Making Sense of Wittgenstein

My Thesis: Section 5 (/end)

2009-04-19T18:02:00.001+01:00

The GFP embodies a particular conception about the understanding of propositions, which can be revealed through analysis. All propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions (TLP 5) which tell you what is the case if they are true. These express the thought that simple objects are concatenated in a certain way. However, “language disguises thought” which means that as the multiplicity of thought is hidden, we cannot see the connection between the proposition and reality. When completely analysed, however, “a thought can be expressed in such a way that elements of the propositional sign correspond to the objects of the thought” (TLP 3.2). In this way, the proposition manages to line up with the thought it is expressing. Given that “A logical picture of facts is a thought” (TLP 3), the proposition reveals itself as a picture of a situation in reality, where there is a one-to-one correspondence between the elements of the picture and the objects in the world.

For the Tractatus, then, language, thought and the world are all constructed according to a common logical pattern (TLP 4.014). If these are made to line up, there is no further question we can ask about the proposition’s logical relationship to reality. All we can do is see whether the proposition is true or not. This is the view criticised in the Investigations:

Thought, language, now appear to us as the unique correlate, picture, of the world. These concepts: proposition, language, thought, world, stand in line one behind the other, each equivalent to each. (But what are these words to be used for now? The language-game in which they are to be applied is missing?) (PI 96)

What is the complaint here? What he is pointing to as a weakness of the Tractatus is what we above highlighted as a (seeming) strength. On my interpretation, the strength and weakness derive from the same source: the presence or absence of the ability to elucidate the sense of our ordinary propositions. For the Tractatus there is no need to express it in this way as we could express the same proposition with any sign. Indeed, a propositional sign with the right multiplicity may have no use in our language (we wouldn’t know what to do with it). However, if the sort of analysis envisaged in the Tractatus is feasible, then it reveals the content of the proposition as the terminus of such an analysis (as envisaged by the GFP). On the other hand, if we can’t say how it applies to our propositions, then what is the use of accepting the GFP? What was positive is now negative: no further questions can be asked. It stops us saying anything about the relationship between the proposition and reality or what makes it true.

Indeed, it is the inability to see how such an analysis might proceed, that made Wittgenstein think his earlier position was empty. Consider the following:

I spoke as if there was a calculus in which such a dissection would be possible. I vaguely had in mind something like the definition that Russell had given for the definite article... At the root of all this was a false and idealized picture of the use of language. (PG p.211)

In PG he says that we can elucidate the sense of certain expressions through the use of definitions. In such instances it will help us see the connection between different concepts, see the logic of that language-game and remove misunderstandings. However, firstly, it would be a mistake to say that this could apply to all of language. Secondly, to the extent that one can dissect a proposition into logically more basic ones, it becomes a ‘problem of calculation’ as to whether the proposition is elementary or not. By this he means we must have a method of discovery whereby we could discern/calculate whether it is further analysable or not. It is precisely because we don’t have such a method for the majority of language, that it is misleading for the GFP to talk about thought being disguised or hidden. As the quote testifies, he thought something like Russell’s definition applied to the whole of language. In relation to this he says, “I saw something far away and in a very indefinite manner, and I wanted to elicit from it as much as possible”[1].

Something very close

Given what I have said above we have to ask why he was so confident of it earlier. Was he ignoring ordinary language and did he simply suppose that we could break down propositions into elementary ones? Would it have bothered him that we can’t see how such an analysis would go or would have merely stated it must be like that? Consider the following:

The strict and clear rules of the logical structure of propositions appear to us as something in the background- hidden in the medium of the understanding. I already see them (even through a medium): for I understand the propositional sign, I use it to say something. (PI 102)

He is referring to such passages as “the understanding of general proposition palpably depends on the understanding of elementary propositions” (TLP 4.411). We are able to understand all sorts of propositions, including ones we have heard for the first time, even though we can’t spell out its projective relation to reality. Equally, we didn’t have to have any new ‘logical experience’. As such, palpably the ingredients were there for understanding the proposition and I know how to put them together to form the thought. Here, my understanding can be brought to light but not in the sense of telling me something I didn’t already know. Instead, in terms of using the medium of language in such a way that logically makes clear what I already know.

In these passages we don’t see analysis as far off and distant but which we must say is there anyway. On the contrary, they seem directly relevant and they feel as if they are contained within my understanding of ordinary propositions. As I argued in the previous section, analysis is only possible because we already know the meanings of the parts of thought. In this way, at each stage of the analysis, the proposition will recognisably be the proposition being analysed. As such, it would certainly be a concern if there was a disconnect between analysis and our understanding, if there was no method of discovery, or if we couldn’t see how it would be applied in the situations in which we use the proposition. The logic of propositions are not ‘out of sight’ but seen through the medium of language, in its application to the world.

The argument then is that it wasn’t dogmatism, as such, about logical analysis or a focus on an ideal language that led him down the path to the GFP. Instead, it was caused by the very real way in which we explain the sense of a proposition to someone. That is, we either point to the situation, point to a picture of it, or explain how things are in that situation. Through this, the person being explained to manages to grasp the sense and is then able to use it appropriately. This requires the person to understand the parts and how they are put together in the sentence. As far as it goes, that account is fine. However, the philosopher then takes that picture, image of the situation or whatever, and says to himself “This is true”, “This is how things are”. Then s/he starts to believe in something like Russell’s theory of descriptions where either we know the elements of the picture by acquaintance or by description.

Now, I said that it was fine in as far as it goes because i) we do understand a proposition because of the words that make it up and ii) pointing to something (for instance) can help us grasp the sense of a sentence or the meaning of a word. However, this is where the Augustinian picture comes in with a philosophically naive conception of what it is to ‘grasp a sense’. We begin to feel that what is grasped is something given in the proposition, or by the explanation or through the pointing. However, we don’t grasp the meaning individually or exclusively through any of these things. These things only manage to do against the background of the rest of language. If we look at the wider context of language, it is harder to see how digging down below its surface helps us become clear about how we are using the propositions.

Conclusion

The GFP, in theory, is simply what is shown through the analysis of language and the uncovering of what we already know when we understand of a proposition. What we will find will differ with each proposition and can only be discovered as the end-result of a process of analysis. However, the kind of answer is given once-and-for-all in advance of such an elucidation. He later believes that if we look at the conditions under which our propositions make sense, we will no longer believe that all propositions can be elucidated in the same way. One reason he had earlier thought it could is because of a prior conception of what understanding a proposition consisted in, brought about through a particular way they are explained. Once we read his critique of the Augustinian picture of language, this motivation is undercut.

[1] Wittgenstein to Waissman as cited by (Monk, 1990) p. 183

My Thesis: Section 4, Part 2

2009-04-13T00:12:00.001+01:00

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Leaving it to chance

What then if we reject the view that simple signs were elucidated via ostensive definition? One should certainly agree with Kenny that in the Tractatus “he is saying is that the understanding of names and the understanding of propositions stand or fall together.”[1] That is, you cannot have facts without things, or things without facts. This much I agree with but it doesn’t explain the import of elucidations. How do they explain the meanings of simple signs? Let us return to the dilemma from Philosophical Remarks where the elucidation “This is A” is either a proposition or a definition. Most commentators take Wittgenstein to be endorsing the first option only: elucidations are fully fledged, true-false propositions. For example, McGuiness says the following:

..teaching can only be carried out by means of complete propositions or complete thoughts. The learner has to grasp these as a whole, and, when he has done that, he will have an understanding of the primitive signs contained in the proposition.[2]

We cannot explain the meaning by pointing at the object, but have to provide ‘illustrative examples’ (White’s translation of Erlauterung[3]) of propositions with the name in. In taking this view of elucidations they firmly ‘bite Wittgenstein’s bullet’ in saying the following: “We must then leave it to chance whether the other catches onto the meanings of those sentences, which is something that can only be done by grasping the meaning of the name.”[4] [5]

This accords with my view in that 1) one can learn whole propositions without first learning the meanings of the simple signs and 2) in learning a proposition you will ‘grasp’ the objects involved in understanding it. As such, if there was already a perspicuous sign-language with the right logical multiplicity, and elucidations were there to help you to understand or speak that language, one is taught complete propositions and it is left to chance whether you catch on.

The meanings of the sign are already known

Everyone in the debate about elucidations has been focusing on a learning situation where we come to learn what a word or a proposition means. It is as if we were learning language for the first time and we had to ‘grasp’ what was being said. Given this, it has been seen as an obstacle to explaining the signs that “they can only be understood if the meanings of the signs are already known” (TLP 3.263). Either an ostensive definition is needed to connect language and reality or it is left to chance whether the learner catches on. However, this is to ignore the context of the passage about elucidations. What is of interest is not how we came to be acquainted with simple objects or have the ability to form elementary propositions in the first place. To the extent that we can speak language at all, we have those experiences and that ability. What is of interest is how we come to know what objects are involved in a proposition as the end result of analysis. We can see this from the fact that 3.263 is a commentary of “In a proposition a thought can be expressed in such a way that elements of the propositional sign correspond to the objects of thought” (TLP 3.2).

3.263 starts from the fact that we already understand how to use the propositional sign and that with it, we can already express that particular thought. Ex hypothesei, if we know the thought we know the objects of thought. Given that a thought is a picture of a state of affairs, we not only know the objects but how they are related in that state of affairs pictured. The objects are the ‘logical co-ordinates’ through which the situation is projected into the propositional sign (NB p.20). Given this, the last line of the passage is seen as an advantage: it is because we already know the meanings that 3.2 is possible. The point is that we do not need any extra information in order to lay out the sense in which a proposition is used. We fully understand a proposition if we use it correctly but the thought can be expressed in such a way that it is clear that it is a logical picture of a fact. In line with the argument throughout the essay, the Tractatus is looking at how we can display the logical features of a proposition in a way that is logically perspicuous.

In making the above argument I am making a distinction between knowing that a simple sign ‘A’ has [object] A as its meaning, and knowing the meaning itself (i.e. knowing A). Of course, if we understand an analysed proposition understanding the simple sign is to know its meaning. In such situations, it would be nonsense to ask which object is the meaning of ‘A’ (‘A’ is the same sign as ‘A’). However, the distinction needs to be drawn for the following reason. We can know the meaning of a sign (i.e. be acquainted with the object) without a) knowing that in a particular notation, ‘x’ has that object as its meaning b) having any sign in my notation (i.e. English) which specifically names it. It is this kind of implicit knowledge of objects and understanding of elementary propositions that I’m claiming are necessary for analysis. However, until the analysis (philosophical elucidation) itself is performed, I am unable to name the objects. Equally, I would be unable to use the analysed proposition without it being explained which object is named by the signs.

How the last stage of analysis is supposed to be achieved- where somehow we are brought to recognise the simple sign names an object we have grasped all along- is as mysterious as any other part of the analysis. That we are able to (at least theoretically) express the proposition so it lines up with the objects of thought was seen as a demand of logic.

A last look at Philosophical Remarks

As Hacker finds ostensive definitions of simple objects to be found in the Tractatus he believes that the Investigations’ criticisms of ostensive definition hit their target, and as Kenny doesn’t find it there he thinks the Tractatus has been misrepresented. However, why, in looking at the passage, must we take “This is A” an elucidation of a Tractarian simple? Would it not be more likely to be something like “This is red”, “This is a ball”, “This is Neil”? Nowhere in his earlier work does he talk about observation statement in relation to simple objects. Where he does talk about ‘pointing’ in the Notebooks, it is about the kind of things above which we are obviously acquainted with. These may indeed be the simple elements of representation, (i.e. simple signs in not further analysable propositions) if the later Wittgenstein is correct. However, whether such propositions are fully analysed is precisely what is up for dispute.

In both periods, ostensive explanation can help us grasp the way ‘red’ is used but for different reasons. Earlier he believed that ostensive explanation revealed our ability to pick out a state of affairs as being ‘red’. However, given that the state of affairs may not exist, the ability does not consist in ‘red’ being a simple element of representation that refers to something red. If, despite this, it helps me grasp the contribution of the word to the sense of a proposition saying that ‘something is red’, it must be analysable by other terms I understand. One is able to elucidate it in this way because the objects of thought are already latent in my understanding of such sentences. After all, I understand the meaning of the sign as I can use it in propositions to assert the truth and falsity of states of affairs.

Here ostensive explanation doesn’t provide the elucidation, it is what is in need of elucidation. It gives me an intuitive grasp of its meaning: it means just that. It needs to be elucidated to yield its objective content. The point of the GFP is, however, that whatever the rules of the logical structure of language are, we are already in command of them. I think this better explains the following: “Logical analysis and ostensive definition were unclear to me in the Tractatus. I thought at the time there is a “connection between language and reality”[6]. Ostension made it seem that there was a connection between language and reality but didn’t reveal what it was; logical analysis reveals that connection. Later he believed both were flawed. “This is ‘red’” is either a proposition or definition. If the former, we could pick it out because we already knew that to be red (because we know how red is used in language). If the latter, then it becomes is part of grammar rather than by revealing reality.

[1] (Kenny, 1974) p.5

[2] (McGuiness, 1981) p.70

[3] (White, 2006) p.61

[4]ibid

[5] I’m not putting all three in the same boat except to say understanding the names come with understanding the proposition. McGuiness thinks it absurd that we could simply be acquainted with a singular object as we only ever sense a concatenation of objects. For Kenny and White it is possible that we can point to a thing.

[6] Wittgenstein in 1932 as cited in (Hacker, 1975) p.608

My Thesis: Section 4, Part 1

2009-04-11T23:57:00.001+01:00

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As I said on the introduction, the version I have here is not the one that I eventually handed in. If I remember correctly, I changed this one more than most. But it give you a good idea...

4- Elucidations and ostensive definitions

In the previous two sections we have looked at the questions to which Wittgenstein’s critique of the Augustinian picture of language and his earlier analysis are addressed. Broadly speaking, both look at how we make clear the contribution of a word to the sense of a particular utterance. The word in both cases played its role as part of something larger: for Augustine as signifying part of the thought and for the Tractatus as contributing to the sense of a proposition. However, there was a difference in the two cases. A main facet of the Augustinian picture- ostensive explanation- is aimed at explaining- or making known- the meaning of our words from one person to the other. How, as a matter of fact can the content of our thoughts be communicated in such a way that another person can grasp what we mean? The Tractatus, on the other hand, was interested in giving a philosophical elucidation in which we can make the sense of our utterances reveal their connection to reality. Whilst this is a matter of understanding, it is done in a way free of an individual’s psychology. My argument in this thesis, as I have intimated, is that a particular view of explanation misled the direction that he though elucidation must take. This section will advance this argument by exploring how the understanding of a proposition brought about by ostension provides the explandum for analysis.

As I have been emphasizing, understanding a proposition and using it with sense does not entail that I have an analysis of a proposition. Wittgenstein says, “Obviously propositions are possible which contain no simple signs… nor do the definitions of their component parts have to be attached to them” (NB p.46). On the other hand, he says that a proposition is “understood by anyone who understands its constituents” (TLP 4.024). Here then, understanding the proposition comes along with understanding the parts but, in analysis we can only come to the parts through what we understand about the proposition. This requires us to think about the proposition in some way to fix that as the object of investigation. We need an independent grip on the proposition in order to evaluate what role the parts contribute to the whole. This cannot be given through laying out its parts as that can only be investigated once we have the thought in focus. Luckily, he tells us that unlike simple signs, with propositions we can make ourselves understood (TLP 4.026). Maybe this involves pointing at a picture, or at the situation that makes it true etc. If through these we fully grasp the thought being analysed, we will automatically (but sub-consciously) be aware of the objects.

Here then is the position I have been putting forward that philosophical elucidation relies on what is ‘grasped’ in non-philosophical explanations of the sense of a proposition. What is grasped is something ‘given’ by the explanation such that it was an alternative way of presenting the same thing. This can be further seen from the passage we quoted from in section 2 about two ways of giving a sign meaning: ostension (which gets outside language) and definition (which relies on other signs with meaning we understand). On this view, both are equivalent in understanding the expression and our ability to use the sentence with sense. However, the distinct advantage of ostension is that it brings us to grasp the meaning of the term non-linguistically. It brings us to an intuitive awareness of what is being thought about in the first place and acquaints us with the objects of thought. The Tractatus is not concerned with ‘reaching outside language’ in this intuitive way but elucidates the state of affairs through analysis into its constituent parts. Consider this:

The meanings of primitive signs can be explained by elucidations. Elucidations are propositions that contain the primitive signs. So they can be understood only if the meanings of those signs are already known. (TLP 3.263)

Here elucidation is made possible as we already know the meanings that the primitive signs will stand for. They were present in my intuitive conception of the proposition all along. We manage to reach parts that themselves reach out to reality. It makes clear what was already there in our notion of ‘how things stand’ given in our explanation of a proposition.

Ostensive definitions and Tractarian objects

I will have a look at another interpretation both of the role of ostensive definitions and its connection with the passage about elucidations. This position is one that is very much connected with what I called the ‘orthodox view’ of the Augustinian picture that I laid out in a previous section. We know how to use language, on this view, because words are ostensively correlated with objects. Hacker advocates the position that this view is present in Wittgenstein’s earlier thinking claiming that “the Tractatus contains a tacit and confused doctrine of ostension”[1]. Nowhere in the text does it talk about ostension or ostensive definition but this may simply be due to the fact that it didn’t exist as a technical term when the Tractatus was written. Hacker believes the passage about elucidations provides a clue that the view was indeed there. Discussing this view is not only worthwhile because it is differs from my take on ostensive definitions and elucidations, but for two further reasons:

1. If this view is to be found in the Tractatus, then the Investigations is aiming at a clear target and is meeting it head on. As such, the Tractatus and the GFP would be undermined to the extent that Wittgenstein’s criticisms of a view of ostensive definition linking language to reality are correct. This, if it could be substantiated, would be a more clear-cut refutation than my criticism. For me, a) ostensive definition remains pre-theoretical and b) the criticisms wouldn’t show the GFP to be false but would just say that it doesn’t meet the real need of elucidating the sense of our propositions.

2. Secondly, those who think the passage about elucidations does not contain a doctrine of ostensive definition, think that the Investigations misrepresent the Tractatus. For example, Kenny agrees that 3.263 is the closest thing you will find to ostensive definition in the Tractatus, but concludes that it isn’t about that after all. As such, he is led to conclude that “The criticism of the role assigned to ostensive definition quite passes by the account briefly given in the Tractatus.”[2]

As such, both the view put forward by Hacker, and its critics share the premise that the Investigations aims to criticise the Tractarian view that names and signs are connected by ostensive definition. This shared premise is one that my answer avoids. However, let’s start by examining Hacker’s view.

Wittgenstein says that “Elucidations are propositions that contain the primitive sign”[3] (TLP 3.263). Hacker contests that the type of proposition Wittgenstein envisaged fulfilling this elucidatory role is one of the form “This is A”. The simple signs to be elucidated are names (TLP 3.202) and “A name means an object. The object is its meaning” (TLP 3.203). As such, pointing to an object and naming it helps convey the meaning of a simple sign. In recognising what the person is pointing to, I form a mental connection between the sign and that object. Therefore, on the view that Hacker ascribes to Wittgenstein, the elucidation helps form a connection between language and reality. In this way we learn all the internal properties of an object and so how to use it in propositions. This view would help explain a comment that Wittgenstein later made to Waissman, “Logical analysis and ostensive definition were unclear to me in the Tractatus. I thought at the time there is a “connection between language and reality”[4].

Hacker draws in support of the view that the Tractatus used “This is A” as an ostensive definition the following passage:

When I explain to someone the meaning of a word A by saying ‘This is A’ and pointing at something, this expression can be meant in two ways. Either it itself is a proposition and then can only be understood if the meaning of ‘A’ is already known, i.e. I have to leave it to fate whether the hearer will grasp the proposition as I meant it or not. Or the proposition is a definition.[5]

Hacker notes how similar the second sentence is to 3.263, which shows that he did take his elucidations to be true-false proposition. However, if this is all an elucidation is it would leave it to chance whether people grasped the meaning of the sign, and as such would fail to explain it. It would no more be a elucidation than the use of any proposition. Thus, he takes it that Wittgenstein also took it as a definition. As such, Hacker believes ‘This is A’ in the Tractatus is “an ostensive definition ‘seen through a glass darkly’, misconstrued as a bipolar proposition”[6]. Propositions tell us about reality (i.e. does a state of affairs obtain in reality or not) whilst definitions tell us about the meaning of a term. In confusing these two functions, Wittgenstein believed that the meaning of name (including its possible combination with other names in propositions) was determined by a feature of reality (the internal properties of an object).

The context principle: a prima facie case against ostensive definitions

At 3.3 Wittgenstein states his version of the context principle: “Only propositions have sense; only in the nexus of a proposition does have a name have meaning”. I will primarily focus on the logical question that the context principle is seeking to address. In doing so, we will see that there is no explanatory need for ostensive definitions of simple objects in the Tractatus. As such, whilst dubious, I will not demonstrate that one’s attention cannot be brought to bear on a particular object or that (empirically speaking) a connection could be set up between a word and a thing by pointing at it and uttering a name. However, these questions will remain firmly in the domain of psychology and not of interest to the author of the Tractatus.

The logical import of the context principle can be taken in a weak or strong way. It could be saying that for a sign to be a name, we must know how it combines with other signs in a proposition in order to be able to state a fact. However, if this was all that the context principle was saying, then it would just be reiterating what had already been established. That is, the sign by itself is of no logical interest and wouldn’t be called a name. A sign only has the logical status of a ‘name’ in being an abstraction from a semantic fact. The key role of language, according to Wittgenstein, is that it is able to state facts. Through his picture theory, he says that for a proposition to represent a state of affairs, its elements must be arranged in a determinate way. The simplest elements ‘stand in’ for objects, and the way they are arranged show what is the case if the proposition is true. Here a name just is the simplest element in the representation of a picture.

This makes it implausible that we could come to know that a sign meant an object simply by pointing. That is because, in order to know that it is the meaning, I would have to know that the object can enter into all the states of affairs that the sign can. Thus, it could be argued that to know the internal properties of an object, I have to know how to use it in senseful propositions. However, an argument can be made out that this is backwards. That is, we know what senseful elementary propositions are because we know the combinatorial possibilities of objects. This is something that we learn by being acquainted with the objects in question. It can be pointed out kennen, the German word Wittgenstein uses for ‘know’, has a strong sensory connotation. Malcolm compares this to Russell’s objects of acquaintance.[7] As such, when he says “If I know an object I also know all its possible occurrences in states of affairs” (TLP 2.0123) he may be saying we learn the meaning from being acquainted with the object. If someone draws attention to it when saying a name, we will know what propositions it can take part in, because we know the combinatorial possibilities of the object it denotes.

However, the (logical) claim that is being made by the context principle is stronger than the one mentioned above. Firstly, it doesn’t just say that we have to consider a name as being capable of being in a proposition but that it actually has to be considered in one. Secondly, it talks about a ‘name’ and not simply a sign. Thus, consider a bona fide name: a sign that in a logically perspicuous language can combine with others to form a proposition. In standing in such a relationship to other names, it has a meaning and refers to an object. However, taken by itself and considered in isolation, it doesn’t refer to an object. This gains support from the commentary on the context principle:

TLP 3.31- I call any part of a proposition that characterizes its sense an expression (or a symbol)... An expression is the mark of a form and a content.

TLP 3.341- An expression has meaning only in a proposition.

Here it can be seen that a name is one such (or even the fundamental) expression. Wittgenstein says in relation to simple objects “It is form and content” (TLP 2.025). As such, a name contributes to the sense of an expression by standing for, or symbolizing an object. Given 3.341, a ‘name’ doesn’t mark a form and content when used by itself, as it doesn’t contribute towards the sense of a proposition.

[1] (Hacker, 1975) p.607

[2] (Kenny, 1974) p.6

[3] This presumably doesn’t mean all elucidations contain the primitive signs, but the ones that are concerned with explaining the primitive signs (the final stage of analysis). If all philosophy consists of elucidations (4.112) he can’t be suggesting that we reach the end of analysis straight away. Presumably there will be stages of analysis where each elucidation is less logically complex than the previous one.

[4] Wittgenstein in 1932 as cited in (Hacker, 1975) p.608

[5] (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Remarks, 1975), section 6

[6] Hacker (1986) p.77

[7] (Malcolm, 1986) pp. 8-10

My Thesis: Section 3, part 2

2009-04-07T15:23:00.001+01:00

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The target of the criticisms

Given what I have said above, a criticism of the GFP must recognise that it aims to uncover the logical form of thought. However, on my interpretation, not only do the criticisms in the Investigations recognise it but they depend on it. It is its very inability to uncover the depth grammar of our propositions that render the GFP empty. When we are implored to look, we are not being asked to look at the surface of language but we are being asked to assess whether analysis, as conceived in the Tractatus, can help us understand the logic of our language. What we need to remember is that the depth grammar, or the body of thought, resides in understanding how we use the proposition with sense. For a philosophical elucidation to uncover the meaning of a proposition, what is uncovered must already be there in its application. As we learnt from TLP 4.112, philosophy cannot discover facts about reality or produce true propositions which justify what sense something expresses. Instead, it can only logically clarify the thoughts that are already expressed/ expressible.

When he highlights that “‘p’ is true = p”, he is pointing out that unless we are able to discover the way in which ‘p’ is used then all we have done is enunciate a rule for signs. That is to say, we have remained on the surface of language rather than looking at how propositions symbolize. This is important to point out in order to guard against two potential errors. The first is that the later Wittgenstein held a purely deflationary or redundancy theory of truth, if by that we mean “that the sole explanation that can be given of the notion of truth consists precisely in the direct stipulation of the equivalence thesis”[1]. On the contrary, coming to know the sense of a sentence comes along with knowing how to assert its truth. In fact, his earlier work comes under criticism for ignoring how truth is used in relation to actual cases in our language. The point being made is simply that “’p’ is true = p” is all that can be said advance. As Winch says, “the real work is done by a detailed examination of how it is applied in particular cases.”[2] We can’t start with a notion of truth and then say something is a proposition only if it fits that mould.

The second error to be avoided is the mirror-image of the first, although it is slightly more complicated. It would be to say that in the Tractatus he had a specific notion of truth that a proposition must fit. In the Notebooks he said ““p” is true, says nothing else but p”. There is nothing further to know about what it is for a proposition to be true once one knows its sense. Here, one could only add ‘is true’ to a legitimately constructed proposition and all propositions are so constructed because they have a sense (TLP 5.4733). To see the sense clearly one has to see in what way it is a logical fact and this means uncovering its ‘logical scaffolding’ (TLP 4.023). After this, the only thing left to find out is whether the proposition is true and to do that one must compare it against reality (TLP 2.223). Either what is shown by its sense obtains or its negation does. Now I said it is more complicated. That is because he does have a substantial view of what it is for a proposition to be true or false. This is because of a particular pre-philosophical conception of what it is for a proposition to tell us ‘how things stand’- that there must be an agreement between something in the propositional sign and something in the situation. However, in the GFP this finds expression, not in a theory of truth but in how we can lay out the sense of any proposition in such a way that it can be compared to reality for truth and falsity.

Logic and understanding

I am claiming that, the Tractarian position that there is a GFP amounts to the view that the sense of our sentences is manifest in how we use them and that logical analysis can uncover what the sense is. It is then vulnerable if we are not given a method for uncovering the logic of our everyday propositions in this way. If so, the GFP fails by its own lights. Such an analysis might be surprising if we take it to tell us something substantial, a priori, about the nature of propositions. As Wittgenstein says, “The general propositional form is the essence of a proposition” (TLP 5.471). Moreover, it is something abstracted from the particular content of a proposition or its internal structure. This is because, in giving the ‘essence’ of a proposition, the GFP informs us what it is in virtue of which a sign can be regarded as a propositional-sign in the first place. In other words, it gives us a necessary feature by which our words have content (are about something) rather than being gibberish. For Wittgenstein, this investigation is directed towards looking at the logical syntax of our language, the status of logical constants, and how propositions are formed, one from the other. This is due to the contention that “logic covers everything that is necessarily true, and so can be said in advance of experience; or to put this in the old terminology, everything that is a priori”[3]. As such, in claiming that the GFP is all that can be said in advance about a proposition having sense, it is the ‘sole logical constant’ (TLP 5.47).

The view that meaningful language depends on its logical form is a view that bears the impress of his predecessors, Frege and Russell. Consider that it seems necessary but not sufficient, in understanding the sense of “The ball is red”, to understand its constituent expressions. We also need to understand how, in the sentence, the expressions are put together; and this depends on certain semantic rules. These rules embodied in ‘logical syntax’ will show why we understand “The sandals are red” but not “The sandals are red and green” or “The good is red”.

In what way though does having a thought then depend on logical laws? Consider this quote from Frege:

In this way it is shown that our eight primitive names have denotation, and thereby the same holds good for all names correctly compounded out of these. However, not only a denotation, but also a sense, appertains to all names correctly formed from our signs. Every such name of a truth-value expresses a sense, a thought[4]

It looks like first we could have signs with denotation, and then if they are correctly conjoined, they have a sense. However, if at first we only knew the denotation, we would only know it and not know anything about it (e.g. its present conjunction with other objects in a fact; the logical role its name plays in any true proposition). How then can we use them in a proposition to state a fact? After all, a proposition is not just a blend of names and only a [propositional] fact can express a sense. As such, we would also have to be in possession of logical laws that tell us how we can put the names together in such a way that they can match the way things in reality in combine. Sandals are the kind of thing that can combine with redness whilst good isn’t.

In this regard, there is a tension between Wittgenstein and his predecessors. Consider that for Frege, logic has “the task of discovering the laws of truth, not the laws of taking things to be true or of thinking”[5]. Here logic is prescriptive: if one wants to think logically, one should put the signs together according to certain rules such that it expresses a thought. However, as Wittgenstein points out, one cannot think illogically (TLP 3.03-3.032). If logical form defines the limits of sense, it delineates what can be said and thought. To think illogically would require us to transgress that limit (i.e. to think what cannot be thought). Thus, the logical laws cannot be merely prescriptive but present in our ability to think and use language in the first place.

This leads Wittgenstein to believe that we couldn’t know the denotation of signs independently of their role in a proposition. The reason is that we our understanding of the components and how they are conjoined would not be enough for the proposition to have a sense, but also the fact that it is a legitimate combination. However, whether a proposition makes sense cannot depend on whether another (the one about whether they can combined in this way) is true. If it were otherwise 1) it could turn out we were thinking illogically if the proposition of logic turns out to be false and 2) we could only be said to know the sense to the extent that we became acquainted with the logical constants through logical analysis. This, as I said, is unacceptable because we can’t think illogically and we don’t need a logical analysis to use our propositions with sense.

Given this, we can only look at the logic of our language by seeing analysing how we use propositions with sense. We start with thoughts- propositions we understand- and then see what role the parts play in that rather than vice versa. To cut a long story short, the propositions at the end of analysis must be of the sort where there is no question whether they express a sense. That is, they don’t depend on any external logical glue that says that the simple signs can be in that combination. These elementary propositions show their sense (how things stand if it is true) through their components parts; and to know the meanings of the component parts is just to know the propositions it is possible for them to take part in. We can’t know their denotation independently of the possibilities of logical form. Given that through repeated negations on sets of elementary propositions we can derive the other logical constants, and because negation is an operation (something that we do) rather than representing anything there is no external logical glue needed for language to represent at all.

Here it is clear that in the Tractatus “’p’ is true”, doesn’t give us any more information than ‘p’ and nothing tells us what it is in virtue of which language makes sense, that is separate from our ability to use and understand language. The GFP doesn’t rely on any logical glue that allows our propositions reach out to reality. As McGinn says, the GFP “is given as soon as language in which we express judgements about the world is given. In acquiring language we have already grasped the general form of the proposition, that is, we have already grasped the whole of logic”[6]. This is something that Wittgenstein realises in the Investigations and is re-iterating. “This is how things are” and other formulations of the GFP are pseudo-propositions which give us nothing other than what is given in the individual sense of elementary propositions. They are not something stated but only shown in how we use our propositions with sense. If the GFP isn’t what is revealed by the elucidation of language it reveals nothing at all.

[1] Dummett as cited in (Winch, 1981) p.164

[2] (Winch, 1981) p.161

[3] (Pears, 1971) p.46

[4] Frege, Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, section 32 cited in (McGinn, 2006) p.242

[5](Frege, 1997) p.326

[6] (McGinn, 2006) p. 240

My Thesis: Section 3, part 1

2009-04-06T20:58:00.001+01:00

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3- THE GFP AND THE UNDERSTANDING OF LANGUAGE

So far we have shown that there is a certain intuitive conception of what the content of the language is, that this is a plausible candidate for his criticisms of the Augustinian picture and that it bears similarity to his pre-Tractarian conception of how to use language with sense. This section will develop the argument by asking two further questions. How far can this conception be seen as influencing the arguments for the GFP? Secondly, in what way does Wittgenstein’s criticism of the Augustinian picture relate to his explicit critique of GFP in the Investigations?

The answer to this will be started in this section and continued in section 4. The criticisms will point out that phrases such as ‘This is how things are’ and ‘This is true’ are only informative in relation to a proposition, given a conception of what the understanding of that proposition entails. That the Tractatus thought that “This is how things are” was the GFP, meant that he had held a particular conception of what it is to understand a proposition that held regardless of a propositions specific content. It finds expression in the Tractatus in terms of us being able to say in advance what the final form of elucidation of any proposition will take.

The explicit criticisms in the Investigations

There are many passages in the Investigations that are relevant to understanding why Wittgenstein later repudiated the GFP, but I will stick to three in which the GFP is specifically mentioned.

1. It ignores the diversity of language (§65, §66)

Wittgenstein believed that philosophical confusion often arose as a result of “an unbalanced diet: nourishing one’s thinking with only one kind of example” (PI 593). In §65 he criticises the GFP by casting his net over a rather wide net of examples. Perhaps it could be considered too wide given that he focuses on linguistic phenomena that prima facie have nothing to do with propositionhood. He refers back to the various sorts of language-games set up in §23. These not only include ones we recognise as propositions (e.g. describing an appearance), or borderline cases (e.g. requesting) but also making jokes and guessing riddles. In focusing on language-games in general he is implicitly arguing against his earlier claim that “The totality of propositions is language” (TLP 4.001). Discovering the essence of a proposition was designed to meet the challenge of finding something common to all language. In the hands of his interlocutor it is reneging on this task that makes him exclaim “You take the easy way out!” Yet, in parading such a variety of language-games in which our words make sense, he bids us “don’t think, but look!” (PI 66): can we see some common element to language? On the one hand, it is hard to see what this has to do with how a word contributes to the sense of a proposition; or whether they share a general form or not. On the other, it makes us question the relevance of finding a general form of propositions for how we use our words with sense.

2. ‘This is how things are’ sounds like a proposition (§114, §134)

“This is how things are”, §114 tells us “is the kind of proposition that one repeats to oneself countless times”. In doing so we come to believe that we come to grasp the essence of a proposition but “one is merely tracing the frame through which we look at it”. Given that it is a phrase that we can use in relation to any proposition, we are misled into thinking that it illustrates a feature they all share. We try to extract from it what a proposition is when abstracted from any particular content. By itself, however, it is just shorthand for the state of affairs in question or a placeholder where a proposition would be. The example Wittgenstein uses is “He explained his position to me, said that this were how things were, and that therefore he needed an advance” (PI 134). Indeed, this can be considered a propositional variable but it does not have any content of its own. It plays no more of a role as a propositional variable than ‘p’ or ‘This is how the cookie crumbles’ and no one would call those the general form of the proposition. The reason we are misled by “This is how things are” because it sounds like a proposition having a subject-predicate form.

3. ‘Truth’ belongs to but doesn’t fit a proposition (§136, §137)

PI 136 affirms certain basic continuities with the Tractatus and yet downplays their relevance for insisting there must be a GFP. The continuity is the idea of the bipolarity of the proposition: it must be capable of being true or false. PI 136 thinks it perfectly apt to say that truth belongs to our concept ‘proposition’. However, he seems to believe that his initial conception of truth was too inflated. Wittgenstein invokes the metaphor of truth as engaging with a proposition, in the way one cogwheel engages with another. If you add ‘is true’ after a sentence and it fits, then it is a proposition. It seems that he took this metaphor as being inherent in the Tractatus, and now renounced it as misleading. The only way ‘true/false’ could fit a proposition is in the way L fits the sequence H, I, J, K....(PI 137) It so happens that in our language L comes after K; likewise we happen to predicate true/false of propositions. Far from illuminating the nature of a proposition, it (as a relevant passage in Philosophical Grammar says) “merely enunciates a rule for signs” (PG p.161) in the following way:

‘p’ is true = p

‘p’ is false= not-p

It is correct to say that the way in which a proposition represents reality must leave it open whether what is asserted obtains or does not obtain. That is, the proposition must have a sense independently of whether it is true or false. However,

The use of ‘true or false’ has something misleading about it, because it is like saying, ‘It agrees with the facts or it doesn’t’, and the very thing in question is what ‘agreement’ is in here.

The criticism in the Investigations means to point out that, in merely being part of the concept of a proposition, it gives us no information as to how it represents reality. Nor does it help indicate that a proposition could only agree or fail to agree with reality in virtue of a single form.

Looking at the use?

The above criticisms seem to charge the early Wittgenstein both with some fundamental oversights and of building his positions on the basis of a few catchphrases, definitions and pseudo-propositions. The Investigations seems to suggest that had he followed the maxim “don’t think, but look!” (PI 66) he wouldn’t have made those mistakes. In seeing the diversity of language, he would have seen the many contexts in which language makes sense, the different ways propositions can be viewed, and the variety of propositions we can predicate truth and falsity of. Thinking about the questions “What is language?”; “How can we state something about the world?”; “What is the nature of the truth-relation?” may provoke the philosophers’ ‘craving for generality’. Looking should avert this craving and lead us to focus on the particular case. The object of investigation should be the temporal and spatial phenomenon of language and not some non-temporal, non-spatial phantasm.

The problem with the above invocation is that if we are to look, what are we looking for? Seeing the diversity of language does not automatically invalidate the view that there is a GFP. It depends on how it bears on the questions that the Tractatus was looking to answer and how it went about answering them. What is it about ordinary language that is relevant in rebutting the answers given? This is especially pertinent given that Wittgenstein was fully aware that language had diverse uses but decided this wasn’t relevant to the question at hand. He drew the line between meaning and use at a particular point. While we may indeed use language to make a joke, the words must already have a meaning for us to be able to do this. In the Tractatus, it is only a word’s contribution in a propositional context in which its meaning (what it is about) is determined.[1] Even if this last point is incorrect, we cannot show that there is no ‘essence of language’ simply by drawing our attention to different uses without discussing its relevance to a word’s meaning.

The same issue arrives even if we restrict our focus to the variable forms that our propositions seem to take. What are the relevant features of our actual use? Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus, realises that propositions have various (external) forms and this may depend on the circumstances in which it is used. In 4.002 he says, “Language disguises thought... the outward form of the clothing is not designed to reveal the form of the body, but for entirely different purposes.” What matters is the thought expressed by the proposition and not the external form of clothing. Logical analysis will reveal the logical form of the thought- and so, how the proposition is used with sense. He may be- and as I will argue in this essay, is- wrong that analysis will reveal propositions to have the same form. However, the mistake is not that ordinary doesn’t seem to have the form he earlier proposed. He later made a similar distinction between ‘surface grammar’ and ‘depth grammar’ (PI 664). The surface grammar is how the word is used in the construction of the sentence (the part ‘that can be taken in by the ear’); the depth grammar is what, when revealed, makes the meaning clear. It is the purpose of philosophical elucidation to reveal this depth grammar. In both periods this meant removing or ignoring the accidental features of the proposition and only looking at the parts that contribute towards the sense.

[1] He doesn’t later reject the distinction between meaning and use e.g. PG p.189. However, a word’s meaning can only be ascertained in terms of its contribution to the wider context of life and language, and not just propositions.

My Thesis: Section 2, Part 2

2009-04-05T00:03:00.001+01:00

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Textual evidence

Notebooks

There are many passages in the Notebooks where we see the meaning of a word or sentence being explained by ostension. One conspicuous passage is an imagined situation is where someone tries to press Wittgenstein to give an account of what “The watch is lying in the table” means. Which situations count as the watch lying on the table and which don’t?

If someone were to drive me into a corner in this way in order to shew that I did not know what I meant, I should say: “I know what I mean, I mean just THIS”, pointing to the appropriate complex with my finger. And in this complex I do actually have the two objects in a relation.- all this really means is: The fact can SOMEHOW be portrayed by means of this form too (NB p. 70)

Here we know what we mean by the proposition but to explain the sense of the sentence we may have to resort to pointing to the fact in question. That is, we point to a situation where it is ‘true’ that the watch is lying on the table. Not too much should be read into the passage as ostension does not take the place of philosophical analysis. Understanding the sense of the sentence does not consist in a relation between a sentence and a fact, set up by ostension. Indeed, the fact can only ‘somehow’ be portrayed by pointing and doesn’t give a philosophical elucidation of what this consists in. However, for all practical purposes ostension serves to adequately explain what is meant by bringing us to understand the content of the proposition (whatever that consists in).

Returning to the view that, in our language, single words get their meaning from the information they help convey; we see that much the same applies. We can see this from his perplexity, in the Notebooks, as to how to account for the meaning of word like “knife”. We not only use the word meaningfully in propositions such as “the knife is in the kitchen” but also understand the specific contribution the meaning of ‘knife’ makes to it. This can be shown by our understanding that the above proposition differs from “the cat is in the kitchen”, by it being the knife and not the cat in that position. Now, it seems that the most unambiguous way to say what it is that ‘knife’ means is to gesture to a knife itself. That this is so, influenced how Wittgenstein thought an elucidation of the meaning should go. It led to his initial temptation to think of the object of acquaintance as the reference of the term:

When I say “’x’ has a reference” do I have the feeling: it is impossible that “x” should stand for, say, this knife or this letter? Not at all. On the contrary.// A complex just is a thing! (NB p.49)

This is a view he came to reject.[1] This is because “the knife is in the kitchen” may fail to be true, not only because the knife isn’t in the kitchen but because there is no knife. If the ‘knife’ refers to the knife, then in the second case the proposition would be nonsense. There would be nothing of which we were stating that it was in the kitchen! The Tractatus correctly says that such a proposition wouldn’t be nonsensical, but simply false (TLP 3.24).

Now whilst he didn’t think the knife was the reference of term, I think it significant that he was tempted. This is because “even if the name “N” vanishes on further analysis [because it doesn’t signify by itself], still it indicates a single common thing.” (NB p.60) It is something specific in the ostensible situation that “N” manages to pick out. Wittgenstein talks about the fact that any particular watch that we ostensively define may have different constituents but there is something the same in all instances. This fits well with the earlier suggestion that understanding a term involves a thought-process that picks the common element out. Of course, its ability to do so has nothing logically to do with any particular act of ostensive definition. We know that in the end, Wittgenstein thought a sign signifying a complex was defined (TLP 3.24) and it signified via the signs that served to define it (TLP 3.261). However, why should one take the meaning of ‘watch’ to be the sense of a sentence asserting that a watch exists, in the first place?

Philosophical Grammar

The key points that I have been making also find support in the Philosophical Grammar. This will help to illustrate that not only were these issues relevant to the Tractatus but the very ones that he began to believe led him into trouble. Wittgenstein says ““That’s him” (this picture represents him)- that contains the whole problem of representation... What is the connection between ‘N’ and N himself?” (PG p.102) The ingredients we have here are the following:

a) a single sign [‘N’]- used as a picture or representation of a state of affairs (i.e. a sign considered as a symbol and not just a set of marks )

b) the state of affairs [N]- that which is so pictured

c) a situation where someone:

i) can [purportedly] switch his attention between a) and b) above.

ii) understands that ‘N’ means N

iii) Considers the connection that allows this to be the case

It is with iii) that the philosophers’ elucidatory task begins. However, ‘the decisive step in the conjuring trick’ has already taken place. Why assume that the meaning of ‘N’ lies in the connection between the sign and a particular state of affairs in which it can be used? This arises from our being able to explain the meaning of ‘N’ by pointing at N itself. Where Wittgenstein italicises something (‘him’) it often means that it is (at least potentially) ostensible. It seems that our thought can reveal/ mentally point at the very state of affairs itself without our thought being determined by our prior use of the sign. The content of ‘what is thought about’ is then considered the meaning of ‘N’ and thus, its contribution to the sense of a sentence of which it is part.

The position outlined above, is the one that in Philosophical Grammar he comes to believe as a core problem. He asks “Doesn’t the misunderstanding consist in taking the meaning of the word “red” as being the sense of a sentence saying something that is red?” (PG p.135) In order to be used in a proposition, it must already have a meaning. This depends on the contexts in which it is used and its interconnections with other concepts. Later he asks, “can’t we represent it [red] in painting by painting something red?” (PG p.209) and answers, “No, that isn’t a representation in painting of the meaning of the word ‘red’ (there’s no such thing)”. The next line gives us a valuable cautionary note, “Still, it’s no accident that in order to define the meaning of the word “red” the natural thing is to point as a red object”. Part of explaining the meaning of red is in pointing to a red object but the meaning doesn’t consist in being a picture of a state of affairs.

[1] Suggesting he did think this would undermine my take on the Augustinian picture that purpose of ostension isn’t to correlate words with objects.

My Thesis: Section 2, part 1

2009-04-03T16:07:00.001+01:00

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OK.... Perhaps my worst part of the dissertation (Hacker fans jump on and maul me now). I know what I'm trying to say but I don't quite manage it. So much so, that I actually want to write a note on it. But I'm rushing now and won't return to a computer until after the Sabbath. Feel free to talk about me behind my back!!!

2- AUGUSTINIAN PICTURE OF LANGUAGE

Grasping and Intention

At the beginning of the Investigations (PI 1), Wittgenstein presents a quote from Augustine trying to recall how he learnt language as a child. We see him trying to work out what his ‘elders’ meant by a word by attending to the ‘natural language of all peoples’. That is, by paying attention to the parents’ actions, movements and tone of voice, the child comes to learn what is being signified by a word and how it is used in language. Attending to these reveals the parent’s ‘state of mind’; for example, what they are intending to point out. This account suggests to Wittgenstein a picture of the essence of language which he finds misleading. Examining this picture will enable me to better illuminate the intersection between the Tractatus and the Investigations. In later sections, we will see how this helps us better understand the criticisms that Wittgenstein makes of his earlier doctrine that there is a general form of the proposition. It is against this criterion that my interpretation should be judged and not whether it has ruled out all competing interpretations or applications of the Augustinian picture. In fact, it would be impossible to do so if we take it seriously as a picture, and not as laying out a recognizable philosophical theory. However, I will bring textual evidence to make it plausible, will align it with the questions Wittgenstein was trying to answer in both periods and will bring to light these answers.

The orthodox view, which I will lay out below, sees the Augustinian picture to be primarily concerned with affecting a correlation between a name and an object. If all words are names (as the picture seems to imply) then they are simply labels for existent features of reality. The interpretation of this picture that I will be presenting, on the other hand, places it firmly within the question of how language manages to communicate a sense or express a thought. This is not only a question of fundamental importance for the Tractatus but also for Augustine:

And undoubtedly, words were instituted among men... so that anyone might bring his thoughts to another’s notice by means of them.[1]

We have a picture here whereby words communicate thoughts. When a child learns a language they have to ‘grasp’ what is being expressed by a particular word or phrase. In the context of teaching, parents have to ‘make known’ to the child the thought being expressed through non-verbal means. According to the Augustinian quote, this is partly done via pointing to something and naming an object. However, the important point to bear in mind is that it is not about naming objects. It is about grasping the elders’ intention and, once the child has ‘heard words repeatedly used in their proper places in various sentence’, about ‘us[ing] them to express my own desires’.

In terms of describing a learning situation, Wittgenstein thinks it unremarkable. Indeed, he thought ostensive teaching (via pointing to objects) was an important part of the child’s training in learning to speak a language (c.f. PI 6). It is part of the process whereby a child comes to understand how a piece of language is used. However, to see why he did think the quote was misleading, consider the fact that there are three characters:

1. The elders- who understand the meaning of ‘x’ and its contribution to the expression of thought. They help the child to grasp that meaning

2. Augustine as child- who comes to understand its meaning.

AND

3. Adult (philosopher) Augustine- Commentating on what was going on when his earlier incarnation observed the pointing.

It is this third character is problematic as, in talking about what the elder’s meant to point out, he is led to have a misleading conception about what is involved in a term having meaning. However, before we get on to this, it should be said that the points that are being made are not confined to (or specifically about) a child learning language. The characters could equally be 1) any fully competent language user who understands a particular expression who explains it to someone else 2) a fully-competent language user who is the recipient of the explanation 3) the philosopher who has a particular (pre-philosophical but misleading) conception of what understanding the expression consists in.

The Augustinian picture leads us to misconstrue the meaning of a word (e.g. ‘red’) as signifying a state of affairs (or something about a state of affairs). We get the impression that ‘red’ is about what is pointed to when we learn the word. This view of what explaining the meaning consists in (encouraged through ostensive teaching) is illustrated by the following quote:

By means of ostensions. In this case we explain the use of a word in statements by constructing various propositions by means of that word and each time pointing to the fact in question. In that way we become aware of the meaning of the word (Ostension really consists in two acts- in an external action, pointing to various facts, and a thought-operation, namely learning what they have in common).[2]

In the case of the child, the parent may not vocalise a proposition but they will point to the fact that corresponds to the thought “This [whatever is pointed to] is red”. So for example, they will point at that which corresponds to the thought “The chair is red”, if there is indeed a red chair in the vicinity. The child will learn the meaning of ‘red’ once many red things pointed to and has heard the word ‘red’ in many sentences. They will do so by learning the comment element in the various facts “The lamp is red”, “The block is red”, “This blood is red” i.e. that given by the propositional function “ζ is red”. On this picture then the meaning of ‘red’ is the sense of the sentence saying that something is red.

Following on from the passage quoted above, he compares explaining the meaning by ostension as opposed to by definition. Whilst definition remains within language, “[o]stension steps outside language and connects signs with reality”[3]. As such, the child manages to grasp the meaning non-linguistically by realising the reality that is pointed to. This is “as if the child could already think, only not yet speak” (PI 32). Wittgenstein’s critique of the Augustinian picture of language suggests one cannot grasp the colour, for instance, simply from pointing and/or naming. The elders may perform precisely the same action is they meant to point out the shape (PI 33). Only when accompanied by training cans ostensive teaching lead to the word being used in the same way as the rest of the linguistic community. It is training, and not the queer power of the mind (‘grasping’), that allows us to learn the meaning of a word.

However, one shouldn’t see Wittgenstein’s main target as a form of mentalism. As Kenny points out[4], the way Augustine sees a child learning language (e.g. through shaping natural reactions) is similar to Wittgenstein’s own views. The problem is more that it leads the philosopher (the third character) to misconstrue what is involved in understanding what a word means (e.g. for first character). It is fair enough to say that the elders intend to point out something red, given that they know the meaning of red. However, as Goldfarb notes, “The trouble comes when we segment the description, i.e., when we take “naming”, “wishing to point”, and so on, as if they pick out isolatable phenomena, whose character can be given independently of any surrounding structure.”[5] Just as a child can only point out something red given training, the adult can only name it given the rest of language. Kirwan[6] points out that Augustine, in this passage, is interested in how language is learnt and not what is learnt. However, it is precisely the lack of focus on what is learnt which causes confusion. It tears the learning away from the contexts in which it is used and the roles it has.

Relationship to the orthodox view

Many of the elements in this picture seem to fit into a fairly standard interpretation of the picture: meaning as a mental phenomenon, reaching out to reality, the meaning of a word becoming its contribution to the sentence, being able to isolate what is being pointed out etc. Perhaps I have worded it oddly talking about the philosopher’s mistake about what is grasped but it is much the same- “Well, of course it is his mistake!” However, one thing I have been very deliberate about is not to talk about the reference of a name or about the method of signification or about a ‘correlation’ between language and reality. Instead, I was simply talking about ‘thoughts’ and how philosophers will view someone grasping the sense in independence from the content of the thought and its contexts of use. There is no attribution of a theoretical error or false philosophical thesis about meaning. This is prior to philosophical theorizing.

The orthodox view, on the other hand, seems to associate the Augustinian picture of language with the following three theses: “Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands” (PI 1). The suggestion seems to be that Augustine is saying that the function of all words is to name an object, and that a word only has a meaning if it fulfils that function. That this is how Wittgenstein interpreted the passage seems to be supported when he comments, “Augustine does not speak of there being any difference between kinds of word” (PI 1). Whereas Wittgenstein compares the diverse function of words to different tools in a toolbox (PI 11), Augustine insists that “no one uses words except for the purpose of signifying something”[7]. Signification here is just a correlation between language and reality. The problem then is that Augustine treats all words on the model of nouns where, so to speak, there is a thing which we label with a sign.

This problem is not conceived of as one particular to Augustine but is meant to be applicable to a wide range of philosophical theories. Baker and Hacker are of this view when they claims that “[n]umerous sophisticated accounts of meaning are unconsciously rooted in the Augustinian picture, and this manifests a disease of the intellect.”[8] Now whilst we can see a definite tendency for philosophers to see meaningful terms as referring to objects, we can also see that no theory fully conforms to this conception of this version of the Augustinian picture. For example:

As Kirwan[9] points out in the passage Wittgenstein quotes, Augustine is concerned with the learning of language and not what is learnt. Elsewhere he has a relatively sophisticated account of different modes of signification, and doesn’t treat them all like nouns.
Frege took all sorts of words to have a reference e.g. truth-values and numbers. However, he was also keenly aware of the different logical roles of words in sentences, and made us aware of the different roles of concepts and objects.
Whilst the three theses above bear a strong resemblance to Wittgenstein’s view of a fully analysed language in the Tractatus, no meaningful words in everyday language refer to objects in the Tractarian sense.

In what way then is the Augustinian picture a criticism of past philosophers? Hacker himself admits:

Wittgenstein did not intimate that Frege cleaved to the Augustinian picture in its naive, pre-theoretical form- indeed, it is not clear that anyone has. Certainly Augustine himself did not do so in his philosophical writings. But that does not... show that Wittgenstein was ill advised to begin his masterwork with that quotation.[10]

The solution is to say that they did hold the Augustinian picture but not in its naive form, but a suitably refined and qualified version of it. According to Hacker, the Augustinian picture gains its importance from being an Urbild or proto-theory that lies at the root of all philosophical theories of meaning. Though they do not square in all respects with the Augustinian picture; that is not because they abandoned it, but because they are refinements of it. For example, it is true that Frege did not hold that ‘Some man’ in ‘Some man is rich’ named an object. However, his theory did hold that any significant word that contributed to its truth-value must have a referent.

Hacker’s interpretation throws up many queries regarding the relationship between the pre-theoretical form of the Augustinian picture and the theories that supposedly follow. Firstly, if a theory is significantly different from the proto-theory, on what basis do we judge whether a theory is a refinement of it rather than an abandonment? Secondly, in what way does criticism of the proto-theory affect the full-blown theory? One has to agree with Goldfarb that “it surely does not do to use the label “Augustinian conception” at will, and then take any considerations against its crude features as directly refuting or undermining the philosophers so labelled”[11].

Another look

My position avoids these difficulties by denying that the problem is specifically one about objects being the references of names and the reason I will say the GFP is misguided is not specifically because the bearer is the meaning of the name. Instead, it is a misleading view about the nature of intending, grasping and understanding that leads to a mistake in the elucidation of the sense of the sentence. If, for the moment, we accept that my interpretation fits the quote. How does it avoid the three theses that explicitly talk about objects being the bearers of a name? The three theses laid out above are not the Augustinian picture of language according to the Investigations! It is indeed from the picture of language that the meaning of a word is its bearer. Indeed, we will see in this essay how the Augustinian picture led to the GFP where all names in an analysed language stand for objects. However, something following from the Augustinian picture is not the same as being that picture and to say that something follows from the picture doesn’t tell us why it does.

The actual picture is: “the individual words in language name objects- sentences are combinations of such names” (PI 1). Here there is no claim that the object is the meaning of the word or that the purpose of uttering a word is to refer to that object. The claim is a philosophical thesis of sorts but it is rather otiose on its own. On this point, there is no reason to think Wittgenstein attributed Augustine a view any stronger than the following from Russell: “Words all have meaning, in the simple sense that they are symbols which stand for something other than themselves”[12]. Again, in terms of the thing named, neither the picture nor Wittgenstein’s interpretation of it demand any more of natural language than that a “thing is whatever is sensed or understood or is hidden”[13]. There is no need to conceive of all things as the kind of object we could encounter and correlate with a name.

To say that each word signifies is to say that it makes a specific contribution to the expression of a thought. The suggestion I am making then, is that when Augustine is talking about naming an object (e.g. red), he is not talking about the bearer of a name but the object of thought. By talking about the ‘object’ of thought, I am not saying anything about the vehicle of thought, but the content of the thought- what the thought is about. A good way to explain this is with the following quote:

The Stoics said that three things are linked to one another, the thing signified, the thing that signifies, and the thing come upon. Of these the thing that signifies is an utterance… the thing signified is the very state of affairs revealed by an utterance…. and the thing come upon is the external subject[14]

Here, ‘the thing come upon’ is the bearer of the name and as such, it is that which we can point to if the thing exists. However, it is not the bearer that is the thing signified but the very state of affairs revealed by an utterance. Thus to learn the meaning of an expression of language, is to understand what it signifies. It is this which is taught to the child when learning the use of a word and explained to a language-user who doesn’t understand the sense of an expression. The philosopher tries to elucidate what is involved in such an understanding.

[1] (Kirwan, 2001) p. 190

[2] Wittgenstein (WWK p.246) as cited in (Hacker, 1986) p. 77

[3] ibid

[4] (Kenny, 1974)

[5] (Goldfarb, 1983) p.272

[6] (Kirwan, 2001)

[7] Augustine, as cited by (Kirwan, 2001) p.191

[8] (Baker & Hacker, 1980) p. 32

[9] (Kirwan, 2001)

[10] (Hacker, 2001) p.240

[11] (Goldfarb, 1983) p.267

[12] As cited in (Baker & Hacker, 1980) p. 52

[13] Augustine as cited by (Kirwan, 2001) p.193

[14] Sextus Empiricus as cited by (Kirwan, 2001) p. 196

My Thesis: Section 1, Part 2

2009-04-02T17:01:00.001+01:00

First Previous Next

Unearthing the sense

In neither period is the sense something to be discovered or unearthed by philosophy. It is not some timeless, abstract thought that has to be grasped in a ‘non-psychological sense’. Nor to know the sense of a sentence do we have to have to have some ‘logical experience’ in order to grasp the indefinables of logic. Some of the negative arguments leading to the postulation that there is a GFP are targeted at just those assumptions. There are no representatives of the logic of facts (TLP 4.0312) with the only indefinables being the simple signs that stand for objects. These do not need to be discovered in order for us to express a sense because as far as they are the ‘logical co-ordinates’ of a proposition, any proposition we understand already involves them. Knowing how our signs symbolize means logical syntax can ‘go without saying’ (TLP 3.334). Philosophy can only be said to ‘find’ or ‘discover’ these things in terms of a process leading to them, by analysing what is already there.

Here there is no such thing as the sense of the sentence- they are not part of the totality of facts. The ‘sense’ just is what is given as answer to a request for the sense of sentence and philosophy is characterized by the kind of answer it gives. He says in PI 108:

We are talking about the spatial and temporal phenomenon of language, not about some non-spatial, non-temporal chimera [...Only it is possible to be interested in a phenomenon in a variety of ways]

For the Investigations it means looking at language as part of a language-game. However, this is perfectly apt for the Tractatus as well (or at least what it aims at). There is no ‘non-psychological sense’ to be grasped- there is only language in use- but we lay the sense out in a non-psychological way. Whilst we understand a proposition individually, philosophy clarifies the thought from the perspective of the ‘metaphysical subject’ (the non-psychological self) (TLP 5.641). As such, early and late, philosophy is marked by the how and not by the what. What then marks out his view of laying out language-games as better is that it is a better how for revealing the what (the sense of our ordinary propositions).

This is important to note as McGinn[1] talks about a change in the ‘object of investigation’ between Wittgenstein’s earlier and later works. She correctly points out Russell’s mistake in the introduction to the Tractatus when he says “he is concerned with the conditions which would have to be fulfilled by a logically perfect language”[2]. However, she then goes on to say that whilst the earlier Wittgenstein was investigating the properties of an idealized language or construct, he was later interested in the spatial and temporal phenomenon of language. He goes from looking at a system of representation simpliciter, to concrete, language-in-use. I find this misleading. If she simply means that he had earlier held an idealized view of language, and that he was mistaken that this view held good of ordinary language, I agree. However, what she actually says is that this was the ‘object’ of investigation. He laid out the rules of an idealized language and only held that ordinary language works this way because it somehow must do. However, I think we misunderstand the arguments against the GFP if we say the Tractatus takes this line. It is because he earlier aimed at elucidating the logic involved in understanding concrete language-in-use, but misinterpreted what this involved, that his earlier view was rejected.

The Tractatus doesn’t look at the logic of an ideal language or any language at all. It looks at what can be said about logic in advance before one looks at the logic of a language. It does tell us that we can analyse any proposition into logically innocent propositions with no logical constants and ‘names’ in immediate combination. However, that is all that can be said a priori (TLP 5.55) and as such we are not given any examples of objects or elementary propositions. An ‘object’, for example, is a ‘formal concept’ and so we don’t know what one is until we are shown what it is used to symbolize (c.f. TLP 4.1272), and thus we don’t have an idea what would be in an ideal language. Finding out information like this would belong to the application of logic (TLP 5.557) and thus observing how signs are used with sense (TLP 3.326). For this, we have to look to ordinary language.

As such, even if the interest was in an idealized language the following is true: “He was working inside the structure of actual language... [in] trying to establish the limits of any possible language.”[3] However, a so-called ideal language is only ideal as an end-point and clarification of how we use our words with sense. Now of course, he doesn’t deal with ordinary language in the Tractatus itself and is just dealing with the logic of any representation whatsoever. However, the point being that logic doesn’t have any content of its own and we need to see the logic inherent in ordinary language.

Misdirection or mistake?

If philosophy is an activity, and is designed to fulfil a particular purpose, then the worst can be said is that it fails to meet that purpose. It cannot be shown to be ‘false’ because it didn’t state a ‘truth’ in the first place. It is at worst, useless. The GFP was meant to be shown in how we our propositions with sense but if we follow Wittgenstein’s advice to look at the varied contexts of their use, it is hard to see how their meaning could be made perspicuous in the way he envisaged. As such, in one sense my criticism will amount to no more than that. On the other hand, something more informative can be said about why he went wrong. We can see why Wittgenstein’s investigation took the turn it did from a misleading account- the Augustinian picture- of how we learn in what sense an expression is being used. By looking at how language is learned without first paying attention to the kind of thing communicated, led him to have a particular pre-theoretical conception of what a particular thought having content consists in. In the end, this conception plays no formal role in a philosophical elucidation of how sentences have sense or in what sense a particular sentence is used. However, i) it is this very way of looking at ‘how things stand’ that the GFP is meant to justify and ii) makes us think that an analysis as proposed in the Tractatus is possible. This is so because it gives us an idea of the ‘what’ (what is understood when we use the sentence with sense) that the ‘how’ of the GFP (the way it can elucidate that sense) is addressed.

[1] (McGinn, 2006)

[2] (Russell, 1922/2001) pp. ix-x

[3] (Pears, Wittgenstein, 1971) p.49

My thesis: Section 1, Part 1

2009-04-01T21:40:00.000+01:00

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I have split my first section in to two for the purpose of the blog so that each post is not to lengthy

1- Explanation and Elucidation

‘What’s the sense?’: Two kinds of answer

On my interpretation, the question which the Augustinian picture invites us to consider is, in itself, is a very simple one about how we use language with sense. For Wittgenstein, “The sense of a proposition (or a thought)… [is] what is given as an answer to a request for an explanation of the sense” (PG p.131). The question then simply looks at what kind of answer is appropriate to just such a request. I shall distinguish in this essay between a pre-theoretical, everyday-sort of explanation and a philosophical elucidation. As I will present it, the Augustinian picture gives us the view that ostension is the fundamental form of explanation (of the first sort) which will, as a matter of fact, bring us to an understanding of the sense in which an expression is being used. The Tractatus, on the other hand, tells us the termination point of a philosophical elucidation. In espousing the GFP, Wittgenstein believes elucidate the sense of any proposition in such a way that we can see how it is derived from truth-operations on elementary propositions. I will argue that the particular view of explanation contained in the Augustinian picture misled Wittgenstein as to the direction a philosophical elucidation must take. Before substantiating this, I must highlight the distinction explanation and elucidation, and the link between them.

In an everyday context, we ask for a clarification of the sense of a particular sentence if we don’t understand how it is being used. This may be due to us not understanding a technical terms in a proposition or a word-play in a joke; we may pick up on someone using a word ambiguously in an order; or a sentence may seem out of place in a particular context. The purpose of explanation, then, is to bring the confused person to a new-found understanding of what is being said: “Aha! Now I understand what you mean!” How an explanation proceeds doesn’t matter but will involve highlighting how the words are being used in their sentential and/or situational context. All that matters is the person now understands what the words are being used to say. Specifically in relation to proposition, it means being able to understand what has been asserted.

The philosopher looks at the question differently and in the question emphasizes ‘what sense’. S/he does not care for the fact that a particular explanation happened to be effective but wonders what it is that is now understood. The philosopher is looking for the objective content of the sense that will provide us with criteria for assessing what is involved in understanding the utterance and what its implications are. According to Frege, “What is objective in it is what is subject to laws, what can be conceived and judged, what is expressible in words. What is merely intuitable is not communicable”[1]. According to this conception, the mark of objectivity is that it excludes any contingent phenomena that may be associated with it on any particular occasion, or in the mind of any particular speaker. As such, philosophical elucidation as traditionally conceived by analytic philosophers involves laying the content of a proposition out in such a way that it subject to logic and the ‘laws of truth’. To do this, the sense is expressed in language where the words have a clear use and a precise reference.

Elucidation as activity

For Wittgenstein, these two types of explanation are closely related. The sense, as delineated by philosophy, is precisely what is explained, communicated and understood in our ordinary use of language. This is because unlike Frege and Russell, who thought that the sense could only be properly laid out in ideal language, Wittgenstein believed that ordinary language is in ‘perfect logical order’ (TLP 5.5563). On this picture, not being able to give a philosophical analysis is no obstacle to a full and complete understanding. We can express a sense “without having any idea how each word has meaning or what its meaning is” (TLP 4.002). Our understanding is manifest in our ability to use that proposition to assert truly or falsely that a state of affairs obtains. However, he still believed that philosophical analysis had the role laid out above: seeing clearly what the sense of a sentence consists in means seeing how it is subject to universal logical laws. The difference being, and this is crucial, that philosophical elucidation denotes the activity clarifying something that, in some sense, is already known. In the Tractatus this finds expression in 4.112 where he says “Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts... A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations... [it results in] the clarification of propositions.”

We have in TLP 4.112 that philosophy is an activity and not a body of doctrine. It is what philosophers do and defines the way they see things. The philosopher tries to get a clear view of things and how language is used with sense. This conception of philosophy is one that survives into his later work:

The concept of a perspicuous representation is of fundamental significance for us. It earmarks the form of the account we give, the way we look at things. (Is this a ‘Weltanschauung’? ) (PI 121)

The account that the philosopher gives- a philosophical elucidation- enables us to see the logic of our language, solve philosophical difficulties, look what is involved in the truth and falsity of our proposition and look at interrelationships between concepts. This is done through laying out language-games and ‘assembling reminders’ about how a section of language is used. As before, there is no need for an average person to be in command of such an elucidation in order to use language. For example, they may never have consciously considered the difference between first and third person pronouncements of pain. However, it is the understanding embodied in ordinary usage that is what is being clarified.

[1] (Frege, 1980)p.26

My Thesis: Introduction

2009-04-01T16:53:00.001+01:00

The last time I published was before I went on my summer holidays and when I got back, spent the next month and a half writing my dissertation. Hence, I was too busy to blog.

Having finished my dissertation, I was very unhappy with it for a number of reasons, and felt like I was handing in a draft. I have not looked over it again until this day, but I will put it up nonetheless. I can't find the final version- it may have got deleted with my uni account. This, however, is a fairly complete version which I will put up in chunks. Maybe one day I'll rewrite it.

How far does Wittgenstein’s critique of the Augustinian Picture of Language undercut the motivation for the General Form of the Proposition?

INTRODUCTION

The ‘General Form of the Proposition’ can be seen as a central plank of the Tractarian account linking language, thought and reality and one that later comes under critical scrutiny in the Philosophical Investigations. At first blush the specification of the general form of the proposition seems rather banal: “This is how things stand” (TLP 4.5). However, being introduced towards the end of the Tractatus, it concludes several strands of investigation as to how we can use language to say something about the world (truly or falsely). Wittgenstein’s ‘picture theory’, for instance, outlined a proposition’s representative ability in terms of a structural isomorphism between the proposition and the reality it depicts. The determinate way names are arranged in the proposition exactly mirror the way objects are arranged (i.e. how things stand) in the situation being represented. However, this only seems to hold true in terms of the ‘logical form’ of elementary propositions. The syntactical form of these propositions is very much unlike that of our everyday propositions, and so the question arises as to how we are able to assert facts in our everyday language. This forms the background to the more complex rendering of the GFP in remark 6. Here, Wittgenstein seeks to show how all our propositions can be formed as the result of a recursive operation on the elementary propositions. As such, whilst hidden, every proposition manages to show us ‘how things stand’ in the same way. They do so by being truth-function of the elementary propositions from which they are constructed. In this way, we are meant to have both a substantive answer to philosophical questions and a vindication of the features of our ordinary propositions.

The arguments against the GFP in the Investigations are deceptively simple in both aim and method. They don’t aim to show that the Tractatus position is false but simply show that is empty. That is, it not only fails to give a substantive account of the ‘connection between language and reality’ but fails to illuminate us about our ordinary propositions. However, it is hard to see how Wittgenstein establishes this given that the Investigations only seem to deal with the seemingly banal statement “This is how things stand” and not with the more complex working-out of the idea. One direction Wittgenstein takes is to persuade us that all the supposed features of a proposition the Tractatus makes so much of, are merely restatements of the concept of a proposition and not an illumination of it. However, how can he claim this if he doesn’t examine the detailed account that the Tractatus tries to give? Another direction he takes is to point out that we have no example of an elementary proposition and no calculus by which we can produce one. However, what about the reasons the Tractatus gave such that analysis must reveal elementary propositions? One can get the impression that when discussing Tractatus positions directly, Wittgenstein merely gives a crude caricature of his earlier positions or outright misrepresents them.

Clearly, Wittgenstein did not think he misrepresented the Tractatus because, as Monk points out, the beginning of the book where he engages with it (1-188) “is the only section of Wittgenstein’s later work with which he was fully satisfied”[1]. I will try to better understand the criticisms of the GFP, by reading the arguments against the background of Wittgenstein’s critique of the ‘Augustinian Picture of Language’. In the first paragraph of the Investigations he quotes St. Augustine’s recalling how he learnt to speak and says that this gives us a particular picture of the essence of language. Taken as a learning situation the description, as Goldfarb notes, “seems trivial, prosaic, well-nigh unobjectionable”[2]. However, taken as directing certain philosophical debates, Wittgenstein believed it can lead to confusion, including that of the Tractatus. In Monk’s words, “The rest of the book was to examine the implications of this idea and the traps which it led philosophers, and to suggest routes out of those traps.”[3] As such, I take the critique to be an indispensable interpretive tool, not only in highlighting a general difference between the Investigations and the Tractatus, but in looking at its implications for specific Tractatus positions. We will see that without the Augustinian picture, the GFP will seem uninformative by its own lights.

[1] (Monk, 1990) p.364

[2] (Goldfarb, 1983) p.268

[3] (Monk, 1990) p.364

Making vs. Having

2008-06-26T01:35:00.001+01:00

One thing that I keep noticing and feeling as very significant is a certain vacillation in Wittgenstein's terminology. Sometimes he talks about a proposition making sense and other times about a proposition having a sense. Sometimes he changes between the two in the course of a sentence as in the following quote from the Notebooks:

[I]f a proposition is to make sense then the syntactical employment of each of its parts must be settled in advance.. must be completely settled before that proposition can have a sense!

In his later work, he seems to overcome the view that a proposition has a definite sense that the proposition connects to. Yet he never seems to diagnose or directly address this slip in terminology as a source of the problems in his earlier work. In fact, the later Wittgenstein is also sometimes inconsistent with how he talks about 'sense'. Yet when he is trying to highlight mistakes in this area, he is (and perhaps without realising) does stick to talking about making sense:

“You understand this expression, don’t you? Well then- I am using it in the sense you are familiar with.”- As if the sense were an atmosphere accompanying the word, which it carried into every kind of application.// …he should ask himself in what special circumstances this sentence is actually used. There it does make sense.

But why the temptation to slip from one to the other? Why not only talk about a proposition making sense? Even in the quote from PI above he seems to talk about 'the sense' of a sentence (or at least a sentence as used in that context). And if we do need to talk about the sense a sentence makes,or the sense that the sentence 'has', wherein lies the false conception earlier?

In PG he writes:

On hearing the assertion “This sentence makes sense” you cannot really ask “what sense?”

Yet, of course this is a question he asks both early and late. A word doesn't by right mean this, that or the other. It is only because it used in this sense or that. The precise philosophical task (which can be done in the right way or otherwise) depends on explicating in what sense the word is used, and that determines the meaning of the word.

I will write more on this and try to work out where the arguments meet. I think it is exceptionally important as it gives a way into diagnosing where the earlier Wittgenstein went wrong, without simply assuming he was being dogmatic. It is one that if he was wrong, it was at a specific point he did so and was a subtle and understandable mistake in the context of a shared goal. Both were trying to elucidate the sense of a proposition, but something led the earlier Wittgenstein to look in the wrong place for such an elucidation.

General Form of the Proposition Part 1: Where the criticism is not

2008-06-03T14:15:00.003+01:00

I

In the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein argues against his earlier claim that there is a ‘general form of the proposition’. Instead he argues that language has a great variety of different uses and there is no one way that a proposition can be used to mean something, or one form of proposition (that of being a truth function of elementary propositions, which are truth functions of themselves) that can have sense. However, Roger White is of the impression that no solid case has been made against the general form of the proposition:

What he does in the Investigations is simply parade before us the extraordinary diversity of uses of language that there are, and invites us to ask whether it is credible that they should conform to a simple underlying pattern, such as he had envisaged in the Tractatus. Here it seems to me a strong case can be made out for saying that his first thought may be nearer the truth than his later one. This is not the place to argue this in full, but I will indicate two considerations to think about. Firstly, Wittgenstein makes no distinction between what a sentence means, and the use to which we put it, and much of the diversity he illustrates in §23 is diversity, in use not meaning. Secondly, it is more than arguable that unless there was a simple underlying system to the language, it would lack the flexibility necessary for it to be put to such diverse uses.

It might seem that the later Wittgenstein believed that in the Tractatus it was simply taken for granted that there was a general form of the proposition. This was assumed, so the thought goes, because there was one use of language and this could be dispelled by: “Don’t say ‘there must…’ but look and see whether there is anything common to all.” This clearly would not do. Firstly, the author of the Tractatus is most certainly aware that there are different uses of language. Secondly, as White argues, it ignores the argument (and not, assumption) of 4.5 that there couldn’t be a proposition whose form could not be foreseen. We can understand propositions that have never been heard before and produce entirely new ones. As such, the most general form of the proposition must tell us ‘This is how things stand’. White argues that translated in this way, it sounds rather banal. It would be better to say ‘This is how things are arranged’: this is what the world would be like if the proposition were true.

In 4.002 he says, “the outward form of the clothing is not designed to reveal the form of the body, but for entirely different purposes. // The tacit conventions on which the understanding of everyday language depends are enormously complicated”. In other words, of course there are different uses and different purposes to which our language is put. More than this, these uses affect our understanding of which thought is expressed. However, it is not this outer clothing that is important (not the way in which a thought is expressed) but the thought beneath it (what the thought is that is expressed). Moreover given that “all the propositions of our everyday language, just as they stand, are in perfect logical order”, there is something that underpins these diverse uses and allows them all to have sense. Whilst there are many forms of proposition, there is only one general form. As such it does no good to simply point out that there many uses of language, because whilst that is true, it doesn’t bear on his arguments for a general form of proposition. As Wittgenstein says in 4.5 “It is clear that only what is essential to the most general propositional form may be included in its description- for otherwise it would not be the most general form”.

II

First of all, it should be noted that, in a certain sense, Wittgenstein is happy to sanction that there is a ‘general form of a proposition’. That is, there are certain features of a sentence without which we wouldn’t say that it is a proposition. In Philosophical Grammar he asks “Why not?” to giving a general propositional form. He says, “of course, you can’t draw a boundary if you have decided in advance not to recognise one. But of course the question remains: how do you use the word ‘proposition’? In contrast to what?” In answer to this he tells us that “A general propositional form determines a proposition as part of a calculus.” At this stage, it is being part of a calculus that allows a sentence to connect with an extra-linguistic reality.

Even in the PI there are certain features of a proposition that Wittgenstein holds fast to. Indeed, I would go so far as to say, they are the very features that he believes to be part of a proposition in the Tractatus. One could say that “This is how things stand” is co-extensive with the totality of propositions; and part of the reason for doing so is that that is what, in English, it is to ‘sound like a proposition’. It, itself, is a proposition in English that may be alternatively expressed (see §134) “such and such is the case” or “this is the situation”. Any genuine proposition, once we know what it means, will tell us ‘what is the case’. A second feature that he maintains is that a proposition is that which we, in our language, can apply a calculus of truth-functions to i.e. those sentences that can be considered true or false. That is to say that the proposition says something about reality and if that obtains, the proposition is true; if not, it is false.

However, the point being made in the PI is that this is yet to say anything at all. In §134 he says, “To say [about ‘This is how things are’] proposition agrees (or does not agree) with reality would be obvious nonsense”. In other words, it is not itself a proposition, nor does it say what it is for a proposition to have a sense (just that if it is a proposition, it will have one). As for a proposition being something we can predicate true or false of, this is something that “belongs to our concept ‘proposition’ but does not ‘fit’ it.” (§136) We can predicate ‘true’ [in English] of any sentence that says something that agrees with reality but is not a property that engages with a sentence to make it a proposition. To say that a proposition is true, is nothing other than to say what the sentence says (‘p’ is true = p // ‘p’ is false = not-p). He is using a deflationary view of truth. To know what truth means in a particular case we have to find out what it is for that proposition to agree with reality:

The use of ‘true or false’ has something misleading about it, because it is like saying, ‘It agrees with the facts or it doesn’t’, and the very thing in question is what ‘agreement’ is in here. (OC 199)

However, these aren’t immediate criticisms of the Tractatus. The Tractatus never saw ‘This is how things stand’ as a bona fide proposition and in the Notebooks, he grapples with the same worries “But how am I to explain the general nature of the proposition now? We can indeed say: everything that is (or is not) the case can be pictured by means of a proposition. But here I have the expression ‘to be the case’… It is just as problematic.” Nor did he see ‘truth’ as a mechanism that gives a proposition sense. In fact the positions from the PI mentioned above are of the very essence for the early Wittgenstein (and as such, form part of the motivation for there being a general form of proposition). Consider proposition 4.06 and its commentary:

4.06 A proposition can be true or false only in virtue of being a picture of reality.

4.061 It must not be overlooked that a proposition has a sense that is independent of the facts: otherwise one can easily suppose that true or false are relations of equal status between signs and what they signify

4.063 [A proposition] does not designate a thing (a truth-value) which might have properties called ‘false’ or ‘true’.

4.064 Every proposition must already have a sense: it cannot be given a sense by affirmation. Indeed its sense is just what is affirmed. And the same applies to negation, etc.

Here, truth and falsity do not add anything to the proposition; otherwise a statement would have a different sense depending on whether it was true or false. Instead, ‘p’ has the one and the same sense whether it is affirmed or denied (does or does not obtain). Of course, the important question, which the quote from On Certainty stresses, is for us to understand what ‘agreement’ consists in, in the proposition. It is precisely because a proposition must ‘already have a sense’ that we cannot say that the proposition tells us “This is how things stand”. Instead, we need to analyse the proposition in order to find out what it says about reality (what the agreement with reality consists in; what situation is shown by the proposition).

2.22 What a picture represents it represents independently of its truth and falsity, by means of its pictorial form

If the pictorial form shows us the sense of the proposition, independently of its truth and falsity, we must be able to foresee the form of all propositions (i.e. all sentences with sense). As such nothing Wittgenstein says in §134 or 136 undermines the Tractatus argument directly and even helps us see the motivation for it.

III

It might very well be denied that we have thus far found nothing to argue with about the Tractatus. How about that our propositions must be analysable into elementary propositions? How come the proposition must show its sense by means of its pictorial form or by its form at all? Such requirements were derided in the Philosophical Grammar as a form of chemical analysis trying to reveal what is hidden, where our normal propositions are fine as they are. However, we have not yet found reason for such complaint. It cannot be that we should ‘analyse’ (construed broadly) our language in order to find which propositions make sense. Consider the following:

4.023 A proposition constructs a world with the help of a logical scaffolding, so that one can see from the proposition how everything stands logically if it is true. One can draw inferences from a false proposition

Is this not the point of language-games in his later philosophy? Do we not want to see the internal relations between concepts? Do we not want to see the inferences that can be drawn from various propositions with sense? Cannot this be done even when the proposition is not true?

Secondly, we cannot say that the propositions in such an analysis are not meant to show us what is the case if true, that there are certain forms that can do this and certain ones that are used illicitly and lead to nonsense. Of course, the form is not decided independently of how we use our propositions. Despite this, it must be noted that Tractarian Wittgenstein isn’t saying that the sense of a proposition can be decided without any knowledge of how we use propositions to describe ‘reality’. For example he says, “The application of logic decides what elementary propositions there are. // What belongs to its application, logic cannot anticipate” (5.557). The general form of the proposition tells us that with a perspicuous sign-language we would be able to see what sense is being expressed from the form alone (without knowledge of truth/falsity), and that our propositions can be analysed as expressing one of these senses. However, we would not necessarily be able to construct such a sign language without knowing that certain situations have existed in reality (have been ‘true’).

This is why in theory the ‘general form of the proposition’ can survive his later criticism of the logical independence of elementary propositions. He says in Notes on Logical Form: “It is, of course; a deficiency of our notation that it does not prevent the formation of such nonsensical constructions, and a perfect notation will have to exclude such structures by definite rules of syntax… Such rules, however, cannot be laid down until we have actually achieved the ultimate analysis of the phenomena in question. This, as we all know, has not yet been achieved”. Analysis is not something magical and form does not do anything by itself. The final product should help us see how we actually do use our propositions. The point of analysis is just to tease out the way in which the proposition relates to reality, as this is sometimes obscured by our words.

Back to school

2008-05-27T15:35:00.002+01:00

[This is a bit rough and repetitive. I'll tidy it up. Please add thoughts]

“Any explanation has its foundation in training. (Educators ought to remember this).” (RPP II)

A

Why is it important for Wittgenstein to start the PI with a learning situation? I think that it is quite simply this: it is where there is the biggest gap between the intentional and contingent; between meaning and use; between grammar and the connection between words and the world. More specifically, it is where there is the largest gap that is also a linguistically normative situation (where ‘meaning’ is in play).

In the learning situation, the focus of our attention is the child: how do they use words in a particular way? How do they have to use the words to mean what we do by our words? In that way, by focusing on their use in simple situations, we will get a clearer focus on our use of the words. However, whilst they are the focus of our attention, it is the parents who are the guardians of meaning. It is they and their actions in which meaning is grounded, their use of words that give rise to the rules by which a word is meant correctly, and they who create a normatively structured situation. The children’s behaviour isn’t essentially normative; neither does it hook onto linguistically salient features of reality. Instead, it is just primitive behaviour that is, in itself, of psychological interest only.

“Am I doing child psychology? – I am making a connection between the concept of teaching and the concept of meaning.” (RRP II 337). In focusing on how a child learns a word, we are not looking at their psychological reactions for the purpose of studying psychological reactions. Instead, it is a conceptual investigation as to what our words mean; and a word’s meaning does not vary if on two occasions of use there is a psychological difference. Yet, it is certain psychological reactions to objects or situations that underpin our ability to mean this or that. It is these psychological phenomena (that cause the child to utter a word on a particular occasion), which are shaped by teaching and training. In considering childhood learning: a) the meaning is held constant as it is independent of the child’s use and only in relation to this is the child’s use relevant b) the connection between word and reality is purely psychological and it is only through these connections that a word can be meant in the relevant way.

B

We can look at the importance of the learning situation from a discussion of Wittgenstein’s in Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology II. In discussing the meaning of “I dread it”, he talks about a child who first uses the word ‘dread’ having heard it from adults. When would we say he meant it? What would be the circumstances? How would we recognise it in his face? He then comments (171), “I chose the case of a child because what is happening in him is stranger to us than it would be with an adult. What do I know- I’m inclined to say- about a background for the words “I dread…”? Does the child suddenly let me look into him?” The answer to the last question is obviously a resounding ‘no’. In a situation where the people in question already have the concept of ‘meaning’, we are tempted to talk about some inner process that is the condition for using the term ‘dread’. But in the case of a child, where we don’t know what goes on inside of him, we are forced to look at external conditions and surface phenomena for the background for the use of the word.

Note that in talking about the child, the external conditions, when the word is uttered etc, I am talking about the background of meaning and not meaning itself. It is still the adults who judge “He meant it” from their perspective as fully-fledged language-users. From the point of view of what is going on in the situation, the child’s use of the word is empirical and contingent. Nothing of a different order happened to what would have happened if he had uttered the word whilst smiling and stroking the dog. In fact, it is the very point that there is nothing a child is doing that is comparable to ‘understanding a meaning’ or ‘following a rule’. It is simply that there is a rule (as held by the parents) that child is following, and that the child’s actions are in accordance with the meaning of ‘dread’ (as given by the adults evaluation of the child’s actions).

C

The difference between ‘a rule being followed’ and ‘following a rule’ and between ‘a word being meant’ and ‘meaning a word’ is almost imperceptible in adult life. That is because we are both the people whose words are ‘meant’ in the everyday flow of life and those judging what others mean a word as we do. The difficulty then is trebly hard for philosophers who not only do both of these but also have to get a perspicuous representation of what it is to mean that word. However, even in the learning situation, itself it seems that I am guilty of sophistry. After all, the moment the adult says of the child “He meant it” we are (it would appear) saying he is doing something different from before when he merely contingently used the word here or there.

Appearances aside, reflecting on the learning situation should help us see that the child’s use of the word is no different to others, other than that it is the one that will be reinforced by the adults. In a different context Wittgenstein says, “I can teach him to continue a series (basic series) without using any expression of the ‘law of a series’; rather I am forming a substratum for the meaning of algebraic rules, or what is like them.” (RPP II 403). In the same way, in teaching a child to follow a rule, there is no ‘rule for the word’ that is given. Instead, they are taught and trained to mean this or that. This teaching and training forms the substratum out of which the rules for a word can be described.

In adults, although it is harder to see, a similar situation exists to that with the child. Our everyday use of words is entirely ‘normal’ and no more miraculous than walking. As I said in a previous post, we are simply operating with signs. The use of particular signs in particular situations could be explained purely psychologically. Of course, we are not per se ‘interested’ in what we happen to do, but whether we meant a word ‘correctly’. This stands ‘outside’ our actions and we are judged, corrected or even trained in response to them. However, ‘meaning’ does not exist apart from our use of words which act as its substratum. Meaning doesn’t literally ‘stand outside’ use in the way it stands outside the child. It is just that particular uses are held constant or particular uses are the ones that people hold to be ‘correct’. When our words can be judged to be ‘meant correctly’, we are not doing anything different to using them ‘incorrectly’, other than one is judged to be ‘correct’ and the other not.

D

It may have seemed odd that I started by saying that the learning situation separates meaning from use, and grammar from the connection between word and thing. Yet I think is important to separate these things, and this is part of what Wittgenstein is trying to show us but cannot articulate. He can’t articulate it as in practice, meaning and use are so closely intertwined that, from the point of view of the rules of meaning, the use ceases to be contingent. The ‘meaning’ constrains which use is the correct one. However, this means that use itself is ‘ontologically’ prior to meaning, such that one use rather than another can be judged as correct. Equally, the only way we can talk about the ‘connection’ between word and reality is by laying out its grammar. However, while the grammar tells us which connection we have, the connection itself is psychological. We respond to reality because certain we are ‘caused’ to in particular situations. This psychological connection constitutes the method of projection by which words are ‘related’ to reality in the way the grammar says it is.

In other words, the ‘constraint’ is non-contingent but the ‘constrained’ is. Use, by itself, is unconstrained and is only turned into the ‘use in language’ in a normatively structured situation. Surely then, in considering meaning we should only be concerned with existent normative situations where ‘use’ is ‘use in language’. Quite so. BUT…. If we have a false picture of meaning it is probably because forget that the substratum of meaning is empirical and is only because we are trained to use a word one way rather than another that they can be considered normative at all. In training certain pre-existent psychological connections between signs and reality are reinforced whilst others aren’t. And as with the Augustinian picture, meaning is built on a view of what the method of projection must be: that of responding to presented objects with names. Once we recognise that the methods of projection involved in meaning are built upon pre-existing psychological connections, we will see the hidden and mistaken psychological picture hidden at the base of the Augustinian picture. Many different types of connections underlie our ability to mean different words.

Looking at the learning situation allows us to look at the non-normative in a way that is relevant to what is normative.

The head of a 'red herring'

2008-05-20T14:06:00.001+01:00

This post is about the ‘red herring’ that is Representational Theory of Mind. It appears that the Tractatus is deficient because it accepts such a theory whilst the later works is at pains to reject this psychological account. I think it is misleading to equate the Tractatus with RTOM where it makes clear that it is up to psychology (and not philosophy) to find out how we come to mean what we do by our signs. It also obscures the explanatory debt psychology has which is later criticised by PI. Secondly, while PI does argue against some of the ontological implications that RTOM may mislead us into taking, this doesn’t mean that RTOM is necessarily a bad psychological theory.

Given the length of what I have to say, and the time it may take me to complete it, I will write it in three separate posts. This post very long by blog standards as it is! This one deals with my motivations for dealing with the questions, what questions are being addressed, and what answers I will be giving. The next post on this topic will specifically deal with the Tractatus and the third with PI.

I am writing this post about the ‘representational theory of mind’ in relation Wittgenstein’s philosophy for two reasons. First, because of a view of Roger White’s (that he has mentioned in passing) that he quite sympathetic to a large point of the Philosophical Investigations, that the Representational Theory of Mind (RTOM from hereon) is false, but that that is quite compatible with a Tractarian theory of meaning. I don’t know whether by this he means:

i) The Tractatus does support a RTOM but whilst that is wrong, it does not mean the whole edifice of the Tractatus crumbles or…

ii) RTOM (or at least, anything that reasonably looks like RTOM) was no part of the Tractatus to begin with. Whilst a) there may be features that resemble the approach of RTOM theorists and b) RTOM is compatible with the Tractatus; it is not a position that the Tractatus endorsed.

Because of this, none of what I write should be taken as outlining his position. However, I will say this much. If he is thinking of i) above, then I believe him to be wrong and will do so on two grounds. First, the Tractatus position does not bear close relationship to anything that is ‘currently on the market’ in psychology. In other words, I will be arguing that ii) is correct. However, the second ground will be the difficulties, the ones that have lead people to assume (incorrectly) that he does accept RTOM, are not escaped by that very denial. That meaning must represent an object and that this must be effected by the mind a) is part of the Tractatus b) is essentially so and c) it is this which is the subject of his later criticisms. In other words, you cannot divorce these problematic features from the Tractatus itself.

What I am doing here may seem very odd indeed. I am/ will be saying that the Tractatus does not endorse a RTOM but does imply a theory of mind whereby the mind is responsible for the representation of states of affairs. Now, the first thing to note is my qualification “(or at least, anything that reasonably looks like RTOM)”. Here the RTOM theories are not any that might be labelled as such for whatever reason, but the theories that actually do go by that name. Now, whilst one might say that a theory of mind that supports a Tractarian theory of meaning as belonging to that category, we have good reason not to. Firstly, such a conflation would lead us to assume that the Tractatus makes philosophical mistakes that it does not, in fact, make. Secondly, there are important differences between W and RTOM theorists in their approach to answering questions about meaning. Sometimes the questions themselves are different. Thirdly, it obscures where the real mistake of the Tractatus qua psychology lies; and thus the target of criticisms in the PI. As such, my approach allows me to accept ii) (above) and yet, retain the feature that is subject to later criticism

III

The second reason for writing this post (and again this may ‘seem very odd indeed’ given what I have written above) is the way that Wittgenstein scholars ride ‘rough shod’ over RTOM or at least its motivations. That the Philosophical Investigations rules out any sort of RTOM is a bit rash. This may just be a misguided sentimental attachment to (something-resembling) RTOM. My BSc was in Psychology-Philosophy and many of my upper-year modules were in cognitive neuro/science and my dissertation grew out the theoretical backwaters of just such an approach (based on a suggestion I read by Carruthers). However, it is not just sentiment…. there are massive motivations for modularity and for there being innate constraints on the mind’s processing. For example, the evidence that Pinker presents in The Language Instinct for ‘innate language’ is overwhelming and just cannot be accounted for by rival psychological theories like those of connectionism. If mentalese or language of thought is needed to account for psychological thought then so be it. What the philosophical implications of it are, or whatever the wisdom of calling it language; it can help psychologically explain certain elements of language acquisition.

Where people like Norman Malcolm make it seem ‘primitive’ to accept RTOM, I find myself cringing. People like Fodor are far from the psychological dogmatists that they are made out to be. In The Mind Doesn’t Work that Way he basically says that whilst it would be very nice if the brain were fully computational, that just isn’t the case. Certain modules or operations can be defined in terms of their computational structure, the overall working of the brain (e.g. in terms of which information is considered relevant, and where processing stops) cannot be.

Even back then, I was wary of some of the philosophical commitments that RTOM theorists tended to have. For example, in my dissertation I wrote:

Carruthers (2002) disagrees, as he is a realist about animal thought, taking animals to be capable of discrete, structured, semantically evaluable, causally effective states. He argues that the evidence of animal thought above would not be possible without structured propositional thought involving relationships of individuals, properties and relations. Whilst he is probably not correct, philosophically speaking, this does not matter for the purposes of this study, which is empirically based. The problem with the anti-realist models is that, because there is no shared representation between animals and humans, it is far harder to frame empirical hypotheses about how human thought evolved from animal thought. This study did not require that logical structures actually do supervene on neurons or that a computational theory of mind is correct. All it requires is a plausible theoretical framework that can be used to investigate the role of language in human cognition.

In the end I asserted, “A theoretical assumption of this paper then, is that all minds including those of animals and pre-linguistic infants are modular.” The theoretical assumption about modules was intentionally free from Fodor’s philosophy as I talked about modules that differ from each other phylogenetically, ontogenetically and functionally. Here (as I wrote in another essay) “many of the above explanations for massive modularity were biological and do not necessarily rely on a strict computational theory of mind”. However, in calling them modules we do have to accept what Fodor posits as a basic claim of modularity: the presence of “functionally individuated cognitive mechanisms”.

However, as my large quote above indicates I was taking a stronger line than just this. That line was my only theoretical assumption; however, I did take on the theoretical machinery of a full-blown RTOM for the purpose of an empirical investigation. That is, whilst I wasn’t too concerned with the ontological implications of this, that or the other view; I was concerned with predicting and analysing brain function (and in my case, the purpose of language in cognition). I felt a) Fodor’s strict modularity stopped us making empirical investigations about central brain function (which includes language) because of a philosophical quandary b) people who are anti-RTOM for whatever philosophical reason also hamper empirical investigation. RTOM, for good or bad, gives us a framework for understanding the mind which connectionism (or whatever) lacks etc.

Back to the topic of Wittgenstein. I think the later Wittgenstein could accept RTOM minus philosophical confusion. That is, so long as we sort out what the direction of explanation is, get rid of a certain mythology of mind, debunk notions of a mentalese that explains our connection to the world or explains meaning etc. Maybe this is over-stated in that the philosophical assumptions of RTOM theorists are so tied up with their view, that you could not get rid of these and still be called RTOM. Indeed, Wittgenstein would not like it called a ‘theory’ of mind. We could as such call it by a different name. However, what I will seek to show is that the research carried out by psychologists who currently agree with RTOM is certainly compatible with the later Wittgenstein.

Indeed, I would go so far as to say (and this is radical I know and would certainly upset White’s notion of PI’s benefit) that PI is MORE FRIENDLY to RTOM than the Tractatus!!! The very things that I will argue show that the Tractatus is not committed to RTOM, added to the theoretical commitments that psychology must account for in its theory of meaning, will disallow current RTOM research looking anything like a final psychology. It will not furnish the Theory of Knowledge which is required. Where PI removes the explanatory debt of theoretical psychology, it is freer to carry out the research it does. This is especially so, given that the subjects of psychology include things like the subject-predicate form which is part of our ordinary language as conceived by PI.

NEXT TIME (The Body of the Red Herring)… sections IV dealing with ontological claims of RTOM and the claims of the Tractatus that seem similar, V showing where the Tractatus is importantly dissimilar to RTOM, VI showing the troubling ‘representational’ claims of the Tractatus that remain over.

The signs, the whole signs and nothing but the signs, so help me Wittgenstein

2008-05-19T03:40:00.005+01:00

Now it seems that it is just common-sense that words have meaning, or at least words are used in such a way that they do. We are not simply uttering sounds, writing marks on paper or rearranging napkins and sugar pots (e.g. when talking about the offside rule in football). It is not enough that I vocalise ‘red’ but that this word has a particular extension, refers to particular objects, is this-or-that idea, has ‘a sense’, or ‘has’ a use. It is not that red is vocalised that is of interest, but that “‘red’ means red”. It is not the words qua sign but the meaning behind the sign.

This, according to Wittgenstein, is a philosophical confusion. To say that we simply do this, or that is not enough, lead us to expound philosophical nonsense. There is no need to look behind the words as “nothing is hidden”. Commentators on Wittgenstein will find nothing new in what I have said so far. Everyone knows that in PI the ‘bearer of a name’ is not its meaning, nor is a particular idea, or sensation, or a sense that surrounds the word like a halo etc. However, this may lead people to conclude that if the meaning is not hidden, then it is on the surface. Rather than being obscure and difficult to grasp hold of, it is simple to see what meaning is. Instead of a substantive notion of what makes something mean red, it is enough to note that “‘red’ means red”.

I think this is a mistake. In a previous post, I have castigated certain commentators for not giving any indication about what they mean by meaning being on the surface. They just seem to repeat the negative critique of particular (substantive) conceptions of a word having a meaning; sometimes with the proviso that no such substantive account may be given. However, as I said there, that whilst I agree on the whole, I have felt no therapeutic effect of this. [My agreement includes denying that ‘meaning is use’ as a substantive notion of meaning:- I will come onto this in a different post]. The reason I feel is this: saying that meaning is on the surface obscures the fact that SIGNS ARE ENOUGH and that there is nothing that we are per se doing other than SIMPLY UTTERING SOUNDS (etc.)

Consider the following:

If I give someone an order, it is for me quite enough to give him signs. And I would never say: this is only words, and I must get behind the words. Equally, when I have asked someone something and he gives me an answer (that is a sign) I am satisfied- that was what I expected- and I don’t object: That’s a mere answer.

Now this at first seems simply absurd for the very reasons I talked about in the first paragraph. Malcolm’s gloss is as follows: “What worries us philosophically is the feeling that the language cannot be enough. You utter some words; I utter some words. Surely there must be more to conversation than just that! Something must be added to words, namely meaning.” But it doesn’t just seem absurd for that reason, but also because it doesn’t seem to square with Wittgenstein’s approach to meaning or what he is up to in PI. a) He wants to see where a word is ‘idling’ (and thus some words don’t idle) b) He wants to distinguish sense from nonsense (thus there is something for words to ‘have a sense’ rather than just being a word or string of words). Etcetera.

Yet the view that signs are enough is that of Wittgenstein. This is not to ignore the two points listed above (or many other related points). However, those questions (questions about meaning) only make sense, or appear to make sense, from a particular perspective. However, this is not a perspective that has much relevance to how we use words in our life. Most of the time when we are conversing, we are simply exchanging signs and not exchanging ‘meanings’. Wittgenstein addresses his opponents: “You say: the point isn’t the word, but its meaning, and you think of the meaning as a thing of the same kind as the word, though also different from the word” Yet there is nothing of this type; there is no word-like thing- only the word. The point may not be the word but that is all one can discover. It is not that the ‘meaning’ is the word, or is on the surface of the word, or just obvious that “red” means red. NO- there is only the sign and no meaning. Of course, there are other things going on in the world (and this is important to remember) apart from using signs: you will see people eating, walking, pulling faces, getting hurt etc etc. The sign is employed in the midst of this life. However, one thing you will not in the world is meaning and this is something W insists on early and late.

Wittgenstein does say: “What interests us in the sign, the meaning which matters for us is what is embodied in the grammar of the sign.” However, the ‘us’ refers to philosophers/ those engaged in a philosophical investigation about meaning and not the ordinary-folk! In such an investigation “We are not interested in any empirical facts about language considered as empirical facts… [but] considered as a game”. That is the point of a linguistic investigations is not about simply what is there, but about a particular way of examining what is there. This particular way is what must be given when a philosopher asks what the meaning, when not in context that the word is usually used (i.e. philosophy seminar). A consideration of the ‘rules of the game’ (looking at words in this way) are not necessary in the flux and flow of life, where words are used without confusion. Words are enough. However, even in a philosophical context it is necessary to get the facts straight- they might not be considered as empirical facts- but nonetheless, the facts are as they are. In this respect: “We are talking about the spatial and temporal phenomenon of language, not about some non-spatial, non-temporal phantasm”. Here there is no phantasmic meaning- only concrete words. Words that are as much a part of our natural history as walking, talking and eating.

The discomfort we experienced in relation to Wittgenstein’s builders (here and here) was that there was no opportunity to express “How d’ya mean?” There was no opportunity to take a particular perspective on the language whereby they could consider its meaning. That is true- there would be no concept of meaning in that situation (at least, they would not have a concept of meaning). Yet that is not a problem as for them- orders are given and the orders are carried out. They expected signs and that is what they got. Our question as philosophers was: given our concept of meaning, did they mean what they said? In order to motivate an affirmative response it wasn’t enough to point to the signs but crucially, we didn’t have to point to meanings either. Instead, we looked at non-linguistic features like looks of puzzlement or a confident smirk in ‘knowing how to go on’. This helps us understand why we would say that something has meaning. Consider the following:

"Is meaning then really only the use of the word? Isn’t it the way this use meshes with our life?”…”So isn’t it something else that constitutes understanding- the feeling “in one’s own breast”, the living experience of the expressions?- They must mesh with my own life.”
“familiarity lies in the fact that I immediately grasp a particular rhythm of the picture and stay with it, feel at home with it, so to speak” .

In other words, signs must have a certain physiogonomy for us. Our use of the words is bound up with images, feelings, dispositions, processes, and states of physical arousal. Certain signs have no sense if they are just signs- they do not mean anything. These psychological connections help us ‘connect up’ the words with reality; with the other elements of our life in which signs are employed. They determine the method of projection. Yet, as we are aware from PI these cannot be ‘meanings’. They are not things that words refer to or accompany them or form part of their content. They are not things like the word but different at the same time. As I said in the previous posts, these are non-linguistic and these contingent, empirical things are not part of meaning. They do however form the background against which words ‘make sense’ in our lives.

Given this non-linguistic background the signs do what they are intended to do. There is no room in our temporal and spatial phenomenon of language there is no space for ‘meanings’ and there is no need for such a perspective to be formed. The builders are fine with their signs. “We regard understanding as the essential thing, and signs as something inessential.- But in that case, why have the signs at all?”

All (emprically-speaking) we are doing is uttering sounds, or writing marks and this isn't a source for worry. Of course, the qualification 'empirically speaking' turns into one of those theses which everyone will agree with. Maybe however it should serve as a reminder of what one already knows. Where does meaning reside? Nowhere. Not even on the surface of the signs.

Elucidation, elucidation, wherefore art thou elucidation?

2008-05-09T01:18:00.006+01:00

"When's a door not a door? When it's ajar!"
"When's an elucidation not an elucidation? When its a proposition!"

Okay.... so it's with a sense of puzzlement and a lack of (even philosophical) humour that I write this post. The 'joke' above (or at least it has that ring about it) is about the only criticism I could properly discern from an article of Hacker's about ostensive definition in the Tractatus. Apparently, we elucidate the meaning of an object via ostensive definition. To do this is to balance two contradictory elements: the true-false feature of an ordinary proposition and the supposed feature of an ostensive definition that it can link language to reality.

My attention was drawn to this article by N.N. He is 'inclined to disagree' with my view that "It is no part of the Tractatus account that names get their meaning (the object which is their meaning) via ostensive definition." Now I certainly think that what I put is the orthodox view but not only that, one that seems cogent in light of what else Wittgenstein says/ shows in the Tractatus. As N.N. rightly said, Kenny shares my view (or to be more precise, I share his! He wrote it before me). And I found this quote from Hodges (after I had made the suggestions responding to N.N.'s comment):

One might be tempted to treat elucidation as a kind of ostensive definition, but that would to seriously misread Wittgenstein... it totally ignore his view that only in a proposition does a name have meaning.. Hence, what the referent of a given primitive term is, is necessarily tied up with the meaningful occurrence of that term in propositions. The relation here is internal, and the notion of ostensive definition simply ignores that. it makes no sense to suppose that we can first be acquainted with a simple object and then discover in which facts it is a possible constituent"

N.N. kindly pointed me in the direction of this Hacker article where it is claimed that in the Tractatus there is an 'opaque discussion of (what was later called) 'ostensive definition'. Before reading the article I put down suggestions as to why I would be dubious about this claim. Nevertheless, I was very interested at how such a suggestion would go. It might help an understanding of what in the Tractatus, the PI was arguing against.

Now what caused my sense of puzzlement was that I couldn't find anything much wrong with what Hacker claims that Wittgenstein says; yet I have still not quite sure why he believes that we connect names to objects via ostensive definitions. He even mentioned the positive suggestion that I made in the comments section and which I believe is entirely relevant. That is, there is a kind of mental or intentional ostension between name and object. For example, he says and I agree that "the correlation is mental (intentional) and meaning is conveyed by [elucidations]." But this is not something achieved by ostensive definition in the PI sense of standing in front of the object and saying "This is x" Instead... it is... well... mental. Now if this is wrong, we need an argument to that effect and to show it is that doctrine which is refuted. I could not discern any such criticism, but then again, he probably deals with it elsewhere. However, he argues that the Tractatus is wrong because it has a confused notion of ostensive definition.

This arises (apparently) from proposition 3.263 of the Tractatus:

The meanings of primitive signs can be explained by elucidations. Elucidations are propositions that contain the primitive signs. So they can be understood only if the meanings of those signs are already known

So, they are elucidations in that they ostensively define the objects, they help us explain what is meant by the primitive signs. "This is red" i.e. this is what is meant by red. And... they are also propositions. "This is red" as in the statement that it is not-blue, not-green (someone may have falsely uttered that it is green because they were in bad light and I have corrected them by saying what is true.)

Now, as I said, this is the only direct and spelt out criticism of the Tractatus that the (admittedly quick preousal through) Hacker's article I could find. Whilst ostension in the Tractatus connects language to reality; in PI it simply provides a sample that becomes 'part of the grammar'. As such, if one accepts Hacker's analysis of 3.263 and the PI's arguments about the role of ostensive definition, one can show that the Tractatus is mistaken. Yet, as seen in the context of Tractarian arguments, his analysis of 3.263 is wrong. If Hacker thinks Wittgenstein explicitly held this view, then he has (in my humble opinion) misread the Tractatus. If, on the other hand, and this might be more likely given other comments, that this is only implicit in the Tractatus; then I question the wisdom of his methodology and the charitableness of his interpretation of the Tractatus.

Yes the elucidations are sentences that can act as propositions. It is in virtue of a proposition being able to say that something that is the case (have a sense), that it can show what sense it has (and thus, which objects are involved). Yet, when elucidating they are neither used as a proposition to assert something or to ostensively define something. They are used, as Hacker rightly says to convey the meaning of a sign: "the correlation is mental (intentional) and meaning is conveyed by [elucidations]." In other words, names are mentally correlated with objects (because of which we can say anything at all), but if we want to know which object a name stands for we can elucidate this using propositions in which this sign occurs. Yet there is a simple reason why an elucidation is neither a proposition or ostenisve definition (as opposed to Hacker who thinks its both) is two-fold: 1) we already know how to use senseful propositions 2) we already know the meaning that the sign stands for.

As for number 1, I have already said that is the only in this way know what the internal properties of the objects are. If the sense of the proposition isn't already known, then one indeed may point to the situation and say "This situation"/ "This is x" etc. Indeed, as I said in my comment in the previous post, that one may call this ostensive definition. But it is not ostensive definition of a (Tractarian) object or how a sign is able to stand for an object. When you are saying "This is x" in the Tractatus, you are pointing to a complex or a state of affairs i.e. the very stuff that makes up the sense of a proposition. One may indeed define this complex or state of affairs as being represente by this sign if you want but that is not of philosophical relevance to the issue at hand. The aim is simply to point out which sense it is that we are using for the purpose of elucidation. Granted we understand the sense of the proposition, and are not confused about the logic of our language, we can analyse the proposition into its constituent parts and thus, find out what objects are involved.

As for number 2, the very quote Hacker uses "So they can be understood only if the meanings of those signs are already known". And indeed they are... that is a precondition of using a proposition with sense. However, this needs clarification. The meanings of the signs are known, but not which meaning a particular sign has (the signs in themselves, are abitrary). That is, we are already mentally correlated with all the simple objects. It is they that form the substance of the world. It is the psychic components standing for these objects, 'concatenating' in various ways that allow us to speak with sense (and as said above, we use a proposition with sesne for an elucidation). So Wittgenstein concludes, to be able to elucidate propositions at all, we must already know the meanings that correspond to the signs in its analysed form. Therefore, all that is left to find out is which object a signs stands for and that is done by looking at it as a symbol- the sign in its logical-syntactical role. In other words, we look at the sign as used in a proposition or propositions that have sense. That is the context principle in action and has nothing to do with ostensive definition.

If it be objected that we cannot use a proposition and not know the meanings of its parts, then Wittgenstein explicitly says otherwise in 4.002 "Man possesses the ability to construct languages capable of expressing every sense, without having any idea how each word has meaning or what its meaning is". Hacker presents us with a stark choice that either the two people (elucidator and person being elucidated to) both know the meaning of a sign or their understandings have to meet halfway. In other words, the person elucidating has to 'leave it to fate' whether they understand at all. Yet, this is just not the case. We start from the premise that we can both use a particular proposition with sense but that doesn't mean we know which menaing a sign has. Then, we can both, intersubjectively, and without leaving it to fate, analyse a proposition to see what the logico-syntactical role of the sign is.

Now, as I have pointed out, I agree with Hacker that there are certain similarities between Tractatus and PI. In both we can point to something and say "This is x". In theTtractatus, there are psychic constituents that have the same rolse ostension does in PI etc etc. However, in the context of the Tractatus, ostensive definition itself does not play the role of connecting a sign to reality. Given his talk of mental ostension, Hacker doesn't necessarily attribute the incorrect position to Wittgenstein explicitly. But if this is the case, then Hacker's real sin, is to read the Tractatus as a precursor to PI rather than as a work in and of itself, that is later criticised by PI. As I said, his article says lots of things I agree with plus the occassional comment like "the Tractatus contains a tacit and confused doctrine of ostension". Now you can't simply read a tacit and confused doctrine back into the Tractatus, when there is nothing there that is intended to play that role. If you want to claim something about the Tractatus you have to look at it on its own terms.

Then one can say that there is something that bears similarity to ostension (i.e. mental ostension), this is a natural consequence of the tractarian view, and the PI shows that anything bearing this role is confused. [Although again, you can't just say that, it has to be argued for.] But one can't say that Tractarian Wittgenstein actually held such a view (confused or otherwise) about signs getting there meaning via ostensive definition. EVEN IMPLICITLY

Getting to the bottom of it

2008-05-06T12:24:00.000+01:00

If we are to make sense of the PI's criticisms of the Tractatus, it doesn't seem that we can always take it at face-value. Roger White is very much of the opinion that by the time he came back to Cambridge to philosophise, he merely misunderstands the Tractatus positions. Now I don't think that; but it is at least true that what he is attacking are not the final positions of the Tractatus.

Just to name two. It is no part of the Tractatus account that names get their meaning (the object which is their meaning) via ostensive definition. The objects are simple and we cannot say anything about it other than via the state of affairs it enters into. He says that we can talk about objects but cannot put them into words (or something similar). We cannot simply go round naming simple objects whether that be via ostensive definition or otherwise. The context principle states that a name only has a meaning in the context of a proposition. In other words, a name only gets to be a name of an object, in virtue of its being part of a fact. That is, the object named is one which in combination with other objects, constitute the state of affairs pictured. Okay, this could be clearer and I don't have the Tractatus in front of me. But the point is, before analysing a proposition into a concatenation of names, we must first be able to use proposition with sense (as picturing a state of affairs). In order to see which state of affairs is pictured, we have to see how the propositions of everyday language are used.

The second misunderstanding might be that of the nature of the objects themselves. The Augustinian picture has the parent pointing at objects. But these are everyday kind of objects like tables and chairs. Wittgenstein's criticisms of the Tractatus also talk about the objects like excalibur. Now, it is nothing if not clear, that these aren't the objects of the Tractatus. He doesn't talk about tables as objects that would have its own sign in a perpiscuous notation. It might be thought, however, that the criticisms that hold for everyday objects (i.e. criticisms of the contention that we name them and talk about them in combination with other objects) holds for Tractatrian objects too. Maybe. Maybe not. 'Object' is a very deflated notion, and quite frankly we don't know what an object is, other than it serves a particular role in the account. "It makes no sense to ask whether the objects are thing like, whether they are something that stands in a subject place, or are something like a property, or are relations or so on" Moreover, in the final analysis, these wouldn't be talked about as objects at all. In fact, they just wouldn't be talked about. There would simply be signs that are used in elementary propositions. So any compunctions we have about calling names representatives of objects (because of how we do/do not use signs as names for everyday options) may just disappaear.

Of course these may not be misunderstandings. But it is clear we need to ask why critcisms of the Augustinian picture go over wholesale to the Tractatus when the Tractatus doesn't explicitly support the positions being attacked (e.g. that '3' refers to an object). It very much depends on what the target of PI is and I suspect it is one that has little to do with the specifics of Tractatus positions. If it is interested in those specifics, it is in trouble.

Fustration, rudeness and petulant schoolboys

2008-05-06T02:57:00.000+01:00

Often reading about Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is incredibly frustrating. We are bombarded with all the things that meaning isn’t and then left in the lurch. Supposedly, the negative critique of ‘theories of language’ are meant to have a therapeutic effect on us. Once we realise that the questions we are asking have no answer, we will no longer be tempted to ask these questions. Indeed, we will not realise them to be bona fide questions at all. Forgive me for saying, but the approach as it stands seems to fail in this objective.

Wittgenstein (let us assume) convinces us that there is no general answer to what meaning is. There is no ‘meaning-body’ of any sort that is grasped. There is no ‘meaning’ in addition to the (sign used as a) symbol. However, even if there is no question about what meaning essentially is, there is a question as to what Wittgenstein’s approach to meaning is. “Okay so we know what we should be against, but how does Wittgenstein deal with questions of meaning?” Now we are not here asking for a definition of meaning but instead this is an exegetical question. What should we say of Wittgenstein’s approach to meaning, and as such what should be ours? It doesn’t seem we can just ignore the question, as we are not discarding the concept of ‘meaning’. Wittgenstein doesn’t abandon meaning and say there are ‘just signs’.

Simply repeating that his approach is to be against account x, y and z seems to smack of being a petulant schoolboy. “We know that! But what are we saying then? [Schoolkid gives no response]” The schoolboy simply rejects every all attempts thrown at him without himself saying anything valuable. He is being a spoilt brat ‘doing down’ all those more nobler than he who are at least trying to give an account. Indeed that is precisely how Wittgenstein appears to many/ most analytic philosophers. The point is perhaps is that we are coming to the conclusion inductively that no sensible exploration of meaning can be given, on the basis of many failed attempts; but without giving any reason why all future ones should fail. To achieve this we would have to say that all such attempts misunderstand meaning but this would suppose there is a way in which we should understand it (as given by W’s approach). So once again, what is it?

Some say he is being a quietist, and thus there is no story to tell about what meaning is. Maybe there is a reason to be a quietist and a reason why all attempts should fail to explicate what meaning is. In this respect it may be better than the previous position but only at the expense of leaving meaning just as queer a thing before (and maybe essentially queer if that is the reason no account can be given). Wittgenstein explicitly says that ‘meaning something’ is not queer.

To account for this, one can go for the not a theory approach of someone like Daniel Hutto (if I remember him correctly). It only appears that Wittgenstein is a quietist because one is still working with the assumptions that we should have rejected. It looked as if there was an answer to be given but also that none could be and hence why it was queer. Give up that framework and no mystery remains. However just saying that is so, doesn’t make it so! This is like being patronizingly told “Don’t worry” when you feel you have something to feel very worried about. This is less the petulant schoolboy and more the stoned university student.

Another approach, along similar lines is the minimalist approach (as in a book I have read by Tim Thornton). Yes in some way “dog” means dog, but let’s get rid of inflated notions of what meaning is. It is perfectly apparent on the surface of language what the meaning is. “Nothing is hidden”. This is like the previous approach we can hang on to meaning if we get onto our false preconceptions and take a minimalist approach. But once again, it seems that the minimalist approach tells us/ shows us nothing at all. Just saying that meaning is on the surface doesn't give any clues as to what that (in a positive sense) means. Wittgenstein talks about the philosopher of language who stares at an object, traces its contours and repeats to himself that it is this that he means. It seems like the same with minimalist: he just stares at the word 'dog' and repeats to himself the word dog, and says to himself over and over 'it means dog'. Now if I say "What is it for me to mean dog" it is less than helpful to be continually told "Can't you see? It just means dog. That's it". If I ever did have a problem, it wouldn't be solved here.

Also, you can't get over the fact that all three accounts (as presented by the authors I've mentioned), when asked to explain their position, still always seem to yield the answer: meaning isn't x, we don't mean y, we can't give an account like z. None of the so-called positions seem to put anything forward. If there is just an underlying faith that once we have had the negative critique we will 'see the world aright' it seems just that: faith.

Now this all shouldn't be taken as me being against Wittgenstein's view or even of the authors/ positions that I have mentioned. No doubt it is true that Wittgenstein held a minimalist account and said that it was the wrong approach to look for a theoretical account. I was just indicating my frustration with the way the account is elucidated. It is like the New Wittgenstineans who says that all nonsense (in the Tractatus) is of the common-or-garden sort. Fair enough. But then they can't just wave everything else away, they need an account of why the Tractatus propositions give an illusion of sense, and of what remains once the ladder has been thrown away. What then can we say about the distinction between sense and nonsense?

As I said, the way they are presented, they don't get far beyond saying anything negative. Yet Wittgenstein does have things to say about how we can find about meaning. First, let me note that I agree with the following point from Kenny that "common to both [philosophies] are two theses of fundamental importance: first, that introspectionist psychology can never explain meaning; secondly, that the ultimate creation of meaning is indescribable". Okay we can never give any superlative fact why this sentence or word means anything at all, or why a particular sign is 'able' to mean a particular thing. Yet, we can say what the sense of the words are. We know who to ask and by what standards we can judge. We know what to be able to do to alleviate worries we have. We know how (empirically speaking) we come attach this label to this object. We know how to find out if something makes sense. We know the arena in which someone means something or other by a sign. We can explicate the concepts and use them to advance our knowledge in various areas of enquiry etc etc etc

Or if we don't know, then these are the things to talk about. If it is not entirely clear how Wittgenstein approaches all these question, then these are the things that need to be discussed. If don't know how to talk about psychology or religion without leading to conceptual confusion, then we need to know how to be able to talk about them without confusion.

For Wittgenstein, the solutions get their background from the problems of philosophy. If so, we must see the original situations in which these questions arose and learn to ask the right questions and give the right answers. Not just to ignore the questions.

Wittgenstein got there first

2008-05-05T17:17:00.000+01:00

This is a follow-up to the post about the “silent movie” and Wittgenstein’s building.

In Norman Malcolm’s article “Language game (2)” which I have just read, I have found some quotes from the ‘Zettel’* that would seem to back up a large part of my interpretation. I was showing that the language-game doesn’t, from what Wittgenstein tells us, seem much like a ‘complete language’. However, we could imagine a situation in which we would call it a language. This derives from the ‘pre-linguistic behaviour’ that forms the background of understanding and which is similar in many ways to our behaviour when we ‘understand’. This much we can get from the quotes below. I may have gone beyond that in saying understanding itself is non-linguistic (and not just the background to understanding) and/or that what is understood/ grasped is non-linguistic. I’ll talk more about that another time.

The following is the main one that caught my eye:

(On language game no.2) ‘You are just tacitly assuming that these people think; that they are like people as we know them in that respect; that they do not carry on that language game merely mechanically. For if you imagined them doing that, you yourself would not call it the use of rudimentary language’.

What am I to reply to this? Of course it is true that the life of those human beings must be like ours in many respects, and I said nothing about this similarity. But the important thing is that their language, and their thinking too, may be rudimentary, that there is such a thing as ‘primitive thinking’ which is described via primitive behaviour. The surrounding are not the ‘thinking accompaniment’ of speech.

“I said nothing about this similarity”. Malcolm: “In language game (2) there is nothing that excludes the possibility that those people will sometimes whistle or hum while they work, or nod at one another in good humour, or occasionally make cheerful dancing movements as they come or go”. Once we consider this similarity (which he said nothing about) there is no requirement that ‘we picture them as behaving stolidly or mechanically’. Presumably there is no requirement the other way either, just that we could describe it as a complete language.

One could describe the situation without reference to ‘meaning’ or ‘language’ at all. One might consider the situation as a scientific phenomenon. The only reason we would consider them as thinking is because their behaviour shares certain similarities with ours when we are said to be thinking. In my post I didn’t really mention thinking as such (or any particular assumptions about thinking), but concerned with intentionality in whatever guise that comes. However, the point was similar, that we would only consider it a linguistic phenomenon because of its relationship to our life and language.

“is such a thing as ‘primitive thinking’ which is to be described via primitive behaviour” Here thinking, in my post understanding, is to be described via or in relation to non-linguistic behaviour. It is only via something that is not part of the thought itself (or part of what is understood) that we could say that they are thinking or understanding at all. By noting this behaviour, into which language is woven, can we say the intentional concepts apply (even if primitively)

'The surroundings are not the ‘thinking accompaniment’ of speech'. The surroundings do not accompany the words showing that they are ‘thought’, ‘understood’, ‘meant’. There is nothing super-added to the thought or sentence that makes it any more the ‘secure’ that this or that situation is what the thought is of.

These I just added to make clearer what I had said previously. There were some other ideas that were potentially more controversial (or at least unconventional-sounding) that I slipped. Those, however are for another time.

-------
*As will be already clear from my previous posts, I am not yet overly conversant on books aside from the Tractatus, Philsoophical Grammar and Philosophical Investigations. Whilst I have skimmed many of the others (e.g. Notebooks, Remarks on Philosophy of Psychology etc) it is sometimes hard to know what to concentrate from, as they all appear to the uninitiated like me, rather ‘samey’. It is only now that I am starting this blog, and putting forward arguments, that the dis/continuities and the original context seem more relevant. As such, if there are relevant bits from other books that I don’t mention, please inform me and excuse my ignorance

And in the number 1 spot today...

2008-05-05T03:10:00.000+01:00

...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

Previewing "Wittgenstein's Builders": The hilarious new silent movie

2008-05-05T02:49:00.000+01:00

On a train from London to Leeds, I was pondering Wittgenstein’s example. It suddenly hit me that imagining the scenario in a ‘silent movie’ may help us see how the builder’s words could be used with meaning.

Is Wittgenstein right that his example with the builders giving orders could be a complete language? Isn’t Rush Rhees right that there must be learning, discourse and understanding for language ‘to hang together’? Otherwise, isn’t it merely something we are trained to do like monkeys? They just become signals and calls. Much like the ‘rhesus monkeys’ (or at least that is what they are called if I remember correctly) that have something like 39 distinct calls (much more than the amount of words in Wittgenstein’s language game). Each call designates a different predator such a snake or an eagle. When the lookout monkey sees the predator, the monkey makes his call to warn the others.

Now one may call this communication, one may say that this call ‘refers’ to that animal, one may say that one monkey is trying to warn the other animals etc. However, this is only by analogy to language. One would not actually call it language; one would not say that they are saying anything, and if they make the ‘wrong’ call, they haven’t said anything false. It seems they are just following their natural instincts, and if they have learnt what to do (here chimps may be a better example than these monkeys), these themselves follow a preordained pattern. Their calls lack the requisite intentionality; they are not about the objects or aimed at them, in the way that our words are. They are just following certain natural laws and following pre-ordained patterns. Mastering a technique in this sense cannot give us what we want from an account of language. Now I take that to be Rhee’s point… language isn’t like learning a set of rules “See how I talked about snakes, now you talk like me”. Learning language is learning how to say things, not just use sounds at the right time.

Wittgenstein talks of language-games as not only language but also the actions with which they are woven. This could just be a reiteration of the point that when the foreman shouts “Slab!” the builder brings the slab. OR… it could be about the other actions, which help us learn that a word is ‘about’ an object, but which are not themselves part of its ‘meaning’. Through training, we come to understand how are words are applied and in what situations. And it is this understanding (and the corresponding opportunity to misunderstand) that is vital to words being part of a language and not mere calls or part of a calculus.

So there are two equally important points to note. First… understanding is non-linguistic; we can show understanding non-linguistically, correct applications of words non-linguistically, make gestures to indicate our not understanding etc. Second… the flip side of the coin is that for something to have meaning, it (the meaning) has to be completely intra-linguistic. It cannot be ‘tied’ to reality or any particular application, image etc etc etc. I stress ‘particular’, because we wouldn’t get to mean anything without using it and applying it at all or if we didn’t ‘follow rules or going against them in actual cases’. In other words, there must be some application to ‘give life’ to the signs. However, there is no natural/ supernatural ‘meaning-connection’ to reality. The meaning of red is well… ummm… just those objects that are (believe it or not) red! {This is merely a grammatical comment and not a specification of any particular application}

In fact, it is this lack of connection to reality that allows us to use the words to be about this or that at all. We intend to use it in this way (accompanied by non-linguistic action). There is no mindless super/natural pointing to reality; no mindless following of rules. We have to grasp what is meant by the term i.e. what applications are intended, what a word is about. Ummm… not explained well. Let’s say this: the meaning of the word is linguistic, but we don’t want to grasp a ‘meaning’ (which is trivial: just ask!). Instead, we want to grasp what is meant (and this is non-linguistic). Thus, what is meant (the content) is non-linguistic (i.e. we mean something about the world such as about the sky being blue). Of course any specification of what is meant is given by words and thus becomes part of the grammar. But this is why we have to recognise that understanding (grasping) itself is non-linguistic.

Now, given this, we can see how ‘Wittgenstein’s Builders’ isn’t just a learnt response, or a system of calls etc. The words are meant and form a ‘language’. And this is where the example of the silent movie comes in. This is one of the old-fashioned Charlie Chaplin type films in black and white with someone playing the piano in the cinema. Most of the time you just see people and their actions: what they are doing. However, you may occasionally get a black screen with white writing on it. I suppose in presentation it is just like you used to get with the old batman series where you would get a ‘kapow’ on screen (or some similar onomatopoeia). However, the effect is quite different. The words on the screen in the silent movie are the only way to get dialogue across and are used sparingly. So rather than ‘kapow’ you would get ‘Slab!’ Now you can imagine all sorts of (dare I say it) amusing scenarios:

· The foreman shouts ‘Slab!’ pointing at the slab and the trainee builder excitedly (with a look of ‘getting it’ points at something random at shouts slab.

· The foreman then picks up the (heavy) slab and then the builder picks up a different heavy object mimicking the (weary, gritted teeth) look of the builder.

· Once more the foreman demonstrates picking up a slab and moving it to the desired place (x marks the spot), and then the builder starts walking in the right way (the foreman looks hopeful) but walks past it (he had taken exactly the same amount of steps but had a bigger stride.

· The foreman looks exasperated; the builder confused.

· When the builder finely gets it, the foreman does a merry jig (presumably then there would be a suitably funny/ ironic ending to the film such as tripping up over the slab and impaling himself on something sharp, G-d forbid!)

Now, it is of course the case that ‘looking confused’ for example, is something that only makes ‘sense’ from the point of our language and these concepts play no part in theirs. We only say it is ‘confusion’ because it is analogous to what we would call ‘confusion’ in our case. However, this is not a problem for three reasons: 1) calling it a ‘language’ at all is only because of certain analogies with our own (i.e. contains orders) 2) there is no other way to talk about situations involving primitive people or certain animals without representing them in language that has meaning for us 3) If there is a difference, and we(in our language) need concepts such as confusion; then this is the point Wittgenstein is trying to show. In our language the meanings of words aren’t exhausted by things that we can point to!

We are alright so long as we don’t say that the thought ‘I am confused’ crossed their mind. The only words that have meaning are the ones like ‘Slab!’ which appeared in the film. However, this is precisely the point! The other things weren’t signs or symbols and they played no part in what the meaning of the words were. Yet, they are the non-linguistic behaviours on which understanding is based. It shows that the words weren’t primitive reactions to stimuli, but were based on a ‘form of life’ in which words could be used in an intentional way. To call something language, we need understanding and meaning and the builders example plausibly helps to illuminate those concepts.

Confusion or mistake?

2008-04-27T23:40:00.000+01:00

I have, the last couple days, re-read a lot of Philosophical Grammar and the Philosophical Investigations and found may quotes that would prima facie count against thinking that 'understanding' or 'meaning' are in any way psychological phenomena. Yet, and as one would expect from Wittgenstein, you also find quotes that support such an assertion. For example,

To understand is to grasp, to receive a particular impression from an object, to let it work on one. To let the proposition work on one; to consider consequences of the proposition, to imagine them, etc.

What we call "understanding" is a psychological phenomenon that has a special connection with the phenomena of learning and using our human language.

Now a major problem with Wittgenstein is understanding which 'voices' are his own and which are those of an interlocutor, opponenent or 'intermediate self' (one where W is putting forward an instinctive view of his own ['I would like to say'] to be later refined.) I find that this is easier to work out in the Philosophical Investigations where his opponents views are more often than not put in quotation marks. In Philosophical Grammar, I am constantly wondering whether views in the regular flow of the text are his or not. However, that may be an artifact due to his thought being in a transitional phase.

Despite this, I have no reason to doubt that the above quotations are his views. Perhaps others may care to disagree. He here links psychology to 'learning' and 'use' which, as I said in the previous post, are crucial to understand later W's views. And the 'use' in 'using our human language' is not denoting what he sometimes calls 'use in language' or at least I think not. That is the use that is internal to the grammar of the language. Instead, it is looking at 'use' as part of 'what happens' in using our language. And these connections don't seem to place 'psychology' as some mysterious mental process. I approve!

However, my excitement at this quote slightly abated as I read on. He goes on with a long paragraph detailing why we shouldn't consider 'remembering' a meaning as 'seeing it in the mind's eye' (the usual stuff!) and then says the following:

The psychological process of understanding is in the same case as the aritmetical object Three. The word 'process' in the one case, and the word "object" in the other produce a false grammatical attitude to the word

Now this is the question as is often the case with Wittgenstein: is it wrong to call some concept x, or can it just have misleading consequences? It seems here that it is not wrong to call understand a psychological matter; it is just that we may take the false grammatical attitude (the emphasis on attitude is his, not mine). It is not necessarily wrong when used in connection with 'use'; it is only misleading when we misunderstand the grammar of 'understanding'.

If it does have misleading or confusing consequences, is there a way to use the same word without those misleading consequences? This is especially pertinent with regard to 'understanding and psychology': we are much more likely in every day language to call understanding a matter of psychology than we are to call 'three' an object. Whilst Wittgenstein will completely avoid using a term that he believes leads to confusion, this could be seen as overstatement on his part. Language that is confusing in one context can be perfectly clear in another.

The everpresent question: can we talk psychology without creating a myth of symbolism or psychology?

A working definition of psychology?

2008-04-24T22:18:00.000+01:00

'Psychology', I'm sure the later Wittgenstein would suggest is a family resemblance term. But then so is 'use' or 'explanation' or 'proposition' and we would not hesitate to (cautiously) use these words to explicate his position. Yet psychology may be a dirty word for Wittgenstein, one that leads to a lot of confusion, and so given little shrift. It does, however, play a big part in his critcisms of his earlier work and so a healthier conception of psychology (one would imagine) in a positive account of his later work. As such, I need a working definition that the later W would be happy enough with to discuss this important topic- and this is where help is needed! Perhaps it will be decided psychology isn't even the right word- it may be better to stick to talking about 'methods of projection', 'the contribution of the learning situation to meaning' or 'how meaning is related to our form of life' the like which is closely connected. However, psychology (maybe wrongly, depending on what people say) is a way to encompass all of these which are equally vital but only swiftly dealt with.

I want to suggest- in ways as yet unspecified- that the change in Wittgenstien's philosophy is due to a difference in his view of the role of psychology. I'm not talking here just in terms of how he describes psychological concepts or in terms of a negative critique of how meaning is given in terms of what goes on in the 'mysterious gaseous medium' of mind. Of course, these are both relevant to W's philosophy in terms of both methodology and outcome. NO... instead, I think psychology does play a positive role in giving signs meaning, in forging a connection between proposition and reality.

This is not to say that in either the Tractaus or PI that some or other psychological mechanism EXPLAINS the ability for this particular sign to attach to this particular object, fact, complex; whatever i.e. there is no psychological element that acts as an intermediary between a sign and a thing that accounts for the connection between the two. When a sign is meant it 'reaches right out to reality'. This is to say that the subject 'psychology' can't discover a meaning fact. It cannot disect the brain, see nerves fire and go "aha, that's the real meaning of anger; that's what anger after all is" .

BUT.. in general if there was no willing subject there would be no 'meaning one thing by another'. Just as no man depicts his portrait and no facts depict anything, signs by themselves don't mean anything (no matter their logical multiplicity). It is only through use/application/thought or whatever it is that I/WE do with the signs that turn them into a proposition. And whatever names we may give for different purposes ('metaphysical self', 'empirical self', willing self etc) it is the one and the same concrete, situated person doing the willing, the representing, the understanding and the empirically investigating. (This is indeed the person that is the subject of psychology). Now whilst psychology cannot tell us what meaning something, in essence 'is'; it can tell us how we came to mean this or that.

The point, of course, may be conceded and yet considered unimportant. Indeed this what Tractarian Wittgenstein does i.e. psychology may be how we connect this sign to this 'thought' but plays no part in explicating what is meant by a word. This is what I will be out to convince people otherwise. Wittgenstein had in mind a very specific kind of psychological connection assumed in the Tractaus (as part of the Augustinian picture). That is, a particular method of projection. Half of the battle is just showing that the connection (as I have said the earlier Wittgenstein might not wish to deny) is a psychological one; a particular empirical connection formed between subject and environment. This is because, when he later criticises the Tractatus, and talks about the different 'uses' of language, he is not criticising one or other theory (even Hacker's proto-theory). Instead, it is a picture (as illustrated by Augustine's learning situation) of how 'reality is caught in the net of language' that is being criticised. When learnng to use different words or speak different sentences, different kinds of psychological connection will be set up between the subject and his environment. These different connections no more become part of the meaning of the words as how it was learnt defined the meaning of the sentence on the Tractarian view. However, it does form the background for us being able to mean anything at all, and will influence the method of projection.

Anyway... that all needs to be clarified. I'm not clear on it myself. The point is that my views do in some sense relate to psychology, or at least that is the word that suggests itself to me when thinking about the issue. But... psychology is perhaps not the best words. I can't find a suitable definition of psychology that cuts across both works and is informative. Is it (or better: does W use it as)....

that which is studied in academic psychology?
the subject of folk psychology?
mental states and processes (or those generally considered as such)?
that which is concerned with the objects of our intensional attitudes: expecting, ordering etc?
the development and behaviour of individuals within their environment? (i.e. how nature and nurture make people do what they do)

Obv. these aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, they generally cover the same things. Yet it is a bit hard to give any positive elucidation of later Wittgenstein's view of what counts as psychological. In a lot of his writing about the philosophy of psychology he is just looking at the clarification of the meaning of certain terms used or studied by psychology like pain. He is looking at the grammar whilst I'm looking at the processes. Secondly, a lot of the things we might traditionally call psychological are by him 'taken out of the mind'. Thirdly, he is overly cautious so as to avoid misunderstanding; only giving critique of particular psychological theories and never stating that it does play a role. He wouldn't be comfortable with me saying that meaning results from psychological processes as these are contingent and empirical. They do not form part of the grammar of meaning x. It is no part of the meaning that we were taught with this or that object in front of me, or had this image in my mind. As such, no time or space is given over to discussing what it means for there to be a method of projection or ever expanding on 'form of life' or 'natural history of humans' or the importance of the learning situation. That is, even though it is these that, whilst meaning may be internal to grammar, connect it to the world.

Ummmm..... any suggestions welcome