American Philosophical Quarterly Volume 48, Number 2, April 2011

MastEr aNd NoviCE iN thE LatEr WittGENstEiN

Meredith Williams

he terms master and novice are not to be found in Wittgensteins writings, though the expressions child, pupil, instruction, learning, and mastery are scattered throughout the later writings. I introduce the terms novice and master to keep track of certain important methodological and explanatory ideas to be found in the later work, especially in Philosophical Investigations (hereafter PI), but also in Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics (hereafter RFM) and On Certainty (hereafter OC). I use these terms to refer to the initiate learning relation between the child and the adult or the pupil and his teacher. These are situations in which the child or pupil does not have the cognitive competence required to exercise the skill that is the object of learning. There is an asymmetric dependence of the novice on the master, a dependence that is not epistemic but linguistic and causal. In the PI, Wittgenstein introduces each great philosophical problem and argument he addresses with the learning situation, importantly that of learning a first language or learning the natural number sequence. The opening lines of the Tractatus-LogicoPhilosophicus (hereafter TLP) and the PI show how far apart these two works are:
TLP, 1. The world is all that is the case. PI, sec.1. When they (my elders) named some object, and accordingly moved towards something, I saw this and grasped that the thing was
2011 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

called by the sound they uttered when they meant to point it out [in translation].

This is a contrast between a metaphysically austere (perhaps empty) claim and the rococo cognitive capacity assigned the child. It is, of course, an intimation of the diagnostic argument to come. These opening sentences indicate the philosophical problems each work addresses. The TLP addresses the problem of the representationality of language, taking the problem of logical form to be the hard problem, while treating the pictorial relationship between names and simple objects as transparent or obvious.1 For Wittgenstein of the PI, there is a deeper philosophical problem, and that is the problem of bedrock normative similarity. The master-novice relation is a window onto the nature of normativity. The problem of normative similarity concerns our fundamental judgments of obvious sameness or necessity: sameness of property or object, going on in the same way, following a proof, recognizing the same sensation. What creates the philosophical problem in each of these areas of judgment is the philosophical theory or picture in play. Theories of reference and propositional content, as well as theories of logical determination and induction, disguise the bedrock of our judgments of sameness. The learning situation turns our attention to a different area of our linguistic practice, one to which we are blind. That

200 / AmEriCaN PhilosophiCal QUartErly

blindness we share in the first instance with the blindness of the child. with the success of the diagnostic critiques. I shall look at this picture through the medium of the master-novice relation.

1. The Diagnostic Work of the Master-Novice Relation

Our human world is a normatively structured one, entry to which is achieved through learning. The features of the learning situation have as much to do with understanding the place of language in the world as logic was alleged to explain the logical form of reality. The learning situation enables us to dissect the structure of normativity in various language games. Doing this provides diagnostic insight into the error or mistake made by the philosophical theories under scrutiny. The first 315 sections of part I of the PI are a highly structured examination of the representationalist theory of language and the Cartesian theory of mind. Wittgenstein subjects each area of philosophical theorizing to diagnostic criticism, criticism that has two phases. Wittgenstein first identifies grammatical errors made by the theory in question, errors that can be described as conflating the means of representation with the object of representation (PI, 104). The identification of such grammatical errors cannot complete the argument against the philosophical theory, however, for the advocate can always claim to have made a philosophical discovery rather than a mistake, say, the discovery of the proposition as mediator between word and the world, or the super-rigid machine that guarantees correct continuation, or the infallibility of self-knowledge. The second phase of Wittgensteins argumentative strategy reveals paradox at the heart of theory: the explanatory machinery of the philosophical theory itself eliminates just what it was to explain. In this way, conflation arguments are paired with paradox arguments. Put together they constitute a successful diagnostic critique of these two powerful conceptions of language and mind. In this article, I shall focus on the alternative picture of language that emerges

(i) Representation: Read the Master into the Novice The PI opens with Augustines description of a child learning language, learning its first words and the objects these words name. Witt genstein introduces the learning situation in his own voice in PI 5, and there he identifies the diagnostic role as well as the explanatory role the learning situation plays:
If we look at the example in 1, we may perhaps get an inkling how much this general notion of the meaning of a word surrounds the working of language with a haze which makes clear vision impossible. It disperses the fog to study the phenomena of language in primitive kinds of applications in which one can command a clear view of the aim and functioning of words. A child uses such primitive forms of language when it learns to talk. Here the teaching of language is not explanation, but training (PI, sec. 5).

The picture of language that has created the haze is this: the individual words in language name objects-sentences are combinations of such names (PI, 1). The two phases of his argument against this picture are to be found in PI, 6, where he identifies the conflation that supports the intuitive plausibility of this picture, and PI, 95, where he introduces the consequence of this mistake, the paradox of thought. The domain of the novice dominates the conflation argument while the domain of the master dominates the paradox argument. (In highlighting these two passages, I do not intend to suggest that the intervening passages are unimportant. On the contrary, they pave the road from conflation to paradox.) Wittgenstein uses the builders game to describe a primitive form of language that is tailored to fit the name theory of meaning. Each of its four words is related to a distinc-

mastEr aNd NoviCE /

201

tive type of building stone. Using these words, A can get B to bring now a slab, now a beam, and so on. This is as close to the name theory of meaning as one can get. Yet even here one is misled by the theory if one holds that words of A name building blocks. The learning situation of PI, section 6, makes this clear. The child who acquires facility with language is brought up to perform these actions, to use these words as they do so, and to react in this way to the words of others. The description of the learning is laced with indexicals, which are indispensable to describing what goes on. It is crucial not to confuse the explanatory role of these indexicals that are part of training with those of ostensive definition. Ostensive definition requires that the recipient can ask for a name, and that requires conceptual and situational stage setting (cf. PI, 2838). The child must have the concept of the kind of thing that is being named; must be able to grasp the indexical gesture as one of pointing or signaling some object, event, or property; must grasp the intention of the one giving the definition; must be situated so as to see or hear the object being named; must not be in a context which is ambivalent; and so on. So one might say: the ostensive definition explains the usethe meaningof the word when the overall role of the word in language is clear (PI, 30). The initiate learner, the novice, has none of these competences and so cannot acquire the use of a new word through ostensive definition. The indexicals used in initiate learning are part of ostensive teaching that is pursued relative to a training.2 As the word training suggests, this acquisition of words in the context of their use is not an intellectualized matter. It is better understood causally. The first conflation Wittgenstein identifies is the conflation of ostensive definition and ostensive training, namely of that which occurs in a conceptual context and that which is part of a training regime. Recognizing that the latter is more readily construed as a causal

event, it is tempting to identify ostensive training with behaviorist conditioning, but this is a mistake. Wittgensteinian training involves a linguistic and cognitive division of labor that is pointedly missing from conditioning theory; or rather, it is camouflaged by the theoretical terms used in describing and explaining behavior. The language of stimulus and response enables the theorist to describe the test animal and its behavior in nonintentional terms while reserving the full panoply of conceptual and intentional states and behaviors to themselves in their production of the laboratory situation. This disguised division of labor is just what Witt genstein displays in the learning situation of the novice. The novice does not have the conceptual and intentional resources that are necessary for asking for the name of some thing or property. Early uses of words are neither names nor judgments, even in the truncated sense of the use of words in the builders game. The utterance of the novice in the context of the game is treated as a holophrastic judgment or request or as a name, depending on the language game of which these words are a part, before it is such. The background cognitive and linguistic competence that makes such an utterance or noise linguistic is provided by the master of the practice, by those who already have linguistic mastery. Without that, the words of the novice recede into mere noise, as the novice alone does not have the linguistic and cognitive competence to support meaningful speech. But training into the actions of a language game is necessary before an individual can exercise the secondorder practice of naming. It should be noted here that the opening sentence by Augustine required just such conceptual prowess on the part of the child who learns the names of objects from adults. In conflating ostensive training with ostensive definition, the master is read into the novice. The single words of the child

202 / AmEriCaN PhilosophiCal QUartErly

are taken to be holophrastic sentences, such that the child must already have mastery of the inferential structure and subsentential roles of the individual words he uses. Making the conflation explicit undermines the representationalist conception of reference and the role it is depicted as playing in the acquisition of language, and thereby it opens space for seeing language in a fresh way. A description of the master-novice relationship in language learning reveals the contrast that is hidden by the picture of language as a set of words associated with objects. Through this haze, ostensive teaching is mistaken for ostensive definition. The background training is out of sight, replaced implicitly by the cognitive mastery of the novice, a mastery that is necessary for explanation by ostensive definition. This diagnosis of the error invites the reply that the child must already have the linguistic competence necessary for ostensive definition. This is to read the adult into the child. And as the linguistic competence must outreach the meaning of a word, grasping the meaning of the word must include grasping its systematic features. The individual word is a name that contributes to the meaning of a thought or judgment by its place within a propositional sign. The word thereby contributes to the truth value of the proposition of which it is a part. It is the proposition that prevents the semantic relation between word and object (property) from slipping into a relation of mere association. In other words, the systematicity of a name prevents the reference relation from degenerating into mere correspondence. That systematicity is specified relative to complex linguistic strings of assertoric shape, that is, the complexity of propositions. Propositional content is the state of affairs that constitutes the truth condition for the assertoric sentence having that content. This explanatory work of the proposition leads to what Wittgenstein calls the paradox of thought:
Thought must be something unique. When we say, and mean, that such-and-such is the case, weand our meaningdo not stop anywhere short of the fact; but we mean: this-is-so. But this paradox (which has the form of a truism) can also be expressed in this way: Thought can be of what is not the case. (PI, 95)

This truth functional account of the semantics for a language supports the representational theory of language. What it is meant to capture is the intuitively appealing idea that meaningful language can represent all logically possible states of affairs, that is, language can represent what is false as well as what is true. The proposition explains this basic normative contrast, the semantic pair true and false. There must be room for meaningful sentences that are nonetheless false. The propositional content of any meaningful sentence must remain the same, whether the sentence is true or false. In brief, a representational system must be bipolar. The proposition is introduced to satisfy this requirement. In precisely the way it explains semantic content, it violates this requirement of bivalence. Hence, the charge of paradox. Propositions seem best suited to explain how sentences say something substantive about the world (that is, something that can be true or false) precisely because the proposition has a constituent structure that corresponds with the syntactic structure of sentences and the proposition has content in its immediate and direct relation to states of affairs, the object of representation. Propositions touch facts: When we say and mean, that such-and-such is the case, weand our meaningdo not stop anywhere short of the fact; but we mean this-is-so (PI, 95; emphases in original). If the content of the proposition is the fact that things are thusand-so, then there can be no false propositions, since a false proposition must stop short of the fact since the fact does not obtain. But stopping short of the fact violates a metaphysically necessary feature of propo-

mastEr aNd NoviCE /

203

sitions, namely, that a proposition cannot stop short of the facts. This is the way that the proposition reaches right out to the world. If empirical sentences are meaningful sentences that can be either true or false, then there are no empirical sentences. The contrast between being true or false and being necessarily true collapses. The paradoxical result is that this theory of representation eliminates meaningful empirical sentences, the very thing it was introduced to explain. Empirical propositions are eliminated because the proposition, in order to explain content, is necessarily true. This first paradox argument shows that semantic normativitythe contrast between true and falseis eliminated. The paradox of thought implicates the domain of the master alone, but the route to it was by way of the conflation between ostensive definition and ostensive training, a misunderstanding of the domain of the novice. This is a misunderstanding of the relation of language to the world: it takes a primitive causal relation exploited by the master in the learning situation for a sophisticated semantic relation. This is to read the adult into the child.

lem is how to understand the relation between causal regularity and normative regularity, or the difference between logical necessity and causal necessity. The pupil learning arithmetic is a perfect vehicle for diagnosing the relation between logical determination and causal determination. Wittgenstein rejects the idea that causal necessity might be revealed to be logical necessity, a position suggested in the TLP. But neither does he reduce logical necessity to causal necessity, though he recognizes the temptation to do just this. In PI, 193194 (just six passages before PI, 201, the paradox of interpretation argument), Wittgenstein examines what he calls the machine-as-symbol:
When does one have the thought: the possible movements of a machine are already there in it in some mysterious way?Well, when one is doing philosophy. And what leads us into thinking that? The kind of way in which we talk about machines. We say, for example, that a machine has (possesses) such-and-such possibilities of movement; we speak of the ideally rigid machine which can only move in suchand-such way. (PI, 194)

(ii) Rule: Read the Novice into the Master The rule following passages can be seen to follow the same general structure as does the critical examination of naming. Witt genstein introduces this discussion with an indeterminacy problem in fixing the correct application of a rule or paradigm (PI, 139) and quickly turns to the case of a pupil learning the natural number sequence (PI, 143). The normatively evaluating language of the teachercorrection and validationapplies to the actions of the pupil in the language of causation: the normal and abnormal response to the instruction, the pupil as being under a psychological compulsion, the possibility that our pupils capacity to learn may come to an end (PI, 143). These dimensions of the learning situation are intended to conform to the philosophical problem in play. That prob-

What is important here is how causal determination and logical determination are conflated, giving rise to illusory explanatory success. The lesson to be learned here will come into play at PI, 198, where cause and interpretation are realigned. John McDowell has recognized the importance of this passage as well and has shaped it to fit his interpretation of the rule-following passages.3 McDowell treats these passages as embodying a dilemma, that between treating rules as the super-rigid source of all possible movements or turning to interpretation as the only alternative. The former is a form of Platonism and subject to all the criticisms of such a view; the latter is subject to the well-known paradox of interpretation. This invites applying the metaphysical debate between Platonic Ideas and humanly sustained coherent systems, that is, the debate between finding a

204 / AmEriCaN PhilosophiCal QUartErly

self-justifying terminus to what we mean or finding a place within a coherent system of meanings. But this account is a distortion of how Wittgenstein argues. To see the problem in the context of initiate learning is to see a form of explanation that should satisfy the philosopher, but does not. It provides what Wittgenstein calls a radical explanation in his RFM.4 From the context of initiate learning, in describing what happens, we describe the relation between causal description and normative description. This context leads us neither to a Platonist determination of all possible movements (after all, the pupils capacity to learn may come to an end) nor to a free-floating interpretation. So how should we understand the argumentative structure of the rule-following passages? I suggest we look through the lens of the learning situation, and through Wittgensteins characteristic pair of arguments, the conflation argument paired with the paradox argument, we can discern a different context for these central passages. The machine-as-symbol is Wittgensteins device for showing how the conflation between causal determination and logical determination occurs. The machine is a physical machine with parts that work together to carry out the specific task that the machine performs. Taking this physical machine as a symbol for its own operation, much in the way that we can use a red colored board as the standard for using the word red, so the physical machine in its operation symbolizes, that is, constitutes the standard for the word machine or machine operation. The fallacy lies in taking the machine-as-symbol as logically determining all its possible applications in virtue of the fact that the actual movements of the machine are causally determined. Idealized causal determination is taken as a model for logical determination once the physical machine is used as a symbol for its actions. Further, however, as a symbol, it is distinguished from the machine itself in its operations:
But when we reflect that the machine could also have moved differently it may look as if the way it moves must be contained in the machine-assymbol far more determinately than in the actual machine. (PI, sec. 193)

Conflating features of logical determination with features of causal determination creates a special kind of entity:
We speak of the ideally rigid machine which can only move in such-and-such a way.What is this possibility of movement? It is not the movement, but it does not seem to be the mere physical condition for moving either. ... The possibility of a movement is, rather, supposed to be like a shadow of the movement itself. (PI, 194)

Once we explain the difference between the two kinds of determination in terms of possible movements as shadows of just the movement they are possibilities for, then the seas of language run high (PI, 194). Witt gensteins diagnosis is that we do not use the key expressions with understanding; we misinterpret them (PI, 194). What lies behind the conflation is the misinterpretation of normative expressions used in rule-governed practices. Conflating logical and causal determination creates a shadow determination that stands behind our particular applications of a rule. Only in the domain of the master can this sort of error be made. When we ask the question of a novice, we find a different alignment of the causal and the logical, one that is not tied to misinterpretation of normative or causal terms. Wittgenstein opens his critical examination of the explanatory and/or justificatory role of interpretation with a discussion of the initiate learner, the novice who comes to act in accord with the rule (PI, 198). Importantly, and prefiguring the paradox of interpretation argument, Wittgenstein asserts that interpretations by themselves do not determine meaning for any interpretation hangs in the air along with what it interprets (PI, 198). So the question arises, What sort of connection

mastEr aNd NoviCE /

205

is there between an expression of a rule and an action? Wittgenstein finds the appropriate reply in the learning situation: I have been trained to react to this sign in a particular way, and now I do so react to it (PI, 198). This is causal training within a normative practice or custom. The causal and logical components of initiation into a practice are kept distinct. They are not conflated in the explanatory role that each plays. Only the learning situation can bring this out clearly. This explanation is the background to the critical work done by the paradox of interpretation. Interpretation, if it is to do the justificatory work it is supposed to do, must ground the use of an expression by itself. In doing this, it displays what is correct in the usage of a word, and by implication what is incorrect. The result, as is well known, is that every course of action can be made out to accord with the rule ... if everything can be made out to accord with the rule, then it can also be made out to conflict with it (PI, 201). In other words, if we insist upon staying within the domain of the master, we lose any context for understanding the relation of interpretation to our ongoing practice. To become a participant in a practice is to understand a language and to understand a language means to be master of a technique (PI, 199). The consequence of restricting our understanding of language to the second-order level of interpretation, the level sustained by those with linguistic mastery, is to fail to understand the character of first-order language use. It becomes confused with a de facto regularity in the words and actions of the participants. The community, as interpreted by some,5 is the only alternative to the interpretationist account. De facto conformity in judgment and action secures a place for correct behavior. Mistakes are deviant uses of language. But this view reads the child into the adult. Autonomy cannot be achieved. Rather we are all constrained in the way that children

are constrained in what they do and say, insisting upon conformity in behavior as the mark of correct behavior. But we need not understand Wittgensteins appeals to custom (PI, 198199) and massive agreement (PI, 241242) as this kind of behavioral conformity. As critics have pointed out, such regularism loses the normative contrast as well.6 To understand our customs (practices) aright, we need to understand how the novice comes to be a practitioner. In looking at the learning situation with questions of our normative practice in mind, we are enabled to see that what interpretation lacks is a proper understanding of the background against which both ordinary and interpretive moves are made: to understand a language means to be master of a technique (PI, 199). Techniques are not constructed of hidden shadow movements or of interpretations. They can, however, be shown in the learning situation. This takes us to the explanatory work of the master-novice relation.

2. Explanatory Work of the Master-Novice Relation

The appeal to initiate training is a crucial part of the radical explanation for how we harden the empirical proposition into a rule (RFM, VI.22). Discussions of learning occur in contexts in which the issue is the problem of normative similarity, of how to make the contrast between correct and incorrect uses of words. Wittgensteins use of the learning situation is a window onto how we become normatively informed creatures, how we bootstrap our way from being causally embedded creatures to rational autonomous agents. The intervening factor is the acquisition of our second normative nature. Before we can be rational beings, we must become rule-governed beings. We must harden our words into rules. (This metaphorical way of putting the transition creates visible contacts with On Certainty, where Wittgenstein is primarily concerned with just such hardened

206 / AmEriCaN PhilosophiCal QUartErly

propositions. There, too, we find numerous references to learning, to the novice and master of language.) The learning process is the locus of this hardening. First, how does causally promiscuous behavior become selfregulated action? Without self-regulation, regularities in nature cannot be discerned.7 This is a question about calibration and the active role of the master in calibrating the novice. Second, what light does the masternovice relation shed on concept acquisition? This is a question about the mastery of technique and the active role of the novice. work as a meter stick. The meter stick must be rigid, not malleable or subject to decay or degeneration. Yet it must also be soft enough to permit scoring. Certain metals and woods are suitable for this measuring job. The necessary empirical properties make possible the calibration of the metal bar so that it can be used to measure length in other objects. Similarly, we can think of the initiate learner as being calibrated to measure certain properties of the world. The child learns to measure his world for simple colors and shapes, ordinary objects, simple sensations, and primitive ethical behavior. Coming to do these things, that is, to measure the world for simple objects and properties of both the natural world and the social world, is a matter of acquiring language. Acquiring language is thus a matter of coming to recognize primitive similarities. This is done blindly by both novice and master, although the master has the capacity to become aware and the novice does not. This important asymmetry is the pivot for initiate learning and explains why the normative status of our bedrock judgments are invisible to us in the conduct of our ordinary lives. The simple language games we play with very young children are the means for scoring or calibrating them. They have the empirical properties that are necessary for this calibration. They display both rigidity and plasticity of the right kinds. We are rigid in our sensory systems, and so the range of properties in the world to which we are sensitive. Yet we are malleable in the range of behaviors we can acquire in relation to various situations in the world. These empirical properties are necessary to our being calibrated to respond to properties and objects to which we are causally related. But what we come to judge is not just another empirical property of ourselves. Our perceptual judgments are not just another wrinkle in the complex working of a detection system. It is a judgment in virtue of the exercise of (normative) standards. Not even the childs early

(i) Calibration: Cognitive Division of Labor If we disentangle ostensive teaching from ostensive definition, we can see how the context in which each is used differs from that of the other. Ostensive definition can be given to those who are able to ask for the name of an object or property. Having this second-order semantic skill requires that they are already cognitively adept and able to provide the stage setting required for successful ostensive definition. Contextual features and cues are equally important in disambiguating correct use.8 Ostensive teaching differs in that the subject of the teaching does not have the background cognitive skills or the ability to recognize the relevant contextual factors. It is the defining feature of a novice to lack these background skills and capacities; as Wittgenstein puts it, the novice does not know how to ask for names. Initiate training can be thought of on analogy with a measuring device. Wittgensteins clearest example of this is the standard meter stick (PI, 50). There are three distinct properties of the meter stick that can be confused or conflated with each. These are, first, the purpose of the meter stick, namely, to measure objects for length; second, the medium in which the measuring is done, that is, scoring the stick in centimeters and meter; and, third, the empirical properties an object must have if it is to

mastEr aNd NoviCE /

207

use of individual words (red or ball, for example) can be treated as mere sounding off, the causal effect of retinal stimulation. This difference can be seen in the initiate learning situation. We can analyze the learning situation in light of the contrast between ostensive definition and ostensive teaching. We have taken as established the claim that ostensive definition presupposes cognitive and semantic abilities in order to ask for and be given such a definition. From this perspective, we cannot but hear the single words uttered by the child as holophrastic sentences expressing assertion or request. The implicit syntactic and semantic complexity of a childs saying juice is assumed to be unconscious. Witt gensteins approach, as we know from his treatment of the builders game, is to challenge just this presupposition. The childs utterance of juice exhausts his linguistic understanding. But it does not exhaust the status of his utterance. The child is requesting juice by saying juice. The necessary cognitive and semantic understanding, necessary, that is, in making the utterance juice a request, cannot be provided by the child, but is provided by the master. There is a cognitive and semantic division of labor. Only in the novices relation to masters practice do his words have the status of linguistic actions. But that they do have that status shows that they cannot be reduced to mere noise-making. So there is a cognitive division of labor: the child needs the active support of the master to constitute his words as linguistic actions. Take that support away and the childs use of these holophrastic sentences will wither away. In all cases of initiate learning, the novice is blind to the cognitive setting against which his words are meaningful. The master also, or typically, is blind to that cognitive background, but for very different reasons. The novice is blind because he has not the resources or basic competence to participate autonomously in the language game. The master is blind

because of the very ubiquity and familiarity of the background to language use. The fundamental feature of our human life is that it is so fully immersed in normative structure that even our most natural reactions and ways of seeing are normatively shaped in ways that are shared: the common behaviour of mankind is the system of reference by which we interpret an unknown language (PI, 206). Though the echo of Quines inscrutability of reference argument can be heard, it would be a mistake to assimilate this argument to Wittgensteins treatment of bedrock practices. The system of reference Wittgenstein refers to is the array of bedrock judgments in which we agree as a matter of course (cf. PI, 211, 217219, 241242). The medium of entry into language is initiate learning in which the novice becomes calibrated to speak with the master. The childs early requests and reports are such only by courtesy of the cognitive and semantic support of the master. The standards and norms that inform these requests are implicit in the judgments and actions of the master in supporting or not the words of the novice. The normativity of our practices does not become (or reduce to) the causal, though it does exploit our causal situation in the world in the way that a measuring device exploits the rigidity of the materials out of which it is made.

(ii) Technique: The Learning Circle Moves from Experimental to Must In addition to the stage setting that Witt genstein holds is necessary for ostensive definition, he also holds that the adoption of a concept is the mastery of a technique. The learning situation provides a window onto this claim as well. The focus here is on rule following, on going on in the correct way. Wittgensteins paradigm for this kind of understanding is the mathematical proof.9 The exercise of a concept consists in the mastery of a technique, of a way of going on in the use of a word or the playing of a game. Thus,

208 / AmEriCaN PhilosophiCal QUartErly

how we learn to add or follow a recipe or re cognize the consequences of meaning something is constitutive of what we learn. This can, without error, be thought of in terms of an inferentialist structure,10 but Wittgenstein prefers the clarity and determinateness of arithmetic and Euclidean proof in making his point. The radical explanations he offers for the justificatory status of proofs appeal to how we are trained in the mastery of mathematical techniques. The learning situation discloses the relation of the background techniques to the construction of a proof or the exercise of a mathematical concept. They must be taken apart for the initiate. What recedes to the background in full mastery is what must be highlighted for the novice. The effect of such initiate training is to see the hardness of the logical must as a lesson ... drawn from the scene (RFM, VI.7; cf. PI, 437). Wittgenstein is not committed to the view that moves within any language game must be subject to the discretely applicable techniques one finds in geometry. Rather, techniques and the necessity with which they are associated form a family of related phenomena. But any clarity we can reach with respect to necessity in mathematical proof will illuminate this family of cases as did the natural number series for going on in the same way. Mathematical proofs, Wittgenstein tells us, give propositions an order. They organize them (RFM, VI.1), and they do so in a special way: The concept of a formal test presupposes the concept of a transformationrule, and hence of a technique (RFM, VI.2). A proof is a pattern of propositions, a way of organizing propositions in accord with transformation rules. Yet understanding proof in terms of transformation rules merely postpones the account of necessity that we look for. Explaining the necessity of proofs in terms of transformation rules raises its own question. Just how is the necessity of transformation rules to be explained? It would seem that transformation rules require rules of application. But Wittgenstein rejects this step.11 Instead, he embeds the transformation rules within a practice of application, which provides the background against which the proof can be constructed. This is what Witt genstein calls a technique. It is a skilled activity, not a further set of rules, and as a skill it is normatively structured. The role of technique opens our lives to the future in virtue of two important features:
only through a technique can we grasp a regularity. The technique is external to the pattern of the proof. One might have a perfectly accurate view of the proof, yet not understand it as a transformation according to such-and-such rules. (RFM, VI.2)

His first point cannot be emphasized too much. To put the point negatively, we cannot recognize a regularity unless we have some way of applying or implementing a rule. In other words, we can recognize regularities in nature, in society, in mathematics only to the extent that we can regularize our own behavior.12 Using a technique is engaging in self-regulating behavior. The regularities (and so similarities) of nature are not forced upon us by some kind of natural resemblance or causal necessity alone; nor are they available to us by way of some principle of identity. This repetitive and self-regulating behavior that marks the mastery of technique is the basis for what counts as going on in the same way. Judgments of sameness are a function of our own repetitive regulated behavior in virtue of which we can grasp other regularities. Selfregulated behavior is constrained behavior, not in virtue of being an instance of a physical law but in virtue of the subject being trained in techniques. Constraint, repetitive regular behavior, and normative judgment of sameness go together. We measure the world only to the extent that we are calibrated. The second feature of technique states that the technique is external to the pattern of

mastEr aNd NoviCE /

209

proof (RFM, VI.2). There are no propositions that are part of the proof which describe the technique for applying the transformation rules that constitute the steps of the proof. So one might see the proof written out and yet not be able to understand it as a transformation according to such-and-such rules (RFM, VI.2). This is the situation of one who has not studied mathematics or logic and sees a proof or derivation written down, but does not understand how or why the successive lines of the proof or derivation are introduced. That individual cannot see a proof in the pattern of propositions, for he does not see it as an organized pattern in which the conclusion must be what it is. How we see things is a matter both of what is obvious and what must be, and both of these are on display in the initiate learning situation. The pattern into which the child is being taught cannot be recognized as such until the child has mastered the techniques for using the rules through the actual repetition of constrained behavior. The child or novice must act out the part if she is to see the pattern. The apparent pointlessness or obviousness of a move does not thereby indicate that it is irrelevant to the training. On the contrary, it may be just what is most important. It is what the master sees and the novice must acquire. We can relate this discussion of technique to the paradox of interpretation given at PI, section 201. There, Wittgenstein concludes that there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which is exhibited in what we call obeying the rule and going against it in actual cases. Grasping a rule or concept is not to be explained in terms of her translating the utterances of her teacher nor in terms of her having tested various hypotheses in the use of a word, but in signif[ying] that the learner has gone in a circle. The learning circle Wittgenstein refers to is temporally bounded. It is the actual process of teaching a pupil how to multiply, for example. The pupil begins and ends

with the same mundane activity of getting a mathematical result. Something as simple as the activity of multiplying 8 by 9 to get 72 (or adding 68 and 57) can be both the start and the end of the learning circle. Nothing is different in the expression of the arithmetic proposition. At the beginning of learning and at the end of learning (when the pupil sees that 8 times 9 must result in getting 72), the same expression is inscribed 8 9 = 72. What differs is the normative status of that proposition for the pupil. The vehicle for that change in status is the mastery of a cognitive skill or technique for using numerals. These skills are modes of behavioral self-regulation that constitute going on in the same way in relation to established procedure. What overcomes the abstract problem of indeterminacy of naming and interpretation is that we can be, and are, trained in certain ways. Developing techniques of use creates the regularities necessary for judgments of similarity or sameness without which language or any rule-governed enterprise is impossible. An isomorphism is created between the techniques we have acquired through training and certain natural regularities. But it is the set of techniques (in part) that determine which natural regularities are salient for us (color, shape, size). As Wittgenstein puts this point in the RFM, the phenomenon of language is based on regularity, on agreement in action (RFM, VI.39). In the learning situation, regularity is guaranteed because no alternative way of responding is permitted or accepted. The novice is alternative blind. The role of the teacher is crucial here, for the resources available to the pupil are not simply his sensory stimulations but an environment shaped by the teacher. The learning circle moves from the experimental activity of testing in which the pupils reactions are shaped by the teacher through the use of external sanctions of praise or correction to the activity of testing in which the result is seen as necessary, as what must be, of setting

210 / AmEriCaN PhilosophiCal QUartErly

an internal standard of correctness for the pupil:
It is as if we had hardened the empirical proposition into a rule. And now we have, not an hypothesis that gets tested by experience, but a paradigm with which experience is compared and judged. And so a new kind of judgment. (RFM, VI.22)

are especially important. They show the way in which the learning relation is pivotal in navigating the problems Wittgenstein seeks to understand and dissolve. The learning situation reveals the bedrock of our practices:
It is clear that our empirical propositions do not all have the same status, since one can lay down such a proposition and turn it from an empirical proposition into a norm of description. Think of chemical investigations. Lavoisier makes experiments with substances in his laboratory and now he concludes that this and that takes place when there is burning. He does not say that it might happen otherwise another time. He has got hold of a definite world-picturenot, of course, one that he invented: he learned it as a child. I say world-picture and not hypothesis, because it is the matter-of-course foundation for his research and as such also goes unmentioned. (OC, 167)

Effecting this kind of change is the result of the learning circle. What is involved in adopting a concept reveals a strong link between the process of learning and what is learned, for the training itself is constitutive of the concept acquired. To adopt the concept is to acquire the technique, and technique can only be shown and practiced.

Concluding Remark
The difference and relation of master and novice emerges in connection with other matters of concern to Wittgenstein, but these four usestwo diagnostic and two explanatory NotEs

Johns Hopkins University

1. See That is how a picture is attached to reality; it reaches right out to it (TLP 2.1511), and It is laid against reality like a measure (TLP 2.1512). Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961). 2. Let me note that Wittgenstein distinguishes ostensive teaching and the training within which it occurs. As he says, With different training the same ostensive teaching of these words would have effected a quite different understanding (PI, 6). Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 3rd ed., trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1968). 3. John McDowell, Wittgenstein on Following a Rule, in his Mind, Value, and Reality (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998). 4. L. Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, rev. ed., ed. G. H. von Wright, R.Rhees, and G. E. M. Anscombe; trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, vol. 6 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978). 5. See Saul Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982); and Crispin Wright, Rails to Infinity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001). 6. See Robert Brandom, Making it Explicit (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), chap. 1, Toward a Normative Pragmatics; and McDowell, Wittgenstein on Following a Rule. 7. David Pears, The False Prison, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). 8. See Charles Traviss discussion of the importance of context in identifying the correct use of a word, in Unshadowed Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000).

mastEr aNd NoviCE /

211

9. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, rev. ed., trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978), vols. 1, 6. 10. See Brandom, chap. 1, III. From Norms Explicit in Rules to Norms Implicit in Practices, Making It Explicit, op cit. 11. Taking this step would assimilate this mathematical case to the case of using the cube-drawing as our standard for picking out cubes. Here we need a method of projection and so a regress is initiated. A rule of application for a transformation rule would also be a method of projection. 12. David Pears made me aware of this important point in False Prison, vol. 2. He sums it up by saying that we discover the regularities in natures behaviour only by first establishing regularities in our own behaviour (p. 371). Also see Pearss more recent work, Paradox and Platitude in Wittgensteins Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), chap. 2.