Yet somehow something we call communication takes place.  How is this possible.  I am not sure that Garfinkel and Wittgenstein will point in the same direction to answer this puzzle.  However, we need all the explanation we can get to understand how communication  happens.

But, while you're thinking about all he doubt that finitism places on any given statement, any given piece of language, reflect on this:
 

Shutz A.  (1962).  Commonsense and scientific interpretations of human action.  In Schutz, A. (1962)  Collected Papers. Vol. 1, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff.
 

Finitism presents us with a puzzle.  It is a kind of uncertainty theory that can be applied to psychology and to conversation, too.  Finitism tells us that we never have enough information to make sense out of what is being said.  The finitist notices that teaching a child the color blue by pointing to a blue object is insufficient to explain the concept of "blue" because the child has no way of telling whether you are pointing to the color when you say "blue" or whether you are pointing to the shape of the blue object or its name.

Hence, we have a puzzle, the puzzle of finitism.  The puzzle is: How on earth do we manage to ever make sense of things?

As long as we don't notice the ambiguity of language there is no puzzle.  Finitists, however, are forever showing us this ambiguity.  For example, have you read yet Article 3 on finitism in Garfinkel and Wittgenstein?  That article introduced the notion of an indexical.   Indexicals are words that are inherently extremely ambiguous and once you learn to recognize all of them, you notice how they fill our speech and text.  If we have this many highly ambiguous words in everything we read and hear, how do things ever seem coherent?

That's the puzzle of finitism.  Wittgenstein's answer is that we find this a puzzle only because we are victims of a kind of cultural myth about language that leads us to expect something different than we have, over and over again.  This is the myth that is represented in the very first words of Wittgenstein's classic work, The Philosophical Investigations.   Wittgenstein introduces this myth, and his analysis of it, with a passage by St. Augustine.

Click here to see how Wittgenstein introduces the Augustine myth.
 

Finitism is important because it leads to the postmodern posture.  As Lyotard said, the postmodern is one who is incredulous of metanarratives.  Disbelieving in metanarratives means that postmodern no longer believes that context free language can be evaluated as true or false.  It cannot even be meaningful without our tying the meaning down contextually.

The notion of an indexical helps to explain why metanarratives no longer inspire faith in the postmodern.  You can read about indexicals today by reading article 3 in the series on "Finitism in Garfinkel & Wittgenstein."
 

In previous articles, I have told you that Garfinkel, following Wittgenstein, abandoned the dream that it would be possible to outline a complete set of rules that would explain social facts.  The abandonment of this dream has been called finitism.  In a previous article (II. Finitism in Garfinkel &Wittgenstein) I showed you how finitist reasoning gave up on research showing us the causes of suicides.  Today, I want to explain one of the features of language that cause finitists to abandon hope of discovering the mechanical rules of interpreting language.  Remember, without such mechanical rules simple techniques of artificial intelligence will not work.  More importantly, for philosophers, a whole visionary strain of philosophy of language is  called into question.  This is important for us as postmodern therapists who try to understand our clients, but first, we need to understand more thoroughly why finitists feel that a mechanical interpretation of language is impossible.

We can start to get a glimpse of the finitists reasons for disillusionment by looking at the concept of an indexical.  Take the sentence, "That's a good idea."  The word that in that sentence serves as an indexical.  What is distinctive about indexicals is that they refer to different things depending on the context in which they occur.  Many words are indexicals that we do not notice, for example, note the previous sentence:
 

What is remarkable about indexicals is that we cannot talk without them.  How would you have worded the previous sentence in order to have avoided the indexical them?  And how would I have worded the sentence without the indexical you?

Our heavy use of indexicals greatly dashes the finitist's  hope of constructing a language that could be interpreted mechanically according to a complex.  But there are other features of language that dash the hopes of many who once dreamed of constructing a mechanically interpretable language.  That means, at least to the finitist that  we can never use a mechanical or logical device that will tell us for sure what any statement means.

Tomorrow, I hope to write a fourth article in this series.  It will explain how another aspect of language compromises the dream of a discovering a mechanically or logically interpretable language.

For an overview of the problem of indexicals, however, refer to:

Levinson, S. C.  (1983). Pragmatics.
   Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 
 
 

Deconstructions in this sense are not just in the postmodern literature.   I think the first one I experienced was as a teenager.  One summer day when I had nothing to do, and there was no one to call, I began perusing an article on "time" in the family encyclopedia.  This clear and simple article deconstructed time for me.  Before that, I took the concept of time for granted.  But as I read I realized that time was relative to the movement of the earth.  If the earth slowed down, I began to wonder, would that mean that time itself slowed down?  My mind was spinning.

There are many people who find these Deconstructions experiences disconcerting.  As I say, they pull the rug out of what we take for granted.  But in doing so they also open up the opportunity for a deeper understanding.  In a period of deconstruction, if you keep your wits about you, you may find new and interesting thoughts occurring to you.  And this can lead, hopefully, to more adequate concepts that assist us better in our attempts to navigate our lives.

What I think makes such an experience psychologically safe is that, right after the deconstruction, the mind reweaves the world in most if not all its familiarity.  For me, first I feel the deconstruction, but then within moments I take the same concept for granted.  I mean, I look at my watch to see if I have time to ponder the deconstruction of time any longer.

However, having deconstructed time, and knowing that I can do so whenever I choose, gives me a rush of seeing something profound.  I can imagine such a deconstruction of time would be absolutely prerequisite for the development of creativity in a present day physicist.  Such a deconstruction would not give the physicists answers, as I imagine it, but it would open up their otherwise closed minds to the possibility of seeing things differently.  Opening the mind this way is a very precious thing.

For me, Wittgenstein's later work is full of such deconstructions.  His words guide me over and over again into realms I had not imagined.  The interesting thing is, like the case of the deconstruction of time, I mostly do not keep these deconstructions in mind.  I mostly just go back to thinking about things pretty much in the same old way.  Still, there is something different.  The possibility of deconstructing the concept stays in the back of my mind.

My purpose in writing this article, however, was not just to tell you about my personal history with deconstruction.  It was to show you a particular aphorism in Wittgenstein that I find deconstructive.  I present it to you as a kind of gem that I particularly like.  I hope it works for you.  If so, you should experience a deconstruction of the concept of reading.  (To get the deconstruction to work, you need to follow the guidelines of what to do carefully.)

Here is Wittgenstein's deconstruction of reading:

For me the whole experience of "reading" dissolves, or deconstructs.  If you can do it, you may begin to start thinking creative thoughts about what it means to read, that is if you can tolerate this little bit of intellectual orientation.  Moreover, you will be able to follow (heaven forbid) certain postmodern writing that might otherwise have been unintelligible to you.

I'll write more about what I think the implications of this deconstruction tomorrow -- once the world has turned on its axis one more time.
 

(This article continues with a line of thinking I introduced in yesterday's article on a Wittgensteinian deconstruction.  That article s still available on the front page of PMTH.)

Yesterday I quoted a one of Wittgenstein's deconstructions:
 

Now, let me extend this thought experiment.  Not looking at your watch, ask yourself if there is anything on the face other than the numbers.  Then look to see.  When I did this I found some very small words telling the brand of the watch.  And what I am struck by now is that I did not see those words when I was looking at the numbers.

A lesson I get from this experiment is that not only can one not read what one knows by heart, but if one faces a situation with the answers in mind, one cannot read new information that one did not know.  It just does not become noticeable.

I think this is true about listening, too.  (Listening is like reading with one's ears.) I cannot listen when I think I am hearing information that I already know.  (Ever try to listen to the same old story that you have been told a thousand times?)  When we think we know, the ability of the mind to listen simply seems to close down.    This is a kind of predicament for the knower.  If I think I know, then I have a hard time learning -- even what I do not know.

This seems to me to have enormous implications for doing therapy.  I wonder if "not-knowing" of CLS did not emerge to cope with our predicament of thinking we know so much we cannot listen.  I suspect Katherine Levine's  suspended disbelief is another way.  I think my own "generous listening" is a way I have tried to work with my own sense of knowing the answers, that is, in order to open my mind.  I think it is to open our minds in this way that psychoanalytic institutes require analysts to have a personal analysis.  Whether that works, or not, is another question, but the purpose seems to me to be much the same.  And that purpose is to somehow open our minds and be able listen and take in new information.

I believe there are many other ways to accomplish this task.  Perhaps, what we need to do to expand our listening minds is to suspend our disbelief, question ourselves and others as to how we do it when we do.

What could be more important than this for doing good therapy?  What is more important in the therapy than that the therapist is able to listen?

I believe the work we do in reading various deconstructive authors (such as Wittgenstein and Derrida) serves that purpose.
 
 
 
 

For the past few days I have been reading a wonderful little book by John Heritage called Garfinkel & Ethnomethodology.  It is the kind of book one can get a lot from in the first reading, and it makes me want to read more things by Heritage.

Not only is this book a good introduction to Garfinkel (whom I am just beginning to study), but it provides helpful assistance in the study of later Wittgenstein.  Earlier today I found myself wondering if Garfinkel had read Wittgenstein or if he had reached many of the same conclusions independently, but I have found that answer.  There is a passage in the Heritage  book (p.122) which makes it clear that Garfinkel had read Wittgenstein.  It is clear to me, now, that Garfinkel was highly influenced by Wittgenstein, and it is for this reason that Heritage often explains Garfinkel by explaining Wittgenstein.

There is much good conceptual explanation in this book.  It is so easy for authors to skim over the difficult to explain parts without really explaining , and Heritage does not do that.

For example, one of the Wittgensteinian concepts that Heritage explains is finitism.  I don't remember Wittgenstein ever using this term, but the concept that Heritage explains is, I believe, very central to Wittgenstein's later work, and, apparently, to Garfinkel's as well.

As Heritage explains it, finitism leads one to the "overall conclusion" that there is an

Finitism despairs of achieving this positivist dream of sufficient rules.  Indeed much of Wittgenstein's later work is devoted to deconstructing the illusion that such a calculus can ever be devised.  In fact, in my view, the only reason we can say that Wittgenstein's text is concerned with matters other than finitiism is that after deconstructing  the illusion, that there can be a language calculus based on rules, a new picture of language begins to emerge.  If I say, "There is a chair in the corner," no rule, or complex of rules, can tell you what I mean by this.  My statement may be part of a joke, I may be telling you to sit down, I may be asking you to move the chair or giving you a clue in a murder mystery.  And there are no rules, the philosopher could give you (ever) for discerning what my meaning is.

But Heritage's book is not just about Wittgenstein.  Not only did later Wittgenstein think that such rules would not be possible, but, according to Heritage,  Garfinkel thought something similar about sociology.  The picture I have gotten from reading Heritage (and listening to some of the PMTH subscribers such as Jerry Gale) is that Talcott Parsons believed that human behavior could be explained entirely by the way people are guided by a set of rules, although complex and implicit rules, of course.  But like later Wittgenstein, Garfinkel did not think behavior was determined entirely by rules.  Heritage says:
 

Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and
   Ethnomethodology. Polity Press.
 

I give you this article because there is always a sense of comfort when I read the same thing from more than one author, and I thought you might like that comfort.  The article to the right gave you a window into Garfinkel according to Heritage.  Here I am going to give you a similar window into Garfinkel's system according to Michael Billig.  This is taken from a footnote in one of Billig's important texts:
 

Billig, M. (1987).  Arguing and Thinking.
   Cambridge University Press.
Garfinkel, H. (1967).  Studies in ethnomethodology,
   Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice Hall.
 
 
 

I said yesterday that finitism was what happened when people abandoned the positivist dream that had people hoping we could discover a logical calculus that would tell us everything we needed to know.  Wittgenstein was a finitist in this sense and so was Garfinkel.

I promised you that today I would tell you a little about why this dream was abandoned.

Look again at the dream.  The dream had us thinking that everything worked like clockwork.  All we had to do, it seemed, was discover the rules.  There are many versions of this clockwork idea.

There was the positivist version of the dream.  It had us thinking that the pieces of langauge statements would worked like a calculus to communicate meaning.  All we needed to do was discover elusive rules.  Then, so the dream told us, we would be able to figure out how communication happened, how people understood each other.  This was the version of the dream that most occupied Wittgenstein.  It was this version that he primarily abandoned.

Then, there was the social science   research version of this dream.  According to social science version, we would be able to figure out psychological and social things just by systematically collecting research data.We might collect data on child rearing, for example, and this would give us a formula for raising mentally healthy children.

And there was the French structuralist version of the dream.  It gave us a picture of the spoken words playing on other minds like piano keys play on the the strings of the piano.

But these dreams were abandoned by finitists.  Why was that?  Wittgenstein concentrated on deconstructing the positivist dream and Garfinkel focused on the research dream.  Let's you and I look at the research dream in this article and the kind of considerations that lead Garfinkel to abandon it.

Garfinkel talks about the the way that our standard social science research variables slip like sand between our research fingers.
There are many examples, but consider the the deconstruction of suicide statistics.

On the face of it what could be more factual and precise than a suicide statistic?  One simply counts the number of suicides in various precincts and at various times and the pattern of suicides will surely emerge from that.  Surely one could find a formula and a calculus for figuring out who would commit suicide and when.

But, a little deconstructive work dispells that illusion.  First, there is the usual anxiety about the data.  Were all the suicides reported?  Or was there a systematic attempt to hide some suicides from the researcher.  Also, how does anyone  know for sure that a death is a suicide.  Even if no one is deliberately disguising a suicide as a natural death, there is the real question of how anyone would know for sure.  For example, might some traffic accidents really be suicides?  And, finally, perhaps some listed suicides are really accidents.  A person might posture about suicide, or tease himself  about suicide, and then accidentally pull the trigger.  Is that suicide?

Every social science project we could possibly imagine has this many questions that undermine its objectivity.  Many have more.  Considerations like this deconstruct the illusion that social science variables are simple and clean and that all we must do is discern the patterns to have airtight psychological formulae.

Garfiend and Wittgenstein both work through examples such as this to reach a point in which it seems clear that no such formula is possible.  However, you are unlikely to be convinced just by this statement.  To receive the full force of their revolutionary work, you must go through a long list of these deconstructions and let them do their work.

These deconstructions on suicide statistics  are just the beginning.  Watch for other deconstructions, soon.

And, finally, the question I deal with in this colum will be: : What does finitism give us that can help our lives?
 
 

Pared to a minimum, [Garfinkel's] claim is that interpretive processes of unknown scope and variety are necessarily implicated in 'making sense' of sociological data.

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