...is the Augustinian picture of language! Since when?
The quote of Augustine's gets prominence from being the first proposition in the Philosophical Investigations. As such, Baker + Hacker make a lot of it. All theories of meaning thus far (including the Tractatus) are refinements on such a picture. Indeed, I too (I think) make a (big?) deal of it. Yet how much of this was intentional on the part of Wittgenstein and how much was a mere accident of the particular organisation?
After all, it doesn't get this privileged position in other of Wittgenstein's posthumous works. In Philosophical Grammar we don't hear of Augustine until point number 19; then only briefly; and after a few points not at all. In PI itself, there is not much revisiting or further explanation of the relevance of Augustinian much later. Maybe some people with more biographical knowledge of Wittgenstein might be able to say if there was ever a consciously articulated reason why it was moved to the front.
Was it something that was meant to inform the rest of the work, or was it one point among others and simply a convenient place to get going from? If it was intentional, is it the Augustinian picture itself that is the main source of confusion (as B + H might suggest) or is there some deeper problem that manifests itself in the Augustinian picture as well as the other positions that W argues against?
One thing I might suggest at this point derives from the different starting point of PG. That starts by trying to explicate the notion of understanding a proposition. How is it that these signs can be a 'code' to say something about the world? What brings these signs to life? Now these question themselves tempt us to give an account of what is involved in a proposition that is understood compared to one that is not. Here Wittgenstein does talk about language-learning but he says this: "Learning a language brings about the understanding of it". But what is it that is brought about; what is there when the statement is understood to when it is not? W later says "Augustine does describe a calculus of our language, only not everything that we call language is this calculus". Here, as later, W is railing against the view that words and propositions only have one use: to name. However, this seems to piggy-back on a prior, and potentially misleading view on the nature of understanding: that of following or being able to apply a calculus.
In the PI, however, there is no need first to explicate understanding. We are already in a linguistic situation where the words are meant and understood by Augustine's elders. The question is then how the learner can be guided to mean and understand as they do. These will be illuminated by first seeing the situations in which the words are used. In PG, the difference lay in how the words were applied, and what was understood (as he also believed later); there also seemed to be an underlying notion of understanding. Later, in PI, the concept of 'understanding' itself is reliant on what we are brought to understand. The notion of 'understanding' that arrives from Augustine cannot be carried through to all linguistic phenomena.
As such, I find it interesting (how historically compelling, I don't know) that rather than saying Augustine describes a 'calculus', he describes a 'system of communication' in PI. A system of communication does not involve any specific claims about meaning/understanding but that, if it is looked at as a linguistic phenomena (as a language), then we must already consider the sentences as having those features (No need for a piror justificaiton or account). As such, putting Augustine at the beginning allows the least possible assumptions about meaning/understanding and that even so will lead to philosophical confusion.
All suggestions helpful
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3 comments:
I don't have time to say much, but I will point out that he puts Augustine right up front in the Brown Book, and this was dictated after the Big Typescript (which became PG) was written.
So his recognition of the importance of the Augustinian Urbild must have come sometime between the two.
Neil,
I don't think it was an accident or convenience. As in the Grammar, the discussion of Augustine's picture of language acquisition does not occur at the beginning of the Big Typescript (naturally, since the PG is a selection, by Rhees, of revisions of the BT). However, as Brandon has pointed out, by the Brown Book (1934-5), Augustine has been moved to the beginning. This remains the case all the way to the final version of the Investigations. In TS 220 (1937; the earliest extant version of the PI), TS 237 (1942; a revision of TS 220), and Rhees's translation of an early version of the PI (though, not of TS 220 or 237; see my blog post on 3-17-08), Augustine is discussed first.
By the way, in my opinion the Big Typescript (translated by Luckhardt and Aue) is a much better text to read than the Grammar. The latter is too much an editorial creation of Rhees's. That, and the BT goes into much greater detail. The PG is most useful when reading it after the relevant sections of the BT.
Thank you very much for those comments. Clearly, from what you have written, it was intentionally put there. It is helpful to have this biographical/ bibliographical knowledge which shows the Augustine's place remains constant through revision.
Still, the three related points remain. 1) What motivated this change?/ What changed is his philosophy to 'up' the relative importance of Augustines view? 2) How did his view of this Augustinian picture itself change? (calculus vs. communication) 3) How far does the Augustinian picture underlie all that comes after? (I do feel that Wittgenstein isn't using him to put forward a theory. Even in talking about an Urbild or Proto-theory, it depends on how deflated we understand 'theory')
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