UNDERSTANDING AND BELIEVING

NORMAN SIGURD LILLEGARD, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Abstract

I attempt to show that the understanding of human actions, practices, and beliefs is predicated upon a grasp of the rules or conventions which people heed, where particular acts are concerned, or upon some antecedent familiarity with similar practices, where a practice is concerned. What I call "practices" can be identified with what Wittgenstein calls "forms of life." Understanding forms of life is not a matter of grasping explanations or justifications for them, since forms of life are simply characteristic ways of acting which have no explanation. However, one can come to an appreciation of a form of life in which one does not participate by seeing its relations to one's own practices or activities. In effect, I defend the view that the understanding of human practices and beliefs presupposes that one has something like an insider's grasp of their "grammar," in Wittgenstein's sense. However, I do not endorse the paradoxical view that one can only understand a form of life if one, in fact, participates in it. I argue for the view that many practices are constituted by rules. In particular, linguistic practices are so constituted, and the understanding of linguistic acts is in some ways paradigmatic for the understanding of action generally. I show that the most pertinent or interesting specifications of acts falling within practices constituted by rules require, logically, a reference to those rules. The specification of occurrences in nature in ways pertinent to scientific inquiry does not require any grasp of rules followed in those occurrences (since none are followed). Since one cannot understand either the what or the why of any occurrence without conceptualizing it in some way, and since conceptualizing an occurrence includes being able to specify it or establish criteria of identity for it, it follows that there is an important difference between the conditions for understanding human actions, under those specifications relevant to most of our interests, and the conditions for understanding occurrences in nature. The Wittgensteinian account of the conditions for understanding which I defend has been criticized on the grounds that it has the absurd consequences that cross-cultural understanding is impossible, and that one could not give up a belief or practice without ceasing to understand it. I argue that these criticisms are based in part upon misunderstandings of the concepts of a language game and a form of life. The application of Wittgenstein's ideas in the philosophy of religion has provoked criticisms which are motivated by the misunderstandings just mentioned as well as by the conviction that there must be some context-free criteria for judging the rationality of any belief or practice. I try to show that this last criticism depends upon a very disputable concept of what a fact is, or upon a failure to see that criteria of logic cannot be invoked in criticizing a form of life before the grammar of that form of life has been mastered. Finally, I attempt to display some features of a religious form of life, and to show some of the conditions for understanding it. I do not claim that one must be a believer to understand this form of life, but I do try to show that one condition for understanding a form of life is that one empathize with it. The concept of empathy which I employ in this connection must be understood in the light of the discussion of forms of life, and in the light of the stress which I place upon Wittgenstein's physiognomic phenomenalism. I thus present a Wittgensteinian version of the view that the understanding of any form of life presupposes the possibility of verstehen, that is, an insider's perspective on that form of life.

Subject Area

Philosophy

Recommended Citation

LILLEGARD, NORMAN SIGURD, "UNDERSTANDING AND BELIEVING" (1981). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8118172.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8118172

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