Wittgenstein, Popper and the poker

On the afternoon of October 25, 1946, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein held a graduate seminar in his rooms at the University of Cambridge. The discussion centred around the issue of what it means to say that you “talk to yourself”. Ironically (given the subject matter), as was typical of his seminars, it was a conversation carried out in silence. Wittgenstein was more a collector of acolytes than students. Most of whom were a bit scared of him.

Later that day, he attended a packed meeting of the university’s Moral Sciences Club. During this he threatened the visiting speaker, Karl Popper, with a fireplace poker.

Or did he?

The details of what happened that evening are charmingly interrogated by David Edmonds and John Eidenow in their 2001 book Wittgenstein’s Poker. The verdict? That Wittgenstein may or may not have been guilty of a failure of donnish etiquette (or attempted assault). The Edmonds-Eidenow prosecution file is an agreeable condensation of most of the historical issues. I can’t recommend it highly enough. It is a beautifully written portrait of the idiosyncrasies of the main protagonists (including Bertrand Russell – no show without Punch), and a faithful characterisation of the other witnesses/attendees – a sort of carnival of philosophical grotesques.

Wittgenstein’s Poker is wonderful psychology but incomplete philosophy. Wittgenstein was a scion of one of the wealthiest families in Austria; Popper was a member of the more professional Viennese classes. He was the deeply ambitious up-and-coming philosopher of science; Wittgenstein, at that point in his career (he died five years later), didn’t think philosophy was a thing. A deeply serious person (and a very practically minded one) he considered it a diversion, one which merits little more attention than a crossword puzzle. It’s alleged that this incident instantiated a feud – it’s more likely that whilst Popper still wrote about it several decades later, Wittgenstein had forgotten about it ten minutes after it happened. Genius tends towards solipsism. The book brings all this out very well. But it misses a trick.

Popper’s paper was titled “Are there problems in philosophy?”. You’d think it would be self-evident that there are, but we who are trained to argue about everything will end up arguing about anything. Wittgenstein’s view was that the huge philosophical issues are no such thing, that they are instead illusions thrown up by our systematic misuse of language. Just as the Buddha thought we can be tricked into a fake view of the universe by getting our words out in the wrong order, so Wittgenstein thought that the deepest questions that trouble the human mind are caused by a certain slovenliness about the way we speak and (therefore) think.

How do you seriously answer questions about whether other people have minds, whether God exists, or what it makes something true rather than false? Wittgenstein’s answer was that you don’t take the question seriously in the first place. The “deepest questions” of philosophy are best addressed not by argument but by therapy. Our ways of thinking imply that what we take to be deeply counter-intuitive is probably no more than linguistic mischief, a mischief in which we collude. Just as the early Church argued that as soon as we act, we display our tendency to sin, so Wittgenstein believed that as soon as we start philosophising, we go deeply wrong.

But there is something obviously wrong here, isn’t there? You could argue that Wittgenstein is guilty of a form of self-refutation, and that the position he advances is, in itself, a redolently philosophical one. The claim that there are no really interesting philosophical problems is surely contentious? And, if contentious, then it’s a metaphysical claim?

More interestingly, what happened on that evening is in itself a question with some philosophical import. Who was right?

What, in other words, is the status of propositions which make claims about the past? Wittgenstein, in an earlier iteration, had sided himself with the Vienna Circle of philosophers who wished to assimilate all knowledge to what can or cannot be empirically verified. Their manifesto announced a theory of language according to which a statement can only be meaningful, as opposed to true, to the extent that it can be subject to some experiment. The “logical positivists” had declared war on speculative metaphysics (dangerous to the scientistic agenda) without noticing that their own position was hilariously self-refuting. How do you verify its own articles of agenda? And how, more interestingly, can you maintain that statements concerning what happened five minutes ago — let alone 75 years ago — are meaningful?

Popper made his name dismantling that theory of meaning. So maybe we should score that one to him?

One thing we do know, is that this was the first and only time these two ever met. Unless, of course, they’re chatting now. That’d be a Round 2 worth watching. Wittgenstein talking to himself; Popper irate that he’s being ignored.