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
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