has Wittgenstein assuming from the outset, and is
misleading where, and insofar as, its surface grammar suggests some other —
realist, say — metaphysical picture.  These views, along with the verification
principle attributed to Wittgenstein in chapter 4, Cook clearly thinks of as
Wittgenstein’s views throughout his philosophical life, from the Tractatus
through to his last writings (pp.99-100), but Wittgenstein’s early work is
given very little attention throughout by Cook.

Chapter 5 takes aim at the idea
that Wittgenstein practiced philosophy in a purely descriptive manner as he
professed to.  Rather, Cook claims, using Wittgenstein’s discussion of the feeling
of having a word on the tip of one’s tongue as an example, Wittgenstein fails
to look at what we actually do and say, imposing instead a picture of how
things must be which is dictated by his metaphysical commitments, and then
endeavoring to make that picture appear in accord with common sense.  Chapter 6
then argues that Wittgenstein was, as a consequence of his phenomenalism, a
conceptual relativist, while chapters 7 and 8 argue that Wittgenstein aims but
fails to show, against Frege, that the laws of logic are neither eternal nor
immutable.  Chapter 9 claims that Wittgenstein thought of science as an
ungrounded language-game which we could just as well do without, and then
proceeds to criticize that idea.

Chapter 10, and Part III, turn to
Wittgenstein’s influence in the philosophy of religion.  For all the provocativeness
of Cook’s arguments in the first two parts of his book, it is perhaps the final
third, where Cook turns to criticizing certain ‘Wittgensteinian’ approaches to
philosophy of religion, that is most compelling.  One of the burdens of this
part is that the actual practice of Wittgensteinians, and of Wittgenstein
himself, involves a signal failure to do any of the looking and seeing that
Wittgenstein advocated, and that their views are, as a result, thoroughly
implausible.  The final chapter here turns to the similarities (or lack
thereof) between Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein; it is a shame that James Conant’s
work on this does not receive any discussion by Cook.

Overall, Cook’s book is entertaining
and interestingly argued; it details clearly the neutral monist reading and
shows how far it can be pushed and in what directions it takes one.  Perhaps,
however, what it shows best has less to do with Wittgenstein himself and rather
more to do with Cook’s own ingenuity in pursuit of a particular interpretation
of Wittgenstein’s work.

© 2006 Edmund Dain

Edmund Dain is finishing his Ph.D.
dissertation at Cardiff University, on the interpretation of Wittgenstein’s
work.

Categories: Philosophical