Learning Code from Wittgenstein [Part 3]

IAN FAIRWEATHER 'CHI-TIEN BURNS THE BUGS' 1964

Wittgenstein suggests — as Leibniz also did — that the rule of language, of calculus, or society takes shape in the mind as a picture or a symbol, which is combined and compared with others. In a governance context I often imagine a symbol combination of no-yes or negative-positive, expressed as a cross and a tick. 

In Wittgenstein’s words “symbolic understanding” of the rule “intimates to me the way to go”, as in a line, row, or a series in calculus. When the rule is implied and intuited it becomes the decision.

Wittgenstein: “To guess the meaning of a rule, to grasp it intuitively, could surely mean nothing but: to guess its application. And that can't now mean: to guess the kind of application; the rule for it. Nor does guessing come in here.”

A rule is like an implied agreement between individuals, specific to a context. In the case of state decisions we should say this intuited agreement would relate to two elemental processes of governance, such as when faced with this form of case you must take only this form of action and not the other.

The rule has a shape in the mind, quite likely subjective, perhaps a picture of railway rails, or some other particularly memorable coding symbol. The rule tells you not to respond to your opinion or emotion.

Wittgenstein: “Well, we might imagine rails instead of a rule. And infinitely long rails correspond to the unlimited application of a rule … The rule, once stamped with a particular meaning, traces the lines along which it is to be followed through the whole of space. But if something of this sort really were the case, how would it help? No; my description only made sense if it was to be understood symbolically. I should have said: This is how it strikes me. When I obey a rule, I do not choose. I obey the rule blindly … One does not feel that one has always got to wait upon the nod (the whisper) of the rule. On the contrary, we are not on tenterhooks about what it will tell us next, but it always tells us the same, and we do what it tells us.”

It is one form of solution to the double contingency problem. The rule seems to operate behind our backs. When all state clerks and all citizens internalise the same rule for application in all analogous contexts, each better knows what to expect of the other. These expectations would accord with universal and impersonal criteria. They apply equally to all, or are equally appropriate for all. 

It is easy to see how Wittgenstein insight into rule-following in language is relevant to state governance. The ‘code’ of governance is a symbolic representation of the rule that first arises because it is intuited as something already-occurring, being reflective of an underlying elemental dynamic quality of governance that has been continuous for some reasonable length of time. 

There has formed an intuition about the existence of this patterned behavioural response to a reality that is already present in the data of governance but which is not fully-formed, explicit, explained, acknowledged. It is found in — but has not been turned into — recorded history, philosophy, political doctrine, science. It is not a state regulation, but is found there too. 

The carriers or bearers of code operate with or through the code silently, largely unconsciously, without reason or intelligence. They are doing so instinctively or intuitively. Yet the intuited rule is already essential to their understanding of meaning in interaction. 

Governance interactions trigger consciousness of the symbol that represents the rule that is already more or less familiar to the individual actors, and which the actors know, without even thinking, represents the essential action choice that necessarily arises in all similar or equivalent contexts. 

This intuition about the application of a rule for carrying out a decision is aroused on each occasion. At every stage it must be rediscovered. After a period of time, however, the discovery becomes like straightforward recognition. Encounters with the rule have repeated so often and in so many circumstances that recognition itself has become the routine. New exposures to similar cases results not in intuition per se, but rather a form of mechanical decision. 

What about the operational aspect? In language there are many nuances to be considered in order to establish understanding of meaning. Coded responses to interactions in governance are likely to be less modulated than in language. The decision choice is more either-or; habituation to an order that one was trained to obey without much need for personal deliberation. The intuition lies in knowing in a flash where and when to repeat the rule. 

This does not eliminate subtle distinctions. There are programable elements in governance where exceptions can and should be made without subverting the rule, and where the response will not be automatic or instinctive. Wittgenstein’s conception of language rules take us only some of the way. Much more needs to be learned about programatic discretion, shading, or even blunt exceptions to the rule, and where the limits lie.

What about origins? During novel events, which present more or less tabula rasa conditions, the role of instinct, intuition and rule-following can be detected not in sheer repetition but in a post-hoc inference from the events themselves. Even then the rule decision accords with the actor’s experience of previous contexts, rather than unique insight. The history must take account not only of the events, individuals, and stated intents, but also the underlying philosophies, the long run structural or environmental context, catalytic processes, and system dynamics.

The observer has the task of interpreting the actions and reactions of individuals who experienced the intuition and recognised the rule. 

Wittgenstein’s first insight is that when a rule is in play “instinct comes first, reasoning second”. But it may be impossible to know for certain. The observation of action presents many opportunities for misinterpretation. If it looks as though a solution has finally been found to a double contingency interaction problem we shall be tempted to explain it after the event as the creation of trust when it was more likely a surrogate rule and subliminal symbolisation of a rule. 

Wittgenstein’s notebooks provide examples of equivalent and inherent uncertainty on almost every page. Here is a random selection:

Wittgenstein: “I can only guess what he's calculating in his head. If it were otherwise, I could report it to someone and have it confirmed by the one doing the calculating. But would I then know of everyone who calculates what he is calculating? How do I make the connection with him? …. Even if I were now to hear everything that he is saying to himself, I would know as little what his words were referring to as if I read one sentence in the middle of a story. Even if I knew everything now going on within him, I still wouldn't know, for example, to whom the names and images in his thoughts related.”

Wittgenstein: “I remember that sugar tasted like this. The experience returns to consciousness. But, of course: how do I know that this was the earlier experience? Memory is no more use to me here. No, in those words — that the experience returns to consciousness — I am only transcribing my memory, not describing it. But when I say ‘It tastes exactly like sugar’, in an important sense no remembering takes place. So I do not have grounds for my judgment or my exclamation. If someone asks me ‘What do you mean by ‘sugar’?’ — I shall indeed try to shew him a lump of sugar. And if someone asks ‘How do you know that sugar tastes like that?’ I shall indeed answer him ‘I've eaten sugar thousands of times’ — but that is not a justification that I give myself.”

Wittgenstein: “Might one not really talk of intuition in mathematics? Though it would not be a mathematical truth that was grasped intuitively, but a physical or psychological one. In this way I know with great certainty that if I multiply 25 by 25 ten times I shall get 625 every time. That is to say I know the psychological fact that this calculation will keep on seeming correct to me; as I know that if I write down the series of numbers from 1 to 20 ten times my lists will prove identical on collation. Now is that an empirical fact? Of course — and yet it would be difficult to mention experiments that would convince me of it. Such a thing might be called an intuitively known empirical fact.”

Wittgenstein’s second insight is that not all post hoc reasoning will be of equal functional value in knowing what happened. The person obeys the rule blindly, and often afterwards explains the decision to others in terms that refer to tangential, contingent, imagined or invented motives, such as personal reasons, moral principles, theoretical rationales, or laws and regulations that do not explicitly sanction the decision but could be interpreted as having done so if one wished to justify it so. People may feel a need to explain their actions by revealing something of themselves.

Wittgenstein: “Why do I want to tell him about an intention too, as well as telling him what I did?Not because the intention was also something which was going on at that time. But because I want to tell him something about myself, which goes beyond what happened at that time. I reveal to him something of myself when I tell him what I was going to do. Not, however, on grounds of self-observation, but by way of a response (it might also be called an intuition).”

An historical study of origins and causation in governance code can usefully employ Wittgenstein’s theory of rules of language to detect the intuitions and rules or codes, and their subsequent evolutions. An observer needs at least be aware how difficult it is to observe. 

Governance is a coded process. Latent code is deduced from patterns of state action over time. It is in great actions of state that establish frameworks, objectives, and procedures for core functions where code is most visible to the observer. If there were bugs in the code they may have needed to be burned. More often than not dysfunction stems from systematic suppression of code. A coded decision preference is embedded. It is personified at a lowly level of operation in Wittgenstein’s example of the clerk. It expresses the function and symbolises the routine of the system. We should trace it historically from latency to sublimation, and even predict it as far as explicit formality. 

Michael G. Heller  ©2021