Take the piano as an example. How do we learn to play? By repetition, again, and again, and again, until we are sick of it. And then we begin again the next day. At first the song, or whatever we are playing, will sound horrid, we feel like giving up, then, out of nowhere, it will sound a little better, but still bad, and after a little more practise, perhaps the tune is coming through, and after even more, you can definitely listen to it without cringing. At this point you realise that your hands are moving by themselves, they know where to go next, they no longer need you to painstakingly tell them what the next key is, they simply move there on their own. And then more practise. And finally, after many many repetitions, the song is there. You look back to the point in time when you couldn't play it, you wonder what has changed, what do I know now that I didn't know before? what is different now?
While working outside today I thought we could look at it this way: think of the mind and the body as malleable objects, the the force which shapes them (generally) as repetition. So, for example, you become better at a purely physical activity by going through the motions over and over, building the strength and endurance of those specific muscles. Or take a purely mental activity, such as multiplication, where one only become proficient through willing practice... I guess if you're young and are forced to do maths against your will then no matter how many times you do it you'll never get better... but I'm not sure.
(But this is all too simple anyway: the mind and the body always work together, even in something as simple as swinging a hammer, so we should always think of it like that).
The strange thing is that many mental activities, such as pure maths, cannot easily be translated into real life situations. It takes a leap to get from doing Pythagoras in the classroom to realising that you can apply it almost anywhere, and that you need to apply it. A builder may have hated maths when he went to school, but now he knows certain things about building which the mathematician would call 'math-being-applied' but which the builder simply calls building. He has in a sense simply started seeing the world in a different way; where the mathematician sees Pythagoras the builder sees 'that's-just-how-it-works' i.e. a rule of reality (Pythagoras cannot not work).
So what has all this got to do with Wittgenstein? Although I'm probably getting it all wrong, I'll just pick some quotes and talk about them. Remember that Wittgenstein wrote about the philosophy of language, and I am now applying this to ways-of-doing-things (i.e. playing piano, using Pythagoras). All of these quotes are from the Philosophical Investigations.
This is part of Wittgenstein broader philosophical view in which he bids us to “look and see” (§66) and advises that in philosophy “We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place” (§109). What he means (maybe) is that as philosophers we should concern ourselves primarily with describing what we see in front of us. I see all this applying somewhat to ways of doing things as well. For example, we learn nothing if some one attempts to explain playing the piano to us. Instead we learn either through doing it ourselves (trial and error), observing someone (emulating how it is supposed to be done), or description (relating how it is supposed to be done). So we may see (or hear someone describing) that one should hold the hands still while playing piano and as much as possible let the fingers do the moving. Or someone may explain how to read sheet music by showing you what each note means (a key on the piano), which is really just description anyway.
Of course you can break these ways-of-doing-things, you can play with your arms, not your fingers, you can read a C note as a G, and you can also, in regard to Wittgenstein's language games, use the word 'Cat' to denote a dog. But if you do any of these things then you are doing something wrong in the sense that you are not following the rules, and the rules are derived from how things are done best. That is to say, it is best if play piano from the fingers and not the arms (or shoulders or whatever), it is best if everyone reads that one note as a C, and it is best if everyone uses the word 'Cat' to refer to a cat.
Gone way off track here. Need to explain other stuff before this makes sense, and even then it's dodgy at best...
This is part of Wittgenstein broader philosophical view in which he bids us to “look and see” (§66) and advises that in philosophy “We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place” (§109). What he means (maybe) is that as philosophers we should concern ourselves primarily with describing what we see in front of us. I see all this applying somewhat to ways of doing things as well. For example, we learn nothing if some one attempts to explain playing the piano to us. Instead we learn either through doing it ourselves (trial and error), observing someone (emulating how it is supposed to be done), or description (relating how it is supposed to be done). So we may see (or hear someone describing) that one should hold the hands still while playing piano and as much as possible let the fingers do the moving. Or someone may explain how to read sheet music by showing you what each note means (a key on the piano), which is really just description anyway.
Of course you can break these ways-of-doing-things, you can play with your arms, not your fingers, you can read a C note as a G, and you can also, in regard to Wittgenstein's language games, use the word 'Cat' to denote a dog. But if you do any of these things then you are doing something wrong in the sense that you are not following the rules, and the rules are derived from how things are done best. That is to say, it is best if play piano from the fingers and not the arms (or shoulders or whatever), it is best if everyone reads that one note as a C, and it is best if everyone uses the word 'Cat' to refer to a cat.
Gone way off track here. Need to explain other stuff before this makes sense, and even then it's dodgy at best...
No comments:
Post a Comment