___________________________________
We
Jaap van Brakel K.U. Leuven
In his review of Thomas Nagel's Last Word Bernard
Williams says:
Parts of our morality, for instance, or our longer-haul
historical narratives, or our models of personal self-
understanding, are more open to suspicion, more
liable to be shown in an unsettling way to depend on
a narrow and parochial `us', than our science or our
logic are (...). When we reflect on what `we' believe,
particularly in cultural and ethical matters, we often
have in mind (as the relativists do) ourselves as
members of modern industrial societies, or of some
yet more restricted group, as contrasted with other
human beings at other times or places. Such a `we' is,
as linguists put it, `contrastive' it picks out `us' as
opposed to others. But `we' can be understood
inclusively, to embrace anyone who does, or who
might, share in the business of investigating the
world.1
Williams's comments raise the questions I'll here
address: what sort of wes are there?,2 what goes with the
`we of science and logic'?, and what goes with the
`parochial us'? The quotations from Williams suggest
that there are two wes, the contrastive and inclusive we.
Here are some other possible wes (the first three culled
from Williams's writings):3
There might be groups with which we are in the
universe, and [if] we can understand that fact, then
they also belong to we: the all-in-the-universe we.
The we of morality that is potentially broader than
the group that could share science: Kant's moral we.
The we which is not one group rather than another in
the world at all, but rather the plural descendant of
that idealist I who also was not one item rather than
another in the world: the transcendental we.
The we of the encounters between yous and mes,
sharing a project of inquiry or having other moti-
vations to interact, which I'll call the you-and-me we.
One could add more wes, e.g. the `globalized world we',
the `ideal speech situation we', and so on. But here I'll
concentrate on the transcendental and the you-and-me
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Ethical Perspectives 6 (1999)3-4, p. 266
___________________________________
we and I ask how they fit in with Williams's we of
science and logic and the parochial us. I'll address this
question indirectly, first by showing that the we of
science and logic is grounded in intuitions that are
associated with a parochial us, rather then with the we of
science and logic (section 2). Then I'll pursue the possi-
bility that other wes can provide an `inclusive'
universality and objectivity. Section 3 is on the
transcendental we, taking up a discussion on `the
disappearing we' a discussion about the (alleged)
transcendental status of Wittgenstein's philosophy.4
Section 4 (on first contact we) and section 5 (on
intercultural communication and objectivity) deals with
the you-and-me we. I conclude that the only really
inclusive we is the we of the encounters between yous
and mes; all other wes are variants of a (super-)capital-
ized parochial I.
I believe this argument can be developed against a
variety of backgrounds using different terminologies.
Here I present the argument against the background of
Wittgenstein's notion of `form of life' and section 1
provides a preliminary characterization of
Wittgensteinian form(s) of life in the form of a collage
of what other writers have said about it. Throughout,
form(s) of life will be used as short for human form(s) of
life. I conclude (section 6) that form(s) of life should be
understood at the same time in the singular and the
plural, as empirical and transcendental, as local and
universal. This complements the argument about the
inclusive we of the encounters between yous and mes.
5
1. Background: form(s) of life
That people can understand one another and themselves
is because they share a certain form, pattern, mode, way,
or world of life. Growing up is to grow into a form of
life. A form of life makes meaning possible. It refers to
the complex of natural and social circumstances which
are presupposed in language and thinking, and in any
particular understanding of the world. A form of life is
the whole of the moral, social, historical,
communicative, religious, mythical, and private
discernments and orders which ground these orders,
___________________________________
without being grounded in anything else. Strictly
speaking an explanation of what a form of life is makes
no sense. Forms of life are constituted by patterns of
human activity which cannot simply be given one
theoretical explanation or another, because these patterns
form the ground on which any explanation or
justification rests. It provides both the context of
meaningfulness and the standards of justification in
terms of which anything at all could be said to be either
right or wrong. That is, it refers to the ultimately
unsystematizable contingent complex of actual social life
on which any provisionally formulable regularities or
rules of behaviour are based. It is an integral whole in
which forms of experience and an independent physical
or material domain can be distinguished only as `later'
abstractions.
Questions, scientific or otherwise, can be raised
about anything, but these questions cannot but be asked
from within the certainties of a form of life. Starting
from certainties one can give reasons, though there's an
end to them: the end is what is just given; it's where
my/your/our/their spade is turned. The latter view is
easily misunderstood, as when the ethicist Hare says:6
Putnam's use of Wittgenstein's `bedrock' metaphor
makes me think that he, like Falwell, is a fundamentalist,
and maybe even, like Hitler, he wants to think with his
blood, however unlike them he is in other respects.
Recognizing that at some point one's spade is turned is
not saying that some things are permanently fated to be
`bedrock', or that any particular belief is forever immune
from criticism.7
Is form of life the same as language game? Or does it
mean something like `human nature'? Or should it be
taken as a synonym of `culture', whatever that may
mean? Perhaps the answer is that there is no answer:
similarities crop up and disappear. Still, two clusters
might be distinguished: the language-related cluster: lan-
guage(s) language game(s) form(s) of life; and the
life-related cluster: culture, background, world picture,
Lebensmuster, facts of living. Both constitute
recognizable clusters of family resemblances and are
intimately related, though not identical.
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Ethical Perspectives 6 (1999)3-4, p. 267
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The close relation between the `language'-related and the
`life'-related clusters can be brought out clearly by
considering intercultural communication (see further:
sections 5 and 6).
One can imagine an innumerable number of forms of
life. But there are no criteria that could specify in
advance what could delineate the form of all possible
forms of life. Forms of life are not related to and
differentiated from one another as different genera or
species might be. They are not discrete and separate
entities, which tangentially may impinge on one another,
but ought not to overlap. It is for this reason that I will
speak of `form(s) of life' or the `manifest forms of life'.
2. The Collapse of the We of Science and Logic
Williams's bipartition of the we of science and logic and
the parochial us is representative of what I'll call the
ultimate dichotomy. Well-known appearances of this
dichotomy include Kant's distinction between `the laws
of the intellect' and `the laws of our actions';8 Nagel's
distinction between the objective and the subjective;9
and Sellars's opposition of the manifest and the scientific
image.10 Sellars's scientific image corresponds to
Eddington's viewpoint of no one in particular, 11 to
Nagel's view from nowhere, and Williams's absolute
conception of the universe, a conception of the world as
it is, independently of our inquiries or experiences.12 The
same notion of objectivity occurs in `non-scientific' con-
texts as well, for example in the style of the omniscient
narrator or in Rawls's notion of judgements that occur
behind a veil of ignorance.13
There are a variety of ways to attack the ultimate
dichotomy, as postmodern critiques, critical theory, and
feminism show. Or one can attack the alleged self-
evidence of the presupposed fact-value dichotomy, as
Putnam does.14 Here I want to follow a line that is less
common, viz. the issue of groundedness in manifest
forms of life of `everything' science and logic
included. Below I list a number of key concepts,
theories, or issues that are typically associated with (the
we of) science and logic. In each case it can be shown
that the final justification of theories about these issues
draws on groundings that are not part of science and
logic.
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Attempts to provide a picture of science unified by
one method have failed. Attempts to specify a reduction
to fit all sciences into one world picture have failed; the
same applies to the revamped notion of supervenience.15
Appeals to ideal physics, the best total causal account
of the world, or the language of completed total
science are either void or a commitment to a value
judgement not itself part of the ideal theory. In contrast,
the unity and pluralism of the manifest life forms cannot
fail, because it/they sustain everything.
In claiming the priority of the scientific image,
contemporary scientific realists and naturalists appeal to
natural kinds, strict laws, and the causal structure of the
world. However, the assumption that there are natural
kinds is highly disputable. Different taxonomies serve
different functions or interests, not only the different
interests of either science or common sense, but also
different taxonomies serving different interests within
common sense and within science.16 The progress of
science is built on a projectable sequence of projectable
predicates. But at the most fundamental level progress
depends on categories that are entrenched in the
prevailing manifest life forms.
That there are no strict laws in the `special sciences'
(like psychology) is a point often made. However, all
laws are ceteris paribus. The boiling point of water is
100 degrees centigrade, but not if it is sea water, not if it
is boiled on top of the Mount Everest or contained in
small capillaries, and so on. The law that water is H2O is
equally imprecise and ceteris paribus.17 Physics provides
models in which strict laws apply to closed systems, but
in the `physical world' there are no closed systems and in
applying the models to concrete situations, apart from
additional assumptions, holistic indeterminacies of many
sorts creep in, in the application of quantum mechanics
to molecular chemistry, just as much as they do when
economic models are applied to real people. There is no
way that one could write out the ceteris paribus or
proviso conditions in full, as Hempel already noted.18
Moreover, any application of theory requires that one's
location is specified in pre-theoretical terms. The
background understanding of one's location
(situatedness) involves not only physical events, but also
concerns and interests that finally derive from the
manifest life forms, not the scientific image.19
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Ethical Perspectives 6 (1999)3-4, p. 268
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Talk of physical causality is a late refinement of
ordinary talk of causes, dispositions, and `powers'.
Sometimes it is suggested that quantum mechanics has
undermined the traditional scientific realist picture of
imperceptible objects constituting the causal structure of
the world. Quantum mechanics would force us to the
view that chance events underlie everything. But the idea
of a world of `real' or `absolute' chance derives from the
manifest life forms.20 Moreover, the chance events
described by quantum mechanics only exist relative to a
higher order belief in the limit of chance, the latter being
grounded in the manifest life forms.21
All knowledge (scientific or otherwise) is under-
determined by what is innate and what enters the senses.
There are no cognitive universals.22 There is not a single
set of epistemic virtues that characterizes `good'
knowledge, nor is there such a set that characterizes
science. The objectivity that both Nagel and Williams try
to mark out is a hodgepodge, not a natural kind.23 Many
different epistemic virtues have been proposed by
different philosophers, without there being any
consensus in the offing on which to choose or how the
general maxims are to be applied in particular cases. 24
There are neither universal nor domain-specific rules as
to how to weigh different virtues when they conflict, not
even for a subset of virtues favoured by one philosopher.
However one draws the dividing line between epistemic
and pragmatic virtues, to claim truth, or empirical
adequacy, or an economic rendering of one's sensory
input, or whatever, as the goal of science, such a goal is
a value, not a scientific fact.
When the notion of rationality and objectivity is
thought to be under threat, there is always a last resort:
logic. As Harman puts it, in a review of Putnam's
Reason, Truth, and History: there is moral relativism in
a way there is not what we might call `rationality
relativism' (where `rationality' refers to `logic'), and
Williams would agree.25 But disagreements about
alternative logics, about the justification of deductive
logic, and about ethnologics, reveal no good reason for
classical logic to be the universal normative constraint
on what it is to have a language, to be a person, or to be
`minded'.26
___________________________________
There is no `displayed rationality' that could reject
beyond doubt modus ponens, but neither is there an
argument that `rationally' forces someone to accept a
logically valid argument (or to reject a formal contra-
diction), as Lewis Carroll's report on the second meeting
of Achilles and the Tortoise already shows.27 Rationality
is no more than bridled irrationality and transcends what
can be said about it.28
Of course, in the twentieth century, the manifest life
forms are constantly modified under the impact of
scientific developments. That doesn't however diminish
the primacy of the former. The fact that most of the
posits of contemporary daily life in the western world
have their origins in developments of science and its
ocularcentric epistemology doesn't change the fact that
when their grounding status is disputed, adjudication
will be governed by criteria that are not the product of
science. It is not a matter of judging whether we should
grant priority to the one or the other. There is no choice
but to start from, and return to, the world of manifest life
forms. This is not to say that science has not produced
all kinds of useful criteria of inquiry. It is to say that the
judgement that these are good criteria is not itself a
scientific judgement.
In the spirit of evolutionary psychology or natu-
ralized philosophy one might say: Science could
explain, for example, how explanation, communication,
and normativity are possible among humans cf.
Williams's it is an important feature of modern science
... that it makes some contribution to explaining how
science itself is possible ....29 But how is the request for
such an explanation ever finally justified? After all, there
will always be alternative `sciences' to offer explanations
of whatever is considered relevant. To make a
judgement with regard to these alternatives one is
committed to making judgements on issues like
deciding which features are valued most, `rightness,'
`appropriateness to the circumstances,' and so on.
Because there is no world out there including the
epistemic virtues, which are simply to be described as
they are, judgements on such issues as what works and
what a good explanation is, are always grounded in
manifest life forms and cannot be bootstrapped out of it.
Even if there were something in the technical notion of
bootstrapping,30 that bootstrapping always draws in part
on hypotheses that are grounded in the manifest life
forms.
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Ethical Perspectives 6 (1999)3-4, p. 269
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Bootstrapping may work locally, but only given,
amongst many other things, a pretheoretical judgement
about what counts as `data'. If these pretheoretical
judgements were completely wrong, bootstrapping
would be powerless to repair the situation.31 Therefore
there is no transcendental or self-correcting inductive
method that systematically comes closer to what is right
by the lights of all eternity. The only way out of it would
be to appeal to exactly one best method of inquiry and
exactly one best end of enquiry which gives the answer.
Such an appeal can only be fossilized in `Brave New
World' and its Congeners.
3. The Transcendental We
Having reduced the we of science and logic to the
intuitions of some parochial us, the conclusion to draw is
not Williams's:32 What is really disturbing ... about
relativists and subjectivists is ... their insistence on
understanding `us' in such a very local and parochial
way. There may be other candidates for the inclusive
we and there may be better ways to approach these
issues than via the contrastive/inclusive dichotomy. I'll
first look at what the transcendental we might have to
offer.
One way to introduce the transcendental we is via a
transcendental reading of Wittgenstein's later phi-
losophy.33 Already in 1962 Cavell34 drew a parallel
between Kant's knowledge as concerns the a priori
possibility of knowledge, or its a priori employment
and Wittgenstein's [o]ur investigation however is
directed not towards phenomena, but, as one might say,
towards the `possibilities' of phenomena.35 And
Williams has argued that the move from `I' to `we'
[from Tractatus to Philosophical Investigations] was not
unequivocally accompanied by an abandonment of the
concerns of transcendental idealism. ... the shift from `I'
to `we' takes place within the transcendental ideas
themselves.36 Anything one says is from within a form
of life: the limits of our language mean the limits of our
world.37 Talking about form(s) of life would require as-
suming an external vantage point and this is
impossible. Therefore, form(s) of life are seen as
transcendental conditions or limits on anything human
(on being human). They are what all human beings share
in virtue of being members of the human community
(aside from an irrelevant biological nature). On this view
Wittgenstein's investigation of rule-following is con-
___________________________________
sidered a transcendental inquiry aimed at providing
insight into how we go on.38
It has been suggested that the only sense the tran-
scendental makes is as a Limitbegriff, because we can
only explore the borders of the transcendental empiri-
cally, using available concepts. This exploration may
hint in the direction of where the border is, but
`direction' here is not a metaphor that can be cashed out
easily. No matter how extensive the empirical
investigation, we will not reach the border, let alone the
other side. Any sense in which empirical research could
determine why human form(s) of life are this way rather
than that, would not be a sense of `my' or `form of life' in
the sense in which the limits of my form of life are the
limits of my world (of everything I might think about).39
However, if the limits of our language are the limits of
our world, it is not clear what sense can be given to the
notion of `limits'.
In his discussion of these issues Williams refers to
transcendental facts.40 However, talking about facts
already makes the border and the other side of it more
concrete than can be said. There is perhaps more truth in
Sacks's suggestion that instead of some transcendental
reality dictating the structure of any empirical form of
experience [s]uch determining as there is seems to go in
the opposite direction from the empirical to the
transcendental.41 Instead of transcendental constraints,
he introduces transcendental features, which indicate
local limitations on conceivability which do not translate
into limitations on possibility. These transcendental
features can themselves change over time, and moreover
can change in a way that is not subject to any a priori
constraints.42
Whether transcendental features that are contingent
can be said to be genuinely transcendental is a matter of
debate of course. It might be argued that without
transcendental constraints governing possible variety,
there is no reason for trusting that there will be any
significant common ground, transcendental or otherwise,
between all different localities. However, there is no
need to deny this, except that these constraints cannot be
put into words and they have no identity conditions. The
problem here is not the `dangerous' reduction of the
transcendental to the historical.
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Ethical Perspectives 6 (1999)3-4, p. 270
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The real danger is that what is contingent, is easily
thought of as truly transcendental. The question is not
how to give content to talk about limits or transcendental
facts in some general sense, but to show what can be
said about them, and then it will become clear that the
empirical (or natural) and the transcendental (or
conceptual) features cannot be strictly separated.
Hints towards the problematic nature of drawing
sharp boundaries between the empirical and the tran-
scendental or between the parochial/local and the
universal, are given en passant by many writers, and can
be found too in the literature on form(s) of life. The
suggestion that the empirical or natural becomes
indistinguishable from the transcendental can be found
as well in the work of Merleau-Ponty and Gadamer
when criticizing Husserl.43 In the form(s) of life
literature, Lear has suggested that we should steer a
middle course between the (too) empirical (and proba-
bly false) [and the] transcendental and vacuous,44 but
he assumes (like Williams) that logic provides an
abstract formulation of rules which must generally be
obeyed in actual cases if our activity is to be an
expression of mindedness. He assumes that, though local
practices might diverge, we could not encounter others
who refused our logical principles.45 However, I suggest
this is a case of what Dummett, in discussion with
Davidson on the status of classical logic, called
`chauvinism'.46
4.The You-and-Me We Part 1:
First Contact We
Another way in which the transcendental pops up is in
connection with Wittgenstein's reference to the
common behaviour of mankind.47 Contrary to what it
may seem to suggest, it does not imply that any
`meaning' or pattern of linguistic behaviour is realized in
all languages, or that any corresponding behavioural
regularity prevails in all or only human beings. Any
suggestion that the common behaviour of mankind
constitutes a we that is either a transcendental or
biological universal that can, in principle, be described
and is applicable to all human beings is falling back on
the idea of a transcendent observer (be it of the a priori
or a posteriori sort).
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The issue of the limits of language and that of the
common behaviour of mankind can be seen as brought
together in any encounter of two or more human beings,
but in particular in so called first contacts: when people
with different `home bases' meet one another for the first
time, knowing (next to) nothing about the others' back-
ground (in particular they don't speak each other's
language and don't have access to interpreters). Here is
an example New Zealand, April 7, 1773, quoted from
the diaries of Cook and Forster:48
... we should have pass'd without seeing them [i.e.
`one man and two Women'] had not the man holloa'd
to us, he stood with his club in his hand upon the
point of a rock. ... the man seemed rather afraid when
we approached the Rock with our Boat, he however
stood firm. ... ... The captain then taking some sheets
of white paper in his hand, landed on the rock
unarmed, and held the paper out to the native. The
man now trembled visibly, and having exhibited
strong marks of fear in his countenance, took the
paper: upon which captain Cook coming up to him,
took hold of his hand, and embraced him, touching
the man's nose with his own, which is their mode of
salutation. ...
... presently after we were joined by the two Women, the
Gentlemen that were with me and some of the
Seamen and we spent about half an hour in chitchat
which was little understood on either side in which
the youngest of the two Women bore by far the
greatest share. We presented them with fish and
Wild fowl which we had in our boat, which the
young Woman afterwards took up one by one and
threw them into the Boat again giving us to under-
stand that such things they wanted not. ...
Although we only have an account from one side,
perhaps this is, empirically, the nearest one can get to
what's going on in essence in interhuman communi-
cation. What is going on is a lot. Even though Cook and
his men aren't learning very much from the encounter
(and basically confirm the picture associated with heroic,
humanistic, paternalistic and colonial enterprise history),
still `everything' is involved: innumerable interpretations
and judgements are made of the other person(s) long
before any word is uttered or understood.
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Ethical Perspectives 6 (1999)3-4, p. 271
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What is the relevance of dichotomies like
subjective/objective or fact/value for understanding what
is going on in events like this? How does the interaction
during this encounter illustrate that, on the one hand, at
bottom everyone reasons in the same way whereas, on
the other hand, there are no moral principles that apply
to all normal people?49
Much can be said about how accounts of first
contacts will be biased in terms of the dominant form(s)
of life in which the event is primarily recorded and
discussed (and recorded contacts are never symmetrical).
However, there is a tendency in the literature that
focuses on issues of power relations or the
embeddedness of the recorded events in macro-
processes like the spread of colonialism,50 not to do
much more than use first contacts as exotic examples to
illustrate whatever is `the latest' in Eurocentric post-
colonialism.51 Instead first contact form(s) of life can
serve as a `life' heuristics in a way that is missed by
imagined cases (Wittgenstein's preference), thought
experiments (Quine, Davidson), ideal speech situations
(Habermas, Benhabib) or shared horizons (Gadamer,
Taylor). The `heuristics' of these philosophers, easily
promoted to transcendental certainties, have an even
greater risk of being ethnocentric or `chauvinistic'.
Cook and his men and, I take it, the man and two
women they met, both considered the others as similar to
themselves, although not the same. Hence they ascribed
to them various properties (of the sort `we' call emotions,
beliefs, desires, intentions, moral judgements, and so on)
that made sense (by the lights of the interpreter). Every
particular interpretation depends on innumerable other
interpretations, each of which can be wrong. Hence
there's no fact of the matter to any particular
interpretation. For example, both Cook and Forster
interpreted the man on the rock as being in fear. Perhaps
this was true, perhaps not. Perhaps he was angry at their
trespassing; that is why he `holloa'd', shouting: `Go
away!' That's what the man and two Women were po-
litely and seriously trying to tell Cook and his
Gentlemen and Seamen in about half an hour in chitchat
and that's what they wanted to say with refusing the fish
and Wild fowl. (Cook and his men could have taken the
last gesture as an insult, but they didn't.)
___________________________________
But perhaps the man was neither afraid nor angry.
Maybe he was trembling from excitement and his
`holloa-ing' was an invitation to come ashore. Perhaps he
was excited or angry, but the trembling had nothing to
do with it because he had a trembling illness. What
would be the real fact of the matter? Does it matter?
First contacts show communication is possible
without sharing language. Non-verbal responses can be
interpreted as rational, meaningful, immoral, and so on
(by the lights of the interpreter). Ascriptions of beliefs
and other attitudes start long before one gets a hold on
interpreting particular utterances. This is not to say that
language is irrelevant (or merely an efficient tool). But
understanding occurs long before linguistic translation.
5.The You-and-Me We Part 2:
Intercultural Communication and Objectivity
In the present context, intercultural communication does
not refer to the aim of facilitating communication in a
global economy between different peoples who are all
desperately trying to speak English. Rather the
prototypical example of intercultural communication is
the situation of first contacts. Linguistic intercultural
communication is preceded by radical translation.
Radical translation refers to concrete situations in which
a speaker attempts to make a `translation handbook' for a
foreign language solely with the help of monolingual
speakers of this language (as has occurred throughout
history). Radical translation is preceded by non-
linguistic interaction. Non-linguistic intercultural
communication is only possible if different forms of life
are partly similar or at least partly imaginable from the
other side, i.e. accessible by empathetic understanding. I
take `empathy' to mean not the projection of one's own
state of mind into something else or merely the capacity
to feel what the other feels, but the capacity and
sensibility to participate in and be enlarged by the
content, spirit, feelings, volitions, ideas, movements, etc.
of what another human being says, writes, feels, wants,
thinks, does, etc.
Taking part in a form of life is a necessary condition
for using language and hence a necessary condition for
translation and interpretation. If it weren't the case that
forms of life were similar in at least certain respects,
radical translation or interpretation would never get
started. But, the assessment that in intercultural
communication we have at least partly shared forms of
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Ethical Perspectives 6 (1999)3-4, p. 272
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life, is an assessment from within one form of life.
Therefore it doesn't follow that because there are simi-
larities there must be a universal core. Such similarities
as appear crop up and disappear (at least that's what
shows itself). That intercultural communication is
possible cannot be disputed, because intercultural
communication is a natural extension of `normal'
interhuman communication and any argument of
whatever sort presupposes interhuman communication.
There is no practical reason to worry about living in
totally incommensurable worlds. But from this
extremely well supported empirical fact it doesn't follow
that there has to be a shared core or essence of human
behaviours; or Williams's basic psychological and
social concepts that are needed to interpret both our own
and other human activities,52 or a shared lingua mentis,
or any other preconceptual, cognitive, affective, or
kinaesthetic universal structure that conceptually or
referentially specifies basic emotions, basic colours,
basic directions, or whatever.53
Interpretation of speech, attribution of beliefs and
other attitudes, explanation of behaviour, rationalization
of actions, the relation of beliefs to the world, and so on,
are interdependent. Meanings, beliefs, desires, logical
structure, and so on must be ascribed simultaneously to
the behaviour, utterances, thought contents,
predispositions, and so on of a speaker. For instance,
she, an interpreter, cannot find out what he, a speaker,
means by his utterances without assuming definite things
about his beliefs and other attitudes (at the time of his
utterances). However, the only access she has to the
speaker's attitudes is via the attribution of meanings to
his utterances (and other behaviour). Hence she seems to
be caught in a vicious circle. The same difficulty is
encountered when she tries to disentangle his beliefs
from his desires or whatever classification of attitudes
she favours.
Some sort of structuring principle is needed for the
process of interpretation, and a whole range have been
proposed. Perhaps the most well-known is Davidson's
principle of charity. It says that the interpreter has to
assume that any speaker is consistent, a believer of truth,
and a lover of the good in the majority of cases54 but
there is no need to speak the same language.55 In the
secondary literature the principle of charity is almost
exclusively written about in terms of truth restricting
discourse to descriptive statements. Such an approach is
fundamentally flawed. Most, or at least many, of the be-
___________________________________
liefs a person ascribes to another person must be true,
but this applies not only to beliefs about matters of fact
or correct logical reasoning, but also to beliefs about
what is the (morally) right thing to do in particular
circumstances.56 This applies both to extreme cases of
radical interpretation in first contact situations and to the
most informative or phatic chitchat with the person one
knows best.
What is correct about a principle of charity is that
some sort of ordering principle is needed, unless one
gives up any claim to rightness of interpretation.
However, such ordering principles are themselves, like
rationality or the notion of language evanescent, if
only because things like beliefs cannot be counted and
do not represent a distinct inner state among human
beings.57 Though some sort of mutual attunement is re-
quired for communication to take place,58 there are no
`secure attunements' with epistemological or
metaphysical priority attunements being fleeting and
contested, with revision in the air. Secure attunements
(those to which one must accede or be declared mad)
tend to be those read into the speech and other behaviour
of others, unless something suggests to the interpreter it
might be a mistake to do so. Whatever meaning is
ascribed to each other's utterances will emerge from
adjustments to, and contestation and revision of one
another's interpretations (as they work through in
actions). This makes negotiation of meanings the
product of social, political, and moral forces and this
applies as much to interpreting the familiar (Other) as
the foreign (Other).
This doesn't mean `everything' is contentious and
fleeting. For communication to take place there is always
a shared world or middle ground, which is as objective
as can be.59 However, instead of a distinct ontological,
mind-independent reality which one `discovers' or
`forms',60 one must come to terms with local reality, and
the ways in which that permits or affords meaning and
objectivity to be realized as a result of the interaction of
social beings and local topography. Moreover, there's no
need for an appeal to basic saliences, reflected in the
shared core of human behaviour referred to above, as a
precondition for communication and objectivity.61
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Ethical Perspectives 6 (1999)3-4, p. 273
___________________________________
How the saliences operative in a you-and-me encounter
are described is as fleeting as the interpretations ascribed
to the utterances or other actions of the partner-in-a-
dialogue (or, in a learner/teacher situation, as idiosyn-
cratic as the secure attunements the teacher happens to
have). There is no need to share the same `natural' ways
of grouping things together, apart from the trivial fact
that the discriminatory capacities of most humans are
more or less similar.62
Hence, for communication to work one doesn't have
to share either a prior language or a prior world if they
are what many philosophers have supposed the words
`language' and `world' to mean.63 What humans share is
broadly similar responses to a diversity of forms of life.
The limits of the human life form(s) are given by what is
similar, but what is similar should not be understood in
the first place as something that is biologically or
psychologically or transcendentally shared by all human
beings. What is similar is what human beings would
recognize as similar in first or other contacts a
similarity that is, in a way, transcendentally grounded,
but the objective content of this grounding remains tied
to the local situations of (potentially actual) encounters
of yous and mes.
Conclusion
The you-and-me we is the generalization of the first
contact we and is embedded in form(s) of life. There is
both one and many human forms of life. It would be
incorrect to talk of many human forms of life, because
all have in common their humanness (grounded in the
we of the you-and-me encounters). It would also be
incorrect to talk about one human form of life; there are
variations without a common core. Form(s) of life
should be understood, at the same time, in the singular
and plural, as local and universal, as empirical and
transcendental.
In particular the notion of form(s) of life should not
be essentialized in the way that was (is?) common for
the notion of culture. Transcendentally there is a sense in
which the commonplace question, how to make sense
or understand a culture other than one's own doesn't
make sense, because it uncritically presupposes that
`understanding one's own culture' does make sense.64
___________________________________ ___________________________________

There is also the more empirical observation that parts essence, rationality, prototype, DNA-structure or tran-
of `our' culture may be quite alien to one of `us'; indeed scendental subject, which they, necessarily, all share.
some parts of it may be more alien than cultural Surely, human beings share all kinds of things that make
manifestations which are geographically or historically them human beings. But the latter assessment is an
remote.65 empirical statement made from within a particular form
First contacts show that both the transcendental and of life. From the point of view of one language or one
the empirical aspect of form(s) of life have a universal form or life, forms of life always show similarities. If
and a local aspect. To be a human person, it is both an this were not so, communication would be impossible. It
empirical and a transcendental precondition that one is a necessary requirement for communication (or
knows the certainties of particular form(s) of life and is translation) that these similarities appear, but there is no
capable of recognizing and somehow dealing with the language-independent way to say this or to guarantee it.
enormous variety of other form(s) of life. By imagining How these similarities are understood depends on the
other communities or, better, by interacting with real form(s) of life one has been exposed to and, in
ones, one can learn to understand better what the particular, on the language that is used to express these
`natural' human form(s) of life is/are there being no similarities. The understanding of what is similar is
distinction between singular and plural anymore. always particularized and not something that is
The fact that different form(s) of life appear similar somehow innate (in a Platonic, Kantian, sociobiological,
is no reason to presuppose that there is one core, or whatever sense). What is similar has to be claimed,66
in first contacts and, strictly speaking, again and again in
every human interaction.
Notes
1.B. WILLIAMS, review of T. Nagel, `The Last Word' in New York Review of Books, November 19, 1998.
2.Here, `wes' is the plural of the noun `we'. Different wes have different extensions. There is Williams's `we of science
and logic' and his `parochial us'. Other wes include `you and I' or `we who are present here'.
3.WILLIAMS, op. cit. and B. WILLIAMS, `Wittgenstein and Idealism' in G. VESEY (ed.), Understanding Wittgenstein.
(Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture, 7, 1972-73). New York, St. Martin's Press, 1974; republished as chapter 12 in B.
WILLIAMS, Moral Luck. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981.
4.WILLIAMS, op. cit. note 2; J. LEAR, `Transcendental Anthropology' in P. PETTIT, J. MCDOWELL (eds.), Subject, Thought
and Content. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1986, p. 267-298; D.D. HUTTO, `Was the Later Wittgenstein a Transcendental
Idealist?' in P. COATES, D.D. HUTTO (eds.) Current Issues in Idealism. Bristol, Thoemes, 1996, p. 121-153.
5.H.R. FISCHER, Sprache und Lebensform. Frankfurt, Athenum, 1987; G.P. BAKER, P.M.S. HACKER, Wittgenstein:
Rules, Grammar and Necessity. Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1985, p. 229-251; J. MARGOLIS, Wittgenstein's `Forms of Life',
in M. CHAPMAN, R.A. DIXON (eds.), Meaning and the Growth of Understanding. Berlin, Springer, 1987, p. 129-150;
G.D. CONWAY, Wittgenstein on Foundations. Atlantic Highlands NJ, Humanities Press International, 1989.
6.R.M. HARE, `How to Decide Moral Questions Rationally?' in Critica (Mexico) 18(1986), p. 63-81.
7.H. PUTNAM, The Many Faces of Realism. La Salle, Open Court, 1987, p. 85.
8.For a contemporary invocation see L. KRGER, `Hilary Putnam: Objectivity and the Science-Ethics Distinction', pp.
158-164 in M. NUSSBAUM, A. SEN (eds.), The Quality of Life, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993.
9.T. NAGEL, The View from Nowhere. New York, Oxford University Press, 1986.
10.W. SELLARS, Science, Perception and Reality. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963, p. 1-40.
11.A. EDDINGTON, Space, Time and Gravitation. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1921.
12.B. WILLIAMS, Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry. Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1978, p. 236-249; ID.,
Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1985, p. 136-139.
13.J. RAWLS, A Theory of Justice. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1971.
14.H. PUTNAM, Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, p. 127-216; ID., Realism with
a Human Face. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1990, p. 135-192.
15.J. VAN BRAKEL, `Interdiscourse or Supervenience Relations: The Priority of the Manifest Image' in Synthese,
106(1996), p. 253-97.

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16.J. VAN BRAKEL, `Natural Kinds and Manifest Forms of Life' in Dialectica, 46(1992); J. DUPR, The Disorder of
Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1993.
17.J. VAN BRAKEL, `Chemistry as the Science of the Transformation of Substances' in Synthese, 111(1997), p. 253-282.
18.C.G. HEMPEL, `Provisos: A problem Concerning the Inferential Function of Scientific Theories', in A. GRNBAUM,
W.C. SALMON (eds.), The Limitations of Deductivism. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1988.
19.B.C. VAN FRAASSEN, `From Vicious Circle to Infinite Regress, and Back Again', in PSA 1992 [Proceedings Philoso-
phy of Science Association], 2(1992), p. 6-29.
20.J. VAN BRAKEL, `Some Remarks on the Prehistory of the Concept of Statistical Probability' in Archive for History of
Exact Sciences, 16(1976) p. 119-136.
21.J. VAN BRAKEL, `The Limited Belief in Chance' in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 22(1991), p. 499-
513.
22.See note
23.A. FINE, `The Viewpoint of No-One in Particular' in Proceedings American Philosophical Association, 72(1998)2, p.
9-20.
24.J. VAN BRAKEL, `Epistemische deugden en hun verantwoording' in Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, 60(1998), p. 243-268.
25.G. HARMAN, Review of H. Putnam, Reason, Truth and History in The Journal of Philosophy, 79(1982), p. 569-575;
for Williams see note
26.For extensive supportive references see J. VAN BRAKEL, De Wetenschappen. Filosofische kanttekeningen. Leuven,
Leuven University Press, 1998, chapter 3, notes 1-3, 33-36.
27.L. CARROLL, `What the Tortoise said to Achilles' in Mind, 4(1895), p. 278-280; reprint: Mind, 104(1995), p. 691-994.
28.B.C. VAN FRAASSEN, Laws and Symmetry. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1989, p. 170-176; H. PUTNAM, Representation
and Reality. Cambridge MA, The MIT Press, 1988.
29.B. WILLIAMS, review of R. Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism, New York Review of Books, April 28, 1983.
30.C.N. GLYMOUR, Theory and Evidence. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1980.
31.G. BEALER, `The Incoherence of Empiricism' in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Suppl. Vol. 66, 1992, p. 99-
138.
32.WILLIAMS, op. cit. note 1, p. 40.
33.For a recent overview of different `types' of transcendental philosophy see S.G. CROWELL, `The Project of Ultimate
Grounding and the Appeal to Intersubjectivity in Recent Transcendental Philosophy' in International Journal of Philo-
sophical Studies, 7(1999), p. 31-54.
34.S. CAVELL, `The Availability of Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy, in Philosophical Review, 71(1962), pp. 67-93.
35.I. KANT, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, transl. Kemp-Smith, p. 96 B81/A56: `da nicht eine jede Erkenntnis a priori,
sondern nur die, dadurch wir erkennen, da und wie gewisse Vorstellungen (Anschauungen oder Begriffe) lediglich a
priori angewandt werden, oder mglich sein [sind], transzendental (d.i. die Mglichkeit der Erkenntnis oder der
Gebrauch derselben a priori) heien msse'. L. WITTGENSTEIN, Philosophische Untersuchungen, 90: unsere
Untersuchung aber richtet sich nicht auf die Erscheinungen, sondern, wie man sagen knnte, auf die `Mglichkeiten' der
Erscheinungen.
36.WILLIAMS, op. cit. note 2, p. 147.
37.Ibid., note 2, p. 150-2; p. 144; cf. L. WITTGENSTEIN, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 5.6.
38.WILLIAMS, op. cit. note 2, p. 153; cf. p. 145f.
39.Ibid. note 2, p. 146.
40.Ibid. note 2, p. 152.
41.M. SACKS, `Transcendental Constraints and Transcendental Features', International Journal of Philosophical Studies,
5(1997), p. 164-186.
42.J. MARGOLIS, Science Without Unity. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 46-50.
43.M. MERLEAU-PONTY, Signs. Evanston IL, Northwestern University Press, 1964, p. 106-107; H.-G. GADAMER, `The
Science of the Life-World' in ID., Philosophical Hermeneutics. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1976, p. 182-97.
44.LEAR, op. cit., p. 293.

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45.LEAR, op. cit. , p. 297; Cf. SACKS, op. cit., p. 176f.

46.In the video recording `In Conversation: Donald Davidson The Dummett Discussion', London, Philosophy
International (London School of Economics).
47.E. VON SAVIGNY, `Common Behaviour of Many a Kind' in Philosophical Investigations section 206, in R.L.
ARRINGTON, H.-J. GLOCK, (eds.), Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. London, Routledge, 1991, p. 105-119; R.
HALLER, `Die gemeinsame menschliche Handlungsweise' in ID., Sprache und Erkenntnis als soziale Tatsache. Wenen,
Hlder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1981, p. 57-69; N. MALCOLM, `The Relation of Language to Instinctive Behaviour', in J.
HYMAN (ed.), Investigating Psychology: Sciences of the Mind after Wittgenstein. London and New York, Routledge,
1991, p. 27-47; E. WOLGAST, `Primitive Reactions' in Philosophical Investigations, 17(1994), p. 586-603.
48.J.C. BEAGLEHOLE, The Voyage of the Resolution and Adventure 1772-1775. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
1969, p. 116.
49.Quotations from HARMAN, op. cit. note
50.K. NEUMANN, `In Order to Win their Friendship: Renegotiating First Contact' in The Contemporary Pacific, 6(1994),
p. 111-45; M.T. BRAVO, `The Anti-Anthropology of Highlanders and Islanders' in Studies in History and Philosophy of
Science, 29(1998), p. 369-89; D. THOMAS, Transcultural Space and Transcultural Beings. Boulder, Westview Press,
1996.
51.B. MOORE-GILBERT, Postcolonial Theory. London, Verso, 1997.
52.B. WILLIAMS, `Saint-Just's Illusion' in Making Sense of Humanity and Other Philosophical Papers 1982-1993.
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p. 142.
53.J. VAN BRAKEL, `Meaning, Prototypes and the Future of Cognitive Science' in Minds and Machines, 1(1991), p. 233-
57; ID., `Emotions as the Fabric of Forms of Life: A Cross-Cultural Perspective' in W.M. WENTWORTH, J. RYAN (eds.),
Social Perspectives on Emotion, Vol. II. Greenwich USA, JAI Press, 1994, p. 179-237; B.A.C. SAUNDERS, J. VAN BRAKEL,
`Are there Non-Trivial Constraints on Colour Categorization?' in Behavioral and Brain Sciences 20(1997), p. 167-228.
54.D. DAVIDSON, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1984.
55.D. DAVIDSON, `A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs', in E. LEPORE (ed.), Truth and Interpretation. Oxford, Basil
Blackwell, 1986, p. 433-446; H.G CALLAWAY, J. VAN BRAKEL, `No Need to Speak the Same Language' in Dialectica,
50(1996), p. 63-72.
56.D. DAVIDSON, Expressing Evaluations. The Lindley Lecture, University of Kansas, 1982; S. JANSSENS, J. VAN
BRAKEL, `Davidson's Omniscient Interpreter', Communication and Cognition, 23(1990), p. 93-99; WILLIAMS, op. cit.
note, p. 140-144.
57.R. NEEDHAM, Belief, Language, and Experience. Oxford, Blackwell, 1972.
58.First introduced in B.A.C. SAUNDERS, J. VAN BRAKEL, `Translating the World Color Survey' in K. GEUIJEN,
D. RAVEN, J. DE WOLF, (eds.) Post-Modernism and Anthropology. Assen, van Gorcum, 1995, p. 161-178.
59.D. DAVIDSON, `The problem of objectivity' in Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, 57(1995), p. 203-220.
60.Ibid., note, p. 183-198.
61.J. VAN BRAKEL, `Quine and Innate Similarity Spaces', pp. 81-99 in Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences
and the Humanities. Vol. XX. Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2000.
62.See references in note
63.J. VAN BRAKEL, `Multiculturalising Davidson's triangulation', forthcoming.
64.P. WINCH, `Can We Understand Ourselves?' in Philosophical Investigation, 20(1997), p. 193-204.
65.N. SCHEMAN, `Forms of life: Mapping the rough ground', pp. 383-410 in H. SLUGA, D.G. STERN (ed.) The Cambridge
Companion to Wittgenstein. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
66.In the sense of S. CAVELL, The Claim of Reason. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1979.

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