Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies

Hacker, P. M. S , Fellow and Tutor of Philosophy at St John's College, Oxford

Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies Print publication date: 2001 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2005 Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-924569-7 doi:10.1093/019924569X.001.0001

Abstract: Consists of 13 thematically linked essays on different aspects of the philosophy of Wittgenstein, by one of the leading commentators on his work. After an opening overview of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, the following essays fall into two classes: those that investigate connections between the philosophy of Wittgenstein and other philosophers and philosophical trends, and those which enter into some of the controversies that, over the last two decades, have raged over the interpretation of one aspect or another of Wittgenstein’s writings. The connections that are explored include the relationship between Wittgenstein's philosophy and the humanistic and hermeneutic traditions in European philosophy, Wittgenstein’s response to Frazer’s Golden Bough and the interpretation of ritual actions, his attitude towards and criticisms of Frege (both in the Tractatus and in the later philosophy), the relationship between his ideas and those of members of the Vienna Circle on the matter of ostensive definition, and a comparison of Carnap’s conception of the elimination of metaphysics and of Strawson’s rehabilitation of metaphysics with Wittgenstein's later criticisms of metaphysics. The controversies into which Hacker enters include the Diamond– Conant interpretation of the Tractatus (which is shown to be inconsistent with the text of the Tractatus and with Wittgenstein’s explanations of and comments on his book), Winch's interpretation of the Tractatus conception of names, Kripke’s interpretation of Wittgenstein’s discussion of following a rule (which is demonstrated to be remote from Wittgenstein’s intentions), and Malcolm’s defence of the idea that Wittgenstein claimed that mastery of a language logically requires that the language be shared with other speakers. These far-ranging essays, several of them difficult to find or not published elsewhere, shed much light on different aspects of Wittgenstein’s thought, and on the controversies that it has stimulated. Keywords: C. Diamond, Frege, J.G. Frazer, metaphysics, P.F. Strawson, private language argument, R. Carnap, S. Kripke, Tractatus, understanding and explanation, Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies end p.i end p.ii

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For Anthony Kenny

who guided my first steps in pursuit of Wittgenstein's ideas

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Contents

Preface viii Original Places of Publication xx Abbreviations xxii 1. Wittgenstein—an Overview 1 2. Wittgenstein and the Autonomy of Humanistic Understanding 34 3. Developmental Hypotheses and Perspicuous Representations: Wittgenstein on Frazer's Golden Bough 74

Postscript 94 4. Was he Trying to Whistle it? 98 5. When the Whistling had to Stop 141 6. Naming, Thinking, and Meaning in the Tractatus 170

Postscript 184 7. Frege and the Early Wittgenstein 191 8. Frege and the Later Wittgenstein 219 9. Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: The Exaltation and Deposition of Ostensive Definition* 242

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10. On Misunderstanding Wittgenstein: Kripke's Private Language Argument* 268 11. Malcolm on Language and Rules* 310 12. On Carnap's Elimination of Metaphysics 324 13. On Strawson's Rehabilitation of Metaphysics 345

Index 371 * Co-authored with G. P. Baker. * Co-authored with G. P. Baker. * Co-authored with G. P. Baker.

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Preface The interpretation of the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein has occupied many philosophers for some decades and will doubtless occupy many more for further decades. This is in part due to the fecundity of his thought, to its ability to shed light on so many problems of philosophy and on different aspects of particular problems. But there are other reasons too. First, while his style, both in the Tractatus and in his quite different later writings, is simple and powerful, it makes scant concessions to his readers. As he remarked in the Preface to the Investigations, it was not part of his purpose 'to spare other people the trouble of thinking'. He had a craving for the erlösende Wort, the redeeming word that would unlock a philosophical problem, go to the heart of a conceptual difficulty, and show how the knotted threads of our understanding are to be disentangled. Having found a form of expression that achieves that, he was loath to spell out the detailed implications that ensue— preferring to retain the power of concisely expressed insight rather than to water it down with what evidently appeared to him pedestrain elaboration. This makes formidable demands upon his readers. That is one reason why the surviving Nachlass is an indispensable tool for the interpretation of his thought. For there one can often find the dozens of pages of struggle that lead up to, and shed light on, the one or two sentences constituting the remark that is the final expression of his thought on the matter. Secondly, Wittgenstein is unique in the history of philosophy in having produced two powerful complete philosophical world-pictures crystallized respectively in the Tractatus and the Investigations. How precisely these stand to each other, how much continuity and how much change there are between the two philosophies, will very likely be a perennial source of controversy, as one reader observing, as it were, the bridges between two land masses will note the connections between them, while another will be overwhelmingly impressed by the gulf that separates them. Thirdly, each of his great masterpieces presents profound difficulties of interpretation quite apart from their forms of expression and compression. The Tractatus cannot be understood without familiarity with the works of Frege and Russell, to which it is a critical, and indeed end p.v iii

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revolutionary, response. This in turn means that, for purposes of understanding the Tractatus, irrespective of how fruitful late-twentieth-century interpretations of Frege and Russell may have been, their works must be seen through the young Wittgenstein's eyes. This hermeneutic principle obtains irrespective of whether Wittgenstein understood them as they were intended to be understood, although, of course, his criticisms hold water only to the extent that he understood them correctly. What is, I think, indisputable is that Wittgenstein's understanding of Frege was very different from current interpretations of Frege's philosophy. But, whether he, who knew Frege and discussed with him the problems of logic, understood his thought better than Frege's latter-day followers is, and will doubtless remain, a source of controversy. And this adds to the already substantial difficulties in interpreting the Tractatus. The parallel difficulty with the Investigations is different. The Tractatus is, and was intended to be, the culmination of a tradition of European philosophy. The Investigations and the other unfinished later works were not. They were meant to be a break with the great tradition of Western thought—indeed a destructive break, which would undermine its most fundamental tenets. The later Wittgenstein denied that philosophy was a cognitive discipline, effable or ineffable (as he had suggested in the Tractatus account of itself). It is a quest for a certain form of understanding, not for a certain kind of knowledge. He rejected all prevailing conceptions of logic, repudiated all three dominant philosophical conceptions of mathematics, and spurned the various prevalent conceptions of the relation of the 'inner' to the 'outer' in the philosophy of psychology. Consequently, his later thought cannot be located on the maps of philosophical possibilities that we have inherited. The temptations to pigeon-hole him, to classify his philosophy as a form of idealism or of anti-realism, to identify his philosophy of language as a form of assertion-conditions semantics standing in contrast to truth-conditional semantics or as propounding a 'use' theory of meaning, to characterize his philosophy of mind as a kind of behaviourism, to think of his philosophy of mathematics as a form of strict-finitism, and so on have evidently been difficult to resist. But resisted they must be if one is to understand Wittgenstein's later philosophy. For the contour lines of the body of his thought cannot be represented on existing philosophical maps. And that is not a mere coincidence, but rather a consequence of the fact that he rejected the most fundamental presuppositions of received philosophical thought. Finally, there are difficulties in viewing Wittgenstein in relation both to his times and to the broad tradition of Western philosophy. In the end p.ix

first place, those whom he most influenced often misinterpreted his thought. Members of the Vienna Circle acknowledged the Tractatus as 'the turning point of philosophy',1 yet they misinterpreted it in important respects and developed their brand of logical empiricism in ways that, sometimes intentionally and sometimes unwittingly, ran counter to his thought. Similarly, Oxford analytical philosophers in the post-war years, who likewise acknowledged Wittgenstein as 'the most powerful and pervasive influence upon the practice of philosophy in this country today',2 often interpreted his ideas in ways that are demonstrably contrary to his intent. So it is important to clarify the relations between Wittgenstein's ideas and those of his contemporaries, even where the latter

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purported to be following his footsteps. Secondly, one must also struggle to clarify his relationship to modern philosophical trends. Two salient features characterize twentieth-century analytic philosophy. The first is the importance it has allocated to logic, which has been unprecedented since the medievals. The second is the centrality it has accorded to language and its use. Wittgenstein played a dominant role in originating these trends—but so too did others, and the trends took many different forms. To elucidate his conceptions of logic and language, both in the Tractatus and in his later philosophy, and their relation to the views of other leading figures of the century is both difficult and pressing. The conventionalism of the Vienna Circle was inspired by Wittgenstein but is fundamentally different from his ideas; and Quine's famous attack upon it is quite distinct from Wittgenstein's. The investigations of anti-realism that characterize the last decades were inspired by Wittgenstein, but involve much misinterpretation. Finally, at an even more general level, it is necessary to try to locate Wittgenstein in relation to deep philosophical currents in Western thought. For his struggles were with the most entrenched philosophical preconceptions that are distinctive of our civilization—in particular with pervasive conceptions we have of the nature of necessity, of the a priori, of the relation of thought to language and of language to reality, of the 'inner' and the 'outer', and of the nature and forms of explanation. To grasp his innovations it is necessary to disclose the roots of our thought—and that is no easy task. For what is taken for granted in all our thinking is also unnoticed. The following volume consists of essays in which I have tried to M. Schlick, 'The Turning Point of Philosophy', Erkenntnis, 1 (1930-1), 1-11, repr. and tr. by D. Rynin in A. J. Ayer (ed.), Logical Positivism (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1959), 53-9.

1

G. J. Warnock, English Philosophy since 1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), 62. 2

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grapple with some of these problems. Most of these papers were written during the last five years, but a couple date from the mid-1980s and another couple from the early 1990s. They are largely concerned with connections between Wittgenstein's earlier and later philosophies, and between Wittgenstein's philosophy and the philosophies of other thinkers such as Frege and the members of the Vienna Circle, as well as with controversies concerning the interpretation of Wittgenstein. The opening essay 'Wittgenstein—an Overview' was, as its title indicates, an attempt to give an overview of Wittgenstein's philosophy, in particular to delineate the relationships between the Tractatus and the later philosophy as I understand it. Hence the central conceptions of the Tractatus are adumbrated, and the account given in the later philosophy of the very same topics is spelled out in sufficient detail to indicate the depth of the differences between the two masterworks. Many of the topics that are merely sketched here are handled in greater detail and with more supporting argument in later papers. This introductory essay belongs to the 'synoptic-comparative' genre. In the same vein, the next essay, 'Wittgenstein and the Autonomy of Humanistic Understanding', might be said to be 'synoptic-historical'. It was written for a

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collection of essays entitled Wittgenstein, Theory and the Arts, and aimed at an audience that may not be familiar with Wittgenstein's work. Its purpose was to make clear why Wittgenstein's philosophy has profound implications for all those disciplines that study man as a social, historical, and cultural being—for the Geisteswissenschaften. Although humanism (in more senses than one) and science marched side by side for more than two centuries in opposition to bigotry and authority in cognitive matters and were allied in the pursuit of the ideals of the Enlightenment, a hallmark of twentieth-century thought was an ever-increasing drift towards scientism coupled with a denigration of or disregard for the forms of understanding, explanation, and interpretation that characterize the humanistic disciplines. Scientism is the illicit extension of the forms and methods of enquiry in the natural sciences to domains for which they are inappropriate. It is motivated by a conception of the unity of science and of the uniformity or reducibility of all forms of explanation and understanding with or to the patterns of explanation and understanding that are thought to be characteristic of the sciences. In its crudest forms it assumes that any genuine problem is to be answered by forms of scientific explanation. Wittgenstein was no enemy of science (although he deplored some of the effects of the technological revolution), but of scientism. He advocated forms of understanding, in philosophy itself, in aesthetics, and in parts of anthropology, that are in no sense modelled end p.x i

on those of the natural sciences. On the contrary, he thought that scientism in philosophy was the main source of metaphysics (understood pejoratively) in the twentieth century, and that scientism in the arts masked what is distinctive about aesthetic understanding. For in these domains there are forms of understanding that consist not in hypothetico-deductive explanation and theory construction, but rather in seeing formal connections between phenomena. Moreover, the various forms of explanation of human action and response in psychology, and hence too in history and the social sciences, are distinctively different from forms of explanation in the natural sciences. Wittgenstein was not the first to take such a stand against scientism in the humanities (or Geisteswissenschaften), and I have tried to sketch the ancestry of this methodological pluralism. Indeed, Wittgenstein did not explicitly and systematically enter the fray between methodological monists and methodological pluralists. But he gave a clearer and deeper account of why the forms of understanding we crave and attain in the study of man and his works are different from those of physics, chemistry, and biology. Wittgenstein's philosophy of language and his philosophy of psychology militate against the reductionism and methodological monism characteristic of the late twentieth century, and I have tried to adumbrate an explanation (not an elaborate vindicating argument) why that is so. The third essay, 'Developmental Hypotheses and Perspicuous Representations: Wittgenstein on Frazer's Golden Bough', involves precisely this issue in the very specific domain of anthropological hermeneutics. Wittgenstein never wrote systematically about anthropology. But he read Frazer's Golden Bough and became interested in Frazer's anthropological methods, about which he jotted down two sequences of notes on the understanding and interpretation of ritual action. These provoked an extensive secondary literature. Among these writings,

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Professor Cioffi's essays are outstanding in their depth and richness of examples. However, I found myself disagreeing with some of his criticisms of Wittgenstein, which I thought abandoned important insights. For, even if Wittgenstein exaggerated the scope of the form of explanation of ritual action that interested him, nevertheless it is, in my view, one important mode of understanding to which Frazer and many others were blind. In his book Wittgenstein on Freud and Frazer ,3 Professor Cioffi responded to my paper, and I have added a postscript to my original paper that replies to his criticisms. Frank Cioffi, Wittgenstein on Freud and Frazer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 3

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Tractatus The fourth, , but fifth, also and the sixth interpretation essays form ofaWittgenstein's group concerned numerous with the postinterpretation Tractatus of the Tractatus writings on his earlier . In Philosophy work. 1988, Professor Cora Diamond published a paper entitled 'Throwing away the Ladder—How to Read the Tractatus' in which she 'When the Whistling had to Stop' was written as a sequel to the previous paper criticized the interpretation that I (and others, including Russell, Ramsey, for a Festschrift for David Pears, from whose lectures I learnt so much when I Anscombe, and Geach) had given of the baffling remark at the end of the was an undergraduate and from whose many books I have profited. In 'Was he Tractatus: 'My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone Trying to Whistle it?' I had isolated ten topics or ten kinds of propositional theme who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has that, according to the Tractatus, cannot be stated in language but are 4shown by used them—as steps—to climb up beyond them.' In Insight and Illusion I had well-formed propositions of language. It occurred to me that it would be of some claimed that this remark was the culmination and direct consequence of interest to examine each such propositional theme in order to see what Wittgenstein's argument that there are truths that cannot be put into words, Wittgenstein thought about propositions of each kind in his later philosophy. For truths about the nature and essence of things, which are shown by language but although in some respects he later thought that he had simply been confused, in which cannot explicitly be stated, and that the propositions of the Tractatus are others there was a truth, albeit seen 'through a glass darkly'. So my theme here self-conscious attempts to say what cannot, by the very nature of symbolism, be is the later fate of the Tractatus ineffability theses, in which I pick up and said. Professor Diamond argued that Wittgenstein was not, as Ramsey had elaborate the ten themes already itemized in the previous paper. suggested, trying to whistle what he held one could not say. Rather he was engaging the temptation to utter in philosophical nonsense, in particular thethat kind of 'Naming, Thinking, and Meaning the Tractatus ' joined the controversy nonsense exhibited by the sentences the Tractatus , and that it is arose between Norman Malcolm andof Peter Winch over theshowing interpretation of the indeed simply nonsense. So the doctrine that there are things that can be shown Tractatus conception of names and their connection (or lack of connection) with by language cannot be stated is itselfand justWorld more in nonsense. This seemed to me reality. In hisbut paper 'Language, Thought Wittgenstein's Tractatus ' at the time to be mistaken. But it was only when Ioffered realized this interpretation Winch had criticized the interpretation Malcolm of that the Tractatus was winningofan extensive especially in reality the USA example, conception the relation following, between language and in(for his book Memory and Professors James Conant, Burton Dreben, Juliet Floyd, Warren Goldfarb, Thomas 5 6 Mind. Malcolm replied to Winch in Nothing is Hidden. According to Malcolm, Ricketts, and Peter Winch), that I attempted to refute it in the essay entitled the Tractatus held that a proposition (a sentence in its projective relation to the 'Was heisTrying to Whistle it?', aisomorphic shortened version which I presented atdepicts. the world) and must be ineffably with theofstate of affairs that it Boston History and Philosophy of Science in April 1998, at And he Colloquium argued that on thethe method of projection is thinking the sense of the which Professors Diamond, Dreben, Floyd, Goldfarb, Ricketts were present. proposition —that is, meaning by the sentence the veryand state of affairs depicted, Professor Dreben was a charming moderator, who cheerfully took sides, and the which in turn involves meaning by the names the objects in reality that are their controversy was passionate, intense, and prolonged. I was grateful for the , meanings. Winch, who favoured the Diamond interpretation of the Tractatus presence of the David Pears, who defended the same view as I didfor with denied that young Wittgenstein held that one can account theenviable meaning of stamina, and generously guarded my flanks when I wilted. He humorously names by reference to anything non-linguistic. Rather, he argued, for a name to characterized the proceedings as 'Burt Dreben's use. Circus comes meaning to town: two have a meaning is just for it to have a significant A name's is Daniels theand lions' den'.its The encounter with role. the lions enriched nothing in over above logico-syntactical To this extent,my Winch (like understanding of their interpretation, but left mereading even more convinced than Diamond and her followers on many issues) was doctrines of the later before that it is mistaken. The matter is of importance, for it concerns not only Wittgenstein into his earlier thought. This seemed to me to be mistaken, and I the correct understanding of the thought that Malcolm had not spotted all the flaws in Winch's case. So I P. M. S. Hacker, Insight Illusion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, Press, 1972; rev. edn. N. Malcolm, Memory andand Mind (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University 1977). 1986). 6 N. Malcolm, Nothing is Hidden: Wittgenstein's Criticism of his Early Thought 4 5

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(Oxford: Blackwell, 1986).

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attempted to spell out ways in which Winch's interpretation falls foul of Wittgenstein's text and argument. In a lecture at Swansea in 1999, Professor Diamond responded to my paper, and, at my request, kindly sent me her lecture. I do not know whether Professor Diamond still cleaves to the views she then expressed, but, since they seemed to me to involve misunderstandings of my position, I have added a postscript to eradicate any further such misunderstandings by others. The seventh and eighth essays are a pair, concerned with the vexed and much disputed question of the relation between Wittgenstein's philosophy and Frege's. Wittgenstein's criticisms of Frege in the Tractatus are opaque. There is relatively little written about them and most of what has been written I found unhelpful (an exception is my colleague Dr Gordon Baker's illuminating discussion in Wittgenstein, Frege and the Vienna Circle7 ). The most eminent followers of Frege, such as Professor Michael Dummett, hold that, where Wittgenstein disagreed with Frege, he was almost always in the wrong. But Dummett has made little attempt to spell out precisely where and above all why Wittgenstein disagreed with Frege. 'Frege and the Early Wittgenstein', the only essay in this collection not hitherto published, is an attempt to elucidate Wittgenstein's early criticisms of Frege. In it, I have tried to outline Frege's conception of sense, of truth and of falsehood, of assertion and of thought, of the logical connectives and of the laws of logic and laws of thought as I believe Wittgenstein understood Frege. Such an understanding is markedly different from the way in which current interpreters of Frege understand his doctrines. But the interpretation offered is, I think, faithful to Frege's text—in particular to the Basic Laws of Arithmetic , which appears to be the text upon which Wittgenstein rightly concentrated (since it is Frege's chef d'œuvre). It also has the merit of making sense of Wittgenstein's opaque criticisms. I cannot pretend to be certain that this was the way in which Wittgenstein understood Frege; or that this was precisely what Frege meant. But, if defenders of Frege disagree with my interpretation and if their criticisms of it can make better sense of Wittgenstein's understanding of Frege and of his objections to Frege's philosophy as he understood it (rightly or wrongly), then my efforts will not have been in vain. In his later work, Wittgenstein does not mention Frege often. My belief is that he thought that he had settled his accounts with Frege's philosophy in the criticisms of the Tractatus. (After all, he had presented them to Frege, face to face, in 1913, and later told Goodstein that he G. P. Baker, Wittgenstein, Frege and the Vienna Circle (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988). 7

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'had wiped the floor with Frege'.) Nevertheless, the various remarks about Frege in Wittgenstein's post-1929 writings add sufficiently to his earlier criticisms to be worth investigating, and his later philosophy of language and logic contains numerous implicit criticisms of Frege. Hence in 'Frege and the Later Wittgenstein' I have tried to show how he deepened and added to his

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earlier objections. It is sometimes thought that Wittgenstein at his best built on Frege's achievement, and accordingly that we can synthesize their respective insights to provide the foundations for our own endeavours. This, I believe, is quite mistaken. Frege's conception of language and logic, of thinking and of what is thought, of what is thought and its relation to reality, can no more be mixed with Wittgenstein's than oil can be mixed with water. For Wittgenstein disagreed with fundamental aspects of Frege's conceptions. Neither of these two essays examines Wittgenstein's equally profound disagreements with Frege's philosophy of mathematics—that is a topic for a book in its own right. The ninth essay, 'Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: The Exaltation and Deposition of Ostensive Definition', was written together with my colleague Dr Gordon Baker. It is the only 'unpaired' paper in this collection, but it picks up a theme often mentioned in previous essays. Brief scrutiny of Wittgenstein's post-1929 writings suffices to show that the subject of ostensive definition was of constant concern to him from 1929 until 1945. Given that this topic has virtually sunk from sight in contemporary philosophy of language, this may seem puzzling and worthy of enquiry. In addition, it is noteworthy that members of the Vienna Circle, unlike philosophers today, made the theme of ostensive definition pivotal to their reflections on language and meaning. It seemed to us that the topic was worth probing, and our essay tried to show how the logical positivists harnessed what they thought were Wittgenstein's insights to their brand of logical empiricism, how they misunderstood Wittgenstein's account of ostensive definition, and how these misunderstandings vitiated their philosophy of language. The neglect by contemporary theorists of meaning and theoretical linguists of ostensive definition and of the use of samples in explanations of meaning similarly vitiates much of their speculation. For the role of samples and the method of their projection in the practice of explanation and application of words are ill-suited to the representation of language as a calculus of meaningrules, a fortiori to the idea that the rules of language might be embedded in what theoretical linguists are prone to call 'the mind/brain'. I have made numerous minor emendations to the original essay, and I am grateful to Dr Baker for permission to publish this revised version. end p.x v i

The Philosophical Investigations produced successive waves of writings on particular themes that Wittgenstein discussed in that book. There was a spate of writings on family resemblance and its implications, on the private-language arguments, on criteria, on vagueness, and so forth, all inspired by Wittgenstein's remarks. Surprisingly, Wittgenstein's extensive discussion of following rules and of the relation between a rule and its extension (that is, the class of acts that count as being in accord with a given rule) attracted no attention for many years. We owe it in the first place to Professor Robert Fogelin, but above all to the scintillating lecture (later published as a short book) given by Professor Saul Kripke in 1976 that this important theme became the focus of intensive discussion for a decade or more. Kripke argued that the discussion of following rules that commences in Investigations §143 and culminates (allegedly) in §202 actually contains the 'real' private-language argument, of which §§243-315, commonly conceived to contain the private-language arguments, are a mere application. He

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claimed that the discussion of following rules introduced a new form of scepticism—scepticism about the meaning of words and about what a person means by his words, and, further, that Wittgenstein gave a Humean sceptical solution to his new sceptical problem, bypassing it rather than exploding it as nonsense. When Dr Baker and I were working on the second volume of our commentary on the Investigations—namely, Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar, and Necessity 8 —we traced §§143-242 of the Investigations to their manifold manuscript sources. It became evident that Kripke's interpretation was far removed from anything that Wittgenstein had intended, that it misidentified Wittgenstein's target and misconstrued the thrust of his remarks. Accordingly we wrote 'On Misunderstanding Wittgenstein: Kripke's Private-Language Argument', which we presented at a meeting of the Oxford Philosophical Society in May 1983 and published in Synthese in 1984. This essay was reprinted, together with a further pair on the theme of following rules, in our book Scepticism, Rules and Language.9 But, since that book has been out of print for a decade, and since the topic continues to be of interest, it seemed to me to be worth including the original essay (with some minor corrections and modifications) in this collection of papers, since it does, I believe, prove that the sceptical interpretation of the rule-following discussion in the Investigations is mistaken. G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar, and Necessity , vol. ii of An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985). 9 G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker, Scepticism, Rules and Language (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984). 8

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The discussion of following rules led to a further controversy among Wittgenstein scholars. Irrespective of whether Wittgenstein was concerned with propounding a new form of scepticism, the question arose of whether he was claiming that following a rule is internally related to community agreement on what counts as accord with the rule, and hence that a language is logically a social phenomenon or whether he was claiming only that there is no such thing as a rule that cannot in principle be understood and followed by others, even if in fact it is known to and followed by only one person. According to the first view, the concept of linguistic meaning (and of a language) is essentially (logically) bound up with that of a community of language-users. According to the second, it is logically bound up only with the possibility of a shared language. There is, to be sure, consensus that, with us human beings, language is actually a social phenomenon. Professor Norman Malcolm agreed with our criticisms of Kripke's sceptical construal of Wittgenstein's discussion of following a rule, but disagreed with the latter view, which we advocated. His paper 'Wittgenstein on Language and Rules', which took us to task for not accepting the 'community view', was published in Philosophy in 1989. We replied to his criticisms in 'Malcolm on Language and Rules' in Philosophy in 1990. Malcolm's paper was reprinted in Professor G. H. von Wright's posthumous edition of Malcolm's papers Wittgensteinian Themes: Essays 1978-1989.1 0 Professor von Wright remarked that he would have liked to include our response in that collection. Since he was unable to, I have included it here, where it complements the previous paper on Kripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein. I am grateful to my co-author for permission to reproduce these two papers.

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The last two papers also form a complementary pair. 'On Carnap's Elimination of Metaphysics' was commissioned by the Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie , which was running a series of essays on the most influential papers of twentiethcentury philosophy. Carnap's 1931 paper 'The Elimination of Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language' 1 1 clearly fell into that category, and I accepted the invitation to write on it with pleasure. I tried to spell out Carnap's arguments, which provided the basis for the opening chapter of Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic and hence influenced the whole positivist anti-metaphysical trend of the immediate pre- and post-war years. Though they N. Malcolm, Wittgensteinian Themes: Essays 1978-1989, ed. G. H. von Wright (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995).

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R. Carnap, 'The Elimination of Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language', Erkenntnis, 2 (1931-2), 219-41, repr. and tr. by A. Pap in Ayer (ed.) Logical Positivism, 60-81. 11

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were, to some degree, inspired by Wittgenstein's Tractatus, they seemed with hindsight to be surprisingly weak, and their scope unclearly defined. It was therefore of interest to compare them with Wittgenstein's own later criticisms of metaphysics, which seemed to me more powerful and convincing. The anti-metaphysical attitude dominated analytic philosophy until 1959, when Strawson published Individuals. There he introduced a distinction between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics, one effect of which was to take the term 'metaphysics' off the Index. But did he mean by 'metaphysics' what had traditionally been meant thereby? And was what he defended under the title of 'metaphysics' what, in their different ways, the positivists and Wittgenstein attacked? And how did the Strawsonian enterprise of descriptive metaphysics stand in relation to Wittgenstein's philosophy in general and to his delineation of the limits of philosophy in particular? The questions were intriguing, and when I was asked to present a paper on Strawson's philosophy at the annual conference of the United Kingdom Kant Society at Reading University in 1999, I resolved to pursue them. The result is 'On Strawson's Rehabilitation of Metaphysics'. Both papers leave open the question of whether the more recent revival of the idea of forms of language-independent de re necessity are cogent, and whether they suffice to provide a genuine subject matter for a branch of philosophy that can, in a weightier sense than I concede in the latter paper, be deemed metaphysics. I have not, however, tried to conceal my view on the matter. I am indebted to my friend John Hyman for his encouragement, advice, and constructive criticism in the course of compiling this volume of essays. end p.x ix

Original Places of Publication I have imposed uniformity of reference style upon the different articles, and I have not hesitated to make alterations when something seemed to me to be infelicitous or downright wrong—so most of these papers have undergone change, sometimes very minor, sometimes quite extensive. Chapter 5 was written for a Festschrift in honour of David Pears. To make it suitable for the present collection, the opening paragraph, which paid tribute to the honorand,

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has been omitted. Chapter 7 has not been published before. The original publication locations of the other papers are as follows: Chapter 1, 'Wittgenstein—an Overview', in A. Martinich and D. Sosa (eds.), A Companion to Analytic Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001). Chapter 2, 'Wittgenstein and the Autonomy of Humanistic Understanding', in R. Allen and M. Turvey (eds.), Wittgenstein, Theory and the Arts (London: Routledge, 2001). Chapter 3, 'Developmental Hypotheses and Perspicuous Representations: Wittgenstein on Frazer's Golden Bough', in Iyyun: The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly , 41 (1992), 277-99. Chapter 4, 'Was he Trying to Whistle it?', in A. M. Crary and R. Read (eds.), The New Wittgenstein (London: Routledge, 2000), 353-88. Chapter 5, 'When the Whistling had to Stop', in D. O. M. Charles and T. W. Child (eds.), Wittgensteinian Themes: Essays in Honour of David Pears (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 13-48. A shorter version of the same paper was published in German in H. J. Schneider and M. Kross (eds.), Mit Sprache spielen: Die Ordnungen und das Offene nach Wittgenstein (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1999), 95-118. Chapter 6, 'Naming, Thinking, and Meaning in the Tractatus', Philosophical Investigations, 22 (1999) 119-35. Chapter 8, 'Frege and the Later Wittgenstein', in A. O'Hear (ed.), German Philosophy since Kant—Royal Institute of Philosophy supplement, 1999 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 223-47. end p.x x

Chapter 9, 'Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: The Exaltation and Deposition of Ostensive Definition' (co-authored by G. P. Baker), Teoria, 5 (1985), 5-33. Chapter 10, 'On Misunderstanding Wittgenstein: Kripke's Private-Language Argument' (co-authored with G. P. Baker), Synthese, 58 (1984), 407-50, repr. in G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker, Scepticism, Rules and Language (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984). Chapter 11, 'Malcolm on Language and Rules' (co-authored with G. P. Baker), Philosophy , 65 (1990), 167-79. Chapter 12, 'On Carnap's Elimination of Metaphysics', in German in Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie (2000), 469-86, and in Portuguese in Cadernos Wittgenstein, 1 (1999). Chapter 13, 'On Strawson's Rehabilitation of Metaphysics', in H. J. Glock (ed.), Strawson and Kant (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). I am grateful to the editors of these journals and books for permission to republish the papers. end p.x x i

13

Abbreviations R Ludwig Wittgenstein: Letters to Russell, Keynes and Moore , ed. G. H. von Wright (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974)

RFM Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, ed. G. H. von Wright, R.

1. Wittgenstein's Works Rhees, andPublished G. E. M. Anscombe, rev. edn. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978)

RLF 'Some Remarks on Logical Form', of thepublished Aristotelian The following abbreviations are used to referProceedings to Wittgenstein's works. Society , suppl. vol. 9 (1929), 162-71 The list includes derivative primary sources and lecture notes taken by others. AWLI Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1932-,35, from the RPP Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology vol. i, ed. G.Notes E. M. of Alice Ambrose Margaret , ed. Alice Ambrose (Oxford: Anscombeand and G. H. vonMacdonald Wright (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980) 1979) TLP Blackwell, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus , tr. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness

BB The Blue and Brown & Books (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958) (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1961) C On Certainty , ed. G. E. M.der Anscombe G. H. von Wright, D. Paul WWK Ludwig Wittgenstein und Wiener and Kreis , shorthand notestr. recorded and G.Waismann, E. M Anscombe Oxford, 1969)Blackwell, 1967). The by F. ed. B. (Blackwell, F. McGuinness (Oxford: English translation, Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle (Oxford: CL Ludwig Wittgenstein: Cambridge Letters—Correspondence with Blackwell, 1979), matches the pagination of the original edition. and Russell, Keynes, Moore, Ramsey and Sraffa, ed. B. F. McGuinness H. von (Oxford: Blackwell, Z G. Zettel , ed.Wright G. E. M. Anscombe and G. 1995) H. von Wright, tr. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford, Blackwell, 1967) CV Culture and Value , ed. G. H. von Wright in collaboration with H. P. winch (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980) ReferenceNyman, style: alltr. references to Philosophical Investigations , Part I, are to GB(e.g. 'Remarks Frazer's Bough" tr.line J. Beversluis, C. G. sections PI ŝ1), on except those"Golden to notes below ',the on variousinpages. Luckhardt Sources and Perspectives (Ithaca, NY: References to Part II(ed.), are toWittgenstein: pages (e.g. PI , p. 202). References to other printed Cornell University Press, 1979) 61-81 works are either to numbered remarks (TLP ) or to sections, signified 'ŝ' (C ., Z.); in all other cases references are to pages (e.g. LFM 21 = LFM, p. and 21) or to LA Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology Religious numbered Beliefs letters,(ed. CL,C. R .). Barrett (Oxford: Blackwell, 1970)

LFM Wittgenstein's Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, Cambridge 1939, ed. C. Diamond (Hassocks: Harvester, 1976)

2. Nachlass

LPE 'Wittgenstein's Notes for Lectures on "Private Experience" and "Sense Data" '; ed. R. Rhees,cited All references to unpublished material Philosophical in the vonReview Wright, catalogue 77 (1968),(G. 275-320 H. von Wright, Wittgenstein (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), 35 ff.) are by MS or TS LWL Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1930-32, from the Notes of John number followed byDesmond page number. Wherever possible, the pagination entered King and Lee, ed. Desmond Lee (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980)in the original document has been used. The Cornell xeroxes in the Bodleian are M 'Wittgenstein's Lectures in 1930-33', in G. E. Moore, Philosophical defective; sometimes a dozen or more pages have been omitted. Consequently, Papers (London: Allen & Unwin, 1959) where access to the originals or to complete xeroxes has not been possible, some Notebooks 1914 -16,unavoidably ed. G. H. von Wright and G.For E. M. Anscombe, tr. errorsNB of page reference will have occurred. memorability, theG. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1961) following special abbreviations are used: BTPG'Big Typescript' Grammar (TS 213):,aed. rearrangement, with written Philosophical R. Rhees, tr. A. J. P.modifications, Kenny (Oxford: additions, and deletions, of TS 211 (1933), vi pp. table of contents, 768 Blackwell, 1974) pp. All references are to page numbers. Where the page number is PI Philosophical Investigations, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and R. Rhees, tr. followed by 'v', this indicates a handwritten addition on the reverse side G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell 1958) of the TS page. PLP The Principles of Linguistic Philosophy , by F. Waismann, ed. R. Harré FW Dictations to Friedrich Waismann, referred to by Nachlass number. (London: Macmillan, and New York: St Martin's Press, 1965) These are about to be published, edited by G. P. Baker, under the title PRVoices Philosophical Remarks , ed. R. Routledge). Rhees, tr. R. Hargreaves and R. White of Wittgenstein (London: (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975) All other typescripts are referred to as 'TS', followed by the von Wright number. PTLP Proto tractatus—An Early Version of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, In transcriptions from the Nachlass I have followed Wittgenstein's convention of ed. B. F. McGuinness, T. Nyberg, and G. H. von Wright, tr. D. F. Pears enclosing alternative draftings within slashes (/) or double slashes (//), and have and B. F. McGuinness (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971) represented the wavy underlining he employed to indicate hesitation over phrasing by a broken underline. end p.x x ii

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end p.x x iii

3. Works by Frazer FGB 1890 The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion, 1st edn., in 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1890), vol. i FGB 1922 The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, abridged edn. (London: Macmillan, 1922)

4. Works by Frege BLA The Basic Laws of Arithmetic: Exposition of the System, vol. i, tr. and ed. M. Furth (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964) BLC 'Boole's Logical Calculus and the Concept-script', repr. in PW

BS Begriffsschrift, eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete For-melsprache des reinen Denkens (Halle: L. Norbert, 1879); Conceptual Notation, a Formula Language of Pure Thought Modelled upon the Formula Language of Arithmetic , in G. Frege, Conceptual Notation and Related Articles, tr. and ed. T. W. Bynum (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972) CO 'Concept and Object', repr. in G. Frege, Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic and Philosophy , ed. B. McGuinness (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984)—references to original pagination in German CT 'Compound Thoughts', repr. in G. Frege, Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic and Philosophy , ed. B. McGuinness (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984)—references to original pagination in German

FA The Foundations of Arithmetic , tr. J. L. Austin (2nd rev. edn., Oxford: Blackwell, 1959) FC 'Function and Concept', repr. in G. Frege, Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic and Philosophy , ed. B. McGuinness (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), 137-56—references to original pagination in German SM 'Sense and Meaning', repr. in G. Frege, Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic and Philosophy , ed. B. McGuinness (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984)—references to original pagination in German

PMC Philosophical and Mathematical Correspondence, ed. G. Gabriel, H. Hermes, F. Kambartel, C. Thiel, and A. Veraart, tr. H. Kaal (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980) PW Posthumous Writings, ed. H. Hermes, F. Kambartel, and F. Kaulbach, tr. P. Long and R. White (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979) end p.x x iv

1 Wittgenstein—An Overview Abstract: An overview of Wittgenstein's philosophy, comparing the Tractatus

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with the Investigations is given. The later criticisms of the Tractatus logic and metaphysics are sketched. The philosophy of language, of mind, and the metaphilosophical reflections of the Investigations are outlined. Keywords: analytic philosophy, Investigations, linguistic turn, metaphysics, philosophy, philosophy of mind, picture theory, Tractatus, Vienna Circle

P. M. S Hacker

1. Background Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) dominates the history of twentieth-century analytic philosophy, somewhat as Picasso dominates the history of twentiethcentury art. He did not so much create a 'school', as change the philosophical landscape—not once but twice. And his successors, within the broad stream of analytic philosophy, whether they followed the paths he pioneered or not, had to reorient themselves by reference to new landmarks consequent upon his work. He completed two diametrically opposed philosophical masterpieces, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) and the Philosophical Investigations (1953). Each gave rise to distinct phases in the history of the analytic movement. The Tractatus was a source of Cambridge analysis of the inter-war years, and the main source of the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle. The Investigations was a primary inspiration for the form of analytic philosophy that flourished in the quarter of a century after the end of the Second World War, with its centre at Oxford and its circumference everywhere in the English-speaking world and beyond. He taught at Cambridge from 1930 until his premature retirement in 1947. Many of his pupils became leading figures in the next generation of philosophers, transmitting his ideas to their students.1 Wittgenstein's central preoccupations at the beginning of his philosophical career were with the nature of thought and linguistic representation, of logic and necessity, and of philosophy itself. These themes continue in his later philosophy, from 1929 onwards, although philosophy of mathematics occupied him intensively until 1944 and philosophy of psychology increasingly dominated his thought from the late 1930s until his death. Having been trained as an engineer, he came to For example, Alice Ambrose, Elizabeth Anscombe, Max Black, Richard Braithwaite, Karl Britton, Peter Geach, Austin Duncan-Jones, Casimir Lewy, Margaret Macdonald, Norman Malcolm, George Paul, Rush Rhees, Stephen Toulmin, John Wisdom, and Georg Henrik von Wright. 1

end p.1

Cambridge in 1911, without any formal education in philosophy, to work with Russell. He was poorly read in the history of the subject, and intentionally remained so in later years, preferring not to be influenced by others. He had read Schopenhauer in his youth, and traces of The World as Will and. Representation are detectable in the Tractatus discussion of the self and the will. He acknowledged the early influence upon him of the philosopher-scientists Boltzmann (in particular, apparently, of his Populäre Schriften) and Hertz (especially his introduction to The Principles of Mechanics). Apart from these

16

figures, the main stimuli to his thoughts were the writings of Frege and Russell on logic and the foundations of mathematics. In later years, as he put it, he 'manufactured his own oxygen'. He certainly read some Kant when he was prisoner of war in Cassino, some of the works of Augustine, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Plato, but did not cite these as influences upon him.2 The only later influences he acknowledged were Spengler, and discussions with his friends Frank Ramsey and Piero Sraffa. His style of thought and writing was idiosyncratic. He was able to dig down to the most fundamental, and typically unnoticed, presuppositions of thought in a given domain. Where philosophers had presented opposing views of a topic, and debate had long continued polarized between alternatives—for example, between idealism and realism in epistemology, or dualism and behaviourism in philosophy of mind, or Platonism and intuitionism in philosophy of mathematics —Wittgenstein did not side with one or another of the received options, but strove to find the agreed presuppositions common to both sides of the venerable dispute and then challenged these. His insights were typically written down in highly condensed form—often a single sentence, a brief paragraph, or a fragment of an imaginary dialogue. Writing standard consecutive prose distorted his thoughts, and, for the whole of his life, his writings were sequences of remarks, entered into notebooks, from which he later extracted and ordered the best. This, together with his great gift of simplicity of style, rich in metaphor, simile, and illuminating example, gives his philosophical writing power and fascination, as well as formidable interpretative difficulty. In one sense, he had the mind of an aphorist—for what is visible on the page is often no more than the trajectory of a thought, which the reader is required to follow through. No other philosopher in the history of the subject shared his 2 The other influences upon his thought that he cited retrospectively in 1931 were Karl Kraus, Adolf Loos, Paul Ernst, and Otto Weininger. In later years he made much use of James's The Principles of Psychology , which he viewed as a useful source of interesting philosophical confusions—hence not so much an influence upon his own ideas as a stimulus to criticism.

end p.2

cast of mind or style of thinking. The closest in spirit are the philosophically minded aphorists Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (whom he much admired) and Joseph Joubert (with whose writings, it seems, he was not acquainted). During his lifetime he published only one book, the Tractatus, and one article 'Some Remarks on Logical Form', written for the Mind and Aristotelian Society meeting in 1929. By the time of his death, he had more or less completed the Investigations (Part 1), and wished it to be published. As for the rest, he left to his literary executors the decision on what parts of his literary remains of more than 20,000 pages of notes and typescripts should be published.3 After the posthumous publication of the Philosophical Investigations in 1953, his literary executors edited numerous volumes of his unfinished typescripts and notes from all phases of his philosophical career. Notebooks 1914-1916 consists of preparatory notes for the Tractatus. Philosophical Remarks was written in 1929, and represents the stage at which the philosophy of the Tractatus was starting to crumble. Philosophical Grammar is an editorial compilation from typescripts written in the years 1931-4, and signals the transformation of

17

Wittgenstein's thought, abandoning the philosophy of the Tractatus and articulating his new methods and ideas. Half of it concerns problems in the philosophy of mathematics, a subject that was at the centre of his interests from 1929 until 1944. The Blue and Brown Books consists of dictations to his pupils, given in 1933-5. It elaborates his new philosophical methods and his transformed conception of philosophy, and examines problems in the philosophy of language, epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of psychology. The Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics is a selection from typescripts and manuscripts written between 1937 and 1944. Zettel is a collection of cuttings Wittgenstein himself made from typescripts written between 1929 and 1947, although most of the remarks date from the period 1944-7. The themes are mainly topics in the philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. The four volumes of Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology and Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology are notes written between 1947 and 1951. On Certainty and Remarks on Colour were written at the very end of his life, the former being unique among his works in its exclusive focus on epistemological themes. Apart from To this must be added a large quantity of dictations he gave to Friedrich Waismann for the projected joint work Logik, Sprache, Philosophie, which was intended as the first volume of the Vienna Circle's series Schriften zur Wissenschaftliches Weltauffassung, that volume itself, published in English under the title Principles of Linguistic Philosophy , and Waismann's notes of conversations with Wittgenstein published under the title Wittgenstein and the Vienna Cir cle. 3

end p.3

other minor writings—for example, on Frazer's Golden Bough or aphorisms and general cultural observations jotted down amidst his philosophical reflections and gathered together in Culture and Value —five volumes of lecture notes taken by his students have been published. The complete Nachlass was published in electronic form in 2000. Wittgenstein is unique in the history of philosophy as the progenitor of two profoundly opposed comprehensive philosophies. To be sure, there are continuities of theme between the two: the nature of linguistic representation, of logic and laws of thought, of the relation between thought and its linguistic expression, of the intentionality of thought and language, of metaphysics and of philosophy itself are topics examined in detail in the Tractatus and then re-examined in the later philosophy. There are also continuities of philosophical judgement. Many of the negative claims in the Tractatus are reaffirmed in the later works, in particular his criticisms of Frege and Russell, his denial that philosophy can be a cognitive discipline, his rejection of psychologism in logic and of logicism in the philosophy of mathematics. And many of the fundamental insights that informed the Tractatus—for example, that there is an internal relation between a proposition and the fact that makes it true, that the propositions of logic are senseless but internally related to inference rules, that the logical connectives and quantifiers are not function names, that ordinary language is in good logical order—are retained in the later philosophy. Nevertheless, the insights that are thus retained undergo transformation, are relocated in the web of our conceptual scheme, and are differently elucidated, and quite different consequences are derived from them. In general, the two

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philosophies represent fundamentally different philosophical methods and ways of viewing things. The Tractatus is inspired and driven by a single unifying vision. It was intended to be the culmination and closure of the great essentialist metaphysical tradition of Western philosophy. An insight into the essential nature of the elementary proposition was held to yield a comprehensive account of the nature of logic and of the metaphysical form of the world, the nature and limits of thought and language. An ineffable metaphysics of symbolism was wedded to an equally ineffable solipsistic metaphysics of experience and to an atomist, realist, ontology.

2. The Tractatus The two major thinkers whose work both inspired Wittgenstein and constituted the main target of his criticisms were Frege and Russell. end p.4

They had revolutionized logic, displacing the subject/predicate logic of traditional syllogistic by the function theoretic logic based on the generalization of the mathematical theory of functions. Frege had invented the logic of generality, the predicate calculus. Both philosophers repudiated psychologism in logic and idealism in metaphysics and epistemology, propounding instead forms of realism. Both had tried to demonstrate the reducibility of arithmetic to pure logic, Frege in The Basic Laws of Arithmetic (1893, 1903) and Russell, together with Whitehead, in Principia Mathematica (1910). It was, above all, their conception of logic that set the agenda for the young Wittgenstein. Frege and Russell thought that logic was a science with a subject matter. The propositions of logic, they held, are characterized by their absolute generality. On Frege's view they are perfectly general propositions concerning sempiternal relations between thoughts (propositions), articulating laws of truth valid for all thinking. According to Russell, logic is the science of the perfectly general. Its propositions are descriptions of the most general facts in the universe. Hence neither would have considered a simple tautology such as 'Either it is raining or it is not raining' as a proposition of logic, but would have conceived of it as an instantiation of the logical proposition '(p) (pv p)'. Both tended to view rules of inference ('laws of thinking') as related to the propositions of logic ('laws of truth'), somewhat as technical norms specifying a means to an end are related to laws or regularities of nature. The laws of truth, according to Frege, describe the immutable relations between thoughts (propositions) irrespective of their subject matter; according to Russell, they are the most general laws governing the facts of which the universe consists. Accordingly, rules of inference are technical norms, dependent on such general laws, compliance with which ensures that, if one wishes to think correctly—that is, infer only truths from truths—one will do so. The logical systems the two philosophers had invented were axiomatized, and they viewed the axioms as self-evident truths. Frege conceived of thoughts and of the two truth-values as logical objects, and of the notions of object, concept, first- and second-level function as ultimate summa genera, drawing ontological distinctions 'founded deep in the nature of things'. The logical connectives he thought to be names of logical entities, unary or binary first-level functions mapping truth-values onto truth-values, and the

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quantifiers to be names of second-level functions. Russell held that terms such as 'particular', 'universal', 'relation', and 'dual complex' are names of logical objects or 'logical constants' signifying the pure forms that are the summa genera of logic, the residue from a process of generalization that has been carried out to its utmost limits. We understand such expressions, he thought, on the end p.5

basis of 'logical experience' or intuition. Both philosophers held natural language to be logically imperfect, containing vague and ambiguous expressions or names without reference, and hence, Frege thought, allowing the formation of sentences without a truth-value. They viewed their own notations as logically perfect languages. From the post-Wittgensteinian perspective, Frege and Russell were radically mistaken about the nature of logical truths (conceiving of them as essentially general), about the nature of logical necessity, about the content of logical truths, about the status of the axioms of logic, about the character of the logical connectives and quantifiers, and about the relation between the truths of logic and rules of inference. If we are any clearer on these matters than they, it is largely due to Wittgenstein. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein accepted some of the salient doctrines of Russell and Frege. Like them, he adopted a (different) variant of metaphysical realism in the Tractatus ontology of simple sempiternal objects, of complexes and of facts. He accepted unreflectively the assumption that the fundamental role of words is to name entities (although this role was denied to logical operators and to categorial expressions) and of sentences to describe how things are in reality. He thought that there must be a connection of meaning between words and the entities they name, that language acquires content by means of such a connection with reality. He agreed with their antipsychologism in logic. He accepted Frege's demand of determinacy of sense, although, unlike Frege, he thought that the vagueness of natural language was merely superficial —analysable into disjunctions of determinate possibilities. And, like Frege, Russell, and many others, he assumed that the logical connectives and quantifiers are topic-neutral. Some of these commitments he was later to abandon, others he reinterpreted. Unlike Frege and Russell, Wittgenstein held that ordinary language is in good logical order. For logic is a condition of sense, and, in so far as sentences of ordinary language express a sense, convey thoughts, they are in good order—any appearance to the contrary (for example, vagueness) being a feature of the surface grammar of expressions, which will disappear on analysis. In so far as they fail to express a sense, they are ill-formed pseudo-sentences. Hence it is not the task of philosophy to devise a logically ideal language, although devising a logically perspicuous notation will enable the philosopher to lay bare the true logical forms of thoughts, which are obscured by the surface grammar of ordinary language. According to the Tractatus, the fundamental function of language is to communicate thoughts by giving them expression in perceptible form. The role of propositions (sentences with a sense) is to describe states of affairs, which may or may not obtain. If the state of end p.6

affairs depicted by a proposition obtains, then the proposition is true; otherwise it

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is false. Propositions are composed of expressions. Logical expressions apart, the constituent expressions in a proposition are either analysable, definable by analytic definition or paraphrase, or unanalysable. Unanalysable expressions are simple names, which are representatives of simple objects. The simple objects are the meanings of the names. Hence names link language to reality, pinning the network of language onto the world. Names have a meaning only when used as representatives, and they are so used only in the context of a proposition. The elementary (logically independent) proposition is a concatenation of names in accordance with logical syntax. It does not name anything, pace Frege (who thought sentences name truth-values) and Russell (who thought they name complexes), but depicts a (possible) state of affairs, which is isomorphic to it given the rules of projection, and asserts its existence. The names in an elementary proposition must possess the same combinatorial possibilities in logical syntax as the metaphysical combinatorial possibilities of the objects in reality that are the constituents of the state of affairs represented. The logical syntax that underlies any possible means of representation mirrors the logicometaphysical forms of reality. Pace Frege and Russell, the assertion sign has no logical significance. Unlike Frege, who thought that there were alternative analyses of propositions, and unlike Carnap, who, in the 1930s, thought that we can choose between different logics, Wittgenstein thought that analysis is unique and that in logic there are no options. The metaphysics of the Tractatus was realist (as opposed to nominalist), pluralist (as opposed to monist), and atomist. The sempiternal objects that constitute the substance of all possible worlds include properties and relations of categorially distinct types. It is far from clear what kinds of things Wittgenstein had in mind, but they are arguably such items as minimally discriminable shades of colour, tones, and so on as well as spatio-temporal points in the visual field. Objects are simple (this is mirrored by the logical simplicity—that is, unanalysability—of their names). They have internal and external properties. Their internal properties constitute their (essential) form—their combinatorial possibilities with other objects (this is mirrored by the logico-syntactical combinatorial possibilities of their names). Different objects belonging to the same ontological category (for example, different shades of colour) have a common form (namely, colour). The external properties of objects are accidental—their contingent concatenations with other objects to form actual states of affairs. A state of affairs is a possible combination of objects (for example, that such-and-such a spatio-temporal point is a end p.7

certain shade of such-and-such a colour). The obtaining or non-obtaining of a state of affairs is a fact (hence there are positive and negative facts). Elementary states of affairs are 'atomic' or 'independent'—that is, each such state of affairs may obtain or not obtain while all other elementary states of affairs that obtain remain the same. This is reflected by the logical independence of the elementary proposition, which has no entailments. The metaphysics of experience in the Tractatus was apparently a form of empirical realism and transcendental solipsism (compare Kant's empirical realism and transcendental idealism). The empirical self that is studied by psychology is not an object encountered in experience, but a (Humean) collection of experiences. The

21

metaphysical self, which is the concern of philosophy, is a limit of experience. It is the willing self, the bearer of good and evil. Sentences are expressions of thoughts. But thought itself is a kind of language, composed of thought-constituents. The form of a thought must mirror the form of reality no less than a proposition. Natural language is necessary for the communication of thoughts but not, it seems, for thinking—which can be effected in the 'language of thought'. It is mental processes of thinking and meaning that inject content into the bare logico-syntactical forms of language. What renders a licit concatenation of signs a living expression of a thought is the employment of the method of projection, which is thinking the sense of the sentence—that is, meaning by the sentence such-and-such a state of affairs. In thinking the sense of a sentence—that is, in meaning by that sentence a given state of affairs—one also means by the constituent names of the sentence the specific objects for which they stand. What pins a name onto an object in reality that is its meaning (Bedeutung) is an act of meaning (meinen) by the name that object. So names have a meaning only in the context of a sentence—that is, only in the context of a representation of a state of affairs meant by the use of a sentence. Hence the intentionality of signs is derived from the (intrinsic) intentionality of thinking and meaning (meinen). The Tractatus account of the intentionality of thought and language is informed by the insight that thought and proposition alike are internally related to the fact that makes them true. The thought or proposition that p would not be the thought or proposition it is were it not made true by the fact that p and made false by the fact that not-p. What one thinks when one thinks truly that p is precisely what is the case, and not something else (such as a Fregean Gedanke), which stands in some relation to what is actually the case. But what one thinks when one thinks falsely that p is not what is the case (since what one thinks does not obtain). Yet one does not think nothing. Indeed, end p.8

what one thinks is the same, no matter whether one thinks truly or falsely. The picture theory of thought and proposition provided a logico-metaphysical explanation of how it is possible to satisfy the demands consequent upon these internal relations. It attempts to explain (i) how it is possible for a thought to determine what state of affairs in reality will make it true; (ii) how it is possible for the content of a thought to be precisely what is the case if it is true and yet to have a content even if it is false; (iii) how it is possible that one can read off from a thought, in advance of the facts, what will make it true; (iv) how it is possible for the 'mere signs' of language to be intentional—that is, for a name to reach up to the very object itself of which the name is the name and for the sentence to describe the very state of affairs the existence of which will make true the proposition expressed. Every representation is a picture of a possibility. A proposition or thought is a logical picture, whose simple constituents name sempiternal objects with determinate form. There is a metaphysical harmony between language and

22

thought, on the one hand, and reality, on the other; for when one thinks truly that p, what is the case is that p; and when one thinks falsely that p, what one thinks is precisely what is not the case. This 'pre-established harmony' is orchestrated by a metaphysics of symbolism. Only simple names can represent simple objects. Simple names have a meaning but no sense. Relations too are objects, and only a relation (that is, the obtaining of a relation) can represent a relation—hence in the proposition 'aRb', it is not 'R' that represents the relation that a stands in to b, but rather it is that 'R' stands to the right of 'a' and to the left of 'b' (in this notation). Only facts can represent facts, and sentences—in their symbolizing capacity—are facts, which are used to describe how things are. For it is the fact that the constituent names are arranged as they are (in accordance with logical syntax) that says that things are thus and so. Sentences have a sense but no meaning. The possible states of affairs in reality are determined by the languageindependent combinatorial possibilities of objects. Every elementary proposition depicts a possible state of affairs. It is true if the possibility depicted obtains, false if it does not. It is of the essence of the proposition with a sense to be bipolar—that is, to be capable of being end p.9

true and capable of being false.4 This mirrors the metaphysical truth that it is of the nature of states of affairs that they either obtain or fail to obtain. The sense of a proposition is its agreement and disagreement with the existence and non-existence of states of affairs. For the proposition that p agrees with the fact that p and disagrees with the fact that not-p. What one thinks when one thinks that p is a possibility, a possibility that is actualized if one's thought is true and is not if one's thought is false. Hence one can read off a proposition or thought (which is a kind of proposition) what must be the case for it to be true, and what one thinks when one thinks that p is precisely what is the case if one's thought is true and what is not the case if one's thought is false, and is the very same thought no matter whether it is true or false. The logical connectives are not names of functions, but rather signify truthfunctional operations on propositions. The quantifiers are construed as operators upon a propositional function (for example, 'fx'), which is a logical prototype collecting all propositions of a certain form (whose values are all those propositions obtained by substituting a name for the variable), hence generating logical sums or products of such sets of propositions. All possible molecular propositions can be generated by truth-functional operations upon elementary propositions. Hence all logical relations are determined by truth-functional combinations of propositions. A molecular proposition ' p' entails another proposition ' q' if and only if the sense of ' q' is contained in the sense of ' p'—that is, if the truth-grounds of ' p' contain the truth-grounds of ' q'. The various operators are interdefinable, and reducible to the single operation of joint negation—namely, 'not . . . and not . . . '. Among the truth-functional combinatorial possibilities of a given number of elementary propositions, there will always be two limiting cases in which the propositions are so conjoined as to be (a) true irrespective of the truth-values of the constituent propositions and (b) false irrespective of their truth-values. The former is a tautology and the latter a contradiction. These are the propositions of logic. Since they are, respectively,

23

true and false irrespective of how things are, they are wholly without any content, and say nothing about how things are in reality. So, by contrast with other molecular propositions that are true under certain conditions (that is, for certain assignments of truth-values to their constituents) and false under others, the propositions of logic are 4 This contrasts with the Fregean and Russellian conception of the nature of the proposition. Frege held that propositions of natural language may lack a truthvalue, although they express a sense. In his logically ideal language, Begriffsschrift, every proposition must be bivalent (but not bipolar)—i.e. either true or false. Russell held propositions to be bivalent.

end p.10

unconditionally true or false. Hence they are said to be senseless, to have, as it were, zero sense. All tautologies say the same thing—namely, nothing. But different tautologies may nevertheless differ, for every tautology is a form of a proof (since every tautology can be rewritten in the form of a modus ponens), and different tautologies reveal different forms of proof. It is a mark of the propositions of logic, Wittgenstein held, that in a suitable notation they can be recognized as such from the symbol alone. He invented a special notation to display this, his T/F notation. Instead of writing molecular propositions by means of symbols for logical connectives, he used truth-tables as propositional signs. Here it is immediately perspicuous from the sign alone whether a proposition is a tautology, and, if so, it is visibly evident that it cannot be false. It is equally evident whether one proposition follows from another—that is, whether the truth-grounds of one contain those of another. This showed, he thought, the nature of the propositions of logic and their categorial difference from empirical propositions. This conception of logical truth made clear how misleading was the Frege/Russell axiomatization of logic, with its appeal to self-evidence for the axioms. Their axioms were not privileged by their self-evidence. They were tautologies no less than their theorems. They were not 'essentially primitive', nor were Frege's and Russell's theorems essentially derived propositions, for 'all the propositions of logic are of equal status'—namely, tautologies that say nothing. Hence too, contrary to Frege and Russell, the propositions of logic have no sense, and describe nothing. In an important sense, the propositions of logic have no subject matter, and logic is misconstrued as the science of the most general laws of truth or of the most general facts in the universe. Consequently, the propositions of logic do not constitute the foundations for the elaboration of technical norms of thinking on the model of the relation between laws of nature and technical norms for achieving desired ends. Rather, every tautology is internally (not instrumentally) related to a rule of inference or form of proof. The conception of logic in the Tractatus was still flawed. But its flaws, which Wittgenstein was later to expose, did not significantly affect the criticisms of the Fregean and Russellian conceptions of logic. According to the Tractatus, the only (effable) necessity is logical necessity. Every well-formed proposition with a sense must be bipolar. What philosophers had hitherto conceived of as categorial (or formal) concepts, such as object, property, relation, fact, proposition, colour, number , and so on, are, Wittgenstein

24

argued, expressions for forms, which are represented by variables, rather than by names. Hence they cannot occur in a fully analysed proposition with a sense. One cannot end p.11

say that, for example, one is a number, that red is a colour, or that A is an object—for such pseudo-propositions employ a formal concept as if it were a genuine concept, and they are not bipolar. Hence such metaphysical pronouncements (which attempt to describe non-logical necessities) are nonsense—ill-formed conjunctions of signs. But what such pseudo-propositions try to say is actually shown by genuine propositions that contain number words, colour names, or other names of objects. It is shown by features of the expressions in such propositions—namely, by the forms of the expressions—their essential combinatorial possibilities. These are represented by the variable of which the meaningful names are substitution-instances. An immediate consequence of this is that most of the propositions of the Tractatus that delineate the necessary forms of language and reality are nonsense. Hence Wittgenstein's penultimate remark in the book: 'My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps—to climb up beyond them.' Hence, too, the conception of philosophy advocated for the future is not the practice exhibited in the book. The Tractatus consists largely of sentences that are neither bipolar propositions nor tautologies. They attempt to describe the essence of the world, of language and of logic, and of the essential relations between them. But this is an attempt to say the very things that cannot be said in language, but are rather shown by language. What is thus shown is indeed ineffable. Hence metaphysics, the attempt to disclose the essential natures of things, is impossible. Once the correct logical point of view has been achieved, once the world is seen aright, the task of the Tractatus is completed. The task of future philosophy is analysis—clarification of philosophically problematic propositions that will elucidate their logical forms or clarify why and where (in the case of putative metaphysical propositions) they fail to accord with the rules of logical grammar. Future philosophy will not be a theory, nor will it propound doctrines or attain knowledge. It will be an activity of logical clarification. Philosophy, thus conceived, is a critique of language.

3. The Role of the Tractatus in the History of Analytic Philosophy In six respects the Tractatus introduced the 'linguistic turn' in philosophy. First, it set the limits of thought by setting the limits of language—by elucidating the boundaries between sense and nonsense. This put end p.12

language, its forms and structures, at the centre of philosophical investigation. Secondly, the positive task for future philosophy was the logico-linguistic analysis of sentences. The logical clarification of thoughts is to proceed by the

25

clarification of propositions—sentences with a sense. Thirdly, the negative task of future philosophy was to demonstrate the illegitimacy of metaphysical assertions by clarifying the ways in which attempts to say what is shown by language transgresses the bounds of sense. Fourthly, the Tractatus attempted to clarify the essential nature of the propositional sign by elucidating the general propositional form—that is, by giving 'a description of the propositions of any sign-language whatsoever in such a way that every possible sense can be expressed by a symbol satisfying the description, and every symbol satisfying the description can express a sense, provided that the meanings of names are suitably chosen'. Fifthly, the logical investigation of phenomena, the unfolding of their logical forms, which was not undertaken in the book, is to be effected by logical analysis of the linguistic descriptions of the phenomena. (The first moves in carrying out this task were taken in the 1929 paper 'Some Remarks on Logical Form', whereupon the whole project collapsed.) For the logical syntax of language is and must be isomorphic with the logico-metaphysical forms of the world. Sixthly, the greatest achievement of the book, as seen by the Vienna Circle, was its elucidation of the nature of logical necessity. This was patently made by an investigation of symbolism. That one can recognize the truth of a logical proposition from the symbol alone was held to contain in itself the whole philosophy of logic. Many of these claims were later to be repudiated. But they heralded the linguistic turn, which was executed by the Vienna Circle, and, in a different way, by Wittgenstein himself in his later philosophy, and by Oxford analytic philosophy. The Tractatus was a paradigm of analytic philosophy in its heroic or classic phase in the inter-war years. It was the major inspiration of Cambridge analysis and of logical positivism. Its programme, as understood both in Cambridge and in Vienna, committed one to the method of logico-linguistic analysis of complex expressions into their simple unanalysable constituents. It encouraged the programme of reductive analysis and its mirror image—logical construction. It cleaved to the thesis of extensionality, holding all non-extensional contexts to be either eliminable, merely apparent, or illicit. It repudiated the intelligibility of putatively synthetic a priori propositions, insisted that the only necessity is logical necessity and denied any sense to the propositions of logic. Hence it seemed to provide the foundations for what the Vienna Circle hailed triumphantly as 'consistent empiricism', for it denied that pure reason alone can attain any knowledge of the end p.13

world. It held metaphysics to be nonsense (the Circle averted their gaze from, or quickly condemned and passed over (Neurath), or attempted to circumvent (Carnap), its paradoxical ineffability claims). And it allocated to philosophy a sui generis analytic role and a status wholly distinct from that of science. Schlick, the leading figure in the Circle, went so far as to characterize the Tractatus as 'the turning point in philosophy'—the deepest insight into what the task and status of philosophy should be. Wittgenstein's influence upon the Vienna Circle was second to none. Indeed, the principle of verification itself was derived from conversations with Wittgenstein in 1929/30, and read back into the Tractatus. Members of the Circle spent two academic years reading through the book line by line, abandoning some of its

26

claims and accepting others. They abandoned the picture theory of the proposition, the doctrine of showing and saying, and most of the ontology of logical atomism. But what they accepted was crucial: the account of the nature and limits of philosophy, the conception of logic and logical necessity, and the programme of the logical analysis of language. These ideas, interpreted and sometimes seriously misinterpreted, were pivotal to their work. The most important misinterpretation concerned the Tractatus account of logic. Members of the Circle agreed with the criticisms of the Fregean and Russellian misconceptions of the nature of logic, and welcomed the view that the propositions of logic are vacuous (senseless). But they gave a conventionalist interpretation to Wittgenstein's account of logic that was far removed from his conception. They thought of the logical connectives as arbitrary symbols introduced to form molecular propositions, whereas Wittgenstein had argued that they are essentially given by the mere idea of an elementary proposition.5 Where he viewed the truths of logic as flowing from the essential bipolarity of the proposition, they conceived of them as following from the truth-tabular definitions of the logical connectives—hence as true in virtue of the meanings of the logical operators. A logical truth therefore was held to be the logical consequence of conventions (definitions). Wittgenstein, by contrast, had argued that the senseless truths of logic reflect the logical structure of the world. Logic, far from being determined by convention, is transcendental. In the 1930s, when he turned to reconsider his earlier conception, Wittgenstein not only reformulated his views but also vehemently criticized the conventionalism of the Circle. Far from following If the elementary proposition is given, then bipolarity is given. If bipolarity is given, then truth and falsity are given. If truth and falsity are given, then negation is given. If the possibility of successive assertion is given, then conjunction is given. If negation and conjunction are given, then all the logical connectives are given. 5

end p.14

from the meanings of the logical connectives, the truth of the propositions of logic, he argued, is constitutive of their meanings.

4. The Collapse of the Tractatus Vision Already in the Tractatus Wittgenstein had taken note of the fact that determinates of a determinable—for example, red and green—are mutually exclusive—if A is red all over, it follows that it is not green (or blue or yellow, and so on) all over. At the time, he thought that this showed that 'A is red' is not an elementary proposition, and that its entailments would, on analysis, be clarified as following from its truth-functional composition out of elementary propositions. When he returned to philosophy after a hiatus of a decade, he realized that this was misconceived. There are irreducible logical relations of exclusion or implication that are determined, not by truth-functional composition, but by the inner structure of elementary propositions. He tried to budget for this by abandoning the topic neutrality of the logical connectives and drawing up truth-tables specific to the 'propositional system' (that is, the system of determinates of a determinable) to which a given elementary proposition

27

belongs. In the case of colour, the conjunction of 'A is red all over' and 'A is green all over' is nonsense. Hence the truth-value assignment 'TT' must be excluded from such conjunctions by a special rule of syntax. But this concession, he rapidly realized, spells the death knell for the philosophy of logical atomism, and strikes at the heart of the Tractatus. For the independence of the elementary proposition was the pivot upon which turned the whole conception of logic and the ineffable metaphysics of the book. Without it, the idea that the logic of propositions depends only upon the bipolarity of the elementary proposition collapses. The significance of the T/F notation as revealing the essential nature of logical propositions and relations evaporates, precisely because there are logical relations that depend upon the inner structure of elementary propositions. Since the logical operators are not topic neutral, separate truth-tables would have to be drawn up for each propositional system. The idea that there is a general propositional form, according to which every proposition is a result of successive applications to elementary propositions of the operation of joint negation, must likewise be relinquished. So too must the thought that generality can be analysed into logical sums and products, and that the quantifiers can be given a uniform topic-neutral analysis. end p.15

As the logical theory of the Tractatus collapsed, so too did the metaphysics. It was wrong to say that the world consists of facts rather than of things. Rather, a description of the world consists of statements of facts, not of an enumeration of things. But the statement of a fact just is a true statement. One cannot point at, but only point out, a fact. And to point out a fact just is to point out that things are thus and so—that is, to make a true assertion. Facts are not concatenations of objects. Unlike concatenations of objects, and unlike states of affairs, facts have no spatio-temporal location. The fact that a circle is red is not composed of redness and circularity concatenated together, since facts are not composed of anything and do not have 'constituents'. The proposition that p is only 'made true' by the fact that p in the sense in which being a bachelor makes one unmarried. All it means is that the proposition that p is true if, in fact, things are as it says they are. The conception of absolutely simple sempiternal objects was incoherent. For the notions of simplicity and complexity are relative, not absolute. To call spatio-temporal points, properties, or relations 'objects' is a misuse of language. What had appeared to be objects that had to exist are in fact samples that we employ in explaining the meanings of certain ostensively defined expressions in the language. As such, they belong to the means of representation, not (like the postulated 'objects' of the Tractatus) to what is represented. As the metaphysics collapsed, so too did the picture theory, the conception of isomorphism between language and reality, and the account of intentionality. What had seemed like an internal relation between the proposition that p and the fact that p that makes it true was no more than the shadow cast upon reality by an intra-grammatical relation between the expressions 'the proposition that p' and 'the proposition made true by the fact that p'. There is an internal relation here, but it is forged in language—in the grammatical rule that permits the intersubstitution of these expressions—not between language and reality. Hence it was mistaken to think that reality must have a certain metaphysical form that must be reflected in the logico-syntactical forms of language in order for this

28

internal relation to obtain. The intentionality of thought and proposition, which had seemed to demand a pre-established metaphysical harmony between language and reality, is fully explained by reference to intra-grammatical connections between expressions. The thought or expectation that it will be the case that p does not 'anticipate reality'; rather, only what satisfies the description 'it is the case that p' will be called 'the fulfilment of the expectation that it will be the case that p'. Of course one can 'read off' from the thought what will make it true, since the expression of the thought contains the end p.16

description of the state of affairs the obtaining of which is called 'the confirmation of the thought'. Of course what one thinks, when one thinks that p, is what is the case when one's thought is true, but this is not a strange form of identity or coincidence between a shadowy possibility and an actuality. Rather the questions 'What is being thought?' and 'What is the case?' here receive the same answer. The metaphysics of symbolism of the Tractatus was in fact a mythology of symbolism. The meaning of a name is not an object of any kind. What is legitimate about the role which the Tractatus simple object was invoked to fulfil is in fact played by defining samples used in ostensive definitions—for example, of colour words. But the sample pointed at in the ostensive definition 'This ☞ ▪ is black' is part of the means of representation, to be used as an object of comparison and standard of correct application of the word 'black'. Names derive their meanings, not from objects in the world that they represent, but from explanations of meaning, of which ostensive definitions are but one type. But it is at best vacuous to claim that all non-logical terms are names. There are indefinitely many grammatically different kinds of expressions, which fulfil different roles in a language and have different uses, given by the explanations of their meanings, which are in effect rules for their use. In the sense in which the Tractatus claimed that there is a connection—a meaning-endowing connection —between language and reality, there is no such connection. It was mistaken to suppose that a propositional sign is a fact, that only facts can represent facts, or that only 'simple names' can represent simple objects. Far from the logical syntax of language having to mirror the logical forms of things, the different grammars of different languages are autonomous. They owe no homage to reality. They do not reflect language-independent metaphysical possibilities, determined by the essential nature of objects represented, but rather themselves determine logical possibilities—that is, what it makes sense to say. Empirical propositions are indeed characteristically (although not uniformly) bipolar, but the concept of a proposition is a family resemblance concept—there are many different kinds of proposition, which are characterized not by an essential nature, but by overlapping similarities. The concept of logical form that had informed the Tractatus is chimerical. For paraphrase into a canonical notation (as in Russell's theory of descriptions) is not an analysis of what is already present in the paraphrased proposition or thought but a redescription in a different form of representation. Logical form is no reflection of the logicometaphysical forms of reality, since there is no such thing. Already in the Tractatus Wittgenstein had rejected the logicism in the philosophy of mathematics that Frege and Russell had endeavoured

29

end p.17

unsuccessfully to prove. He denied that numbers were logical objects or reducible to classes. Mathematical propositions, he claimed, are not descriptions of possible states of affairs. Nor are they bipolar. They are, in effect, nonsensical pseudo-propositions—they do not have a sense consisting in their agreement and disagreement with the existence and non-existence of states of affairs. Rather, they are substitution-rules for the transformation of one empirical proposition concerning magnitudes or quantities or spatial relations, and so on into another, and expressions of rules are not propositions. In the 1930s he wrote extensively about the foundations of mathematics. It is not possible here to do more than indicate briefly the general trajectory of his thought. He did not reject logicism in order to embrace one or the other of what seemed to be the only alternatives —namely, intuitionism and formalism. His fundamental claim is radical. With the liberalization in his concept of a proposition, he was now willing to speak of mathematical propositions. Nevertheless, they are radically unlike empirical propositions, and equally unlike logical ones. Mathematics is a system of interlocked propositions. As already implied in the Tractatus, the fundamental role of this system (but not of every proposition within it) is to constitute rules for the transformation of empirical propositions. An arithmetic equation, such as 252 = 625, is a rule licensing the transformation of such an empirical proposition as 'There are 25 boxes each containing 25 marbles' into the proposition 'There are 625 marbles'. A theorem of geometry is a norm of representation—a rule permitting the transformation of empirical propositions about shapes, distances, or spatial relations. Different geometries are not different theories about empirical space, which might turn out to be true or false. Nor are they different uninterpreted calculi. Rather, they are different grammars for the description of spatial relations. Proof by mathematics (for example, in engineering) is wholly different from proof in mathematics. While a mathematical proposition is a rule, unless it is an axiom, it is not stipulated, but produced according to rules by a proof. Here we must distinguish proofs within a proof system—for example, a computation—that is just 'homework', as Wittgenstein put it, from proofs that extend mathematics by extending a proof system. Proofs that extend mathematics create new internal relations, modifying existing concepts by linking them with concepts with which they were hitherto unconnected, or connecting them with concepts in new ways—thus licensing novel transformations of appropriate empirical (or other mathematical) propositions. Mathematics is concept formation. The propositions of mathematics determine the concepts they invoke. What we conceive of as mathematical necessity is at best a distorted reflection of the internal end p.18

relations within a proof system. Mathematics is a human creation, invented rather than discovered.

5. The Philosophical Investigations Dismantling the Tractatus preoccupied Wittgenstein in the early 1930s. Gradually a new method and a wholly different conception of language, of linguistic meaning, and of the relation between language and reality emerged. It became

30

clear that his neglect of questions in the philosophy of psychology in the Tractatus, which he had taken to be licensed by the anti-psychologism he took over from Frege, was unwarranted. For the concepts of linguistic meaning are bound up with the concepts of understanding, thinking, intending, and meaning something—and these pivotal notions demand philosophical elucidation. The new method also led to a new conception of philosophy itself—related to, but still importantly different from, the conception of philosophy advocated in the Tractatus. That in turn led to a different criticism of metaphysics. Successive efforts to compose a book laying forth his new ideas culminated in the composition of the Philosophical Investigations, Part 1, which was virtually completed by 1945/6. It is his masterwork. Despite some continuities of theme and negative conceptions, it stands in stark contrast not only to the sibylline tone of the Tractatus but above all to its spirit. Where the Tractatus strove for a sublime insight into the language-independent essences of things, the Investigations proceeded by a quiet weighing of linguistic facts in order to disentangle knots in our understanding. The Tractatus was possessed by a vision of the crystalline purity of the logical forms of thought, language, and the world; the Investigations was imbued with a sharpened awareness of the motley of language, the deceptive forms of which lead us into confusion. The Tractatus advocated conceptual geology, hoping to disclose the ineffable essences of things by depth analysis of language, the Investigations practised conceptual topography, aiming to dissolve philosophical problems by a patient description of familiar linguistic facts. The Tractatus was the culmination of a tradition in Western philosophy. The Investigations is virtually without precedent in the history of thought. Wittgenstein's later work, as he himself said, is not merely a stage in the continuous development of philosophy, but constitutes a 'kink' in the development of thought comparable to that which occurred when Galileo invented dynamics—it was, in a sense, a new subject, an heir to end p.19

what used to be called 'philosophy'. A new method had been discovered, and for the first time it would now be possible for there to be 'skilful' philosophers—who would apply the method. The transition from the Tractatus to his later philosophy, as he wrote when his new ideas were dawning in 1929, is the transition from the method of truth to the method of meaning. It is a transition from Wesensschau—putative insights into the nature or essence of things—to the clarification of conceptual connections in the grammar of our languages, with the purpose of disentangling knots in our thought. The conception of philosophy advocated in the Investigations has no precedent, although it is, in a qualified sense, anticipated by the Tractatus programme for future philosophy. The philosophy of language is equally without ancestors: it is neither a form of idealist telementational linguistic theory (on the model of classical empiricism or de Saussure) nor a form of behaviourist linguistic theory, it is neither a realist truthconditional semantics nor a form of 'anti-realist' semantics. The philosophy of mind repudiates both dualism as well as mentalism, on the one hand, and logical behaviourism as well as physicalism, on the other. The critique of metaphysics neither rests on Humean or verificationist grounds, nor does it resemble the Kantian critique of transcendent metaphysics. It is no wonder that Wittgenstein's

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later philosophy has been so frequently misunderstood and misinterpreted, for it can no more be located on received maps of philosophical possibilities than the North Star can be located on a terrestrial globe. The Investigations opens with a quotation from St Augustine's autobiography in which he recounts the manner in which he assumes that he had learnt to speak. These unself-conscious, non-philosophical reflections seemed to Wittgenstein to crystallize an important proto-picture of language, a pre-philosophical conception of its role and function, which informs a multitude of philosophical theories. According to this picture the essential role of words is to name things, and the essential role of sentences is to describe how things are. Words are connected to things by means of ostension. This proto-picture, which is akin to an unnoticed field of force unconsciously moulding the shape of sophisticated philosophical theories, is one root of extensive misconceptions in philosophy of language, logic, mathematics, and psychology. It is a muted leit-motif running through the book, and combatting the influence of this picture is one of the central tasks of the book. For we are prone to think that corresponding to every name, or corresponding to every name on analysis, there must exist some thing—that nouns name objects, adjectives name properties, verbs name actions, that psychological expressions such as 'pain' name psychological objects and 'believe', 'want', end p.20

'intend', 'think', and so on name psychological states or processes, number words name numbers, and two-place logical connectives name binary relations. We are inclined to believe that every declarative sentence describes something—that logical propositions describe relations between thoughts, that mathematical propositions describe relations between numbers, that what we conceive of as metaphysical propositions describe necessary relations between ultimate categories of being, that psychological propositions in the first person describe states of mind, and so on. But this is illusion.

6. Philosophy of Language The philosophy of language of the Investigations has a destructive and a constructive aspect. Its destructive aspect is concerned with undermining the conception of analysis that had informed the Tractatus and, more remotely, has characterized philosophy at least since the Cartesian and empiricist programmes of analysis into simple natures and into simple ideas respectively. It aims to destroy the conception of a language as a calculus of meaning rules and the idea that the meaning or sense of a sentence is composed of the meanings of its constituent words and derivable from them, given their mode of combination. Hence, too, it combats the ideal of determinacy of sense, and the thought that all expressions are either definable by analytic definition or are lexically indefinable and hence explained by an ostensive definition, conceived of as linking language with reality and laying the foundations of language in simple objects given in experience. It has already been noted that the concepts of simple and complex are relative. Hence, whether an A is complex or simple has to be determined by reference to

32

criteria of simplicity and complexity laid down for As—if there are such criteria. But we commonly confuse the absence of any criteria of complexity (since none has been laid down) with the satisfaction of criteria of simplicity. We are prone to think that an expression is complex if it is defined by analytic definition, and simple if it is explained by ostension. But analytic and ostensive definitions are neither exclusive nor exhaustive. We can explain what 'circle' means by saying that this ☞ is a circle, or by saying that a circle is a locus of points equidistant from a given point. And we can explain what words mean by contextual paraphrase, contrastive paraphrase, exemplification, by a series of examples together with a similarity rider, by gesture, and so on. The meaning of a word is not an object for which a word end p.21

stands or of which it is the name. Rather, it is what is given by an explanation of meaning, and an explanation of meaning is a rule for the use of the explanandum—a standard of correctness for its application. To ask for the meaning of a word is to ask how it is to be used. Indeed, the meaning of a word is (or, more cautiously, is determined by) its use. Ostensive definition is one legitimate manner of explaining the meanings of some words. It is not especially privileged: as argued, it does not 'connect language with reality' or lay the foundations of language; it is only one rule for the use of the word in question, and it is as capable of being misunderstood as any other explanation of meaning. Many expressions do not have necessary and sufficient conditions of application. Among these are family-resemblance concepts, such as 'game', which are explained by a series of examples and a similarity rider. (Even if someone comes up with a sharp definition of 'game', that definition is not the rule by reference to which we have been applying the word 'game' and by reference to which we would have justified our use of the word.) Indeed, many of the pivotal concepts in philosophy, such as 'language', 'proposition', 'number', 'rule', 'proof', as well as many psychological concepts, are family-resemblance concepts. Their extension is determined not by common properties, but by overlapping similarities—like the fibres in a rope. Since numerous kinds of expression are not explained in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions of application, the idea that vagueness is only a surface grammatical feature of language or that it must be an imperfection in language is awry. The Fregean demand for determinacy of sense was incoherent. For determinacy of sense is not merely the absence of vagueness, but the exclusion of the very possibility of vagueness—the exclusion, by a complete explanation of meaning, of every possibility of doubt in every conceivable circumstance. But there is no such thing. There is no absolute conception of completeness. The concepts of complete and incomplete are both relative and correlative. A complete explanation of meaning is an explanation that may be invoked as a standard of application in all normal contexts. Relative to that standard, explanations may be judged to be complete or incomplete. But we have no single ideal of exactness; what counts as exact or vague varies from context to context. Moreover, vagueness is not always a defect ('I ask him for a bread knife', Wittgenstein mocked, 'and he gives me a razor blade because it is sharper'), and (pace Frege) its occurrence is not logically 'contagious'. The idea that the sense of a sentence is a function of the meanings of its

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constituents and their mode of composition is a distorted statement of the platitude that, if one does not know what the words of a sentence end p.22

mean or does not understand the way in which they are combined, then one will not understand what is said. The supposition that what a sentence means follows from an explanation of what its words mean, together with a specification of its structure, errs with regard to both meaning and understanding. The meaning of a sentence is no more composed of the meanings of its parts than a fact is composed of objects. The distinctions between sense and nonsense are not drawn once and for all by reference to circumstance-invariant features of type-sentences, but by reference to circumstance-dependent features of the use of token-sentences. Sentences of precisely the same form may have very different uses. Indeed, the forms of sentences, no matter whether in natural language or translated into a canonical notation of the predicate calculus, conceal rather than reveal their use. Moreover, understanding a sentence is not a process of deriving its meaning from anything. Little remains of analysis as previously understood. Philosophical problems are misunderstandings caused, among other things, by misleading analogies between forms of expressions with different uses Some of these can be dissolved by paraphrase, as exemplified by Russell's Theory of Descriptions. But it was an illusion that there is anything like a final analysis of the forms of our language, let alone that analysis reveals the logical structure of the world. Instead of analysis as classically conceived, what is needed is a description of the uses of words that will illuminate philosophical confusion, and a rearrangement of familiar rules for the use of words that will make the grammar of the relevant expressions surveyable. For the main source of philosophical puzzlement and of misguided philosophical theories is our failure to command a clear view of the use of words and our consequent entanglement in the network of grammar. Connective analysis (the term is Strawsonian rather than Wittgensteinian)—that is, a description of the conceptual connections and exclusions in the web of words—and therapeutic analysis (see below) replace reductive analysis. A sentence is completely analysed, in the new sense, when its grammar is laid out completely clearly. A language is misrepresented if it is conceived to be a calculus of rules. More illuminating is the idea that it is a motley of language-games. Language is indeed rule governed, in the loose manner in which games are. Using sentences is comparable to making moves in a game, and a language can be fruitfully viewed as a motley of language-games. The use of language is interwoven with the lives and practices of speakers, and is partly constitutive of their form of life. Training and teaching underpin the mastery of a language, and these presuppose shared reactive and behavioural propensities within a linguistic community. end p.23

Words are like tools, and the diversity of their use is as great as that of different tools—hence masked by conceiving of them as essentially names of things, and concealed by their grammatical form. The greatest error of philosophers of his day, Wittgenstein remarked, is to attend to the forms of expressions rather than to their uses. Even declarative sentences are used for endlessly diverse

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purposes, of which describing is only one, and non-declarative sentences are misrepresented if taken to be analysable into a force-indicative component (for example, an imperative sign or interrogative sign) and a descriptive, truth-value bearing 'sentence-radical'. Moreover, the concept of description is itself nonuniform, for describing a scene is altogether unlike describing a dream, describing the impression something made is unlike describing the item that made the impression, and describing what one intends is altogether unlike describing the execution of one's intention. These are logically distinct kinds of descriptions, with distinct kinds of grounds and consequences. Understanding is akin to an ability, not a state from which performance flows. The criteria for linguistic understanding are of three general kinds: correct use, giving a correct explanation of meaning in context, and responding appropriately to the use of an expression. Viewing explanations of meaning as rules for the use of words, the use of words as rule-following, and understanding as the mastery of the technique of the use of words require that these concepts be tightly interlocked. And so they are. There is an internal relation between a rule and what counts as compliance with it, which is manifest not only in the interpretations one might give of the rule, but above all in the practice of acting in accordance with it, and in the critical practices of teaching the meanings of expressions, of correcting misapplications and mistaken explanations of meaning. Meaning is determined by use; it is given by an explanation of meaning, and it is what is understood when the meaning of an expression is understood. Not every difference in use is a difference in meaning, but every difference in meaning is a difference in use. Wittgenstein's later philosophy of language is guided by this series of conceptual connections, the ramifications of which he explored in detail.

7. Philosophy of Mind Against prevailing tradition, Wittgenstein challenged the inner/outer picture of the mind, the conception of the mental as a 'world' accessible end p.24

to its subject by introspection, the conception of introspection as inner perception, the idea that the capacity to say how things are with us 'inwardly' is a form of knowledge (let alone a paradigm of self-knowledge), the thought that human behaviour is 'bare bodily movement', the notion that voluntary action is bodily movement caused by acts of will, the supposition that explanation of human behaviour in terms of reasons and motives is causal, and the pervasive influence of the Augustinian picture of language that disposes one to think that psychological expressions are uniformly or even typically names of inner objects, events, processes, or states. His philosophy of mind and of action can be seen as providing a rigorous philosophical underpinning for the hermeneutic insistence on the autonomy of humanistic understanding and its categorial differentiation from understanding in the natural sciences. Psychological expressions are not names of entities that are directly observable only by the subject, and avowals of the inner are not descriptions of something visible only in a private peepshow. It is all too easy to think of psychological

35

expressions as names of inner entities, and hence of assigning them meaning by private ostensive definition. Wittgenstein's 'private-language arguments' are aimed at this misconception. There can be no inner, private, analogue of public ostensive definition. Sensations cannot fulfil the role of samples—so a pain cannot serve as a defining sample for the application of the word 'pain'. Concentrating one's attention upon one's pain is not a kind of pointing. Remembering a sensation presupposes and so cannot explain the meaning of a sensation-name, and the memory of a sensation cannot serve as an object of comparison for the application of a sensation-word. There is no such thing as applying an expression in accordance with a rule that is in principle incommunicable to anyone else. But the idea of defining a sensation-word by reference to a sensation, conceived of as private and intended to function as a defining sample in an ostensive definition would be such a pseudo-rule—for which there could be no criterion of correct application. Whatever seemed to one to be right would be right, and that means that there is no such thing here as right or correct. Indeed, the very notion of privacy that informs Cartesian and empiricist conceptions of the mental is misconceived. The mental was taken to be private in two senses: privately owned and epistemically private. Pains, for example, were held to be privately owned—that is, only I can have my pain; another person cannot have my pain but only a qualitatively identical one. And only I can really know that I have a pain; others can only surmise that I do. Both of these claims are misconceived. To have a pain is not to own anything, any more than to have a birthday or a train to end p.25

catch. The distinction between numerical and qualitative identity, which applies to substances, no more applies to pains (or mental images, thoughts, or feelings) than it does to colours. If A is red and B is red, then A and B are the same colour; so too, if NN has a throbbing headache in his right temple and MM has a throbbing headache in his right temple, then NN and MM have the same headache—neither numerically the same, nor qualitatively the same, but just the same. To think that what differentiates my pain from yours is that I have mine and you have yours is to transform the sufferer from pain into a distinguishing property of the pain from which he suffers—which is as absurd as claiming that two chairs cannot have the same colour, since the colour of this chair belongs to this chair and the colour of that chair belongs to that chair. The conception of epistemic privacy is equally awry. Far from the 'inner' being a field of certain empirical knowledge possessed by the subject, which is better known than, and provides the foundations for, other kinds of empirical knowledge, first-person, present-tense psychological utterances are not generally expressions of knowledge at all. 'I know I am in pain' is either an emphatic or concessive assertion that I am in pain, or philosophers' nonsense. In such cases, ignorance, doubt, mistake, misidentification, misrecognition are ruled out by grammar —we have no use for such forms of words as 'I may be in pain, or I may not—I am not sure, I must find out'. But we mistake the grammatical exclusion of ignorance, doubt, and so on, for the presence of knowledge, certainty, correct identification, and recognition. Whereas they too are excluded as senseless in such cases as pain, and the use of the epistemic operators in other

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cases has a distinctive meaning. 'I don't know what I want' or 'I do not know what I believe' are not expressions of ignorance but of indecision. I do not need to look into my mind to find out what I want or believe, but to make it up. If I do not know what I believe about X, I need to examine the evidence, not my state of mind. The utterances 'I am in pain', 'I'm going to V', 'I want G' are standardly employed as expressions or avowals (rather than descriptions) of pain, intention, or desire, and the utterance is a criterion for others to ascribe to the speaker the relevant psychological predicate. A criterion for the inner is logically (conceptually), as opposed to inductively, good evidence (justification) for ascribing to another an appropriate psychological predicate. Pain and pain behaviour, or desire and conative behaviour, are not analogically, inductively, or hypothetically connected. Rather, crying out in circumstances of injury, assuaging an injured limb, avoiding the cause of injury, and so on are non-inductive grounds for pain ascriptions. Grasping the concept of pain involves recognizing such criteria as grounds for ascription of pain to another. end p.26

The criteria for ascription of psychological predicates are partly constitutive of the relevant concepts. Psychological utterances or avowals of the inner are (in certain cases) learnt extensions of primitive behaviour that manifests the inner. For example, an avowal of pain is grafted onto, and is a partial replacement of, a groan of pain; and, while an utterance of pain is as groundless as a shriek of pain, it too constitutes a criterion for third-person ascriptions. It is misguided to suggest that we can never know whether another is in pain. On the contrary, we often know with complete certainty. When someone severely injured screams with pain, just try to doubt whether he really is in pain! Self-knowledge is a hard-won achievement, not gained merely by having toothache, wanting or thinking this or that, and being able to say so. Indeed, others often know and understand us better than we do ourselves. The mind is not a substance. It is not identical with the brain. It is not a private space, in which mental objects are paraded, disclosed to introspective vision. There is, to be sure, such a thing as introspection, but it is not inner perception. Rather it is a form of reflection on one's past, one's reasons and motives, affections and attitudes. The third-person pronoun refers neither to the mind nor to the body, but to the person, the living human being. The first-person pronoun functions quite differently—here reference failure, misidentification, misrecognition, and indeterminacy of reference are standardly excluded. 'I' is at best a degenerate, limiting case of a referring expression, as a tautology is a limiting case of a proposition with a sense. Psychological predicates are predicable neither of the body nor of its parts (save in the case of sensation-verbs, such as 'hurts', 'itches'). It is senseless to ascribe to the brain predicates applicable only to the whole creature—for example, thinking, believing, wanting or intending. For the criteria for the third-person ascription of such predicates are distinctive forms of behaviour of the creature in the stream of life—and there is no such thing as a brain manifesting thought or thoughtlessness, belief or incredulity, desire or aversion, intention or inadvertence in what it does. Hence, too, it makes no sense to ascribe thought or

37

thoughtlessness, understanding, misunderstanding or failure of understanding to machines. Thought is essentially bound up with the sentient, affective, and conative functions of a being that has a welfare, is capable of desiring and suffering, can set itself goals and pursue them, and can hope to succeed or fear to fail in its projects. Human behaviour that constitutes criteria for the ascription of psychological predicates to others is not 'bare bodily movement', from which we infer analogically or hypothetically their inner state or which we interpret as action. On the contrary, we see the pain in the face of end p.27

the sufferer, hear the joy in the voice of a joyful person, perceive the affection in the looks of lovers. Pain, pace behaviourists, is not pain behaviour, any more than joy is the same as joyous behaviour or love the same as a loving look. But the 'inner' is not hidden behind the 'outer'—it may sometimes be concealed or suppressed (or it may just not be manifested). But, if it is manifested, then it infuses the 'outer'—which is not bare bodily movement, but the actions and affective reactions of living sentient beings in the stream of life. These are not typically describable save in the rich vocabulary of the 'inner'. Human action is not movement caused by acts of will. There are such things as acts of will and great efforts of will, but they are unusual, and are not causal antecedents of action. There is such a thing as will power, but that is a matter of tenacity rather than a psychic analogue of muscle power. Voluntary actions are not actions, let alone movements, preceded by an act of will. Wanting and willing are not names of mental acts or processes, and 'He Vd because he wanted to' does not give a causal explanation of his action—on the contrary, it typically precludes one. Voluntary movement is action for which it makes sense to ask for agential reasons, which a person can decide to perform, try to execute, or be ordered to do. It is marked by lack of agential surprise, and the agent can be held responsible for it. A reason for action or for belief is a premiss in reasoning. Hence it is no more causally related to the action for which it is a reason than the reasons for a belief are causally related to the conclusion that they support. A person's reason is given by specifying the reasoning he went through antecedently to acting or the reasoning he could have gone through and is willing to give ex post actu. Reasons, unlike causes, justify or purport to justify that for which they are reasons. A person's avowal of a reason for his action, unlike his typical assertion of a cause of some event, is not a hypothesis. Unlike the assertion of a cause, in the standard case of an avowal of a reason, there is no room for mistake. What makes the connection between the reason and the action is the agent's avowal itself. In avowing a reason, the agent typically takes responsibility for his action viewed under the aspect of the avowed reason.

8. The Critique of Metaphysics and Nature of Philosophy The Tractatus programme for future philosophy advocated a radical non-cognitive conception of philosophy, denying that there could be any

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philosophical propositions, a fortiori any philosophical knowledge. end p.28

Philosophy should be an activity of elucidation by analysis. Although philosophy was deprived of the possibility of stating essential truths about the natures of things, these very truths were held to be shown by the well-formed propositions of a language, and arriving at a correct logical point of view would include apprehension and appreciation of what cannot be said but shows itself (including truths of ethics and aesthetics). The later conception of philosophy adhered to the radical non-cognitivism, but rejected the doctrine of linguistically manifest ineffabilia. There is indeed no philosophical knowledge. What appears as such, and what was construed by the Tractatus as an attempt to say what can only be shown, is in effect the expression of a rule for the use of an expression in the misleading guise of a metaphysical description of the nature of things. So the portentous, apparently metaphysical, claim that the world consists of facts not of things amounts to the grammatical statement that a description of the world consists of a statement of facts and not a list of things. And that in turn is just a rule for the use of the expression 'a description of the world'. In so far as metaphysics is conceived to be the quest for knowledge of the necessary forms and structures of the world or of the mind, it is chimerical. All that can be gleaned from these barren fields are grammatical propositions—that is, expressions of rules for the use of words in the misleading guise of descriptions. There are no such things as 'metaphysically necessary forms' or 'metaphysically necessary structures' of the world, and sentences such as 'red is a colour' or 'space is three dimensional' are in effect expressions of rules for the use of words. If something is said to be red, then it can be said to be coloured; if something is in space, then its location is given by three coordinates; and so on. Similarly, apparently synthetic a priori truths, such as 'Black is darker than white' or 'Red is more like orange than it is like yellow' are not insights into language-independent necessities in the world, but expressions of rules that are partly constitutive of the meanings of the constituent expressions. For any ordered pair of samples that can be used to define 'black' and 'white' ostensively can also be used to define the relation 'darker than'. So, if A is black and B is white, it follows without more ado that A is darker than B. If A is red, B orange, and C yellow, then A is more akin to B in colour than to C —one need not look to see. The apparently metaphysical proposition is in fact an inference rule, which is partly constitutive of the meanings of the constituent terms. What appear to be descriptions of objective necessities in the world are merely the shadows cast by the rules for the use of colour predicates and relations. Similarly, 'cannot' and 'must' in putatively metaphysical propositions end p.29

mask rules for the use of words. 'You cannot travel back in time' or 'You cannot count through all the cardinal numbers' look like 'An iron nail cannot scratch glass', but they are not. Experience teaches that iron cannot scratch glass. But it is not experience that teaches that one cannot travel in time; rather, it is grammar that stipulates that the form of words 'I travelled back to last year' has no use—nothing counts as travelling backwards in time. 'Cannot' in metaphysics

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is not about human frailty, but is an expression of a convention. 'You cannot count through all the cardinal numbers' is an expression of a grammatical rule that excludes the phrase 'counting through all the cardinal numbers' from the language. It does not say that there is something we cannot do, but rather that there is no such thing to do. Similarly, 'must' in metaphysics signifies not an objective necessity in reality, but a commitment to a form of representation. 'Every event has a cause' is a true or false empirical generalization. 'Every event must have a cause' is an expression of a commitment not to call anything 'an event' unless it has a (known or unknown) cause. There are no theories in philosophy, for there can be nothing hypotheticodeductive about the determination of the bounds of sense, nor can it be merely probable that such-and-such a philosophical pronouncement makes no sense. And we do not need to wait upon future confirmation to determine with certainty that it makes no sense. Hence, too, there is no philosophical knowledge comparable to knowledge in the sciences. If anyone were to advance theses in philosophy, everyone would agree with them: for example, 'Can one step twice into the same river?'—'Yes'. Indeed, there are no explanations in philosophy in the sense in which there are in the sciences, for the methods of philosophy are purely descriptive, and not methods of hypothesis formation. The purified non-cognitivism of the Investigations has two aspects. On the one hand, philosophy is a quest for a surveyable representation of a segment of our language with the purpose of solving or dissolving philosophical perplexity. On the other hand, philosophy is a cure for diseases of the understanding. Philosophical problems are conceptual, hence a priori and not empirical. They can be neither solved nor advanced by new information or scientific discoveries, although scientific discoveries may, and often do, raise fresh conceptual puzzles and generate new confusions. Conceptual problems may concern novel conceptformation or existing conceptual structures and relations. The former are exemplified by mathematics, the latter by philosophy. The task of philosophy is to resolve conceptual questions arising out of our existing forms of representation, to clarify conceptual confusions that result from entanglement in the web of the grammar of our language. end p.30

Philosophy is a contribution not to human knowledge but to human understanding—an understanding of our forms of representation and their articulations, an overview of the forms of our thought. The main source of philosophical puzzlement and of misconceived philosophical theories is our failure to command a clear view of the uses of words. The grammar of our language is lacking in surveyability, for expressions with very different uses have similar surface grammars: 'I meant' looks akin to 'I pointed', 'I have a pain' to 'I have a pin', 'He is thinking' appears akin to 'He is talking', 'to have a mind' looks like 'to have a brain', '2 is greater than 1' seems akin to 'Jack is taller than Jill'. Hence we misconstrue the meanings of expressions in our philosophical reflections. We think of meaning something or someone as a mental act or activity of attaching signs to objects, take pain to be a kind of object inalienably possessed by the sufferer, imagine that the mind is identical with the brain, assume that statements of numerical inequalities are descriptions, and so

40

on. What is needed is a perspicuous representation of the segment of grammar that bears on the problem with which we are confronted. It enables us to see differences between concepts that are obscured by the misleadingly similar grammatical forms of expressions. For this no new discoveries are necessary or possible—only the description of grammar, the clarification and arrangement of familiar rules for the use of words. We must remind ourselves of what we already know perfectly well—namely, how expressions, the use of which we have already mastered, are indeed used. To be sure, these rules must then be arranged in such a manner as to shed light upon the difficulty in question. The rules that concern the philosopher are different from those that concern the grammarian, and the ordering of rules by the philosopher is very different from the ordering sought by the grammarian, for their purposes are quite distinct. A perspicuous representation of a fragment of grammar will enable us to find our way around the relevant part of the grammatical network without stumbling into conceptual confusion. In philosophy, unlike in the sciences, all the information is already at hand—in our knowledge of our language. The problems of philosophy, unlike those of science, are completely solvable. Failure to solve them is due to philosophers' failure to arrange the grammatical facts in such a way that the problems disappear. Complementary to the conception of philosophy as the quest for a surveyable representation of segments of our language that give rise to conceptual perplexity and confusion is the conception of philosophy as therapeutic. The philosopher's treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness. One should not try to terminate a disease of thought, either by dogmatism or by the substitution of a technical concept for the end p.31

problematic one that causes confusion (as Carnap did with his method of 'explication'), for slow cure is all important. Every deep philosophical confusion has many different roots, and each must be dug up and examined. Every deeply misconceived answer to a philosophical problem that mesmerizes us and holds us in a vice has many facets, and each must be separately surveyed. Wittgenstein sometimes compared his new methods of philosophical clarification with psychoanalysis. Philosophical theories are latent nonsense; the task of the philosopher is to transform them into patent nonsense. Like the psychoanalyst, the philosopher aims to give the afflicted insight into their own understanding and misunderstanding. Philosophy is categorially distinct from the sciences. Since there is no philosophical knowledge and there are no licit theories in philosophy, there can be no progress in the sense in which there is in the sciences. For there is no accumulation of knowledge, no generation of ever richer explanatory theories, no refinement of instrumentation making possible ever more accurate measurement and observation. But there can be progress in another sense— namely, in clarification of conceptual structures, in drawing, refining, and sharpening distinctions, in destroying conceptual illusions, and in eradicating conceptual confusions. However, since there is no way of predicting future forms of entanglement in the web of language, the task of philosophy never ends.

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9. Wittgenstein's Place in Post-War Analytic Philosophy Is Wittgenstein's later philosophy a form of analytic philosophy? The concept of analytic philosophy is neither sharply defined nor uncontested. If one takes the concept of analysis narrowly, connecting it primarily with decompositional analysis, with reduction and logical construction, then one will be inclined to associate analytic philosophy primarily with a variety of forms of philosophy that flourished in the first half of the twentieth century. One will also be prone to associate the movement with a profound interest in, and ingenious philosophical use of, the calculi of formal logic, and, in some cases, in the devising of formal or semi-formal languages to replace the apparently defective natural languages for philosophical purposes. Moore and Russell, the young Wittgenstein of the Tractatus, the Cambridge analysts of the early inter-war years, and the logical positivists will then be one's paradigmatic analytic philosophers. end p.32

Thus construed, it is clear that it would be at best misleading to characterize the later Wittgenstein as an analytic philosopher at all. But it would be perverse to construe analytic philosophy thus. The term 'analytic philosophy' was a latecomer upon the scene, and the Oxford philosophers of the post-war era had no qualms in characterizing their work as analytic philosophy and their methods as conceptual analysis. This did not imply that they were dedicated to reductive analysis and logical construction. Indeed, they repudiated them. What it implied was a looser sense of 'analysis'—the description of the conceptual connections and articulations of salient elements in our conceptual scheme. In this sense, to be sure, the later Wittgenstein was an analytic philosopher—and said as much. For, he claimed, a proposition is 'fully analysed' when its grammar has been completely laid bare. Taken in this broader sense, analytic philosophy continued after 1945 in a new and distinctive form. It was dominated by Oxford rather than Cambridge philosophers, although Wittgenstein's philosophy, transmitted to Oxford largely by word of mouth before 1953, was a primary influence upon them. This post-war phase of analytic philosophy lasted for a quarter of a century. It was not a 'school' and, unlike the Vienna Circle, issued no manifestos. It was united by its conception of philosophy as an a priori conceptual investigation, contributing to human understanding rather than to human knowledge, hence wholly unlike the sciences. There was consensus that the methodical examination of the use of the relevant words is a sine qua non of any serious philosophical investigation. Analytic philosophy of language flourished, as did analytic epistemology; so too did analytic philosophy of psychology and philosophy of action. Paths pioneered by Wittgenstein were followed and refined. But other branches of analytic philosophy, such as analytic jurisprudence, analytic aesthetics, analytic philosophy of history and the social sciences, which had been of little or no concern to him, were also developed, often in a manner that bore the marks of his influence. This phase of analytic philosophy waned in the 1970s, and Wittgenstein's influence declined. Whether the forms of philosophy that succeeded it are to be counted as yet another phase of analytic philosophy or as symptoms of its final demise is something that will become clearer only with the passing of time. What

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is, however, clear, is that Wittgenstein dominated the forms of analytic philosophy from the 1920s until the 1970s, ineradically impressing the imprint of his thought upon twentieth-century philosophy. end p.33

2 #2 Wittgenstein and the Autonomy Of Humanistic Understanding Abstract: Clarifies why Wittgenstein's philosophy has profound implications for the humanities and human sciences. It sketches the gradual growth, from the Renaissance until the early twentieth century, of awareness of the distinctive nature of the understanding involved in the study of mankind as social, historical, and cultural beings. It explains the weaknesses of the traditional objections to methodological monism and argues that Wittgenstein's philosophy of language and his philosophy of mind and action make a unique and powerful contribution to methodological pluralism and to the autonomy of humanistic understanding. Keywords: autonomy of meaning, explanation and understanding, Geisteswissenschaften, humanism, language, language-using animals, methodological pluralism, scientism, unity of science

P. M. S Hacker

1. Not Merely Destructive Wittgenstein was a 'critical philosopher' in two more or less Kantian senses. First, he was concerned, early and late, with elucidating the limits of language. Where Kant had understood by Kritik the delineation of the limits of a faculty, Wittgenstein gave a linguistic turn to a form of critical philosophy. Where Kant explored the limits of pure reason, Wittgenstein investigated the limits of language. Where Kant delimited knowledge in order to make room for faith, Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus, delimited language in order to make room for ineffable metaphysics, ethics, and religion. With the collapse of the Tractatus conception of the distinction between what can be said and what cannot be said but only shown, his later critical investigations into the bounds of sense led to the repudiation of metaphysics, effable or ineffable. Ethics and religion were conceived naturalistically or anthropologically as aspects of a form of life, ultimately beyond rational foundation or justification. The investigation into the limits of language no longer intimated a domain of ineffable truth beyond those limits, which nevertheless shows itself in the forms of language. There is nothing ineffable about ethics, aesthetics, and religion, but a proper understanding of ethical, aesthetic, or religious utterances requires an apprehension of their role within the distinctive form of life or culture to which they belong. The bounds of sense fence us in only from the void of nonsense. Philosophy as it were keeps the account books of grammar, and its task is to point out to us when we are drawing a draft on currency that does not exist. I am grateful to Professor Rom Harré, Dr John Hyman, Dr Stephen Mulhall, Professor O. Hanfling, Professor Herman Philipse, and Professor G. H. von Wright for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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end p.34

The second sense in which Wittgenstein's philosophy is critical is complementary to the first. Critical philosophy is also concerned with what Kant called the 'critique of dialectical illusion', the systematic criticism of the 'logic of illusion'. Analogously to Kant, Wittgenstein was a remorseless critic of the philosophical illusions that result when the bounds of sense are inadvertently transgressed. He criticized behaviourism and dualism in the philosophy of psychology, savaged Platonism and intuitionism in the philosophy of mathematics, and undermined foundationalism in epistemology and in philosophy of language. He rejected the pretensions of metaphysics to give us insights into the allegedly languageindependent essences of things, and repudiated the venerable belief that logic is a field of knowledge of the relations between abstract objects. He condemned as illusion the idea that the subjective and mental is essentially better known than the objective, and denied that the subject has privileged access to his own consciousness. In each such case, his criticisms are not haphazard, but, like Kant's dialectical critique, focus upon failures to accord with the conditions of sense and upon illicit extensions of the uses of expressions beyond their legitimate domains. Because the use of the first-person pronoun does not refer to the body and seems immune to misidentification and reference failure, we are prone to think of it as referring unerringly to a Cartesian ego with which we are intimately acquainted, inhabiting the body but distinct from it. Here we illegitimately extend the rules concerning reference and identification for the use of the other-personal pronouns to the first-person pronoun, failing to see that the use of 'I' standardly involves no identification at all and at best only a degenerate form of reference. We are inclined to think of the mind as a private domain of objects of subjective experience, which each person inalienably possesses, to which he has privileged access and of which he has privileged knowledge. Here we illegitimately extend the distinction between numerical and qualitative identity, which applies to material objects, to experiences—where there is no such distinction—and erroneously infer that two people cannot have the very same experience. And we mistakenly extrapolate from the use of the epistemic operator 'I know' upon such third-person, present tense, psychological propositions as 'He is in pain (believes such-and-such, thinks thus and so, expects, wants, and so on)' to the first-person case, and wrongly conclude that 'I know I am in pain' adds something more than emphasis to 'I am in pain'. We mistake the grammatical exclusion of doubt from a subclass of first-person psychological propositions such as 'I am in pain' for the satisfaction of criteria for certainty, and jump to the conclusion that such propositions are paradigms of certainty. And so forth. end p.35

It is easy to get the impression that Wittgenstein is the paradigmatically destructive philosopher, an impression to which he himself sometimes succumbed and indeed sometimes cultivated. In an apocalyptic passage in his diary of 1931 he wrote, 'If my name survives, then only as the terminus ad quem of the great philosophy of the West. As the name of him who burnt the library of Alexandria.' 1 Later that year we still find him saying to himself: 'I destroy, I destroy, I destroy' (CV 21). This is understandable in view of the fact that the years 1929-31 were the period during which he dismantled the Tractatus and with it the understanding of metaphysics, ontology, and logic 2 that had informed the great

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tradition of European philosophy. But despite the fact that over the next fifteen years he did a great deal of constructive elucidatory work in philosophy, much the same negative tinge is retained in his final masterpiece, the Philosophical Investigations. For he there queries, 'Where does our investigation get its importance from, since it seems only to destroy everything interesting, that is, all that is great and important? (As it were all the buildings, leaving behind only bits of stone and rubble.) What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand' (PI ŝ118). It is unsurprising that many of his readers concluded that his aim was wholly destructive, that what Moritz Schlick had hailed as 'the turning point of philosophy' ('die Wende der Philosophie') was in effect 'the terminal point of philosophy' ('das Ende der Philosophie').3 It is not difficult to defend Wittgenstein against this charge. Even if his philosophy were wholly negative and destructive, the critical task of philosophy can have no terminus as long as mankind is prone to fall into conceptual confusion, either in philosophical thought or in science, mathematics, and the humanities. And since there can be no way of circumscribing the conceptual confusions that may distort human thinking or of predicting in advance fresh sources of conceptual entanglement that may emerge from a culture, there will be no end to the need for philosophical criticism. L. Wittgenstein, Denkbewegungen—Tagebücher 1930-1932/1936-1937, ed. I. Somavilla (Innsbruck: Haymon, 1997), 37. 1

The task of dismantling the traditional conception of logic had already been undertaken in the Tractatus, in Wittgenstein's criticisms of Frege and Russell, who conceived of logic as a science (of the the most general laws of thought or of the most general facts of the universe). But he then continued to cleave to the idea that logic is 'transcendental', constituting the 'scaffolding' of reality. After 1930, this too was repudiated. 2

Schlick wrote an article with the title 'The Turning Point of Philosophy' in Erkenntnis I (1930-1), 1-11; in which he hailed Wittgenstein's Tractatus as the turning point of philosophy, putting an end to metaphysics and putting philosophy upon the proper path of the clarifier of sense. 3

end p.36

However, despite his own pronouncements, Wittgenstein's philosophy also has a complementary constructive aspect to it, which he himself acknowledged. Side by side with his demolition of philosophical illusion in logic, mathematics, and philosophy of psychology, he gives us numerous overviews of the logical grammar of problematic concepts, painstakingly tracing conceptual connections that we are all too prone to overlook. The conceptual geology of the Tractatus gave way to the conceptual topography of the Investigations. In place of the depth analysis envisaged by the Tractatus, he now described the uses of expressions, the various forms of their context dependence, the manner in which they are integrated in behaviour, the point and presuppositions of their use, and their relations of implication, compatibility, or incompatibility with other expressions. Such a 'connective analysis' 4 of philosophically problematic concepts that give rise to philosophical perplexity aims to give us an overview of the use of our words. 'The concept of a perspicuous representation', he wrote, 'is of fundamental significance for us' (PI 122)—it produces precisely that

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understanding that consists in seeing connections, and enables us to find our way through the web of language, entanglement in which is characteristic of conceptual confusion and philosophical perplexity. Providing such a perspicuous representation of some segment of our language, elucidating the conceptual forms and structures of some domain of human thought that is philosophically problematic, is a positive, constructive achievement that is complementary to the critical and destructive task of shattering philosophical illusion, destroying philosophical mythology, and dispelling conceptual confusion. However, there is a further aspect to the philosophy of the later Wittgenstein that is in no sense destructive and negative. On the contrary, it betokens a trenchant attempt to protect and conserve a domain of knowledge and form of understanding from erosion and distortion by the scientific spirit of the age. For one may see Wittgenstein's philosophical endeavours as a defence of the autonomy of humanistic understanding against the illegitimate encroachment of the natural sciences. By 'humanistic studies' (Geisteswissenschaften) is to be understood the range of intellectual disciplines that study man as a cultural, social, and historical being. This includes parts of psychology and linguistics, history, anthropology, and the social sciences, as well as those disciplines that study the cultural products of man, such as the This felicitous term is Strawson's. See his Analysis and Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), ch. 2. Connective analysis is to be contrasted with depth analysis or reductive analysis. 4

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study of literature and the arts. I shall use the term 'humanistic understanding' to refer to the distinctive forms of explanation and understanding characteristic of humanistic studies. By 'scientism' I understand the illicit extension of the methods and forms of explanation of the natural sciences. Not all extensions of the methods and forms of explanation of the natural sciences to the study of man as a cultural, social, and historical being are misconceived. But some are; and so too is the doctrine of the methodological homogeneity of scientific and humanistic understanding. The doctrine of the Unity of Science, vigorously propounded by the logical positivists earlier this century with roots in nineteenth-century positivism and in earlier post-Cartesian mechanism, is a form of scientism. In its most extreme form it is reductive. The envisaged reduction may be logical or only ontological. The heyday of logical reduction in philosophy coincided with behaviourism in psychology and linguistics that flourished in the inter-war years of this century. Logical behaviourism was a philosophical, not a psychological, doctrine. Where Watsonian eliminative behaviourism in psychology treated the mental as a fiction, logical behaviourism held that statements about the mental are reducible to statements about behaviour and dispositions to behave. The former treated the mental as if it were on a par with witches or dragons, the latter treated talk of the mental as if it were comparable to talk of the average man. Ontological reduction characterizes much contemporary philosophy of psychology. It is exhibited by the various forms of physicalism that were rife in the final decade of the twentieth century, which deny the translatability of psychological statements into non-psychological statements, but affirm the contingent identity of the psychological with the neural.

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A non-reductive form of scientism is methodological. On that view, even though social and psychological phenomena are not logically or ontologically reducible, even in principle, to physical phenomena, the logical structure of explanation in humanistic studies, in particular the explanation of human thought and action, is the same as that of typical explanations in the natural sciences. Accordingly, common or garden psychological explanation of thought and action is causal, and a fully scientific understanding of human behaviour requires knowledge of causes and of the underlying causal laws that determine it. These underlying causal laws may be conceived to be psychological or socio-historical (cf. Hume, Mill, or Comte) or physicalist, and hence taken to describe regularities of neural or abstract computational mechanisms. If so, then the whole field of the study of man as a cultural being, hence as a language using social and historical being, is methodologically of a end p.38

piece with the study of nature. The physicalist version of this methodological thesis is currently common among philosophers. Wittgenstein was not, by and large, directly concerned with the general question of the status of the study of man in the humanistic disciplines. His main preoccupation throughout his philosophical career was with the nature of representation, in particular linguistic representation—hence with meaning and intentionality. This general concern led him to investigations into psychological concepts and the logical character of explanations of human action. The results of these enquiries have, and have been seen to have, profound implications for the humanities.5 In this sense it can be said that Wittgenstein provides guidelines for a kind of philosophical anthropology and hence the foundations for the philosophical understanding of humanistic studies. To this extent, his work constitutes a much needed bulwark against the illegitimate encroachment of science upon those disciplines that are concerned with understanding ourselves, our culture and society. Since the achievements of Western science are among the intellectual glories of mankind, and since science is above all a vindication of the power of reason and observation to render the world we inhabit intelligible to us, it may seem atavistic to accuse science of trespassing upon territory inappropriate for it. How can there be any domain of experience that is not a subject for rational enquiry? And is not the spirit of scientific enquiry precisely that of rational investigation? If so, can it be limited within the sphere of the pursuit of knowledge and understanding? Does not the tradition of Western science spring from the very same sources as the tradition of Western humanism? And, if so, how can there be conflict between them? I shall suggest answers to these questions in this paper. In Section 2, I shall give a synoptic view of the emergence of renaissance humanism and the rise of modern science in the seventeenth century, of the manner in which the subsequent development of humanism, in the modern sense of the word, was initially allied with science in combatting irrationality and dogma. In Section 3, I shall survey the development of the doctrine of the Unity of Science and the manner in which the methodology of the study of man became swamped by the model of scientific understanding. In Section 4, I shall sketch some of the dissenting views in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which insisted on the autonomy of humanistic

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understanding, views that were not heeded by mainstream reflection upon methodology. Thereafter,I e.g. by Charles Taylor, Peter Winch, and G. H. von Wright. The following discussion is indebted to G. H. von Wright's illuminating essay 'Humanism and the Humanities', in his The Tree of Knowledge and Other Essays (Leiden: Brill, 1993), by which it was inspired. 5

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shall adumbrate Wittgenstein's philosophy of language and philosophy of mind and action in order to show how his investigations give sound reasons for insistence upon the autonomy of humanistic understanding and repudiation of the doctrine of the Unity of Science. There are forms of rational enquiry that are not scientific, forms of understanding that are not modelled upon the scientific understanding of natural phenomena. Understanding man as a cultural and social being involves categories and forms of understanding and explanation alien to the natural sciences. There are other domains of enquiry of which that it is also true—for example, aesthetic understanding, understanding of myth and ritual, as well as philosophical understanding. These will not be discussed.

2. Humanism, Science, and the Study Of Man The term 'humanism' is of nineteenth-century origin, first in Germany (Humanismus) and later in Britain. It was used initially to refer to the spirit of the Renaissance humanists, who, beginning with Petrarch, revived classical learning and transformed the cultural self-consciousness of Europe. The umanisti revived the study of classical philosophy, literature, history, and law. They advocated and practised the teaching of studia humanitatis, which was a course of classical studies consisting of grammar, poetry, rhetoric, ancient history, and moral philosophy. The name was based on the Ciceronian educational, cultural, and political ideal of humanitas—the development of the human excellences in all their forms, inspired by classical culture. Renaissance humanism was not merely a scholarly movement of retrieval of ancient texts. Rather it pursued the rebirth of a cultural ideal of life—which would inform not only a distinctive vita contemplativa of literary and philosophical scholarship, but a vita activa informed by the ideals the umanisti discerned in the literary, and later also the artistic, remains of the classical world. It is no coincidence that the umanisti flourished not in the existing universities, but in Renaissance courts and academies set up for educational purposes at those courts. Nor is it a coincidence that the ideal of humanitas, of the classically educated man of civic virtue, was reborn in a republic (namely, Florence) rather than a monarchy. The retrieval, translation, and editing of classical texts was due to the labours of the umanisti and the Byzantine scholars who fled to the West in the fifteenth century. Their work established standards of philological end p.40

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scholarship and a concern for studying original texts without the mediation of commentaries that was in due course to affect biblical studies, encouraging the study of Hebrew and Greek in order to read the original texts rather than the Vulgate. Long lost philosophical texts became available in the West for the first time since antiquity. The retrieval of the Platonic corpus is due to the labours of the humanists, as is the revival of ancient scepticism and of Stoic ethics. The writings of Roman poets, rhetoricians, and historians not only stimulated Renaissance poetry and literature, as well as the writing of contemporary history, but provided models for them. The endeavour was above all directed at a rebirth of, and application of, the wisdom of the ancients. Ancient history was studied not only for its own sake but also for the examples of virtue that it supplied in abundance and for the statecraft that could, it was thought, be learnt from it and applied to the present. The study of Roman law revolutionized jurisprudence from the Renaissance onwards. Ancient medical treatises, in particular Galen, were (on the whole unfortunately) influential, and anatomical research recommenced (for example, Leonardo, Vesallius). Classical texts on mathematics were likewise stimuli to fruitful fresh endeavour, after a hiatus of almost a thousand years in the West. Alberti, who advanced applied mathematics in the art of projective perspective, in architectural engineering, in cartography, and in cryptography, held mathematics to be the key to all sciences; Vittorino made it central to his pedagogical programme at Mantua; and, in the sixteenth century, Cardano advanced algebra. Renaissance humanism contributed to the emergent individualism of the late-fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italian city states associated with the rise of the mercantile classes. The revival of the study of the intellectual heritage of the ancient world moulded the conception of humanity that informed the quickening intellectual life of the time. That reality is rational, that the power of human reason can render the world intelligible, that the pursuit of knowledge of the empirical world accords with the dignity of man, celebrated by Gianozzo Manetti and Pico della Mirandola, and is a constituent of the good life—these were important lessons the Renaissance learnt from the culture of antiquity. The free intellect of man was glorified and its employment in enquiry into the natural world and into human society was conceived to be a requirement of cultivated man. Man was accorded a dignity, unique in nature, of moulding his destiny according to his choice. The Socratic ideal of self-knowledge and self-understanding was revived as a constituent of the life appropriate to the dignity of a morally autonomous being (see Petrarch and, much later, Montaigne). It is no end p.41

coincidence that autobiography was revived in the Renaissance (for example, Alberti, Cardano, Cellini), and that the art of biography flourished as it had not done since antiquity. This humano-centrism marks a profound shift in sensibility relative to the Middle Ages. Nonetheless, it was not perceived to be at odds with, but complementary to, the ideals of Christianity. And it gave rise, in subsequent centuries, to a 'humanism' in a different sense of the term, signifying not only humanocentrism, but also an advocacy of the study of mankind, of the understanding of man and his works, that can be gained from knowledge of

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human history and the history of human institutions, and from the philosophical investigations (not distinguished from psychological investigations until the end of the nineteenth century) into human nature, the scope and limits of human understanding, and the foundations of morality. Despite the growing interest in the natural world in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and despite great advances in technologically oriented and applied sciences—for example, architecture, fortification, shipbuilding, navigation, and cartography—the development of theoretical science lagged behind. The two theoretical sciences that were at the centre of Renaissance interests were astronomy, which was still inextricably interwoven with astrology, and alchemy, which only much later produced chemistry as a legitimate offspring. The conflation and confusion of magic and science were reinforced by Ficino's influential translation of the Corpus Hermeticum, mistakenly attributed to the mythological figure of Hermes Trismegistos, and revered by the Neoplatonists. The scientific revolution gathered pace only in the early seventeenth century, after the flowering of the Renaissance was over. With Kepler and Galileo, mathematical physics was advanced and physical astronomy was invented, replacing the merely mathematical astronomy that saved but did not explain appearances. Laws of nature, expressible in mathematical terms, were discovered, unifying and explaining disparate phenomena in supra- and sublunary nature alike. These advances, coupled with new astronomical observations, shattered Aristotelian cosmology. The classical teleological conception of the cosmos was displaced in favour of a mechanistic conception, and final causation discarded from scientific theory in favour of efficient causation. The laws of nature were no longer seen as constitutive of a cosmic normative order, of which humanity and human society were a part. Nature was now envisaged on the model of clockwork—intelligible in the language of mathematical and geometrical physics. It was, to be sure, still thought of as exhibiting design—in its laws, but only in the sense that clockwork does (it was left to the philosophers of the end p.42

Enlightenment—for example, Hume—to reject this teleological residue). The order of nature, as studied and understood by the new science, is conceived to be a mechanical order, not a teleological and normative one. Solar centrism demoted man from the centre of the universe. That was in due course, after some appalling persecution (for example, the immolation of Giordano Bruno and condemnation of Galileo), accommodated without excessive strain. For the insights of the new sciences into the machinery of the universe also glorified the power of human reason to fathom the handiwork of the Great Geometer, and indirectly confirmed man's favoured relation to God. Nonetheless, the shift to mechanistic science contained within itself the seeds of a new and irreligious answer to the question of man's place in nature, seeds that grew to fruition in the nineteenth century. To be sure, mechanism was hotly disputed by vitalists. Some—for example, the Cambridge Platonists—denied that mechanism could even explain the phenomena of physics, arguing instead that spirit alone explains activity in nature—matter being essentially inert and passive—and invoked the non-conscious spiritual substance of 'Plastick Nature' (Cudworth) or the 'Spirit of Nature' (Henry More). More lastingly, vitalists denied that mechanism could explain life, and

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rejected the Cartesian reduction of biology to physics. It was not until the twentieth century that vitalism was given its quietus by advances in biochemistry and molecular biology. The scientific revolution had two great philosophical spokesmen: Bacon and Descartes. Both were concerned with demarcating the proper domain of science and elaborating its methodological foundations. Bacon was the ideological prophet of a scientific technology that would be put to use in the endeavour to ameliorate the human condition. His far-seeing prophecies were not fulfilled until the eighteenth century. For the early strides forward in technology were in the production of scientific instruments, pendulum clocks, telescopes, microscopes, barometers, thermometers—useful primarily in the pursuit of further knowledge (and navigation), rather than in easing man's estate. But from the eighteenth century until the present, Bacon's vision of productive technology has been confirmed beyond his wildest dreams, with destructive and disruptive consequences to both nature and society that he did not foresee. Knowledge, his famous slogan declared, is power—power to control and manipulate nature to human ends. The manipulative craving was ancient, and manifest in the magical and cabalistic doctrines of the Renaissance, in alchemy and astrology. What was novel, by contrast with the esotericism of Renaissance magi, was Bacon's recognition of the need for cooperative scientific research and end p.43

the sharing of scientific knowledge (duly realized by the establishment of the Royal Society), and his insight into the relation between scientific (mechanical), rather than magical (animist), knowledge of nature and technological advance. For knowledge of laws of nature is also the foundation for knowledge of technical norms guiding the technological manipulation of nature. He was also the ideologist of experimental and inductive method. Descartes likewise envisaged a science that will make us 'the lords and masters of nature',6 but, by contrast with Bacon, he was the philosophical spokesman for rationalism in science. With hind-sight, the conflict between them was only apparent. From our perspective (although not from theirs), each stressed different elements of science that we now recognize to be equally important. Inductivism and experimentalism, on the one hand, and rationalist abstraction from the data of experience, on the other, are complementary faces of theoretical science as it has developed in the West. Mere observation and correlation of phenomena without the abstraction requisite for mathematicization are blind to the underlying laws of nature, while rationalist, a priori abstraction is empty without observation and experiment aided by instrumentation and measurement. Just as the Renaissance humanists did not see themselves as challenging the truths of Christianity, but as complementing them, so too the heroic figures of seventeenth-century science did not conceive of their discoveries or of the picture of the cosmos that they elaborated as challenging religion. On the contrary, they thought of themselves as reading the handiwork of God inscribed in the language of mathematics in the book of nature.7 The pursuit of knowledge of nature was a glorification of God, and so the fulfilment of human destiny as conceived by Christianity. Indeed, it has been argued that Judaeo-Christian monotheism, by contrast with Chinese Confucianism, which eschewed reflection on transcendent reality, and with Indian Hinduism, which viewed the empirical

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world as mere maya (illusion), was the ideal seedbed for theoretical science.8 It accepted the reality and importance of the natural world, while affirming the existence of a supernatural order. Behind the flux of experience, it envisaged a single omnipotent intelligence, Creator of the natural world in accordance with an intelligible design. That design is constituted by the laws of nature, which are mathematical. Scientific knowledge can be achieved by penetrating beneath mere appearances to disclose the hidden mathematical patterns 6

Descartes, Discourse on Method, pt. VI (AT vi. 62).

7

Cf. Galileo, The Assayer .

See Anthony Quinton, 'Religion and Science in Three Great Civilizations', in From Woodhouse to Wittgenstein (Manchester: Carcanet, 1998), 3-22. 8

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of the Creator's design that determine the diversity and the dynamics of the perceptible world. Nevertheless, the Renaissance humanists' outlook and the world- view of the new science were, in due course, bound to generate conflict with the Christian vision of the day. The Renaissance humanists' classicizing interests were overwhelmingly secular, no matter how much they strove to reconcile the classical heritage with Christianity. Their philological scholarship inevitably endorsed challenges to the received interpretations of sacred texts. And their intellectual individualism encouraged the questioning of Catholic doctrine that was duly unleashed by the rise of Protestantism. Similarly, even though the new science did not arise with the intent of challenging religion, it was inevitable that it would clash with pre-scientific dogmas espoused by the Church. It was unfair, but sapient, of Pascal to have observed: 'I cannot forgive Descartes. In all his philosophy he would have been quite willing to dispense with God. But he had to make him give a fillip to set the world in motion; beyond this, he has no further need of God.' 9 The tensions were latent from an early stage. They became patent in the eighteenth-century age of Enlightenment, when Deism seemed to the first generation of the philosophes the attractive alternative to a reactionary Church and Christian doctrines. (The third and last generation of Enlightenment thinkers tended towards atheism, and, unlike their predecessors, inclined towards utilitarianism rather than natural law theory.) A far more fundamental challenge, not merely to Christianity, but to religion in general, was presented in the nineteenth century with the advent of the theory of evolution. For Darwin's explanation of the evolution of species by natural selection gave a scientific, naturalist answer to the question of man's place in nature. From the Enlightenment to the twentieth century, science and the forms of humanism (in the modern sense of the term) that evolved in the wake of the Renaissance humanists were allied against authoritarianism in doctrine, despotism in political practice, and irrationality as well as inhumanity in sociopolitical arrangements. By the twentieth century, the authority of religion on matters of fact had waned. The description and explanation of the natural world was the province of science. Religion still claimed authority from its adherents on matters of value and norm, while scientists were, on the whole, content to conceive of their disciplines as value free and of their discoveries as value neutral offerings to a society at liberty to use the resultant scientific knowledge

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and technology as it pleased. 9

Pascal, Pensées, 77.

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As the twentieth century advanced, rifts opened between the spirit and methods of the natural sciences and the humanistic spirit with which they had hitherto been allied. These rifts are manifest today in various forms—in the erosion of humanistic values and the decline of high culture, in the transformation of conceptions of the value of education and its harnessing to the needs of post-industrial society, and in the devaluation of the role of the humanities in education—under pressure from economic forces released by advanced scientific technology. They are exhibited in the growing realization of the mortal danger of the power of knowledge unrestrained by understanding of humanity. They are also patent at the theoretical and intellectual level of the methodology of understanding human nature and the activities of mankind, in the view that the study of man is of a piece with the study of nature. Here too the fault lines are, with hindsight, visible from the inception of the transformation of Western culture by the Renaissance and scientific revolution.

3. Scientism and the Doctrine Of the Unity Of Science Descartes fostered the vision of the Unity of Science, with metaphysics as the root of all knowledge, physics the trunk, medicine, mechanics, and morals the branches. His invention of coordinate geometry encouraged him in his opposition to the Aristotelian conception of the methodological autonomy and irreducibility of different sciences (for example, arithmetic and geometry). He denied Aristotle's claim that each science has standards of explanation and precision unique to itself, insisting instead upon the methodological unity of the sciences. His assimilation of the biological sciences to mechanics, and his conviction that microphenomena wholly explain macro-phenomena of the physical world, broke with Aristotelian anti-reductionist tradition. He denied that the soul is the form of the living body and rejected the Aristotelian conception of the vegetative and sensitive souls as necessary to explain vegetable and animal life. The limits of Cartesian mechanism lie at the portals of the mind. But Descartes redefined the mental in terms of consciousness and thought, the latter including subjective perception (seeming to perceive), sensation, pleasure and pain, mental images, and emotion, as well as intellectual activity and will. This contrasts with the Aristotelian and scholastic conception, which took the mind to be defined not in term of consciousness, but in terms of rationality, hence end p.46

confined to the intellect and will. But three points are noteworthy. First, Descartes's mechanist successors in the eighteenth century (for example, La Mettrie, d'Holbach) envisaged no such limitation to the proper domain of mechanist explanation, any more than did his contemporary, Hobbes. Secondly, Descartes had no philosophy of the historical and social sciences. His obliviousness to the latter is understandable in the context of his times, for the social sciences, as opposed to political theorizing and reflections on statecraft, did not yet exist. His contemptuous dismissal of history10 is more surprising,

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though intelligible in as much as the study of history is neither reducible to relations between simple natures nor explicable in terms of interaction of microparticles. Hence it lacks the explanatory forms of science and its mathematicization, and cannot hope to achieve the kind of certainty Descartes demanded of genuine scientific knowledge. Thirdly, while he acknowledged freedom of the will, he envisaged the relation between volition and action as causal. By implication, the forms of explanation of human behaviour will be nomological, to the extent that causation is so conceived. By the eighteenth century, the discovery of laws of nature had sufficiently advanced to make the idea of laws of the operations of the mind compelling. 'May we not hope', Hume wrote, that philosophy, if cultivated with care . . . may . . . discover, at least in some degree, the secret springs and principles, by which the human mind is actuated in its operations? . . . [Newton] seems, from the happiest of reasoning, to have also determined the laws and forces, by which the revolutions of the planets are governed and directed. The like has been performed with regard to other parts of nature. And there is no reason to despair of equal success in our enquiries concerning the mental powers and economy, if prosecuted with equal capacity and caution.1 1 Hume's ambition was, indeed, to be a Newton of the mental sciences. In the first flush of youthful enthusiasm, he saw the operations of association of ideas as the psychological analogue of gravitation. Nomological regularity seemed as much a prerequisite of intelligibility in the domain of the psychological as in the domain of the physical. The laws of human nature are universal and transhistorical. It is universally acknowledged that there is a great uniformity among the actions of men, in all nations and ages, and that human nature remains still the same, in its principles and operations. The same motives always produce the same actions: the same events follow from the same causes. . . . Mankind are so 10

Descartes, Discourse on Method, pt. I (AT vi. 6).

Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, sect. I (Selby-Bigge, 2nd edn., p. 14).

11

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much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature, by showing men in all varieties of circumstances and situations, and furnishing us with materials from which we may form our observations and become acquainted with the regular springs of human actions and behaviour.12 The idea that there are laws of mental association seemed to hold out the promise of a genuine science of the human mind. That thought inspired a host of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century thinkers, such as Hartley, Brown, the Mills, and Bain. Indeed, it was this very vision that informed the rise of experimental psychology at the end of the nineteenth century with Wundt's introspectionist

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psychology. The conception of voluntary human action that had dominated thought from Hobbes and Descartes to the twentieth century was causal—a voluntary act is a bodily movement caused by a mental act of volition. How the mind could interact causally with the body was, to be sure, obscure—an obscurity hardly unveiled by the short-lived Cartesian theory of interaction via the pineal gland. By the nineteenth century the received explanation was in terms of kinaesthetic sensations, images of which guide the will in generating voluntary movements. Wundt, Bain, Helmholtz, and Mach held that, in addition to an image of the kinaesthetic sensation correlated in past experience with the desiderated movement, there must also be a feeling of innervation or impulse, an efferent sensation of volitional energy correlated with electrical currents directed to the appropriate muscles. Nascent neurophysiology was clumsily married to venerable, though misguided, philosophical analyses of voluntary action. The mental came to seem explanatorily redundant—the real explanations of behaviour must lie at the neurophysiological level. Hence, if there are any laws of behaviour, they must be physiological, and ultimately physical, laws. It is, therefore, not surprising that the developments in neurophysiological psychology in the second half of the nineteenth century gave impetus to forms of epiphenomenalism (for example, T. H. Huxley). Advances in the neurosciences in the second half of the twentieth century similarly stimulated a corresponding marginalization of the mental, encouraging the thought that the true explanation of human behaviour is to be found at the neural level or at the level of non-conscious computational operations that have a neural realization. The explosive growth of empirical psychology in the first decades of the twentieth century included the emergence of both radical (eliminative)

Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, sect. VIII, pt. I (SelbyBigge, 2nd edn., p. 83). 12

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and more moderate (methodological) behaviourism among psychologists reacting against the introspective psychology of the previous generation. Eliminative behaviourists, as noted, treated consciousness as a fiction. Methodological behaviourists eschewed subjective reports of mental states, under the misapprehension that such reports rest on introspection, conceived as subjective perception of inner states. Introspection, thus (mis)conceived, was held to fail the test of intersubjective verifiability, and hence to provide unreliable data for an objective science of psychology. Behaviourism dominated experimental psychology in the Anglophone world until the 1950s. It was displaced by the cognitivist revolution, which was intended to reinstate the psyche in psychology and the legitimacy of the empirical study of 'cognitive processes'. Ironically, this transformation coincided with the invention of the computer, the rise of computer sciences, and the emergence of Chomsky's novel, eminently computerizable, theory of syntax, the rules of which the 'mind/brain' was supposed to 'cognize', even if the person did not. Hence the favoured conception of cognitive acts or activities became that of algorithmic information processing, and the study of the mind turned to the construction of models of unobserved but hypothesized cognitive processes in accordance with algorithmic transformations allegedly operated by the brain. Consequently, psychological theory was not so much humanized as computerized—a trend that cohered with

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neurophysiological developments, on the one hand, in particular with the discovery of the functional architecture of the 'visual' striate cortex, and with engineering advances in information theory and artificial intelligence on the other.13 The social sciences were late advents upon the scene of Western culture. Just as the rise of the natural sciences in the seventeenth century had an ideologist in Bacon, the rise of the social sciences in the nineteenth century found its ideologist in Auguste Comte. His contribution to the social sciences was as negligible as Bacon's to the natural sciences. But his positivist vision of the character of the study of man as a social being was influential. Every science, he thought, must go through successive theological, metaphysical, and positive phases. The several sciences are hierarchically related. The study of society is the last of the sciences to reach the maturity of a positive phase. 'Sociology', or 'social physics' as Quételet had called it, presupposes the antecedent sciences of 1 3 It is striking, but also encouraging, that one of the founders of the cognitive revolution in psychology, Jerome Bruner, is now 'decrying the Cognitive Revolution for abandoning "meaning making" as its central concern, opting for "information processing" and computation instead' ( Acts of Meaning (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), 137).

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mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology. Its methodology is in essence no different from the inductive methodology of the other sciences. It studies the laws of the functioning of social wholes ('social statics'), just as biology studies the functioning of organic wholes, and it aims to discover the laws of social development ('social dynamics'), as biology aims to discover the laws of biological development. The idea that there are 'iron laws' of social change, which it is the task of the social sciences to discover, informed nineteenthcentury social theories, both Marxist and social Darwinist. Mill, who, unlike Marx, was a methodological individualist, likewise held the task of social science to discover general laws of social change. For 'if . . . the phenomena of human thought, feeling and action are subject to fixed laws, the phenomena of society cannot but conform to fixed laws, the consequence of the preceding'.14 At the end of the century, Durkheim advocated the idea that 'social life should be explained, not by the notions of those who participate in it, but by the more profound causes which are unperceived by consciousness . . . Only in this way, it seems, can history become a science, and sociology itself exist.'15 Internal incoherences were patent. Comte insisted upon invariable laws of social change, but also advocated the formation of a new religion of humanity and a new clergy of a scientific-industrial elite to guide history down the paths that he predicted it must inevitably follow. Marx insisted upon the historical inevitability of the law-governed transformation of society, while simultaneously advocating the need for determined participation in the class struggle. Social Darwinists insisted upon the iron laws of the survival of the fittest, while advocating social policies the adoption of which would ensure the dominance of the bourgeoisie. Freud preached a form of psychological determinism, while presenting psychoanalysis as a mode of liberation from the forces of the unconscious. The transformation of Western consciousness, which commenced with the

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Renaissance, was deepened by the scientific revolution, and swept triumphantly forward during the Enlightenment, was meant to liberate man from the shackles of dogma, moribund tradition, and unreason, and to lead to the full realization of the capacities of humanity. Knowledge of nature and knowledge of human nature alike were envisaged as being within the powers of man. Achievement of the former would lead to mastery of the natural world, achievement of the 14

J. S. Mill, System of Logic , bk. VI, ch. 6.

1 5 E. Durkheim, review of A. Labriola, Essais sur la conception matérialiste de l'histoire, in Revue philosophique (1897).

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latter to mastery of human nature. Mastery of the natural world would be manifest in control and manipulation of nature by technology. Mastery of human nature would be manifest not in control and manipulation of mankind, but in moral improvement through self-knowledge and self-understanding. However, the conception of what understanding of man consists in, of the character of knowledge and understanding in the study of man, of the distinctive nature of the forms of explanation in the humanistic studies, became obscured and then swamped by the forms of understanding and explanation characteristic of the natural sciences. The operations of the mind were first envisaged as subject to law in the same sense as the operations of nature. Psychological determinism, and subsequently neurophysiological determinism, were advocated. Behaviourism sought for laws of human behaviour that would explain and predict human action non-intentionalistically. And the demise of behaviourism led to a computationalist conception of the human mind that was modelled on the pattern of the machines invented by man. Paradoxically, the understanding of man in anthropomorphic terms was held to be illusory, or merely superficial.

4. Dissenting Voices There were dissenting voices in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Vico had been a lone voice insisting upon the methodological distinctiveness of the study of man and combatting the Cartesian idea that scientia is possible only with regard to what is clearly and distinctly conceived, in particular with regard to mathematical descriptions of the mechanical workings of nature. On the contrary, Vico claimed boldly, although we can attain true knowledge in the domain of mathematics, that is because we have made it. But we cannot truly understand nature. Were we able to attain that true knowledge of nature that God alone possesses, we should be creating it—'Si physica demonstrare possemus, faceremus.' For 'Verum et factum convertuntur' (the true and the made are convertible). History, art, civil society, and its institutions, unlike nature, are made by man and can be understood and known by man in a manner in which true knowledge of nature is inaccessible in principle to him. For the mode of investigation and of consequent knowledge of the activities and products of man is altogether unlike the modes of investigation appropriate to the natural sciences. It involves fantasia, reconstructive imagination, the endeavour to enter into the minds of other peoples belonging to past times and earlier phases of culture, to end p.51

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see the world through their eyes and in terms of their categories of thought. This is to be done by studying their languages, their mythologies and poetry, their laws and customs, their monuments and rituals. However, Vico's revolutionary 'transvaluation of Cartesian values' went unheeded until he was rediscovered by Michelet in the nineteenth century. Kant insisted upon a categorial difference between determination of events by causes and the 'determination' of human action by reasons, between the laws of causality and the laws of freedom. The concept of human agency, he argued, concepts of moral action and hence of moral responsibility, of autonomy and hence of doing and being good or evil, are essentially bound up with the form of freedom that is presupposed by behaviour that is 'self-determined' by reasons. That in turn implied a radical difference between the understanding and explanation of natural events in causal terms and the understanding and explanation of human behaviour in terms of reasons. But in the attempt to propound a form of compatibilism, to reconcile the inescapable conception of man as part of the order of nature with the equally necessary conception of man as a self-determining autonomous being, he wrapped these distinctions up in an incoherent dichotomy between a noumenal and phenomenal realm. Kant set the agenda for subsequent efforts to clarify what is distinctive about humanity that makes us both part of the natural order and yet also autonomous—a task with which we are still struggling. Many of the ideas that are to be found, chaotically expressed and interwoven with wild speculation, in Vico's The New Science emerged again, apparently quite independently, in the writings of the post-Kantian German CounterEnlightenment. Like Vico, Herder repudiated the conception of human nature as static, transhistorical, fixed irrespective of time and place. This conception had informed the attempts of Renaissance historians such as Machiavelli to derive universal principles of statecraft from the study of the ancients; it was explicitly articulated in Hume's vision of a science of man; and it was shared by the philosophes of the Enlightenment. By contrast, Herder argued that human nature is essentially historically and culturally determined. The claim that man is essentially a historical being is to be understood as implying, inter alia, that human nature is plastic and changeable, moulded by socio-historical circumstances and national self-consciousness. Forms of thought and action, laws, social organizations, and institutions that were appropriate in ancient Athens or Rome are neither possible nor appropriate for modern nations. Moreover, they are not to be understood in terms of the categories of modernity. The mentalities of the Jews of antiquity, of the ancient Greeks or of the Romans, are not end p.52

just phases in the linear unfolding of a transhistorical rationality, stages in the progress of mankind towards the Enlightenment and its ideals. Each nation has its own genius, its own forms of expression, its own conception of reality, which are not more or less primitive approximations to the rationalist world-view of the Enlightenment. Hence to understand earlier or alien cultures, indeed, to understand human beings, their thought and works, human institutions, literature or art, requires Einfühlung, 'entering into' the subject in question in its social and cultural context.

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The idea that there is a special 'Kunst des Verstehen' was elaborated by German theologians in the early nineteenth century, above all by Schleiermacher, whom Dilthey later characterized as the founder of systematic, methodologically self-conscious hermeneutics. His concern with the methodology of biblical interpretation led him to much more general reflections on textual understanding. The nature of understanding, he thought, needs to be fathomed, not only in cases of exegetically problematic passages, because contradictory or apparently nonsensical, but quite generally. For, he insisted, 'I understand nothing which I cannot apprehend as necessary and which I cannot construct myself' (the accidental echo of Vico's principle is striking). A text is the product of a particular individual, employing the symbolism of a language of a people, in specific historical circumstances, giving expression to his thoughts as formed within the context of the specific ways in which he views the world. The 'art of understanding', therefore, recognizes a duality in all expression of thought, its relation to the totality of the language in which it is expressed and its relation to the totality of the thought of its author. Hence hermeneutics has two aspects, grammatical interpretation and psychological-technical interpretation. The former is concerned with the language of the text, with elucidating its syntax, meaning, style, genre, and their roots in the life and world-view of a culture. The latter is concerned with the text as an expression of the individual mind of its author, the product of his individual world-view. This requires a form of intuitive insight, an 'act of divination', a sensitivity to the movements of thought of another's mind, indeed a striving to understand an author better than he understood himself. The self-conscious hermeneutical reflections of the German theologians provided stimulus for philosophers and philosophers of history later in the nineteenth century, such as Windelband, Rickerts, and Dilthey. It was Dilthey above all who made familiar the distinction between the explanation (Erklärung) of scientific phenomena and the understanding (Verstehen) demanded by historical and social phenomena, and who advocated the principle that 'the methodology of the end p.53

human studies is . . . different from that of the physical sciences'. We experience life as meaningful, see the actions of those around us as imbued with purpose and value, apprehend the past as significant, interpret life in terms of categories richer than the Kantian categories of sensible experience—for example, in terms of the inner and outer (mental content and its expression), in terms of human powers to affect things, in terms of means and ends, of value, purpose, and meaning. Understanding the phenomena of human life requires empathetic understanding, knowledge of the historical context and of the social and cultural systems in which they are embedded, and interpretation of the forms of thought of the participants. Dilthey's conception of understanding informed the sociological theories and methodology of Weber, who similarly insisted upon the autonomy of sociological understanding. Nevertheless, such dissenting voices were a minority, and their insights, often confusedly and confusingly expressed, proved difficult to assimilate and to develop. Vico's claim that we have true knowledge only of what we (mankind) create, of history and culture, and not of nature, was preposterous. It masked what was true—namely, that the two kinds of knowledge are radically different.

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His cyclical theory of historical development was patently false, and it obscured his genuine insights into the historically conditioned, variable nature of man. The Counter-Enlightenment voices of the German romantics, with their emphasis on the uniqueness and creativity of the Volksgeist, Volksseele, and Nationalgeist (terms originating in the writings of Herder), led less to a sustained development of a philosophy and methodology of humanistic studies than to the philosophical cultivation of irrationalism, nationalism, and ultimately, in the hands of Heidegger and Gentile, fascism. The terms in which such thinkers and their followers attempted inchoately to articulate the character of the form of knowledge and understanding that they thought distinctive of hermeneutics, 'fantasia', 'inner understanding', Einfühlung, 'acts of divination', 'empathetic understanding' (and, in the twentieth century, 're-enactment' (Collingwood)), were obscure and their attempts to explain them were philosophically unilluminating. Small wonder, then, that they made little impression upon the realist, mathematically trained philosophers and their successors who displaced neo-Hegelian idealism in Britain and neo-Kantianism in Germany from the turn of the century. The most distinctive philosophical movement of twentieth-century thought was analytic philosophy, and in the first half of the century it paid scant heed to the hermeneutic tradition and its concerns. Logical positivism, the leading analytic school of the inter-war years, advocated 'the scientific conception of the world'. Its leading members were end p.54

trained mathematicians and physicists. They explicitly saw themselves and the 'scientific world-view' that they advocated as heirs to the ideals of the Enlightenment. The methodological goal of positivism was the Unity of Science. All science—that is the total domain of human knowledge—was held to be reducible to physicalist language. 'The physicalist language, unified language, is the Alpha and Omega of all science.'16 Not only was the language of 'science' conceived to be unified, but the methods of science were held to be uniform. 'All states of affairs are of the same kind and are known by the same method.'17 The 1929 Manifesto of the Vienna Circle declared that 'The attempt of behaviourist psychology to grasp the psychic through the behaviour of bodies, which is at a level accessible to perception, is, in its principled attitude, close to the scientific world-conception.'18 Carnap contended that 'all sentences of psychology describe physical occurrences, namely the physical behaviour of humans and other animals'.19 Indeed, 'psychology is a branch of physics'. A similar view was taken of the social sciences. 'Sociology', Neurath declared, 'is not a "moral science" or "the study of man's spiritual life" . . . standing in fundamental opposition to some other sciences, called "natural sciences"; no, as social behaviourism, sociology is part of unified science'.20 Brief forays into the philosophy of history (for example, by Hempel, Nagel, and Popper) argued that historical explanation conforms to the hypothetico-deductive model of explanation that the positivists ascribed to the natural sciences. The contribution of analytic philosophy in its early phases to the philosophy of psychology, the social sciences, and the philosophy of history was superficial. The dominant interests of logical positivists and of Cambridge analysts were in the philosophy of physics, the foundations of mathematics, the philosophy of logic and epistemology. Eager to banish metaphysics to the dustheaps of history, and

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inspired by the ideals of the Enlightenment, they assumed that all rational explanation of any empirical phenomenon must have the same general logical form, exemplified by the forms of explanation in the natural sciences. Their vision of the unity of the sciences seemed to them to be a defence of rationality in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding in all Otto Neurath, 'Sociology and Physicalism' (1931/2), repr. in A. J. Ayer (ed.), Logical Positivism (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1959), 293. 1 7 R. Carnap, The Unity of Science (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1934) 1 8 The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle , ŝ 3.4 1 9 R. Carnap, 'Psychology in Physical Language' (1931), repr. in Ayer (ed.), Logical Positivism, 165. 2 0 Neurath, 'Sociology and Physicalism', 296. 16

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domains, which, they thought, could be opposed only by dogmatism and metaphysics. The conceptual myopia of the Vienna Circle was, however, characteristic of the spirit of the age, and continued to dominate reflection on the methodology of the sciences of man long after the demise of logical positivism. It was encouraged by developments in neuro-physiological psychology and by the development of computer sciences and artificial intelligence, which seemed to suggest that we are to be understood on the model of our machines. However, there was a further reason for the impotence of the vision of understanding propounded by the hermeneutic tradition. The failure of its advocates to give a coherent and philosophically illuminating explanation of their several conceptions of empathy, Einfühlung, reenactment, 'inner' understanding, and so on was in part a consequence of their lack of an adequate philosophy of language and philosophy of psychology.

5. Wittgenstein and the Autonomy Of Meaning The thought that man, though part of nature, is also unique in nature has preoccupied philosophers since antiquity. The characterization of what sets man apart from the rest of nature has varied. Some have thought it to be man's rationality, his capacity for reasoned thought, or his capacity for knowledge of eternal truths. Others have thought it to be our knowledge of good and evil, our possession of free will and of a moral conscience, or our capacity to act for reasons. Descartes thought that consciousness is unique to mankind. Others have shied at denying consciousness to animals, but have held self-consciousness, understood as knowledge of our own subjective states, to be uniquely human. Nineteenth-century historiography emphasized the uniqueness of man as a historical being—other animals have a natural history, but only man has a history and a historically determined nature. It is striking that all these characterizations, most of which are true, are dependent upon a more fundamental feature—namely, that mankind is unique in nature in possessing a developed language. The languages of mankind enable us to describe the world we experience, to identify and reidentify objects in a

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spatio-temporal framework and to distinguish the objects we experience from our experiences of those objects. Knowledge of truths of reason is knowledge of the norms of representation, and of the propositions of logic correlative to the inference rules, of the conceptual scheme constituted by a language. Only a end p.56

language-user can give articulate expression to his own thoughts, desires, and feelings, and ascribe thoughts, desires, and feelings to others of his kind, can have and give expression to memories of the past, spatio-temporally locating the events experienced. Only such a being can form long-term intentions, guided by reasons and norms of behaviour, act on the basis of reflective reason, and intentionally follow rules that determine the rightness or wrongness of conduct. What makes us the kinds of creatures we are is, to be sure, also our animal nature—but it is our animal nature transformed by our possession of a rich language, which expands our intellect, affections, and will. It is not so much eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil that expelled us from the Eden of animal innocence, but rather eating of the Tree of Language.21 The key to our nature is that we are language-using animals. Our language conditions our nature, conditions our understanding of the world and of ourselves, and conditions the institutions we create that constitute the societies in which we live. The humanistic disciplines investigate mankind as cultural, social, and historical beings. But we are such beings only in so far as we are also language-users. Our animal nature is transformed by our acquisition of, and participation in the cultural institution of, a language. The phenomena that are the subject of humanistic studies are infused with language, intelligible only as properties and relations, actions and passions, practices and products, institutions and histories of language-using creatures. The understanding of such phenomena therefore demands forms of understanding and explanation appropriate to and dependent upon the understanding of language and its uses in the stream of human life. Wittgenstein was not directly concerned with the methodology of humanistic studies. Nevertheless, his philosophy of language and his philosophical psychology show why the subject matter of the humanistic studies is not in general amenable to the forms of explanation of the natural sciences and why the forms of explanation characteristic of the humanities is different in kind from and irreducible to that of the natural sciences. We shall first schematically survey his reflections on language. A language, Wittgenstein argued, is essentially a public, rule-governed practice, partly constitutive of the form of life and culture of its speakers. Uses of language, and the words and sentences of language used, are bearers of meaning, objects of understanding that are subject to interpretation and misinterpretation, which are meant or intended by A point already sapiently made by Rousseau in his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality , First Part. 21

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their user, and are embedded in the institutions and customs of their social life. The concept of the meaning of an expression is a holistic one—that is, an

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expression has a meaning only in the context of the language to which it belongs. The meaning of an expression is a correlate of understanding, it is what one understands when one understands the expression and knows what it means. The criteria of understanding an expression fall into three broad kinds: correctly using an expresion, that is, using it in accordance with the established rules for its use, giving correct explanations of the meaning of the expression in context, and responding appropriately to the use of the expression by others. That a language must be 'public' means that there can be no such thing as a language that cannot in principle be understood by others. Every language is essentially shareable by creatures of a like constitution. Human languages are shared by members of human linguistic communities.2 2 Human beings are born not with an innate ability to speak a language, but with an innate ability to acquire the ability to speak a language. They learn their languages in the communities in which they are born and bred. Learning one's first language is part of the process of acculturation. The child does not learn a list of names and rules of sentence-formation—it learns forms of behaviour . 'Words', Wittgenstein emphasized, 'are deeds'. To learn a language is to learn to perform a wide variety of acts and activities that characterize the culture of a linguistic community—to give orders and obey them, to ask for reasons for action and to justify actions by reference to reasons, to describe objects or to construct objects from descriptions, to guess, to report events, to explain events and to explain human actions by reference to agential reasons, to listen to and to tell stories, to crack jokes, to ask, to thank, to curse, to greet, to pray, and so on. Hence a language relates to a way of living, to the form of life and culture of a human community. Expressions of a language may be used correctly or incorrectly. They are correctly used if they are used in accordance with the received explanations of their meaning. The meaning of an expression is also a correlate of explanation—it is what is explained by an explanation of meaning. An explanation of meaning is a standard for the correct use of the expression—a rule for its use. Hence an explanation of the meaning of an expression is internally related to instances of its correct application. The internal relation between a rule for the use of an expression Save in aberrant cases, such as the last Mohican, or an as yet unshared, invented language. Much ink has been spilt over the question of whether Wittgenstein held language to be essentially shared or essentially shareable. For present purposes, this controversy is of no importance. 22

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and its extension is fixed by the practice of applying the rule, of correcting misapplications of it, explaining the meaning of the expression by reference to the rule, by the responses (of understanding, misunderstanding, and not understanding) to the expression in use,—which exhibit what counts in practice as correct and incorrect applications. Hence information processing, mechanistic models of language acquisition, and linguistic understanding cannot be adequate. Mechanisms, both artificial and neural, may produce behaviour that accords with a rule, but cannot determine what counts as accordance. Nor can brains or computers follow rules—that is, intentionally act in accordance with a rule.

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'Following according to a rule' is fundamental to the institution of language. To learn a language is to master the rule-governed techniques of the uses of its expressions. To understand the meaning of an expression is to be able to use it correctly. One cannot follow a rule that one does not know or understand. Hence the rules that determine and are constitutive of the meanings of expressions cannot be unknown, awaiting future discovery. Rather they are exhibited in the humdrum, common or garden explanations of meaning given in teaching, in correcting misuses of expressions, and in explaining what one meant by what one said. What an expression in use means and what the speaker meant by it normally coincide. Giving an acceptable explanation of meaning in context is a criterion of understanding. Someone who uses an expression in an utterance and cannot explain what he meant is judged not to have understood what he said. Words have the meanings that they are given in the normative practice of their employment in the stream of human life. Their meaning is not determined by mental association or by any causal processes, and it is not answerable to the nature of the world that they may be used to describe. It is not determined by word-world connections, exemplified by linking words with things, names with nominata, but by conventions. It is not nominata and their language-independent nature that determine what names mean, but the rules for the use of names that determine their nominata and their defining nature. The meanings of words are neither 'in the head' nor outside the head, but are constituted by their use in the practice of their application. They are not determined by anything 'in the head' or by any object external to the head, but rather by received explanations of meaning that constitute rules for their correct use. Ostensive definition or explanation appears to connect language with entities in reality and to endow expressions with meaning by means of such connections. But that is an illusion. For an ostensive definition links words with samples that belong to the means of end p.59

representation. It is a rule for the use of a word, akin to a familiar substitution rule, although the substitutable symbol in this case includes the sample ostended and ostensive gesture (for example, instead of 'black' in the sentence 'the table is black', one may say ' this ▪ colour'). There is no meaning-endowing connection between the means of representation and what is represented. Rather, language is, in this sense, an autonomous, free floating structure. What the expressions of a language mean is not explicable by reference to behavioural stimuli and patterns of response. No attempt to explain the meanings of expressions in behaviouristic terms can explain the rule-governed connections within the network of language, for such connections are internal or logical, not causal, and correlation of stimuli and responses can at most establish external relations, not internal ones. A belief is internally related to the fact that makes it true, a desire is internally related to the occurrence of the event that fulfils it, an expectation to the occurrence of the event that satisfies it as an order is internally related to its compliance. There is no such thing as understanding an assertion without knowing what must be the case if it is true, or of understanding an expression of desire or of expectation, or an order without knowing what counts, respectively, as its fulfilment or satisfaction, or as compliance with it. These are not extractable from a behaviouristic account of linguistic stimuli and responses. That the sign 'V!' is the expression of an order to V cannot be

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extracted from the fact that an animal is conditioned to act in a certain way on exposure to the stimulus of hearing the sign. For the animal may misbehave, it may react wrongly to the order. But that its behaviour is wrong is determined by reference to the meaning of the order, and does not determine it. The meaning of the order is determined by the conventions of meaning articulated in the conceptual truth that 'V!' is the order that is complied with by Ving. It is precisely such patterns of internal relations that are constitutive of the meanings of words and sentences. There is no going below the level of rules and the normative practices of their application and invocation to determine what expressions of a language mean. Understanding the expressions of a language is mastery of the rule-governed techniques of their use. The attempt to reduce understanding to stimulusresponse correlations cannot account for what is understood, or for the ability that is acquired when the meaning of an expression is mastered. Equally, any attempt to reduce understanding to neurophysiological states is futile. For no neurophysiological story can capture the normative structure that is mastered or what counts as having mastered it. For the criteria of understanding cannot be located at the neurophysiological level, but only at the level of normative (rulegoverned) behaviour. end p.60

Similarly, cognitive scientists' attempt to explain the institution of language by reference to a 'language of thought' that the brain 'knows' and Chomskian theoretical linguists' attempt to explain language acquisition by reference to pre-linguistic 'cognizing' of a universal grammar of all humanly possible languages are equally incoherent. For a language of thought would indeed be a private language. Likewise, there could be no such thing as following the rules of a universal grammar (as opposed to exhibiting regularities) without understanding them. But neonate language-learners cannot understand rules of any kind, and their brains can no more know or 'cognize', understand and follow rules, than their brains can hope or fear, fall in love, feel remorse or guilt, or undertake obligations. For these are properties of living creatures and not of their constituent parts.

6. Language, Thought, and Action Animals, pace Descartes, are conscious creatures. They can be perceptually conscious of features of their environment. For to be perceptually conscious of something is to have one's attention caught and held by it, and the capacity to have one's attention caught by items on the periphery of one's perceptual field is crucial for animal survival. They can learn and therefore come to know many things. They can remember and misremember things they have learnt. They can, in a rudimentary way, think or believe things to be thus and so. But their cognitive powers are strictly limited. A dog may now expect its master, if it hears and recognizes its master's footsteps, but it cannot now expect its master to return home next Sunday. It may now think that it is going to be taken for a walk, if it hears its leash being taken off the peg, but it cannot now think that it is going to be taken for a walk next month. It may remember where it left a bone in as much as it can go and dig it up, but not when it left it wherever it left it. For such

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capacities presuppose possession of a language. The limits of thought and knowledge, Wittgenstein argued, are the limits of the possible expression of thought and knowledge. It only makes sense to ascribe to a creature such knowledge, memory, thought or belief as it can in principle express in its behaviour. For it is the behaviour of a creature that constitutes the criteria for such ascriptions. Hence the horizon of possible cognitive achievements of a creature is determined by the limits of its behavioural repertoire. But nothing in the behavioural repertoire of a dog could constitute criteria for ascribing to end p.61

it knowledge or belief involving determinate temporal reference. But, to repeat, 'words are deeds', and the use of language is behaviour. It is linguistic behaviour, involving the use of a tensed language and of devices for temporal reference, that constitutes the primary criteria for ascribing to a creature knowledge, memory, thought, and belief involving such reference to the past or future. And it is the possibility of such linguistic manifestations of knowledge, memory, thought, and belief that makes intelligible the ascription of such cognitive achievements even when they are not exhibited. The possession of a language therefore enlarges the intellect, makes it possible to think not only that things here and now are thus and so, but also that things—of an indefinite variety—are severally thus and so at indefinitely many other times and places. It is the availability of devices of generalization that makes it intelligible to ascribe to a creature knowledge, belief, or conjecture of a universal kind. It is mastery of the use of general concept-words, of count nouns, concrete mass nouns, and numerals, that renders accessible to a creature thought that goes beyond mere recognition, and knowledge, as opposed to mere recognition, of number and quantity. And it is the availability, in one's linguistic repertoire, of logical devices signifying negation, conjunction, implication, and disjunction that makes possible reasoning, and hence renders intelligible ascription of reasoning, that goes beyond the most rudimentary. We do ascribe to the higher animals rudimentary forms of thinking. We may even be willing to explain an animal's behaviour by attributing to it a reason for its thinking what it does. But we cannot go far down this road. For even if we are willing to say that the animal had a reason for thinking such-and-such, a large part of the essential role of reasons for thinking or believing cannot be fulfilled in the case of non-language-using creatures. For a mere animal cannot justify its thinking by reference to a reason; it cannot explain its errors, as we can explain ours, by reference to the reasons it thought it had, for it cannot have thought it had reasons; and it cannot reason from one thought to another—even if it can perhaps be said to have a reason for an action. The possession of a language extends the will and affections no less than the intellect. Animals, like us, do not only do things—as inanimate objects do things—they act. Like us they have, and exercise, two-way powers, to act or refrain from acting as they please. That is a condition for having wants, as opposed to mere needs. Hence too, unlike plants, animals have wants and act in the pursuit of the objects of their desires. But the horizon of their desires is as limited as the horizon of their cognitive powers. A dog can want to go for a walk

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now, but it cannot now want to go for a walk tomorrow or next Sunday; it can want a end p.62

bone now, but not now want a bone for Christmas. Animals have purposes, pursue goals, and choose among different possible ways of achieving their goals. But the trajectory of their will reaches no further than their behavioural repertoire can express, and the objects of their will are constrained by their limited preconceptual recognitional capacities. They can choose between patent alternatives, but not deliberate. There are reasons why an animal acts as it does, but only in the most tenuous sense can we say that they have reasons for acting as they do, and it is doubtful whether we can make sense of ascribing to an animal reasons for doing something that it did not do. Only a language-using creature can reason and deliberate, weigh the conflicting claims of the facts that it knows in the light of its desires, goals, and values, and come to a decision in the light of reasons. In so far as animals can be said to decide, animal decision is a matter not of calling a halt to a process of reasoning, of weighing the pros and cons of a course of action in the light of reasons and coming to a reasoned conclusion, but only of terminating a state of indecision. Similarly, even if we go beyond attributing purposes to mere animals, and ascribe to them intentions—then only in the most rudimentary sense. For without a language there can be no formation of intentions on the basis of reasons duly weighed and considered, no long-term plans and projects, no beliefs based upon one's intentions, self-knowledge, and assumptions about features of the world that may facilitate or hinder one's plans. Being language-users, we are also essentially intentional animals. Our uses of language are characteristically intentional. We mean something by what we say, and typically mean what we say. We intend to be understood in a certain way, and normally will correct misunderstandings in the light of the meanings of our words and what we meant by them. In saying what we say we perform a variety of speech acts, locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary. What we do is intentional in some respects, but may be unintentional in others. What acts we thus perform, intentionally or inadvertently, are determined in part by the words we utter in the context, and by our understanding of them. Hence our behavioural repertoire expands as we master the techniques of using words, and what we do is describable in terms that presuppose the concepts that we possess and exercise. However, it is not merely the speech acts we perform that are intelligible only in the light of the concepts we exercise, but also the vast range of our other intentional acts and activities, which presuppose forms of knowledge and belief available only to one who has mastered a language. The horizon of the intentions of a language-user are limited only by the resources of his language, the historically conditioned institutions in end p.63

which it is embedded, and the possibilities of action he knows or believes to be available in the social context of his life. Intentional action is action of which it always makes sense to ask for what reason the agent performed it. To specify the agent's reason for his intentional action is to give one kind of explanation of his behaviour. When an agent gives his

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reason for doing what he did, he not only explains his action, but typically also purports to justify it. The factors that may be cited as reasons may be of different general types. Forward-looking reasons may specify a further intent with which the action was performed, as when we V in order thereby to X or to attain G. In so doing, one may further specify the goal of the action in terms of some desirability characterizations that render the act intelligible, desirability characterizations that are intelligible in terms of the scheme of values of the culture of the agent. Backward-looking reasons cite past facts or events, and explain or justify the act by reference to them—as when we explain performance of an action as the fulfilment of a promise antecedently made, or as compliance with an order from someone with accepted authority or with a request, or as an expression of loyalty to someone to whom loyalty is owed. Description or redescription of the intended act may give a reason for performing it, if it is, for example, enjoyable, or just, or obligatory. One may also explain and justify one's action by specifying one's social role in the circumstances, given that the social conventions determining the role require or make appropriate such an action. The 'space of reasons', therefore, is also a cultural space. Wittgenstein rejected the received account of voluntary action as movement caused by acts of volition, and repudiated both innervationist and non-innervationist (Jamesian) ideo-motor accounts of action in terms of mnemonic images of kinaesthetic sensations. To characterize a human movement as voluntary is not to specify the nature of its cause, but to exclude certain kinds of causes—namely, such causes as would rob it of the name of action. For a movement constitutes an action only if the agent could have done otherwise. To explain an action by specifying that its agent wanted to do it for its own sake, or wanted to do it for a further goal, is not to identify a mental cause of the action. For wants would be causes of actions only if the want were always a state or event identifiable independently of the action it allegedly produces. But this condition is patently not satisfiable in myriad cases of voluntary action—for example, in writing this very sentence, each word was voluntarily written, written because I wanted to write it and none other, but there was no independently identifiable want or volition corresponding to each word. Contrary to the empiricist tradition, Wittgenstein did not think that end p.64

either reasons for believing or reasons for acting are causes of believing or of acting. Nor did he think that explanation of intentional action in terms of the agent's reasons for acting is a form of causal explanation. Neither the grammar of 'a reason' nor the epistemology of reasons resembles that of 'a cause' and causes. We attribute reasons, but not causes, to people, as when we say that A had a reason for Ving or that A's reason for Ving was that R. Reasons, but not causes, may be good or poor, defensible or indefensible, persuasive or slight. There may be a reason, and A may have a reason for Ving yet not V, and his failure to V does not intimate that there was no reason or that he had no reason for Ving. Causes make things happen, reasons guide and justify agents' acting. Accordingly reasons, unlike causes, provide grounds for the evaluation of action as reasonable or foolish, right or wrong. An agent can do something for a reason only if he has the power to refrain from doing it. But if an agent is caused to do something in the sense in which the ice on the path may cause one to slip, he or it

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does not have the power to refrain from doing it. Knowledge of causes is generally (though not uniformly) inductive, but one's knowledge of the reasons one has or had for Ving is generally not. One does not normally find out one's reason for thinking or doing something. In general, an agent's sincere avowal of his reason for Ving is authoritative, even if defeasibly so. But an agent's sincere averral of causes is not. The concept of a reason is related to that of reasoning. Reasoning is a transition from one or more assertion or thought to another, the former purporting to justify the latter. A reason is characteristically a premiss in reasoning, which may be the reasoning one actually went through or may be given ex post actu as the reasoning one could have gone through if challenged. Explanation of an agent's action by reference to his reasons is not nomic. Specification of the agent's reason does not specify a sufficient condition for the performance of the action for which it is a reason. The agent's specification of his reason is not a hypothesis. Causal explanations, by contrast, are characteristically nomic (or generally so conceived by those who favour the methodological unity thesis), specify sufficient conditions, and are typically hypotheses. Explaining an action as done for a reason, or for the sake of a goal, or in order to bring about a certain state of affairs is not giving a causal explanation. The explanatory link between reason and action is not forged by wants and beliefs (mis)conceived as causes, and does not instantiate a causal generalization. It is, in the most fundamental kind of case, what an agent says (or would say) is his reason that makes the connection between action and what is cited as his reason. Hence it is not normally independent of what the agent sees as the connection—that is, of how he understands his end p.65

action himself. His expressions of self-understanding in giving his reasons for his action may be defeated, as in cases of insincerity, disingenuousness, self-deception, and so on. But such circumstances of defeasibility are essentially exceptions to the rule. That is not because the agent normally has an unerring eye for the correct causal hypothesis that will explain his action. What he says was his reason was his reason, unless there are grounds for doubting the connection he makes between his action and the reasons he had for doing it. Such grounds are not typically afforded by alternative causal hypotheses that the agent has not taken into account, but by his having other reasons (often of a less laudable kind) for doing what he did, which fit his motivational history better than the reasons he avows.23

7. Consequences The above conceptual observations describe but a small part of the web of concepts and conceptual relations that lie at the heart of the characterization of what is distinctively human. But Wittgenstein's connective analyses suffice to shed light upon the flaws in the thesis of the Unity of Science.2 4 Stigmatizing the various forms of reductionism and the doctrine of the methodological uniformity of understanding as 'scientism' is not a form of anti-rationalism. It is not to deny reason the power to understand both nature and man. Rather it is to insist that the canons of understanding in the study of nature and in the study of man differ, that the forms of explanation appropriate for the one are typically inappropriate

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for the other. Although Wittgenstein did not concern himself with the nature of explanation and understanding in history and the social sciences, his philosophy of language and of psychology shed light upon the claims made by the hermeneutic tradition originating in Vico. Windelband's contention that history is idiographic, concerned only with the particular and unique, whereas science is nomothetic, For further elaboration, see G. H. von Wright, 'Of Human Freedom', in In the Shadow of Descartes—Essays in the Philosophy of Mind (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1998), 1-44. 23

It should be noted that the thesis of the Unity of Science is doubly flawed. As argued above, it has no application to the study of man as a social, cultural, and historical being. But it is also mistaken within the proper domain of the natural sciences. This theme will not be investigated here. For an illuminating discussion of the methodological disunity of the natural sciences themselves and the irreducibility of manifold scientific explanations to physics and its laws, see J. Dupré, The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993). 24

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concerned with general laws, is indefensible, but contains a grain of truth (see below, p. 71). Dilthey's distinction between the Erklärung (explanation) characteristic of the natural sciences and the Verstehen (understanding) characteristic of humanistic studies contains crucial insights, even if poorly expressed. Weber's contention that the objects of sociological investigation have a subjective meaning absent from merely natural phenomena indicates an important truth, masked by the obscurity of the notion of meaning invoked. And the hermeneuticians' insistence that understanding phenomena of man as a social, historical, and cultural being requires 'divination', Einfühlung, fantasia, empathetic reenactment of the thought of the past, similarly combines depth with obscurity and exaggeration. The behaviour of man has to be understood, and sometimes interpreted, in a sense in which the behaviour of inanimate nature and much of animal behaviour do not. This is obvious in the case of human linguistic behaviour. The utterances of a human being have a meaning, which must be understood by reference to the rules of the language in question. Human discourse involves both speaker and hearer. The speaker may mean various things by what he says and what he means may be multi-layered and stand in need of an interpretation. The hearer may understand, misunderstand (misinterpret), or fail to understand what the speaker says or what he means. Hence, both describing and explaining human discourse and its upshot, from case to case, requires minimally grasping how it was meant by the speaker and how it was understood or misunderstood by the hearer, and hence too how it is interwoven in the context, in the participants' understanding of that context, and in their motivational history. But the insistence upon the distinctive and irreducible forms of understanding and explanation in the humanistic studies reaches much farther than the understanding and interpretation of discourse. Dilthey held that human life can be understood only by reference to categories alien to the natural sciences—namely, categories of meaning. Weber characterized the subject matter of sociology as 'social action', including in the category of 'action' those acts and activities to which the agent

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attaches 'subjective meaning'. It is doubtful whether the various human phenomena in question are usefully subsumed under the category of the meaningful, where that incorporates not only the notion of linguistic meaning, but also that of the intentional (that is, what is meant), the purposive, that which is emotionally coloured, and what is, in one way or another, valued. Nevertheless, both were sensitive to important differences between the subject matter of the natural sciences and that of humanistic studies. end p.67

Since characteristic human behaviour, unlike the behaviour of inanimate nature, is not mere movement but action, its description requires reference to the manifold rule-governed practices and institutions within which human life is conducted. A man raises his hand and moves it back and forth—the physical movement can be described and explained physiologically and neurophysiologically. But such a gesture may be an act of greeting, or warning, or beckoning. It may be signalling that a run has been scored, it may be part of the activity of conducting an orchestra, or part of an explanation of what 'waving' means—and doubtless many other things too. Making a mark on a piece of paper can be described physically and neurophysiologically, but whether inscribing something on a piece of paper is writing one's name or something else, and whether the writing of one's name is signing a letter, a cheque, a contract, or a will, inserting a name in a book one owns or dedicating to a friend a book one has written, all these and much else too require reference to endless rules, conventions, and institutions of social life, which are not reducible to anything sub-normative, and are products of social life at particular historical times. The characterization of distinctively human behaviour and of the intentions that make it what it is can be said to be context bound, both 'locally' and 'globally' in a manner alien to scientific explanation. No matter what movements a person executes, they can be constitutive of signalling a run in a game of cricket, of conducting an orchestra, or of signing a cheque, contract, or will only if the appropriate cultural, social, and legal institutions exist. An intention, Wittgenstein stressed, is embedded in human customs and institutions. Only if the techniques of chess exist can one intend to play the game and make a move as opposed to a mere movement; only if the institutions of contracts, wills, copyrights exist can one intend to make a contract or will, to sell or to violate copyrights. A medieval knight could not have intended to solve a differential equation, and a twentiethcentury soldier could not intend to be knight errant. The horizon of possible intentions is set by the historical context in which human beings find themselves. Were the situation to differ in such-and-such ways, nothing would count as having that intention, no matter what went on in the mind or brain of the agent. More locally, as it were, the description of a human being as hoping, expecting, or fearing that things are thus and so requires an appropriate surrounding and antecedent history—as describing a human being as feeling pain or seeing something red do not. For these intentional descriptions, applicable on the grounds of behavioural criteria, demand an appropriate context for the criteria to constitute adequate grounds of ascription. An agent's utterance constitutes an end p.68

intelligible expression of fear, hope, expectation, intention, and so on, and hence

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a criterion for third-person ascription, only in the right setting and with the right kind of history. In the right context, such-and-such behaviour is a criterion for the agent's expecting a friend for tea, hoping to be able to repay a debt, fearing that there will be an explosion, and so forth. But if one could, as it were, cut a minute's worth of this behaviour out of its context and antecedent history, then what we would see would not be expecting, hoping, fearing thus (no matter what mental or neural events accompany it). Consequently, the description of the phenomena that are the concern of humanistic studies requires concepts that are not needed by the natural sciences for the description of their subject matter. Although zoological sciences require psychological concepts for the description of animal behaviour, the range of concepts thus required is limited, and they are attenuated relative to their primary application to humanity because the relevant intentional contents are restricted to what is expressible in the animal's limited behavioural repertoire. The concepts needed by the animal behaviourist to describe rats would not go far for purposes of describing human behaviour, history, and culture. For the manifold speech-acts of human beings, and the acts and activities involved in human discourse, including the understanding of the speech-acts of others and the responses to them, can be rightly described only by reference to linguistic rules internal to the rule-governed activities of speaking a language. Since linguistic meaning is, in the sense explained, autonomous and irreducible to non-normative behavioural or neurophysiological concepts, the description of such phenomena lies beyond the grasp of the concepts of the natural sciences. Equally, the identification of distinctively human behaviour presupposes conventions, systems of beliefs and values, and social institutions that are intrinsically related to the behaviour, and requires concepts associated with these conventions, value systems, and institutions. The meaning or significance of such behaviour can therefore be grasped only historically and contextually. The phenomena of nature do not, in the requisite sense, have a meaning, are not rule governed or intentional, are not thus embedded in customs and institutions and in specific situations, and are not actions done for reasons. Once rightly identified, human behaviour often demands an explanation—we may correctly identify the behaviour as signing a cheque, a contract, a will, or a death warrant, but still want to know why it was done. And for that we need recourse to explanations in terms of agential reasons and motives, and to social norms of conduct. Often the explanation will refer not only to the agent's knowledge and beliefs regarding the situation in which he finds himself, to his goals and end p.69

values and consequent reasons, but also to his conception of himself and his role, and his conception of others' beliefs about himself. For often understanding his action requires not only an explanation of the agent's reasons, but also an explanation of why those reasons weighed with him—which can sometimes be given by reference to his self-understanding, or his conception of the expectations of others, or the values that he has imbibed in the context of the society of which he is a member. Such explanations are alien to the natural sciences. They are not reducible to causal, sub-normative explanations, and are not formally homogeneous with the nomological forms of explanation characteristic of the sciences.

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8. Ramifications To ward off misunderstandings, it should be emphasized that there is not a single form of explanation appropriate to understanding human behaviour. There are many different, though related, forms. To explain behaviour by reference to motives is not the same as explaining it by reference to reasons, and neither is the same as explaining behaviour in terms of tendency explanations. Although desires and wants feature in motive explanations, not all explanations by reference to wants involve motives, and the category of conative explanation is itself diverse. For explanation of behaviour in terms of felt desire—for example, hunger, thirst, or lust—is not the same as explanation in terms of purposes and goals. And these too are different from explanations in terms of tendencies. Tendency explanations are themselves diverse, since explaining behaviour by reference to custom is not the same as explaining it by reference to habit, and neither is the same as explanations by reference to dispositions of character. Explaining inaction or omission by reference to physical inability is not the same kind of explanation as explaining inaction by reference to normative inability—for example, lack of legal power, and neither is the same as explaining omission by reference to ignorance, inattention, carelessness, inadvertence, mistake, or accident—none of which is the same as explaining it by reference to intentions, and associated reasons or motives. Wittgenstein did not explore the complex relations between actions and omissions and the kinds of explanation and explanatory factors appropriate to them, nor did he examine the relations of compatibility and incompatibility between different types of explanation and explanatory factors. Others, since his death, have endeavoured to do so.2 5 For example, G. E. M. Anscombe, A. J. P. Kenny, B. Rundle, F. Stoutland, G. H. von Wright, and A. R. White.

25

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What Wittgenstein's reflections show, if they are correct, is not that history, let alone psychology, sociology, and economics, is idiographic (as Windelband suggested), concerned only with the particular and unique.2 6 To be sure, much of history and historical explanation is, and so too are some of the concerns of the social sciences. It is also true that where the explanandum is thus specific, no matter whether it is as particular and individual an event as Elizabeth I's 'etceteration' or as complex, multiple-agent-involving an event as the outbreak of the First World War, it is explained not by subsumption under general laws that apply to all events of a general kind, but by reference to the agents' reasons and motives, their understandings and misunderstandings of the situation that confronted them, their specific judgements, made in the light of their evaluations of the situation and of their values in that situation. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to deny to historians any nomological—that is, generalizing—ambitions, and absurd to extend such a limitation to psychology and the social sciences. However, even nomological insights in the domain of the study of man as a social and cultural being are not nomothetic —that is, do not specify strict, exceptionless laws. The valid generalizations that can be achieved through the study of history, economics, and society are not akin to laws of nature, and their explanatory value is not akin to that of scientific laws. For what underlie the generalizations of the study of culture and society are not the blind movements of matter in space, but the actions and activities of man—sometimes intentional,

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often done for reasons, typically moved by motives and directed to ulterior goals, and only intelligible as such. Statistical correlations abound in the social sciences, as they do in the natural sciences, but no understanding of the phenomena described by such correlations in the social sciences—for example, of divorce rates or illegitimacy rates—is achieved in the absence of further investigations of the beliefs, motivations, and values of the agents, which will render their behaviour intelligible. What Wittgenstein's elucidations show is that the relevant concepts are not reducible to the concepts of the natural sciences, are not eliminable, and that the relevant explanations are not logically homogeneous with explanations in the natural sciences. Of course, experimental psychology aims to discover general laws of human nature. Its main successes have been, and could only be, at the level of the investigation of human capacities (for example, the capacities It would be equally mistaken to suppose that the natural sciences are never concerned with the particular and unique, with identifying the nature, causes, and consequences of individual events in nature, e.g. the destruction of dinosaurs as a consequence of the impact of a large meteorite in the gulf of Mexico. But such 'idiographic' explanations in science do subsume the particular under general laws. 26

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to perceive, recognize, remember, attend, calculate, reason inductively, draw inferences), the neurophysiological structures that underlie them, the dependence of these capacities and their exercise on innate dispositions, environmental circumstances, learning, and the order of their acquisition and development. Here there are generalizations to be discovered, perhaps even general laws. But they do not explain individual human behaviour save in so far as they disclose constraints on what a person can do or think in a given situation. For what is investigated are the conditions under which human capacities can be exercised—not why particular people under specific social and historical circumstances do what they do, the ways in which they understand the situation in which they act, and the reasons they have for doing what they do. To understand the latter requires attention to the specific agent and his unique life, to the way he views the world, to his beliefs and goals, to the reasons that weigh with him and to the values he embraces—which is why the greatest of psychologists are the great biographers and, above all, the great novelists (we understand more about Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina than about anyone we know). Understanding the thought and action of other people does, to be sure, require sensitivity, imagination. 'What one acquires here', Wittgenstein noted, 'is not a technique; one learns correct judgements. There are also rules, but they do not form a system, and only experienced people can apply them right. Unlike calculating rules' (PI, p.227). Only metaphorically speaking does it require one to 'enter into the mind of another'. It demands a grasp of the other's reasons for thinking or doing whatever they thought or did, understanding their fears and hopes, their purposes and values—and, in this sense, to see things from their 'point of view'. Many aspects of historical understanding are similar, save that such understanding also needs to be informed by scholarship, and not merely the sensitivity and judgement that are the product of life. It does not require the

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historian to 're-enact' the thought of the past in his mind, but to understand the thought and action of the past in terms of the beliefs, values, goals, reasons, and motives available to the agents whose actions are being studied. For it requires a grasp of the mores and morals of the times, of the intellectual and volitional horizons set by the culture, of the social institutions and structures that obtained. These are not describable or explicable in terms available to the natural sciences. Nor are the terms in which they are describable and explicable reducible to the categories of the sciences. It involves no denigration of science let alone of reason to insist that there are domains of enquiry that lie beyond the purview of science. Forms of rational understanding and explanation are diverse and logically end p.72

heterogeneous. Science and humanism were indeed allied in their endeavours to combat unreason, moral and political dogma, and the myth-making power of religion. Science is a source of truth, and its achievements over the past four centuries are indeed remarkable. Every source of truth is also unavoidably a source of falsehood, from which its own canons of reasoning and confirmation attempt to protect it. But it can also become a source of conceptual confusion, and consequently of forms of intellectual myth-making, against which it is typically powerless. Scientism, the illicit extension of the methods and categories of science beyond their legitimate domain, is one such form, and the conception of the unity of the sciences and the methodological homogeneity of the natural sciences and of humanistic studies one such myth. One task of philosophy is to defend us against such illusions of reason. end p.73

3 Developmental Hypotheses and Perspicuous Representations: Wittgenstein on Frazer's Golden Bough Abstract: Wittgenstein's criticisms of Frazer's explanation of the rule of succession of the priest-king of Nemi are clarified. Professor Frank Cioffi's objections to Wittgenstein's criticisms are examined. In an appendix, Professor Cioffi's objections to this discussion are rebutted. Keywords: F. Cioffi, interpretation of ritual action, J.G. Frazer, meaning, perspicuous representation, The Golden Bough, understanding

P. M. S Hacker

1. Who is in the Dock? In antiquity the priest of Diana at Nemi, near Aricia, was known as the King of the Wood. His rule was limited by a horrific mode of succession. A candidate for this priesthood could succeed to office only by slaying the incumbent priest, and would then retain office until he himself was slain. The murder, however, was constrained by strange rules: within the sacred grove grew a tree of which no branch could be broken save by a runaway slave. If he succeeded in breaking off a branch (which the ancients associated with the Golden Bough that, at the

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Sibyl's bidding, Aeneas plucked before his journey to Hades), this entitled him to fight the priest in single combat. Success would give him the fearful office of Rex Nemorensis. Frazer's declared aim in The Golden Bough was to explain this rule of succession, which has no parallel in classical antiquity. He set himself to answer two questions: (1) why had the priest to slay his predecessor? and (2) why, before he slew him, had he to pluck the Golden Bough? (FGB 1890: 6). He held that these questions cannot be answered by reference to classical sources, and accordingly proposed to cast his net worldwide. He wrote: recent researches into the early history of man have revealed the essential similarity with which, under many superficial differences, the human mind has elaborated its first crude philosophy of life. Accordingly, if we can show that a barbarous custom, like that of the priesthood of Nemi, has existed elsewhere; if we can prove that these motives have operated widely, perhaps universally, in human society, producing in varied circumstances a variety of institutions specifically different but generically alike; if we can show, lastly, that these very motives, with some of their derivative institutions were actually at work in classical antiquity; then we may fairly infer that at a remoter age the same motives gave birth to the priesthood at Nemi. (FGB 1992: 2) end p.74

In 1930/1 Wittgenstein read The Golden Bough and wrote a series of remarks about it in his notebook. These were dictated for purposes of the 'Early Big Typescript' (TS 211), though dropped from the 'Big Typescript' (TS 213), save for the single methodological remark that in due course became Philosophical Investigations §122, transformed from a comment on anthropological hermeneutics into one on philosophical method. This is the observation on the importance of a perspicuous representation (übersichtliche Darstellung). In the academic year 1932/3 Wittgenstein briefly talked about Frazer in his lectures. A further very rough set of notes and marginalia was written much later, possibly as late as 1948 or thereafter. The complete set of notes is published under the title of 'Remarks on Frazer's "Golden Bough' ". In commenting on them, it should be borne in mind that they are incomplete, unpublished, and not intended for publication. If one wants to learn from them, they should not be squeezed too hard. Wittgenstein makes numerous harsh remarks about Frazer's methodology. Frazer's account of the magical and religious views of mankind, he argues, is unsatisfactory (GB 60). His explanations of the primitive practices that he recounts are misleading (GB 65). Indeed, his explanations are much cruder than the meaning of those practices themselves (GB 69). All Frazer does is to make those savage rites plausible to people who think as he does (GB 60). But he, and they, are imprisoned in such an impoverished spiritual life as to make it impossible for Frazer to conceive of a life different from that of the England of his time. He cannot imagine a priest who is not basically a present-day English parson with the same stupidity and dullness (GB 65). Frazer stands accused of methodological and hermeneutical inadequacy, which, according to Wittgenstein, exhibits not merely intellectual error, but a blindness to the life of the spirit.

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In place of Frazer's historical enquiries Wittgenstein does not, at first blush, offer alternative empirical methods of investigation. He writes: 'The very idea of wanting to explain a practice—for example, the killing of the priest-king—seems wrong to me' (GB 61), suggesting that any attempt at historico-anthropological explanation is misconceived. What then does he put in its place? He insists, as he insists in his general philosophical methodology, that 'Here one can only describe' (GB 63). But how is a mere description of an alien rite, such as the killing of the Nemi priest, supposed to give one 'the satisfaction being sought through the explanation' (GB 63)? A superficial reading of his remarks would suggest that the 'satisfaction' supposed to give quietus to our puzzlement will flow, not from historico-anthropological explanation, but from associating the baffling rite with a comparable impulse in us. end p.75

'Once such a phenomenon is brought into connection with an instinct which I myself possess, this is precisely the explanation wished for; that is, the explanation which resolves this particular difficulty' (GB 72). But how is the satisfaction that allegedly stems from associating a savage rite with a subjective inclination supposed to be a substitute for an explanation of the rule of succession at Nemi? And, whatever satisfaction it might yield, that satisfaction is hardly a criterion for having rendered the puzzling rite perspicuous. It is not surprising that Wittgenstein's remarks should have called forth indignant accusations of obscurantism. In his Inaugural Address to the Aristotelian Society, Professor Cioffi nicely distinguished between the charge of 'limits obscurantism' and 'method obscurantism', the former placing gratuitous limits on the explanatory potential of empirical enquiry of the historico-anthropological kind that informs Frazer's investigations, and the latter allotting to armchair reflection and introspective scrutiny of one's primal responses explanatory powers that they do not have.1 Defending Wittgenstein against the charge of limits obscurantism, one might suggest that he is simply distinguishing two questions: how a ritual developed, and what it means. But Cioffi objects that what a ritual means cannot be entirely segregated from an account of its development (for example, the Catholic Mass). In his lectures, Wittgenstein offered as an argument against the relevance of genetic enquiry that a rite 'may have its own complex of feelings' (AWL 33). But why should that preclude the explanatory relevance of its history? The complex of feelings of a contemporary pious Jewish family at the Passover Feast is doubtless distinctive, but that does not make the history of these rituals any less explanatory of their meaning. On the charge of method obscurantism, Cioffi notes Wittgenstein's remark that 'the attempt to find an explanation is wrong': 'The religious actions, or the religious life, of the priest-king are no different in kind from any genuinely religious action of today, for example, a confession of sins. This, too, admits of being " explained" and not explained' (GB 64). The sense in which the Nemi rite can be 'explained' or elucidated, Wittgenstein seems to be saying, is by assimilation to a ritual-expressive inclination in us. But, Cioffi objects, it is not true, even of contemporary ritual practices such as the Catholic confession, that they cannot be explained. They are explicable in terms of Catholic dogma—for example, the priest's power of absolution is explicable in terms of the sacrament of ordination and the historical tradition on which it depends, that

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F. Cioffi, 'Wittgenstein and Obscurantism', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , suppl. vol. 64 (1990), 1-23.

1

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is, 'just that genre of fact on whose irrelevance Wittgenstein insists' (p. 4). Moreover, there is much about it that cannot be made clear by 'relating it to an inclination in us' (ibid.). One might try to defend Wittgenstein against the charge of method obscurantism by reference to the claim that ritual action is expressive rather than instrumental. Hence puzzling alien rites cannot be made intelligible by an empirical enquiry into their genesis, which might at best explain the false beliefs about the instrumentality of the actions, but only by associating them with impulses familiar to us, such as kissing the picture of a loved one or striking an inanimate object in rage. But, Cioffi objects, this too is unsatisfactory, for the contrast between the genetically explicable and the non-historically clarifiable does not coincide with the contrast between the instrumental and the expressive. The expressive may be opaque without an account of its genesis, for example, making the sign of the cross (other than apotropiacally); and the instrumental may be perspicuous. The expressive lies outside the range of genetic explanation only to the extent that it is primal. So, even if it is true that we can find a primal impulse in ourselves that might, in a different socio-historical context, find expression in a rite akin to Nemi, what light would it shed on Nemi? How, independently of historical enquiry, could we discover that this kind of impulse produced the Nemi practice? And how does recognition of such an impulse—to enact in barbaric form our relation to the 'terrible, horrible, tragic, etc.' (made vivid, for example, in William Golding's novel The Lord of the Flies)—show that Frazer made a mistake in his explanation of Nemi? Moreover, even if some rites are, in their general character, actuated by an expressive motive, not all are. Some are actuated by superstition; and only empirical enquiry can tell us whether a particular rite belongs to one category or the other. Cioffi argues that Wittgenstein's criticisms of Frazer are largely unwarranted, although what Wittgenstein has to say retains its value since he is actually addressing a different question from Frazer's, thus 'characteristically masking an epistemic preference as a methodological thesis' (p. 3). Wittgenstein's question is not 'why Nemi?' but rather 'How do we stand to such practices, how are our feelings and impressions about them to be accounted for?' (p. 12). His interest is in why we find the eighteenth-century, seemingly innocuous, Scottish Beltane Fire Festivals, for example, 'terrible and sinister', and in what that tells us about ourselves. His concern is not with 'How did these sinister practices originate?' nor with 'What do they mean?' but with 'What do they mean to us?' And to this question (unlike Frazer's), historical enquiry is irrelevant. end p.77

In what follows I shall first address the accusation of limits obscurantism in order to see whether Wittgenstein's remarks do really bypass Frazer's concern. Subsequently I shall examine the question of method obscurantism in order to identify the role that associating alien rites with primal impulses in us has according to Wittgenstein. For I think that there is more to his remarks that has a direct bearing on Frazer's methodology and on hermeneutics in general than

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Cioffi allows.

2. Limits Obscurantism Did Wittgenstein think that the aetiology of a primitive ritual is always explanatorily impotent? Despite his remark in his notes that 'the attempt to find an explanation is wrong', I think that his position was less dogmatic than that. His observation that a practice has 'its own complex of feelings' is embedded in a comment that does not preclude genetic enquiry: Frazer concludes that since people at one time were burnt, dressing up an effigy for burning is what remains of that practice. This may be so; but it need not be, for this reason. The idea which underlies this sort of method is that every time what is sought is the motive. People at one time thought it useful to kill a man, sacrifice him to the god of fertility, in order to produce good crops. But it is not true that something is always done because it is useful. At least this is not the sole reason. Destruction of an effigy may have its own complex of feelings without being connected with an ancient practice, or with usefulness. (AWL 33)2 All this does is deny the ubiquitous relevance of aetiological investigations, and to gesture in the direction of a different kind of elucidation appropriate for practices that are not, or not simply, instrumental. Nevertheless, Wittgenstein is doing much more than making room for a different form of elucidation. He is critical of Frazer's work, quite independently of its failure to articulate the 'complex of feelings' of the magic rites he examines. Most of the criticisms turn on the fact that Frazer's account of the magical and religious notions of primitive societies make them appear as mistakes. Frazer typically represents their rituals as resting on false empirical beliefs: See also Moore's notes on Wittgenstein's lectures: 'He gave as an instance of this sort of mistake Frazer's statement, in speaking of Magic, that when primitive people stab an effigy of a particular person, they believe that they have hurt the person in question. He said that primitive people do not always entertain this "false scientific belief", though in some cases they may: that they may have quite different reasons for stabbing the effigy' (M 315). 2

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their errors were not wilful extravagances or the ravings of insanity, but simple hypotheses, justifiable as such at the time when they were propounded, but which a fuller experience has proved to be inadequate. It is only by the successive testing of hypotheses and rejection of the false that truth is at last elicited. After all, what we call truth is only the hypothesis which is found to work best. Therefore in reviewing the opinions and practices of ruder ages and races we shall do well to look with leniency upon their errors as inevitable slips made in the search for truth. (FGB 1922: 264) Wittgenstein did not preclude explanation of primitive practices by reference to false (superstitious) empirical hypotheses of the participants. On the contrary, he

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wrote: Operations which depend on a false, overly simple idea of things and processes are to be distinguished from magical operations. For example, if one says that the illness is moving from one part of the body to another, or takes precautions to divert the illness as if it were a liquid or a condition of warmth. One is then creating a false picture for oneself, which, in this case, means a groundless one. (GB 65) This may be contrasted with the magical healing of an illness, in which one directs the illness to leave the patient (GB 67)—the latter, in Wittgenstein's view, no more involving an error of fact than any other mode of addressing the inanimate. Wittgenstein accuses Frazer of confusing superstition (false empirical hypotheses concerning good or ill fortune held in flagrant disregard of countervailing evidence or on the basis of patently inadequate evidence) with magic, and of trying to explain magic by reference to mistaken causal beliefs that would be dispelled by more careful inductive procedures. This accusation sticks, for Frazer did assimilate magic to protoscience. Magic, he wrote, assumes that in nature one event follows another necessarily and invariably without the intervention of any spiritual or personal agency. Thus its fundamental conception is identical with that of modern science; underlying the whole system is a faith, implicit but real and firm, in the order and uniformity of nature . . . The fatal flaw in magic lies not in its general assumption of a sequence of events determined by law, but in its total misconception of the nature of the particular laws which govern that sequence . . . magic [is] the bastard sister of science. It is therefore a truism, almost a tautology, to say that all magic is necessarily false and barren; were it ever to become true and fruitful, it would no longer be magic but science. (FGB 1922: 49-50) As a reply to this, one might read Wittgenstein's observation that one could begin a book on anthropology by saying: when one examines the life and behaviour of mankind throughout the world, one sees that, except for what end p.79

might be called animal activities, such as ingestion, etc., etc., etc., men also perform actions which bear a characteristic peculiar to themselves, and these could be called ritualistic actions. But then it is nonsense for one to go on to say that the characteristic feature of these actions is the fact that they arise from faulty views about the physics of things. (Frazer does this when he says that magic is essentially false physics or, as the case may be, false medicine, technology, etc.) (GB 67) This assimilation of magic to proto-science leads Frazer astray in three respects. First, he explains ritual actions by reference to beliefs construed to be beliefs in

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uniformities of nature in circumstances in which failure to note that the regularity is independent of the action is wildly implausible. Frazer writes: A ceremony intended to make the wind blow or the rain fall, or to work the death of an enemy, will always be followed, sooner or later, by the occurrence it is meant to bring to pass; and primitive man may be excused for regarding the occurrence as a direct result of the ceremony, and the best possible proof of its efficacy. (FGB 1922: 59) Wittgenstein remarks, apropos rain ceremonies, 'it is surely remarkable that people don't realise earlier that sooner or later it's going to rain anyhow' (GB 62). Secondly, Frazer offers explanations in terms of beliefs in homoeopathic magic (magic that is efficacious or instrumental by imitation) that are absurd. Wittgenstein cites one: The same principle of make-believe, so dear to children, has led other peoples to employ a simulation of birth as a form of adoption. . . . A woman will take a boy who she intends to adopt and push or pull him through her clothes; ever afterwards he is regarded as her very son, and inherits the whole property of his adoptive parents. (FGB 1922: 14-15) Frazer implies that the Bosnian Turks believe that this 'simulated birth' will make the adopted person into the biological offspring of the adopting mother. Wittgenstein objected that, if the ceremony of adoption proceeds thus, 'it is surely insane to believe that an error is present and that she believes that the child has been born' (GB 65). Comparable examples of misplaced credulity on Frazer's behalf and of hermeneutic absurdity abound in Frazer's writings. Wittgenstein need not deny the existence of homoeopathic magic qua false belief in order to sustain his criticism of Frazer. Nor need he go so far as he does in claiming dogmatically that magic 'is always based on the idea of symbolism and language' (GB 64). That is either a stipulative definition or an overhasty generalization. But it suffices for his end p.80

purpose that some magical rites are such. Burning in effigy, he argued more carefully in his lectures, is not necessarily or uniformly based on the mistaken belief that the person whose effigy is burned will therefore die. (Reflect on mob behaviour today!) Rather, 'magic brings a wish to representation; it expresses a wish' (GB 65). And, again, he might have added, such expressive behaviour need not be bound up with false beliefs regarding its instrumentality. Baptismal rites are conceived as purification—washing away the sins of the past and symbolizing a fresh start in the life of the converted. It is no coincidence that water is used, rather than mud or blood. But this is not a matter of false beliefs about the cleansing powers of H 2 O and the material dirtiness or solubility of past sins. Primitive medicine certainly involves misconceptions about disease and healing processes (as well as true beliefs about herbal cures based on observation and experiences). But magical healing involves symbolic connections and ritualized expressive behaviour—that is, the articulation of a wish in the form of a ritual that typically invokes personification: 'With the magical healing of an illness, one

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directs the illness to leave the patient. After the description of any such magical cure, one always wants to say: If the illness doesn't understand that, I don't know how one should tell it to leave' (GB 67). Emphasizing the symbolic character of such magic does not commit one to the view that such rites are never conceived instrumentally or that they are not also conceived to be of instrumental value. But it does mean that it is false that the 'fundamental conception is identical with that of modern science' and that 'underlying the whole system is a faith, implicit but real and firm, in the order and uniformity of nature'. Thirdly, Frazer's mistake of explaining magic and ritual by reference to false empirical beliefs ramifies into his more global explanations of a practice as a whole, such as the Nemi priesthood. Wittgenstein remonstrated: 'It is very remarkable that in the final analysis all these practices are presented as, so to speak, pieces of stupidity. But it will never be plausible to say that mankind does all that out of sheer stupidity' (GB 61). It is unfair to make the point in these terms—for Frazer does not explicitly attribute the savage rites to stupidity . But he does think that they rest on empirical error—as if more careful observation of nature would have brought the Nemi practice to an end! He explains the widespread custom in various cultures of killing a god-king in his prime by reference to such beliefs as that otherwise his soul would not be kept fresh, or that otherwise it could not successfully be transferred to his successor, or that the decay of the soul would bring about decay of the world. Frazer presents these as errors, which explain the ritual murders. But such beliefs, which are partly constitutive of these practices, are not end p.81

empirical at all. They are not based on observations of constant conjunctions in nature, and cannot be shown to be mistaken by an experimentum crucis or more careful inductive procedures. Hence Wittgenstein objects: It can indeed happen, and often does today, that a person will give up a practice after he has recognized an error on which it was based. But this happens only when calling someone's attention to his error is enough to turn him away from his way of behaving. But this is not the case with the religious practices of a people and therefore there is no question of an error. (GB 62) How would Frazer have corrected the savages' beliefs about the freshness of the soul or its transferability to the succeeding god-king? By proving that the souls of the aged are equally fresh and can migrate with equal facility? There is no more a scientific error here than in the Catholic belief in the doctrine of transubstantiation. Wittgenstein has often been interpreted as claiming that all magical ritual is purely expressive, and it is true that there is one hyperbolic remark in his notes to that effect—namely, that all magical action is akin to venting one's anger by beating an inanimate object. This is patently false—both because even expressive ritual is ceremonial, rule-governed ritualization of expressive impulses, and because much magic is, or is also, instrumental. But Wittgenstein's criticisms of Frazer stand firm without this unjustifiable claim. For Frazer's contention that all magic is instrumental is falsified merely by showing that some magic is expressive—and that is surely evident. Moreover, even when one is dealing with

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magical rites that are designed to bring about certain consequences, one must draw distinctions. One must distinguish, as Frazer does not, between action that aims to bring about an empirical consequence by means of production or prevention of causal sequences of events and action that aims to bring about an empirical consequence by non-causal means—for example, by ritually addressing a disease. In the latter case the instrumentality of the action rests on error, although it is improbable that any distinction is drawn between the ritual act qua instrumental and qua ceremonious expression of a wish. (Reflect on the intermingling of expressiveness and instrumentality in much interpersonal action: an insult is an expression of, for example, contempt that is intended to hurt, kissing the beloved is an expression of love that is meant to delight and be recognized as such.) Both of these kinds of action need to be distinguished from action that aims at a non-empirical consequence, for example, killing the priest-king in his prime in order to keep his soul fresh or baptizing in utero to avoid the young soul's end p.82

being condemned to Hell. Neither personification nor 'metaphysical instrumentality' can correctly be conceived of as mistakes about regularities of nature. Specific features of a given ritual are often opaque. Frazer wanted to know why the challenger of the Nemi priest had first to break off a branch of a tree in the grove. Again, horses were forbidden in the Sacred Grove. Why was that so? And it is surely right that a mere association of the Nemi rites with primal impulses in us, with our sense of 'the majesty of death', as Wittgenstein puts it, will not answer these questions. There is, in this case, Cioffi argues, no alternative to a Frazerian investigation into the historical origins of the rites. But we must distinguish here two questions, which neither Frazer nor Wittgenstein did; first, how did it come about that at this point in this ceremony such-and-such an act had to be performed? And, secondly, what, in this ceremony, does this strange act mean? The first question may be answered (with luck) by historical investigations into the origins of the rite (although, as we shall see, not by the Frazerian 'comparative method' of accumulating data from comparable rites throughout history and in other cultures). But the second question, which is a genuinely hermeneutical one, can be answered, if at all, only by reference to the course of the ceremony, the attitudes, beliefs, and justifying reasons of the participants. If they are ignorant of the ancestry of their ritual, then the bare fact of its genesis can contribute nothing to explaining its significance. Indeed, in many cases there may be nothing to explain: this is simply what has to be done at this point in the ceremony. The ceremonious act may be reasonant with meaning, either qua expressive or symbolic act, or as heralding the sequel; but the remote and long since forgotten origins may well be irrelevant to its current significance. (Reflect on the Proctorial pacing back and forth in the Sheldonian Theatre at an Oxford degree ceremony.) The aetiology of a practice stands to its meaning or inner character as the etymology of a word stands to the meaning of the word. In rituals, as in grammar, there is no action at a distance. However, distinguishing the genetic question from the hermeneutical one goes no way towards absolving Wittgenstein from the charge of limits obscurantism in respect of his remark that the attempt to explain is wrong, that even the

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contemporary Catholic practice of confessing sins cannot be explained. But, Cioffi remonstrates, the Catholic confession is explicable—in terms of Catholic dogma and the historical tradition on which it depends, that is, 'just that genre of fact on whose irrelevance Wittgenstein insists'. This is questionable on three grounds. First, Wittgenstein does not preclude reference to the beliefs of the end p.83

participants in a ritual. On the contrary, he writes 'an opinion—a belief—can itself be ritualistic or part of a rite' (GB 68). Obviously, we could not even adequately describe the Catholic confessional, the Mass, or (a less difficult task) the Jewish Passover without mentioning the beliefs involved. Secondly, there is a perfectly natural sense in which the confessional practices of Catholics cannot be explained but only described. Is it obvious that Catholic dogmas about the Apostolic succession, priestly ordination, and the power to absolve from sin explain the practice? Is it not that these beliefs belong to the practice and that recounting them amplifies what is going on (hence is part of its description) but does not explain it? I shall return to this point below. Thirdly, what matters about these constituent elucidatory beliefs is not their truth or falsity, but the fact that they are believed and that these beliefs are expressed (directly or indirectly) in the ritual ceremony. Their truth, where the beliefs can be evaluated thus, is irrelevant to the clarification of the rite. Because Frazer does not distinguish the genetic question from the hermeneutic one, his investigations typically bypass the relation of belief and action that characterizes the rites he studies. The Roman explanation of the prohibition on horses in the Sacred Grove was that the grove was sacred not only to Diana but also to Virbius, who was believed to be an avatar of Hippolytus. Since Hippolytus was killed by horses, their exclusion from the sanctuary was a requirement of piety. Strikingly, these stories are dismissed by Frazer as 'unhistorical': 'Clearly, they belong to that large class of myths which are made up to explain the origin of a religious ritual and have no other foundation than the resemblance, real or imaginary, which may be traced between it and some foreign ritual' (FGB 1922: 5). It may be true that these Roman myths postdate the origins of Nemi and do not answer the question of how this practice came about. But it may equally be true that they are partly constitutive of the rituals as practised in Roman times and are essential to its elucidation and to the clarification of their meaning. Even where 'straightforward' historical beliefs are involved in a ritual, they do not enter simply as historical fact (CV 32). What 'explains' the eating of unleavened bread at the Passover Feast is not the fact that the children of Israel ate unleavened bread (Matzot) when they fled from Egypt, but that pious Jews today believed they did. If a Sinai Scroll were discovered recording that they ate pitah (a different form of unleavened bread common to this day in Arab societies), it need not matter one jot to the contemporary ceremony. And note yet again the sense in which this belief does not explain: in what sense does the fact that the children of Israel are believed to have eaten unleavened bread end p.84

on their flight from Egypt constitute a compelling reason for a contemporary Jew to eat Matzot? Their food was probably mixed with a fair amount of sand too—but is that a reason for sprinkling sand on Matzot? What makes the practice

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intelligible to us is the commemorative impulse in us—a point to which I shall return later. Of course, in elucidating a rite, it is not only historical, legendary, and mythic beliefs that enter the description, but also mystical and magical beliefs. They belong to the rite. But the ritual actions do not stand to such non-empirical beliefs as an instrumental action stands to a belief in a causal nexus. One cannot elucidate the Catholic Mass without elaborating the participants' belief that they are mystically partaking of the body and blood of Christ. And, if Frazer is right, one cannot elucidate the ritual murder of priest-kings in their prime without mentioning beliefs about the character of their soul (fresh, rather than decayed). But, contrary to Frazer, what we have here is no error. Rather—to quote fully a passage from Wittgenstein already mentioned—'the characteristic feature of a ritualistic action is in no sense a view, an opinion, whether true or false, although an opinion—a belief—can itself be ritualistic or part of a rite' (GB 68). Moreover, 'where that practice and these views occur together, the practice does not spring from the view, but they are both just there' (GB 62). The beliefs are no more intelligible independently of the rituals they inform than the rituals are intelligible independently of the beliefs. They are internally related to each other. The moot question is whether there is any sense, in such cases, in which they can be 'explained' or elucidated.

3. Method Obscurantism Is Wittgenstein guilty of 'method obscurantism', that is, of allotting to mere reflection and association of alien rites with subjective primal impulses in us explanatory or, better, elucidatory powers that they do not have? The pivotal remark he makes is: 'I believe that the attempt to explain is certainly wrong, because one must only piece together what one knows, without adding anything, and the satisfaction being sought through the explanation follows of itself' (GB 62-3). This remark is obscure and prima facie obscurantist. To add to the mystery he then comments: 'Here one can only describe and say: this is what human life is like' (GB 63). Professor Cioffi saves Wittgenstein from the charge of method obscurantism by deflection. In fact, he argues, Wittgenstein has no interest in end p.85

Frazer's questions, but is concerned rather with the quite different question of what a certain ritual means to us—why we respond to Frazer's account of the eighteenth century Beltane Fire Festivals as we do, that is, with a sense of horror, an overwhelming impression of the sinister and terrible. This is neither an aetiological enquiry nor a hermeneutical one into an alien rite, but the pursuit of a particular form of self-clarification and understanding of the human condition. For this purpose, it can indeed be argued that a synoptic arrangement of the facts about the alien rite, reflection on what we know about humanity and association with primal impulses in us is what is requisite, and historical hypotheses are not, qua hypotheses, relevant. I do not dispute this characterization of the discussion of the Beltane Fire Festivals, which Cioffi has done so much to illuminate. But I am inclined to think that focusing exclusively on

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that discussion misses important methodological points, which are not only relevant to Frazer's procedures, but also of great philosophical interest. When we set Wittgenstein's schematic remarks against the context of Frazer's argument, it seems to me that the charge of method obscurantism can be rebutted. It will be recollected that Frazer's declared aim was to explain why the Nemi priest had to slay his successor, and why he had first to pluck a bough from a tree in the Sacred Grove. Moreover, he dismissed the fragmentary Roman sources that might shed some light on these practices as 'unhistorical', as if the truth of the constituent beliefs of a rite were pertinent to what the rite meant. Instead, he amassed an awe-inspiring quantity of anthropological material from all quarters of the earth and all periods of recorded history, searching for similar practices involving sacred groves, ritual slaughter of kings, fertility rites, and so on. After exhaustive (and exhausting) surveys (through eleven tomes) of tree worship, midsummer bonfire rituals, the worship of the mistletoe and of the oak on which it grows, totemic beliefs in the external lodging of the soul in an object, and an account of the medieval Norse Balder myth, Frazer brings his tale to a climax in the following passage: the priest of the Arician grove—the King of the Wood—personified the tree on which grew the Golden Bough. Hence if that tree was the oak, the King of the Wood must have been a personification of the oak spirit. It is, therefore, easy to understand why, before he could be slain, it was necessary to break the Golden Bough. As an oak spirit, his life or death was in the mistletoe on the oak, and so long as the mistletoe remained intact, he, like Balder, could not die. To slay him, therefore, it was necessary to break the mistletoe, and probably, as in the case of Balder, to throw it at him. And to complete the parallel, it is only necessary to suppose that the King of the Wood was formerly burned, dead or end p.86

alive, at the midsummer fire-festival which, as we have seen, was annually celebrated in the Arician grove. The perpetual fire which burned in the grove . . . was probably fed with the sacred oak-wood; and thus it would be in a great fire of oak that the King of the Wood formerly met his end. At a later time . . . his annual tenure of office was lengthened or shortened, as the case might be, by the rule which allowed him to live so long as he could prove his divine right by the strong hand. But he only escaped the fire to fall by the sword. (FGB 1922: 703-4) Nothing but a thin tissue of analogies and groundless conjectures supports this detective work. There is no evidence for midsummer fire festivals at Aricia, let alone for any ancient burning of the Nemi priest. There is no evidence that the sacred tree off which a bough had to be broken was an oak, and the only ground for supposing that the Golden Bough was a mistletoe is that Virgil, in the Aeneid, compares the Golden Bough that Aeneas plucked to a mistletoe—to which Frazer responded: 'the inference is almost inevitable that the Golden Bough was nothing but the mistletoe seen through the haze of poetry or of popular superstition' (FGB 1922: 703). There is no known connection between the Nemi rite and the Balder

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myth (a thousand or more years later) and no reason for connecting the Balder myth with the ritual burning of a priest-king (Balder, according to the legend, was given the customary funeral rite for Norse heroes of cremation on a longship). In the preface to the 1922 edition, Frazer noted that further evidence of ritual slaughter of kings has come to light, so that it is no longer possible to regard the rule of succession to the priesthood of Diana at Aricia as exceptional; it clearly exemplifies a widespread institution, of which the most numerous and the most similar cases have thus far been found in Africa. How far the facts point to an early influence of Africa on Italy or even to the existence of an African population in Southern Europe, I do not presume to say. (FGB 1922: pp. vi-vii) This remark displays some awareness that the thin analogies between the diverse practices he notes support his historical conjectures only to the extent that a genuine historical connection can be traced. This Frazer patently fails to do. But there was another consideration that was never far from Frazer's mind and that informed the 'comparative method' in anthropology. This was an extrapolation from the Darwinian theory of evolution to social development. If there are general laws of societal development analogous to laws of the development of species, then 'missing links' in the chain of development of one society and its institutions can be inferred from analogous chains in development in other societies. This supposition, long since rejected, is prominent in Frazer's reasoning and was derived from his reading of Spencer and Tylor. end p.87

The most interesting feature about Wittgenstein's response to Frazer is not that he declares Frazer's hypotheses to be implausible or not proven. He thinks that something has been achieved by Frazer's vast assemblage of facts, though not what Frazer fancied. He observes correctly that when Frazer begins by telling us the story of the King of the Wood at Nemi, he does this in a tone which shows that he feels and wants us to feel, that something strange and dreadful is happening. But the question 'Why does this happen?' is properly answered by saying: Because it is dreadful. That is, the same thing that accounts for the fact that this incident strikes us as dreadful, magnificent, horrible, tragic, etc., as anything but trivial and insignificant, it is that which has called this incident to life. (GB 63) The remark is insightful, for Wittgenstein's sensitivity to Frazer's tone was accurate, as is evident nor merely from reading the opening pages of The Golden Bough, but from a letter Frazer wrote to George Macmillan, his publisher, delineating the 'plot' of the book: 'By an application of the comparative method I believe that I can make it probable that the priest represented in his person the god of the grove—Virbius—and that his slaughter was regarded as the death of the god. This raises the question of the meaning of a widespread custom of killing men and animals regarded as divine.' 3 Evidently Frazer was concerned with the meaning of the ritual killing and with how it was regarded by its participants. The moot question is whether these hermeneutical questions could ever be answered by Frazer's comparative method, especially in view of his dismissal of Roman

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sources as 'unhistorical'. Wittgenstein's response is the highly contentious remark quoted above the 'the attempt to explain is certainly wrong, because one must only correctly piece together what one knows, without adding anything, and the satisfaction being sought through the explanation follows of itself' (GB 62-3). It might be thought (as Cioffi suggests) that the allusion to 'what we know' refers to what we know about ourselves and the human condition, about our ritualizing instincts and primal responses to elemental features of our lives. This is mistaken, although it is true that Wittgenstein thought these facts to be relevant to the kind of understanding he sought. But they come in at a later stage. What has to be put together in the right way is a judicious selection of Frazer's data. But it should not be put together to yield a highly implausible developmental Quoted in R. Ackerman, J. G. Frazer: His Life and Work (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 95.

3

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hypothesis. Wittgenstein's apparently obscurantist remark at the beginning of his notes should be linked with his later observations on a perspicuous representation: 'The historical explanation, the explanation as a development hypothesis, is only one way of assembling the data—of their synopsis. It is just as possible to see the data in their relation to one another and to embrace them in a general picture without putting it in the form of an hypothesis about temporal development' (GB 69). There is indeed a pattern, or array of patterns, in Frazer's data. One is tempted, Wittgenstein remarks, to respond to Frazer's tales by quoting from Goethe's poem. 'The Metamorphosis of Plants': Alle Gestalten sind ähnlich, und keine gleichet der andern Und so deutet das Chor auf ein geheimes Gesetz, Auf ein heiliges Rätsel. (All the shapes are similar, yet none the same And thus the chorus points to a secret Law, To a sacred riddle.) The 'secret law' that Goethe thought he discerned in the morphology of plants was exhibited in the idea of the primal-plant (the Urpflanze). Wittgenstein, like Schiller,4 thought that the Urpflanze was not a biological hypothesis, but an organizational schema for botanical typology—hence a form of representation rather than an evolutionary conjecture concerning the development of plants. In the case of Frazer's anthropological data, Wittgenstein notes, one can represent the 'secret law'—the pattern of formal similarities and analogies—by means of a developmental hypothesis (as Frazer did) or, analogously to Goethe's schema of a plant (the Urpflanze), by means of a schema of a religious ceremony (though he gives no hint as to what such a schema might be). But one can also represent the 'law' by means of an arrangement of the data alone in a perspicuous representation (übersichtliche Darstellung). The concept of a perspicuous representation is of fundamental importance, Wittgenstein insists, for it earmarks the form of our representation of the data—a form that brings about the understanding that consists in seeing the connections. Hence the importance of finding connecting links—not as missing elements in a law governing a

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developmental sequence, but rather to direct the attention to the similarity, the relatedness of the facts. As one might illustrate an internal relation of a circle to an ellipse by gradually converting an See Schiller's notorious response to Goethe's explanation of his theory: 'that is an idea, not an experience.' 4

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ellipse into a circle; but not in order to assert that a certain ellipse actually, historically, had originated from a circle (developmental hypothesis), but only in order to sharpen our eye for a formal connection. But I can also see the developmental hypothesis as nothing more, as the clothing of a formal connection. (GB 69-70) What Wittgenstein is advocating is not an obscurantist jettisoning of anthropological data on the grounds that it is irrelevant to any hermeneutic purpose. On the contrary, it is relevant, but not as a flimsy analogical basis for a historical hypothesis concerning false beliefs that gave rise to magic conceived as proto-science. Rather, Frazer's collection of facts is relevant to an elucidatory enterprise—an arrangement of the data that will display the specific ceremonial, ritual physiognomy of a given savage practice against the backcloth of whole families of analogous rituals. Indeed, up to a point it could be argued that this is what Frazer himself does, for one can see his developmental hypotheses as no more than 'the clothing of a formal connection'—that is, in so far as his 'explanations' are convincing, it is not because of their historicity. Wittgenstein is advocating a quite different principle of ordering from Frazer's developmental one. It should reveal patterns of affinities and differences of ceremonious expression such as the 'hot' or 'cold' (but not 'lukewarm') character of acts that manifest piety (for example, that everyone must touch a sacred object or no one, that the god-king can be seen in public only at night or only at noon). It will make clear similarities and dissimilarities of modes of personification, of forms of symbolic reflection of the macrocosm in the microcosm of a ritual or even in the person of the god-king, and analogies and disanalogies in the ritualized response to that which primitive man everywhere finds impressive, awesome, or sacred. Such a 'perspicuous representation' of the data will, Wittgenstein intimates, be analogous to Spengler's presentation of the life cycles of different cultures, which was intended to illuminate the formal relations between their phases, conceived in terms of rise, maturation, and decline (on analogy with human life) or the pattern of interwoven conceptions of space, time, and number (and hence too of music and architecture) that characterize a culture. A similar conception of a principle of ordering is evident in Paul Ernst's discussion, in his Nachwort to Grimm's Kinder und Hausmärchen, of the inner character of folk tales. And Wittgenstein goes so far as to suggest that this conception of elucidatory, non-hypothetical ordering is a peculiar way of looking at phenomena, a kind of Weltanschauung characteristic of (some) thinkers in the early twentieth century (that is, his times) in contrast with typical nineteenth-century positivist ways of looking at phenomena in evolutionary,

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developmental terms. Most importantly of all, from a philosophical point of view, it informs Wittgenstein's own revolutionary, and revolution in, philosophical method. Wittgenstein insisted, both in his remarks on Frazer's anthropology and even more notoriously in his methodological observations on philosophy, that there is an important sense in which presentation of data in a perspicuous representation does not explain. In the notes on Frazer he wrote: 'The religious actions, or the religious life, of the priestking are no different in kind from any genuinely religious action of today, for example, a confession of sins. This, too, admits of being " explained" and not explained' (GB 64). I have suggested, contrary to Cioffi's argument, that Wittgenstein was not ruling out as irrelevant a description of Catholic beliefs concerning the ceremony and rituals of confession, even though their historical origins, if unknown to the participants in these rituals, are irrelevant to their understanding. Why then does Wittgenstein insist that there is a sense in which such hermeneutical endeavour does not explain? Specifying the beliefs that belong to a ritual is not akin to specifying a belief in a causal nexus that makes an instrumental action intelligible and representable in a practical syllogism. Once the connection of belief and ritual action has been spelt out in a description, the participants' reasons for acting as they do—the only reasons that can render the action intelligible—have been given. And there is no further explanation. Yet, even though beliefs in the Apostolic succession and sacrament of ordination with its consequent conferral of power of absolution are constitutive reasons—they may well remain opaque. To an 'outsider' the participants' reasons are not compelling. He may well be puzzled why these features, these beliefs, are reasons. Someone blind to the confessional impulse will not understand the practice whatever he is told. (And if he is told that it is engaged in because Catholics generally feel much better after confession, he will not have understood but misunderstood the practice.) Reflect on the much simpler and familiar British practice of wearing artificial poppies in one's buttonhole on Armistice Day! Why is this done? Because poppies grew in Flanders in 1914. Is that a reason for wearing poppies now? Someone blind to the commemorative impulse and the various forms it takes would find the practice opaque. (There was mud in Flanders too, but that is no reason for muddying one's boots on Armistice Day!) Hence Wittgenstein's remark: 'Here one can only describe and say: that is what human life is like' (GB 63). This, far from being obscurantist, earmarks a distinctive and deep feature of hermeneutics. It is at this point, and not earlier, as Cioffi suggested, that end p.91

Wittgenstein invokes our primal inclinations, symbolizing propensities and responses to elemental experience, not as a substitute for articulating the constituent beliefs of a practice (where they are known), but as a condition for their intelligibility. Invoking our primal inclinations does not make the work of giving a perspicuous representation of Frazer's material otiose. On the contrary, it is this that makes the appropriate arrangement of the data illuminating. If Frazer's explanations, Wittgenstein observes, 'did not in the final analysis appeal to a tendency in ourselves, they would not really be explanations' (GB 66). In the

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mass of anthropological stories: It is a multiplicity of faces with common features which continually emerges here and there. And one would like to draw lines connecting these common ingredients. But then one part of our account would still be missing, namely, that which brings this picture into connection with our own feelings and thoughts. This part gives the account its depth. (GB 74) An arrangement of Frazer's data—whether in the guise of a developmental hypothesis that masks an array of formal connections or in the form of a perspicuous representation that explicitly makes these formal connections—will only be explanatory, that is, elucidatory, to the extent that the rituals can be seen as symbolic, ritualized, expressive behaviour that articulates, in the framework of mythic, magical, mystical, or religious belief, primal impulses and responses to the human condition. The 'appeal to a tendency in ourselves' is a condition of our finding the symbolism of ritual, the 'extremely developed gesture-language' intelligible. And it is equally a condition of our being able to grasp, to whatever extent we can, the beliefs that are partly constitutive of a rite as reasons for the ritual action. If 'the common behaviour of mankind is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language' (PI §206), then the common wonder of mankind at the rain, thunderstorms, the phases of the moon, the changing seasons, the way in which animals are similar to and different from one another and in relation to man, the phenomenon of death, birth, and sexual life, in short, everything we observe around us year in year out. (GB 66-7) and the forms of impulse, symbolic and expressive, to which it gives rise in us is the point of reference for rendering intelligible the meaning of magical rites of primitive societies. For a culture that lacked a sense of wonder, that was not impressed by lightning and thunder, dawn and dusk, love and hatred, and so on and so forth, would find the symbolic rites and beliefs of magic wholly unintelligible, and would perhaps think to account for them, as Frazer did, simply in terms of erroneous proto-scientific end p.92

beliefs. This claim is no method obscurantism, but a methodological observation about the presuppositions of one form of hermeneutic endeavour.

4. Blindness to the Life of the Spirit Frazer, Wittgenstein asserted, merely makes a practice plausible to people who think as he does—who are blind to the symbolism of ritual and are lacking in, or lack awareness of, the ceremonial impulse to give expression to what is awesome, wondrous, terrible, tragic in human experience. Frazer, like Renan, whose work inspired The Golden Bough,5 thought that primitive man was impressed by the forces of nature because he could not explain them (GB 67). Renan, in the same spirit as Frazer, wrote: 'Birth, sickness, death, madness, catalepsy, sleep, dreams, all made an immense impression and, even nowadays,

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only a few have the gift of seeing clearly that these phenomena have causes within our constitution.' 6 Against this Wittgenstein remonstrates: (1) These phenomena are not objects of wonder because they are unusual. And if we do not wonder at, say, lightning, it is not because it is more commonplace today. (2) It is false that primitive man could not help wondering at them—'Or is it being assumed that men, as it were, suddenly woke up and, noticing for the first time these things that had always been there, were understandably amazed?' (CV 5). To be sure, such wonderment arose at some phase in human history—not that primitive man suddenly became aware of thunder and lightning for the first time, but rather that such familiar things began to arouse wonder. But, Wittgenstein remonstrated, this has nothing to do with being primitive. It is rather an awakening of the human spirit. (And it is evident that Wittgenstein thought that the lack of wonder in a culture—as in ours—betokens spiritual impoverishment.) (3) In so far as a phenomenon is found to be impressive, mysterious, or wonderful—such as fire or the similarity of fire to the sun (GB 67)—a scientific explanation does not, as such, make it any the less impressive or wonderful. But it may well be true that the reductive spirit in which science is conducted today and by which Frazer and Renan were infected is inimical to a sense of wonder. Frazer read Renan's drama La Prde Némi in 1886, the year in which the idea of investigating the Nemi rite occurred to him. In a much later address to the Ernest Renan Society, Frazer said that he felt closer to Renan as man and thinker than to any other French writer or scholar (see Ackerman, Frazer , 93). 5

6

E. Renan, History of the People of Israel, vol. i, ch. 3, quoted in CV 5.

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Postscript In his paper, 'Explanation and Self-Clarification in Frazer', Professor Cioffi replied to the above discussion. Some of his criticisms betray misunderstandings of my argument. To avert such misapprehension, I should like to add a few further elucidatory remarks. Professor Cioffi contends that I am guilty of equivocation in equating the 'significance' of a ritual with its 'current significance'.7 For I argued that, if the participants in a ritual are ignorant of the ancestry of their ritual, then the bare fact of its genesis can contribute nothing to explaining its significance (p.83). But, Professor Cioffi remonstrates, does this not overlook Tyler's distinction between 'form and meaning', on the one hand, and 'signification', on the other, and the problem set us by 'time honoured religious customs whose form has been faithfully and even servilely kept up while their nature has often undergone transformation'. Tyler's rationale for enquiry into origins is that the ethnographer, who brings together examples of a ceremony from different stages of a culture, can often give a more rational account of it than the priest, to whom a special signification, sometimes very unlike the original one, has become a matter of orthodoxy.8 So, Professor Cioffi suggests, the superstitious practice of knocking on wood is genetically explicable in terms of an ancient belief that knocking on wood summoned the protective, benevolent intervention of the dryad who lived in the tree from which the wood knocked on came. This is unknown to most of those who continue the superstitious practice, but, Professor Cioffi avers:

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Would this not confer intelligibility on the practice in spite of its remoteness from its current significance in Hacker's sense? Don't we now understand something which previous to the discovery of its origins we did not understand? [It is] arbitrary to exclude the only genetically explicable features of a practice from its meaning, to reduce significance to significance for the current practitioners of the rite . . . It seems to me that the only equivocation is that which stems from equating Tyler's use of 'signification' with my use of 'significance'. I distinguished between two questions 'first, how did it come about that at this point in this ceremony such-and-such an act had to be F. Cioffi, Wittgenstein on Freud and Frazer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 257. 7

Edward Tyler, Primitive Culture (London: John Murray, 1920), 363, quoted by Cioffi. 8

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performed? And, secondly, what, in this ceremony, does this strange act mean (p. 83)? And I observed that the first question may be answered (with luck) by historical investigations into the origins of the rite (although not by Frazer's 'comparative method' of accumulating data from comparable rites throughout history and in other cultures). But the second question, which is a genuine hermeneutical one, can be answered, if at all, only by reference to the course of the ceremony, the attitudes, beliefs, and justifying reasons of the participants. Hence, if they are ignorant of the ancestry of their ritual, then the bare facts of its genesis can contribute nothing to explaining its significance—that is, what it means in the practice of the ritual as observed in the life of the community. I am not, in any sense, precluding aetiological investigations. I am insisting only that they cannot shed light on the meaning of the ritual as practised—its meaning to the participants, if they do not know its origins. In the understanding of the inner meaning' of a ritual, as in understanding the meaning of an expression in a language, 'there is no action at a distance'. That Wittgensteinian grammatical principle does not preclude etymological investigations in linguistics. It merely points out that the etymology of an expression need not, and often does not, explain its current meaning. (It is of considerable interest that the expression 'There's the devil to pay' originates in eighteenth-century naval idiom, that 'the devil' is the gap between the deck of a ship and its hull, that 'to pay' means to squeeze tar into the gap, and that the original expression ran 'There's the devil to pay and no hot tar', meaning 'Here is a well-nigh impossible task to execute'—but none of this explains what the phrase, as currently used, means.) So, too, Professor Cioffi's explanation of the origins of the custom of knocking on wood confers a kind of intelligibility on the practice by reference to its aetiology, but it does not explain the meaning or significance of knocking on wood in the current superstitious practice—the meaning of which is much less rich. And, in many cases, a ritual act may become wholly divorced from its original meaning and either assume a different meaning or lose any meaning other than that this is the done thing at this point in the ceremony. Following Wittgenstein, I claimed that Frazer's data are relevant to an

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elucidatory enterprise—an arrangement that will display the specific, ceremonial, ritual physiognomy of a given savage practice against the backcloth of a whole family of analogous rituals. This, Professor Cioffi claims, begs the question, since we do not know which rituals are analogous to which until we know the rationales the arrangement is intended to elucidate. I agree that, if by 'rationale' one means the 'inner significance' or 'meaning' of the ritual, one will indeed not know which end p.95

rituals are analogous to which unless one can piece together their rationale. (It would be mistaken to assimilate the burning of the 'Guy' on Guy Fawkes night to some of the fire festivals that Frazer discusses.) But there is nothing questionbegging about that—only an appropriate admission of the possibility of error and misconstrual, which is the lot of such investigations. Professor Cioffi contends that I, like Paul Johnston,9 err in claiming that the inner nature of a practice is accessible to us only in so far as the practice relates directly or indirectly to our own experience. But, he objects, how can its accessibility to us determine its inner character? It is, he rightly observes, one thing to express dissatisfaction with an account that does not leave us feeling that we understand it and quite another to insist that an account can be true only if we do understand it. Adapting a remark by Chesterton, he nicely observes that we may have discovered the truth—even though the truth makes no sense to us. But my claim was not that 'accessibility' to us is a criterion of truth, but rather that it is a condition of hermeneutic intelligibility. 'Invoking our primal inclinations', I wrote, 'does not make the work of giving a perspicuous representation of Frazer's material otiose. On the contrary, it is this that makes the appropriate arrangement of the data illuminating' (p. 92). The appeal to a 'tendency in ourselves' is a condition of our finding the symbolism of the ritual intelligible, and of our being able to grasp the beliefs that are partly constitutive of a rite as reasons for the ritual action. Of course, there is no guarantee that this will always be possible. In correspondence and conversation, Professor Cioffi raised a further question that bears on the dispute. Wittgenstein distinguished beliefs that belong to a ritual from instrumental beliefs. But, Professor Cioffi remonstrated, the fact that a practice cannot be described without mentioning a belief does not show that the belief is not causal or that the activity is not instrumental. Does not the belief in the germ theory of disease belong to and inform the surgeon's scrubbing-up before an operation? His action would be unintelligible independently of his belief, yet the activity is instrumental. So one cannot characterize ritual by reference to the distinction between beliefs that belong to an activity and beliefs that instrumentally inform an activity. One must concede that Wittgenstein did not explain what he meant by a belief's 'belonging' to an activity. But it is not obvious that he meant simply that the activity cannot be adequately described independently of the belief. No doubt one would need to distinguish a multitude P. Johnston, Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1989), 221.

9

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of different cases. But some simple points apply to a certain range of cases, and suffice to shed light on Wittgenstein's concern. In the case of the surgeon's instrumental action, he acts according to his belief. He does not wish to infect his patient; what he believes is that, unless he washes his hands, germs on his hands may infect his patient; so he washes his hands. But this stands in contrast with many rituals that are informed by constitutive beliefs. In some cases, a story belongs to the ritual, as the story of the birth of Christ in Bethlehem belongs to Christmas rituals and the story of the ten plagues belongs to the Passover rituals. Without the story, the significance of the ritual would be lost, for its deep meaning lies in the story. (Indeed, as I should have noted, in some cases, though a participant must know the story in order for the ritual to have the meaning it has for him, he does not have to believe the story and need not do so in order to engage in the ritual and find it meaningful.) Those who participate in certain kinds of ritual do not act on the beliefs that belong to it, by contrast with the surgeon who acts on his beliefs concerning the germ theory of disease. In wearing a poppy on Armistice Day, the belief that there were fields of poppies in Flanders in 1914 is not an instrumental belief that guides the action; in lighting candles at the Jewish celebration of Hanukka, the tale of the Maccabean liberation and sanctification of the Temple has no instrumental role in determining what is done. The behaviour is commemorative and expressive. Participation in the ritual may be, and typically is, an expression of a sense of community, of social solidarity and communal identity. While some of Wittgenstein's remarks may be exaggerations of limited truths, the main thrust of his observations is to emphasize the expressive character of many ritual actions. Ritual and magical actions, he insisted, bear a characteristic peculiar to themselves. It is not, as Frazer supposed, that they all arise from faulty, superstitious, views about physics and medicine, for many are constituents of a rich gestural language, which, in the context of a tradition, express attitudes and emotions of the participants. His primary concern was not to lose sight of this aspect of human behaviour, both for purposes of anthropology and for the understanding of the numerous residues of such forms of behaviour that survive in modern secular societies.1 0 10

I am grateful to Dr Ruth Mansur for discussions on these themes.

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4 Was he Trying to Whistle It? Abstract: Wittgenstein's doctrines of what can be said and of what cannot be said but only shown, and the paradoxical conclusion of the Tractatus that the sentences of the book are nonsensical, are outlined. Professor Cora Diamond's interpretation of the Tractatus is sketched. It is criticized as inconsistent with the text of the Tractatus, on the one hand, and with everything that Wittgenstein said about the Tractatus, both while writing it and thereafter, on the other. Keywords: C. Diamond, logical syntax, nonsense, showing and saying, Tractatus

P. M. S Hacker

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1. 'A Baffling Doctrine, Bafflingly Presented' That there are things that cannot be put into words, but which make themselves manifest (TLP 6.522) is a leitmotif running through the whole of the Tractatus. It is heralded in the Preface, in which the author summarizes the whole sense of the book in the sentence 'What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence', and it is repeated by the famous concluding remark 'What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence'. Wittgenstein's claim is, or at least seems to be, that, by the very nature of language, or indeed of any system of representation whatsoever, there are things that cannot be stated or described, things of which one cannot speak, but which are in some sense shown by language. The numerous truths that seemingly cannot be stated, but that are nevertheless apparently asserted in the course of the Tractatus, can be sorted into the following groups: (i) The harmony between thought, language, and reality . There is (or seems to be) a harmony (or as Wittgenstein later put it, with deliberate Leibnizean allusion, a 'pre-established harmony' (BT 189)) between representation and what is represented. This harmony does not consist in the agreement of a true proposition with reality, since there are also false propositions. Rather it consists in the agreement of form between any proposition whatever and the reality it depicts either truly or falsely. A shortened version of this paper was presented at the Boston Colloquium on the History and Philosophy of Science, 23 and 24 April 1998. Professors Diamond, Dreben, Floyd, Goldfarb, and Ricketts laboured generously to make their views clearer, even if they did not succeed in making them any the more plausible, to me. I thank Dr G. P. Baker, Dr H. Ben-Yami, Professor A. Crary, Dr H.-J. Glock, Dr J. Hyman, Sir Anthony Kenny, Dr S. Mulhall, and Professor W. Waxman for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I am indebted to Professor J. Conant for an illuminating correspondence about a forthcoming paper of his entitled 'The Method of the Tractatus'. Dr A. Emiliani kindly read the published version and suggested an important addendum for which I am grateful.

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This shared form, however, cannot itself be depicted. A picture can depict any reality whose form it has, but it cannot depict its pictorial form—it displays it (TLP 2.171-2.172). Propositions show the logical form of reality (TLP 4.12-4.121). (ii) Semantics. One cannot say what the meaning of a symbol is. It is impossible to assert the identity of meaning of two expressions (TLP 6.2322). One cannot say what the sense of a proposition is; rather, a proposition shows its sense. A proposition shows how things stand if it is true, and it says that they do so stand (TLP 4.022). (iii) Logical relations between propositions. One cannot say that one proposition follows from another, or that one proposition contradicts another. But that the propositions ' p q', ' p', and ' q', combined with one another in the form '(p q).(p): :(q)', yield a tautology shows that ' q' follows from ' p' and ' p q' (TLP 6.1201). A tautology shows the internal relations between its constituent propositions.

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(iv) Internal properties and relations of things and situations. Internal properties and relations of a thing are properties and relations that are such that it is unthinkable that the thing should not possess them (TLP 4.123). But it is impossible to say that a thing possesses an internal property or stands in an internal relation to some other thing, for example, that light blue is lighter than dark blue. Rather, internal properties and relations make themselves manifest in the propositions that represent the relevant states of affairs and are concerned with the relevant objects (TLP 4.122). Similarly, one cannot say that a proposition is a tautology, since that is an internal property of the proposition. But every tautology itself shows that it is a tautology (TLP 6.127). (v) Categorial features of things and type classifications. One cannot say that a thing belongs to a given category—for example, that red is a colour or that a is an object (TLP 4.122-4.125). For the ontological category of a thing is given by its logical form, which consists in its combinatorial possibilities with other objects. But the logical form of an object cannot be named, since it is not itself an object—it is rather the common features of a whole class of objects, in particular the combinatorial possibilities in reality of the objects of the common category. And that is represented in a perspicuous notation by a variable. Apparent categorial or formal concepts, such as space, time, colour, or fact, object, relation, number, or proposition, name, function, are in effect variable names, not real names. They cannot occur in a fully analysed, well-formed proposition with a sense. (vi) The limits of thought. One cannot circumscribe what can be thought in language by saying what cannot be thought, for in order to say it one would have to be able to think what is not thinkable end p.99

(Preface). Nor can one justify excluding a certain form of words as nonsensical by reference to reality (as Russell had tried to do in his theory of types). (vii) The limits of reality and the logical structure of the world. Empirical reality is limited by the totality of objects, and that limit makes itself manifest in the totality of elementary propositions (TLP 5.5561). The limits of the world are also the limits of logic—that is, the limits of all possible worlds are the limits of logical possibility. So we cannot say in logic that the world contains such-and-such possibilities but not such-and-such other possibilities. For that would appear to presuppose that we were excluding certain possibilities (TLP 5.61). But a logical impossibility is not a possibility that is impossible. Nevertheless, that the propositions of logic are tautologies shows the formal—logical —properties of language and the world (TLP 6.12). (viii) Metaphysical principles of natural science. The fundamental principles of natural science, such as the laws of causality, of least action, of continuity, and so on, are not descriptions of nature, but forms of description. The so-called law of causality amounts to no more than that there are laws of nature. But it cannot be said that there are laws of nature—it makes itself manifest (TLP 6.36). It is shown by the

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possibility of giving a complete description of the world by means of laws of the causal form. (ix) Metaphysics of experience. What the solipsist means is quite correct, only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest in the limits of my language being the limits of my world ( TLP 5.62). That there is no soul, no Cartesian soul-substance 'as it is conceived in the superficial psychology of the present day', cannot be said, but it is shown by the logical form of propositions such as 'A believes that p' (TLP 5.542-5.5421). (x) Ethics, aesthetics, and religion. It is impossible for there to be propositions of ethics. Propositions can express nothing that is higher. Ethics is transcendental. Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same (TLP 6.42-6.421). It is impossible to speak about the will in so far as it is the subject of ethical attributes (TLP 6.423). The doctrine of what cannot be said but only shown is, as David Pears has observed, a baffling doctrine bafflingly presented.1 Bafflement is further increased when the author of the Tractatus, in the penultimate remark of the book, draws the inevitable corollary of his arguments: D. Pears, The False Prison: A Study of the Development of Wittgenstein's Philosophy , i (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 143. 1

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My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps—to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright. (TLP 6.54) So the propositions of the Tractatus are themselves nonsense. They fail to comply with the rules of logical grammar—logical syntax (TLP 3.325). For either they employ formal concept-words as proper concept-words, and nonsensical pseudo-propositions are the result (TLP 4.1272) or they ascribe internal properties and relations to something, which cannot be done by a well-formed proposition with a sense. For a proposition with a sense must restrict reality to, and allow reality, two alternatives: yes or no—it must be bipolar (TLP 4.023). But any attempted ascription of an internal property would not allow reality two alternatives, since it is inconceivable that something might lack its internal properties. It is not surprising that the early, well-informed readers of the Tractatus greeted this conclusion with incredulity. In his introduction to the Tractatus, Russell wrote, 'after all, Mr Wittgenstein manages to say a good deal about what cannot be said, thus suggesting to the sceptical reader that possibly there may be some loophole through a hierarchy of languages, or by some other exit' (Introduction, p. xxi). He clearly felt that it was incredible that so many profound insights into the nature of logic should be intelligibly stated and yet be held to be nonsensical. Wittgenstein's restriction on what can be said, he confessed, 'leaves me with a

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certain sense of intellectual discomfort'. Neurath famously remarked of the closing sentence: 'one should indeed be silent, but not about anything.' 2 If, as Wittgenstein wrote in the preface, what lies on the other side of the limit of language is simply nonsense, then metaphysics is simply nonsense and there is nothing to be silent about. Ramsey remonstrated that, if the chief proposition of philosophy is that philosophy is nonsense, then 'we must take seriously that it is nonsense, and not pretend, as Wittgenstein does, that it is important nonsense'.3 Elsewhere he observed that, 'But what we can't say, we can't say, and we can't whistle it either'.4 Indeed, it is not as if one can even think what 2 O. Neurath, 'Sociology and Physicalism', Erkenntnis, 2 (1931-2), 393-431, repr. in translation in A. J. Ayer (ed.), Logical Positivism (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1959), 284. 3 F. P. Ramsey, 'Philosophy', in F. P. Ramsay: The Foundations of Mathematics, ed. R. B. Braithwaite (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., 1931), 263. 4 F. P. Ramsey, 'General Propositions and Causality', in ibid. 238. (The joke alludes to Wittgenstein's famous expertise at whistling.) I am indebted to Professor D. H. Mellor for locating the quotation for me.

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one cannot say—for, as the young Wittgenstein himself (wrongly) insisted, 'thinking is a kind of language' and a thought 'just is a kind of proposition' (NB 82). So can one whistle what one cannot think—that is, can one apprehend truths that one cannot even think? The predicament is serious. It is not merely that Wittgenstein's explanation of what apprehension of the ineffable consists in itself perforce invokes the use of formal concepts. Nor is it merely that Wittgenstein deliberately saws off the branch upon which he is sitting, since, if the account of the conditions of representation given in the book is correct, then the sentences of the book are mere pseudo-propositions. But rather, if that is so, then the account of the conditions of representation is itself nonsense. And that seems a reductio ad absurdum of the very argument that led to the claim that the sentences of the book are one and all pseudo-propositions.

2. A Postmodernist Defence One may well share Russell's qualms. Surely, one is inclined to think, there is much that can be learnt from the book. Even if there is, as the later Wittgenstein laboured to show, much that is wrong with it, there is also much that it has taught us. Few, today, would defend the claim that the logical connectives are names of logical entities (unary and binary functions), or that sentences are names of truth-values or of complexes. Few would claim, as Frege and Russell did, that logical propositions are (what we would call) generalizations of tautologies, or that they are descriptions of relations between abstract entities (Frege) or of the most general facts in the universe (Russell). And there can be no doubt that Wittgenstein's explanation of the tautologousness of the propositions of logic has had a profound effect upon the general understanding of logic. One response to Wittgenstein's paradoxical conclusion is to try to erect a line of

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defence that will salvage the insights of the book from self-destructive condemnation. Max Black, author of the only detailed commentary on the Tractatus, tried to do just that.5 He conceded that, if communication is equated exclusively with 'saying', then the Tractatus communicates nothing. But, since the book itself insists that there is much that can be shown but cannot be said, should we not insist M. Black, A Companion to Wittgenstein's Tractatus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), 378 ff. 5

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that it shows a great deal, and that what it thus shows can be salvaged? Wittgenstein's propositions about the essences of things consist, Black suggested, in a priori statements belonging to logical syntax. These are formal statements that show things that can be shown, and they are no worse than logical propositions, which do not transgress the rules of logical syntax. But this is mistaken. The propositions of logic are senseless, not nonsense. Wittgenstein's own propositions, which Black called 'formal statements', are, by the lights of the Tractatus, nonsensical pseudo-propositions. They show nothing at all. The propositions that are held to show the ineffable truths that the Tractatus seems to be trying to say are not the pseudo-propositions of the book but well-formed propositions (including the senseless propositions of logic). Black's suggestion is in effect that Wittgenstein was, as Ramsey had suggested, trying to whistle what he held one could not say. In recent years a quite different defence of Wittgenstein's Tractatus has gained popularity, particularly in the United States. On this view, Wittgenstein was not trying to whistle it. (Neurath was right to claim that there is nothing to be silent about, and only wrong in imputing to Wittgenstein the contrary view.) It has been propounded by Cora Diamond, further elaborated by James Conant, Juliet Floyd, Warren Goldfarb, and Thomas Ricketts. On their side, enthusiastically urging them on, stands the puckish figure of Burton Dreben, a benevolent and humorous Geist der stets verneint. It has won warm approval from Peter Winch.6 According to them, the Tractatus does not self-consciously try, by deliberately flouting the rules of logical syntax, to state deep, ineffable truths, which actually cannot be said but are shown by well-formed sentences Cora Diamond, 'Throwing away the Ladder: How to Read the Tractatus', repr. in The Realistic Spirit (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991), 'Ethics, Imagination and the Method of Wittgenstein's Tractatus', in R. Heinrich and H. Vetter (eds.), Wiener Reihe: Themen der Philosophie , v (Vienna: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1991), and 'Wittgenstein', in J. Kim and E. Sosa (eds.), Companion to Metaphysics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995); James Conant, 'Must We Show What We Cannot Say', in R. Fleming and M. Payne (eds.), The Senses of Stanley Cavell (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1989), and 'Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein and Nonsense' in T. Cohen, P. Guyer, and H. Putnam (eds.), Pursuits of Reason (Luboc, Texas: Texas Tech University Press, 1993); Juliet Floyd, 'The Uncaptive Eye: Solipsism in Wittgenstein's Tractatus', in Leroy S. Rouner (ed.), Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, xix: Loneliness (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), 79-108; Warren Goldfarb, 'Metaphysics and Nonsense: On Cora Diamond's The Realistic Spirit', Journal of Philosophical Research, 22 (1997) 57-73; Thomas Ricketts, 'Pictures, Logic and the Limits of 6

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Sense in Wittgenstein's Tractatus', in H. Sluga and D. G. Stern (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); P. Winch, 'Persuasion', in P. A. French, T. E. Uehling, and H. K. Wettstein (eds.), Midwest Studies in Philosophy , xvii: The Wittgenstein Legacy (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 124-5.

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of a language. Rather, it engages our temptations to utter nonsense, in particular philosophical nonsense of the kind exhibited in the Tractatus, and it demonstrates that such putatively philosophical sentences are indeed plain nonsense, different from mere gibberish only in as much as we are under the illusion that such sentences, though nonsensical, are deep nonsense—trying to say what can only be shown. There are significant differences between some of these interpreters. In the compass of a single article, it is impossible to deal in detail with those differences. Hence I shall focus primarily on Diamond's account, mentioning others only en passant, and attempt to isolate the various theses they agree upon, all of which seem to me to be mistaken. Diamond's interpretation depends upon giving maximal weight to the preface and the penultimate remark. This she refers to as 'the frame' of the book, which instructs us how to read it. In the preface, Wittgenstein identified the aim of his book as being to set a limit to the expression of thoughts. This, he declared, can be done only by setting the limit in language, 'and what lies on the other side of the limit will simply be nonsense [wird einfach Unsinn sein]'.7 The penultimate remark declares that 'anyone who understands me eventually recognizes [my propositions] as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps—to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.)' The question Diamond poses is: how seriously are we meant to take the latter remark? In particular, does it apply to the leitmotif of the book. After we have thrown away the ladder, she queries, 'Are we going to keep the idea that there is something or other in reality that we gesture at, however badly, when we speak of "the logical form of reality", so that it, what we were gesturing at, is there but cannot be expressed in words?' 8 This would, she responds, be 'chickening out' 9 —that is, pretending to throw away the ladder while standing 7 'wird einfach Unsinn sein', contrary to Diamond's original suggestion in her 'Ethics, Imagination and the Method of Wittgenstein's Tractatus', 70, does not mean 'is plain nonsense' but 'is simply nonsense'. 8

Diamond, 'Throwing away the Ladder', 181.

The term is, as Goldfarb points out ('Metaphysics and Nonsense', 64), picturesque but highly tendentious. He prefers to distinguish 'resolute' interpretations of the Tractatus, which resolutely apply the penultimate remark to the text, from 'irresolute' ones, which claim that its application is qualified by the distinction between showing and saying. According to him, the Tractatus, understood irresolutely, 'avoids outright inconsistency only by undercutting any genuine commitment to its basic doctrines' (ibid.). This is mistaken. The author of the Tractatus was explicitly committed to a host of claims about logic, language, thought, and the logical structure of the world, which cannot be stated in well-formed sentences of language, but are shown by them. That the book is inconsistent, that its position cannot be upheld, is undeniable—as its author later realized. It is, as he remarked, like a clock that does not work (see 9

101

below, p. 108).

end p.104

as firmly as possible on it. But to throw away the ladder is, among other things, to throw away in the end the attempt to take seriously the language of 'features of reality'. To read Wittgenstein himself as not chickening out is to say that it is not, not really, his view that there are features of reality that cannot be put into words but show themselves. What is his view is that that way of talking may be useful or even for a time essential, but it is in the end to be let go of and honestly be taken to be real nonsense, plain nonsense, which we are not in the end to think of as corresponding to an ineffable truth.1 0 Diamond contrasts two ways of taking the idea that there are, according to the Tractatus, no philosophical doctrines. One is to take the book as containing numerous doctrines that stricto sensu cannot be put into words—so that they do not, by the lights of the Tractatus, count as doctrines. On that view (shared by Russell, Ramsey, Neurath, and later also by Anscombe, Geach, and myself 1 1 ), one is left holding on to some ineffable truths about reality after one has thrown away the ladder. The other is to hold that the notion of ineffable truths about reality is 'to be used only with the awareness that it itself belongs with what has to be thrown away'. The latter, she claims, is the correct way to interpret the book. Diamond extracts from these considerations three salient theses. First, all the propositions of the book are nonsense, except for the frame. Secondly, they are plain nonsense, no different from 'A is a frabble', with one proviso. Some of them are 'transitional ways of talking' in a 'dialectic' that culminates in their wholehearted rejection. They are the (nonsensical) rungs of the ladder up which we must climb before we reject them in toto. Hence, thirdly, the distinction between what can be said and what can only be shown but not said is itself part of the nonsense that is to be discarded. These three theses are common ground to most of the proponents of this interpretation of the Tractatus.1 2 What is the argument for it? Diamond's argument involves three steps: 10

Diamond, 'Throwing away the Ladder', 181.

See G.E.M. Anscombe, An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1959), 161-73; P. T. Geach, 'Saying and Showing in Frege and Wittgenstein', in J. Hintikka (ed.), Essays on Wittgenstein in Honour of G. H. von Wright, Acta Philosophica Fennica, 28 (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1976), 54-70; and P.M.S. Hacker, Insight and Illusion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 17-32, which Diamond criticizes. 11

Professor Dreben would not agree with all these theses, or with Diamond's way of putting matters. I am grateful to him for pointing this out to me in conversation. Professor Floyd, unlike Conant and Diamond, considers the Preface too to be 'ironic' ('The Uncaptive Eye', 87).

12

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102

(a) If we take a metaphysical sentence such as 'A is an object', then, Diamond contends, in so far as we take ourselves to understand it, we take its truth and falsehood both to be graspable. Even in thinking of it as true in all possible worlds, in thinking of it as something whose truth underlies ordinary being so and not being so, we think of it as itself the case; our thought contrasts it with as it were a different set of necessities. Our ordinary possibilities have the character of possibility, given that these underlying necessities are as they are, not some other way. . . . possibility and necessity [are being viewed] as fixed some particular way rather than some other; they are still conceived in a space. What is possible in the contingent world, what is thinkable, what is sayable, is so because of the way ontological categories are fixed.1 3 Wittgenstein's aim is to show that this philosophical perspective is but an illusion. (b) It is an illusion that there is any such thing 'as violating the principles of logical syntax by using a term in what, given its syntax, goes against what can be said with it'.1 4 It is because of this illusion that one may think that we violate the rules of logical syntax when we form such expressions as 'A is an object' and conceive of them as trying to state necessary features of reality that properly speaking show themselves in language. But the notion here of there being something one cannot do dissolves into incoherence if pressed slightly.1 5 (c ) In fact, she argues, Wittgenstein's claim is not that the sentence 'A is an object' is a special kind of nonsense, a kind of nonsense that transgresses the bounds of sense in the attempt to say something that cannot be said. Pace Ramsey, Wittgenstein was not committed to the existence of two kinds of nonsense, (i) important nonsense that tries to say what can only be shown, and (ii) plain nonsense.1 6 What Wittgenstein says is that any possible sentence is, as far as its construction goes, legitimately put together, and if it has no sense, that can only be because we have failed to give a meaning to one of its constituents (TLP 5.4733). The reason why 'Socrates is identical' is nonsense is that we have given no meaning to 'identical' as an adjective. 'A is an object' is nonsensical in exactly the same way. We have given no meaning to 'object' as a predicate noun, but 13

Diamond, 'Throwing away the Ladder', 195-6.

14

Ibid. 195.

15

Ibid.

Juliet Floyd, by contrast, argues that there is a difference between 'deep nonsense' and 'plain nonsense' ('The Uncaptive Eye', 85). Deep nonsense, in her view, is the nonsense that interests Wittgenstein, for it does have sense 'in the ordinary grammatical sense; it is not just gibberish', although, like plain nonsense, it 'yields' no ineffable insight. She does not, however, explain what 'having sense in the ordinary grammatical sense' means or give any evidence to show that Wittgenstein drew any such distinction. 16

end p.106

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only as a variable. But, unlike 'Socrates is identical', we are misled by the former kind of sentence, and think of ourselves as meaning something by it that lies beyond what Wittgenstein allows to be sayable. When he insists that we cannot say 'There are objects', he does not mean 'There are, all right, only that there are has to be expressed in another way'.1 7 Rather, he simply means that this sentence is plain nonsense, not essentially different from 'There are frabbles'. There is nothing to be shown that cannot be said. Indeed, she argues (correctly) that 'It is an immediate consequence of this account of philosophy that the sentences of the Tractatus itself are nonsensical, since they treat formal properties and relations as non-formal properties and relations. In their use in the sentences of the Tractatus, the words "world", "fact", "number", "object", "proposition" (and so on) have been given no meaning.' 1 8 When we are told to 'throw away the ladder', it seems, we are meant, on pain of 'chickening out' as she puts it, to throw everything away, including the bogus distinction between things that can be said and things that cannot be said but only shown. This is a radical interpretation of the Tractatus, according to which the whole book is a dialectic in which one proceeds from one nonsensical rung of a ladder to another. Unlike Hegelian dialectic, however, there is no final synthesis that incorporates what was right about the antecedent theses and antitheses—for it culminates not in a final synthesis of all that precedes it, but in its total repudiation. It is a 'dialectic' only in the sense that the reader is supposed to interrogate the book while reading it, and to realize, as each transitional stage is transcended, each rung ascended, that it was actually nonsense, and indeed to realize, in the end, that the whole book is nonsense. James Conant has developed her interpretation in 'Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein and Nonsense' and attempted to draw parallels between Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard. In particular, he compares the author of the Tractatus to the pseudonymous Kierkegaardian 'humourist' Johannes Climacus, who wrote his book in order to revoke it. Conant represents the book as an exercise in Kierkegaardian irony. Following Diamond, he writes, 'I would urge that the propositions of the entire work are to be thrown away as nonsense.' 1 9 The aim of the book, he claims, 17

Diamond, 'Throwing away the Ladder', 197-8.

18

Diamond, 'Wittgenstein', 514.

Conant, 'Must We Show What We Cannot Say', 274, n. 16. In 'Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein and Nonsense', he makes the same point: 'when Wittgenstein says "nonsense" he means plain nonsense, and when he says "throw the ladder away", he means throw it away ' (p. 198). 19

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is to undo our attraction to various grammatically well-formed strings of words that resonate with an aura of sense. The silence that . . . the Tractatus wish[es] to leave us with in the end is one in which nothing has been said and there is nothing to say (of the sort that we imagined there to be). . . . [It] is not the pregnant silence that comes with the censorious posture of guarding the sanctity of the ineffable.2 0 This 'deconstructive' interpretation2 1 seems to me to be a most curious way of

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reading a great book and of dismissing the philosophical insights that it contains, even though many of them are, as Wittgenstein himself later realized, 'seen through a glass darkly', and many of the claims are, as he later laboured to make clear, erroneous. The Tractatus, as he remarked to Elizabeth Anscombe, is not all wrong: it is not like a bag of junk professing to be a clock, but like a clock that does not tell the right time.2 2 On Diamond's interpretation, it was never meant to be a working clock, but a self-destructive one designed to explode as soon as wound up. But it is perhaps not surprising that this interpretation should appeal to the postmodernist predilection for paradox characteristic of our times. I shall argue that it is mistaken.

3. Criticism of the Postmodernist Interpretation: The Tractatus—Internal Evidence The following critical assessment of this interpretation involves a pincer movement. On the one hand, we must examine internal evidence of the Tractatus text and the manner in which the proponents of the interpretation handle it. On the other hand, we must examine what Wittgenstein wrote and said to others about his work both before, during, and after the composition of the book. Both are equally important, and present the proponents with a large array of difficulties that they have not confronted. In this section I shall be concerned only with internal evidence. One cannot but be struck by the hermeneutic method that informs the interpretation of the Tractatus given by Diamond, Conant, 20

Conant, 'Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein and Nonsense', 216.

In so far as 'deconstruction' subscribes to the hermeneutic principle that an author never says what he means or means what he says, this epithet seems eminently suitable to characterize many of the tactical moves of the proponents of this interpretation in disregarding what Wittgenstein actually wrote and said about what he had written. 21

G.E.M. Anscombe, An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus (4th edn., London: Hutchinson, 1971), 78.

22

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Goldfarb, and Ricketts, and by the sparseness of the evidence they muster. First, they rightly take seriously the Preface to the book and the notorious concluding remarks. But they surprisingly disregard the fact that in the Preface Wittgenstein speaks of the thoughts expressed in the book, asserts that their truth is 'unassailable and definitive', and expresses the belief that he has found, 'on all essential points, the final solution of the problems'. This is problematic, since 'the frame' was supposed to be taken literally and not 'dialectically' or 'ironically'. But it seems evident that, on their interpretation, the frame too is written 'tongue in cheek'—since, in their view, no thoughts are expressed in the book and there are no unassailable and definitive truths, effable or ineffable, in it. Secondly, they are methodologically inconsistent. (a) Apart from the 'frame', Diamond and Conant implicitly exempt TLP 4.126-4.1272, 5.473, and 5.4733 from condemnation as nonsense, since these are the passages upon which their

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argument depends, which distinguish formal concepts from concepts proper, equate formal concepts with variables in order to show that one cannot say that, for example, 'There are objects' (unlike 'There are books'), and which explain that 'Socrates is identical' is a possible proposition. I shall return to this point below. (b) When it is convenient for their purposes, proponents of the postmodernist interpretation have no qualms in quoting and referring to further points Wittgenstein makes in the Tractatus, which they take to be correct rather than plain nonsense. Thus, for example, Goldfarb argues that Wittgenstein's discussion of objective possibilia in TLP 2 ff. involves intentional inconsistency. It is merely discourse 'in the transitional mode'. If we press these passages, we shall see the inconsistency. Then, in 5.525 Wittgenstein says, 'The . . . possibility of a situation is not expressed by a proposition, but by an expression's . . . being a proposition with sense.' So we see what the transitional vocabulary was meant to lead us to: an appreciation that our understanding of possibility is not ontologically based in some realm of the possible, but arises simply from our understanding of . . . the sensical sentences of our language.2 3 Goldfarb, 'Metaphysics and Nonsense', 66. Goldfarb's argument is derived from Ricketts, who argues as follows (using the Ogden translation). The discussion of TLP 2 ff. is intentionally misleading, and intended to be seen as such. (i) It suggests that the determination of the range of possibilities by the forms of objects is itself some sort of fact. (ii) Talk of atomic facts as obtaining or not obtaining (TLP 2, 2.04-2.06, 4.21) reifies possibilities and treats actualization as a property that some possibilities possess. But this is inconsistent with claiming that an object's form is not any sort of fact about it. It is also inconsistent with identifying atomic facts with combinations of objects (TLP 2.01, 2.031). Objects being configured thus and so constitute the obtaining of the atomic fact. The obtaining is not a property that the combination of objects has or lacks. So, if an atomic fact does not obtain, there is nothing, no entity that fails to obtain. Finally, the reification of possible atomic facts would make them independent of what is the case. They would then play the role that the 2.02s assign to objects. This is a mistaken interpretation. First, the determination of the range of possibilities by the forms of objects is not suggested to be a sort of fact. For a fact is precisely what is contingently the case. But possibilities of occurrence in states of affairs are essential to, and part of the nature of, objects. Every possibility is necessarily possible (TLP 2.012-2.013), hence not 'some sort of fact'. Secondly, TLP 2, 2.04-2.06, and 4.21 do not speak of atomic facts as obtaining or not obtaining. It is states of affairs that obtain or fail to obtain. By the lights of the Tractatus there is no such thing as a fact that does not obtain (for which Wittgenstein criticized himself later (cf. PG 199)). Thirdly, it is true that, if, as Ricketts puts it, an atomic fact (i.e. a state of affairs) fails to obtain, there is no entity that fails to obtain. But a state of affairs is not an entity of any kind—any more than is a fact. Fourthly, states of affairs are not denominated 'possible facts' (a phrase Wittgenstein studiously avoids). Positive facts are the existence or obtaining of states of affairs; negative facts are the non-existence or non-obtaining of states of affairs (TLP 2.06). But unactualized states of affairs are possibilia. And they are indeed independent of what is the case, of the facts. They do not play the role of objects, which constitute the substance of the 23

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world. It is the objects that determine the range of all possible states of affairs in virtue of their combinatorial possibilities (TLP 2.0124). When he wrote the Tractatus, Wittgenstein would have denied that actualization is a property that some possibilities possess: it is no more a property of states of affairs than existence is a property of an object or a complex (which is not to be confused with a fact). But it is important to note that Ricketts's penetrating point was precisely one of the criticisms Wittgenstein directed against himself in his later writings (PG 136-8). It is also noteworthy that TLP 2.01, 'A Sachverhalt is a combination of objects', is a comment on TLP 2—hence obviously a comment on existing or obtaining Sachverhalten. A Sachverhalt that does not obtain is a possible combination of objects (TLP 2.0121-2.0123). An obtaining Sachverhalt is an actual combination of objects—a positive fact. There is no intentional incoherence here.

end p.109

So this passage is, apparently, not nonsense (even though it employs formal concepts). Diamond discusses approvingly TLP 3.323, which says that in the proposition 'Green is green'—where the first word is a proper name and the last an adjective—these words do not merely have different meanings, they are different symbols.2 4 Yet here, too, formal concepts are being used (for example, name, proposition, symbol). Similarly, she holds that Wittgenstein really did think that the signs ' p' and ' p' can say the same thing (TLP 4.0621), that his criticisms of Frege in 4.063 are not 'plain nonsense' but genuine, powerful criticisms, as are his criticisms of Russell's theory of judgement.2 5 With this one must agree, but wonder whether this is not a case of trying to have one's cake and eat it. Thirdly, they pay no attention to the other numerous passages in the Tractatus in which it is claimed that there are things that cannot be said Diamond, 'Ethics, Imagination and the Method of Wittgenstein's Tractatus', 70-1.

24

These remarks are taken from Diamond's paper 'Truth before Tarski: After Sluga, after Ricketts, after Anscombe, after Geach, Goldfarb, Hylton and Van Heijenoort', which she presented at the Boston Colloquium on the History and Philosophy of Science on 23 April 1998. 25

end p.110

but are shown by features of the symbolism. But it is surely necessary, if their interpretation is sound, to examine these too, in order to show the adequacy of their interpretation. They cannot be brushed aside as ironic or transitional, but must be argued to be so on the basis of evidence from the text and from Wittgenstein's own remarks on the book. Fourthly, they pay inadequate attention to Wittgenstein's understanding of the concepts of sense, senselessness, and nonsense in the Tractatus, and are consequently too hasty in assuming that everything that is deemed to be nonsense is mere gibberish, on the same level as 'Lilliburlero' or 'piggledy wiggledy'. It is important to bear in mind that the sense of a proposition is, according to the Tractatus, its agreement and disagreement with possibilities of existence and non-existence of states of affairs (TLP 4.2). Empirical (contingent) propositions have a sense. Tautologies and contradictions are senseless—they have zero sense. Most of the sentences of the Tractatus are nonsense. They are

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not well-formed propositions with a sense or well-formed propositions with zero sense. Similarly, mathematical propositions are nonsense—they are neither tautologies nor do they agree and disagree with the possibilities of existence and non-existence of states of affairs. They too are pseudo-propositions (TLP 6.2). But there is no suggestion that they are mere gibberish on the same level as 'Lilliburlero', let alone that they are to be thrown away. If the propositions of the Tractatus are nonsense, at any rate they are nonsense that is deliberately and self-consciously put together with a very definite point and purpose. We are, after all, supposed to 'climb up' them in order to be able to see the world from a correct logical point of view. They try to say what cannot be said but can only be shown. It is far from obvious that one could 'climb up' rungs consisting of 'Lilliburlero', 'piggledy wiggledy' and 'A is a frabble', and such gibberish is not uttered in the attempt to say something that is shown by well-formed propositions. Finally, those interpreters who contend that some of the propositions of the Tractatus are 'transitional ways of talking' in a 'dialectic' do in effect distinguish between two kinds of nonsense: plain nonsense and transitional nonsense. Assuming that it is important that we come to realize that apparent sentences that we think make sense are actually nonsense, then transitional nonsense is important nonsense, unlike plain nonsense. So Diamond reinstates the distinction she deplores, not in order to hold on to ineffable truths about reality, but rather to hold on to effable truths about what does and what does not make sense. Moreover, if some bits of (transitional) nonsense enable us to understand that other bits of nonsense are indeed plain nonsense, how do they do this? Not, presumably, by saying that they are—for then the 'transitional end p.111

nonsense' would not be nonsense at all. Nor by showing that the other bits of nonsense are nonsense—for the distinction between what can be said and what cannot be said but only shown is itself, according to Diamond, plain nonsense.2 6 Can Diamond and her followers, without themselves 'chickening out', explain how this is effected? I shall now turn to details of this interpretation of the Tractatus and demonstrate its inadequacies. (i) Sawing off the branch. Diamond argues that Wittgenstein did not really think that there is anything that cannot be said by well-formed propositions but that can nevertheless be shown. All features of the world can be described by well-formed propositions with a sense, and there is nothing that can be shown but not said. So he did not really think that there are objects (properties, relations, states of affairs, facts) or that such-and-such propositions are tautologies or contradictions, or that such-and-such a proposition entails such-and-such another propositions, or that red is a colour, 1 is a number, being-greater-than a relation. He did not think that these combinations of words, which employ formal concept-words as if they were genuine concept-words or which predicate internal properties of propositions, are, despite being ill-formed, attempts to say what can only be shown. He thought that they are plain nonsense, and that there is really nothing at all to be shown—neither tautologousness nor contradiction, and not entailment either. But why, in

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her view, are they nonsense, or rather, why, in her view, did the author of the Tractatus think they are? After all, it is natural enough to reply, red is a colour, 1 is a number, the proposition that p v p is a tautology, and the proposition that p & p is a contradiction. If it is misguided to say such things, some argument is necessary. Diamond rightly claims that Wittgenstein thought these combinations of words lack sense because they employ formal concept-words as if they were proper concept-words, and formal concepts are expressed by propositional variables. And a well-formed proposition with a sense cannot contain an unbound variable; hence a formal concept-word cannot occur in a fully analysed well-formed proposition (TLP 4.126-4.1272). But these claims themselves involve the use of formal concepts (proposition, variable, concept, formal concept, formal property, function). They too are nonsense. Wittgenstein did not say, in TLP 6.54, 'My propositions elucidate in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical—except for propositions 4.126-4.1272'! So, on Diamond's interpretation, the argument in 26

I owe this point to John Hyman.

end p.112

support of the claim that the sentences of the Tractatus are plain nonsense is itself, by the standards of the Tractatus, plain nonsense. So too is her claim that, according to what Wittgenstein really thought, all features of the world (a word that, she has told us (see quotation on p. 107 above), has been given no meaning in the Tractatus) are describable. Similar considerations apply to Diamond's reliance upon TLP 5.473 and 5.4733 in order to sustain the claim that the propositions of the Tractatus are mere nonsense in as much as we have given no meaning to words, otherwise used as formal concept-words, when they occur as predicates. These claims likewise employ formal concepts (for example, proposition, property, symbol). And they are surely not bipolar propositions with a sense, contingent truths that could be otherwise. Nor are they senseless but well-formed tautologies. So they too are nonsense, and cannot legitimately be invoked to support Diamond's thesis. The merit of Diamond's interpretation was supposed to be that it saves Wittgenstein from the embarrassment of sawing off the branch upon which he is sitting. But it now turns out that Diamond's interpretation involves exactly the same embarrassment. (ii) The rationale for the showing/saying distinction. Diamond rightly emphasizes the fact that the rationale for the claim that one cannot say that A is an object, or that there are objects is that 'object' is a formal concept-word. But it is not the only kind of rationale for claims concerning what cannot be said. One similarly cannot attribute internal properties to an object or to a fact (TLP 4.122-4.125). It is impossible to assert by means of propositions that such internal properties and relations exist: rather they make themselves manifest in the propositions that represent the relevant states of affairs and are concerned with the relevant objects (TLP 4.122). Hence one cannot say that Cambridge blue is lighter than Oxford blue (cf. TLP 4.123) or even that a light blue object

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is lighter than a dark blue one, even though no formal concepts are involved here. But it is shown by the pair of propositions 'The Cambridge flag is light blue' and 'The Oxford flag is dark blue'.2 7 Similarly, one cannot say that a proposition is a tautology or a contradiction, or that one proposition follows from another. For such assertions ascribe formal properties and relations to propositions (which are Cf. WWK 55, where he introduces for the first time a distinction between a complete and an incomplete description, thus licensing the incomplete description that the Cambridge flag is lighter than the Oxford flag but excluding the pseudo-proposition that the light blue Cambridge flag is lighter than the dark blue Oxford one. See below, p. 134, and n. 47. 27

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facts2 8 ). So they both contain a formal concept—namely, 'proposition'— and ascribe internal properties and relations. But, whatever plausibility attaches to the claim that 'there are objects' is, according to Wittgenstein, plain nonsense (and he certainly thought it was nonsense), very little attaches to Diamond's suggestion that there is never, stricto sensu, anything to be shown. For on her interpretation, such propositions as 'The Cambridge flag is lighter than the Oxford flag', ' " p v p" is a tautology', and ' " q" follows from "(p q).(p)" ' are also, according to the Tractatus, plain nonsense that does not try to say something that is otherwise shown. But here there evidently is something that is manifest—in the first case by the above pair of propositions (which also show that light blue is lighter than dark blue), in the second by the T/F notation that visibly shows a tautology to be a tautology, and in the third case by the tautologousness of the formula '(p q).(p): :(q)'. (iii) Diamond on the Tractatus. (a) Diamond suggests, as we have seen, that, if we take ourselves to have understood a metaphysical sentence such as 'A is an object' ('1 is a number', 'Light blue is lighter than dark blue', '12 o'clock (here, today) is a time'), we take both its truth and its falsehood to be graspable. Even in thinking of it as true in all possible worlds, 'we think of it as itself the case', and think of possibilities and necessities as fixed some particular way rather than some other. To interpret Wittgenstein as holding that there are ineffable truths which he tried to indicate by means of the illegitimate sentences of the Tractatus is to view possibility and necessity as fixed some particular way rather than some other way—to conceive of them as being in a space. But this is not so. These sentences purport to ascribe either formal or internal properties and relations (or both) to things. An internal property, as we have noted, is one that it is unthinkable that its object should not possess. We do indeed think that we apprehend that 1 is a number, but we would not know what to make of the claim that 1 might not be a number. We see that Cambridge blue is lighter than Oxford blue, but we rightly find it inconceivable that this 'necessity'

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be otherwise, that these very colours might not stand in the relation of one being lighter than the other. So we manifestly do not take the falsehood of these metaphysical assertions to be graspable—we take it to be inconceivable. It has been objected by Professor R. J. Fogelin that Wittgenstein does not hold that propositions are facts ( R. J. Fogelin, 'Feature Review Article', International Philosophical Quarterly , 38 (1998), 77), since what he wrote is that 'A propositional sign is a fact' (TLP 3.14). But, since a proposition is a propositional sign in its projective relation to reality (TLP 3.12), if a propositional sign is a fact, so too is a proposition. (Cf. NB 98: 'Propositions, which are symbols having reference to facts, are themselves facts.') 28

end p.114

We do not take A's being an object to be something that is the case and might not be the case; we take it to be something that could not be otherwise. And, of course, that is one reason why Wittgenstein does not think that these sentences express genuine propositions: they do not satisfy the essential requirement on a proposition with a sense, namely bipolarity. They attempt to say something that cannot be said. (b) Diamond rightly claims that 'A is an object' is nonsense in exactly the same sense as 'Socrates is identical' or 'A is a frabble'. But, more contentiously, she claims that the only difference between them is that the first is likely to mislead us, for it may lead us to think that we mean something by it, something that lies beyond what Wittgenstein allows to be sayable. But, if Diamond allows herself to invoke the nonsensical sentences of TLP 5.473-5.4733, then we should surely turn to other pertinent passages too that stand on exactly the same level. In particular we should note TLP 4.1272, which holds that 'Whenever the word "object" ("thing", etc.) is correctly used, it is expressed in conceptual notation by a variable name. . . . Wherever it is used in a different way, that is as a proper concept-word, nonsensical pseudo-propositions are the result' [emphasis added]. What are these 'nonsensical pseudo-propositions'? Wittgenstein's examples are not mere possible sentences to one of the constituents of which we have patently failed to give a meaning, like 'A is a frabble'. Nor are they such gibberish as 'Good has is'. Rather, they are (nonsensical) putatively metaphysical sentences such as 'There are objects' or 'A is an object', '1 is a number', Russell's axiom of infinity, namely, 'There are o objects' (TLP 4.1272), identity statements (TLP 5.534) and the propositions of mathematics (TLP 6.2). And, of course, the sentences of the Tractatus itself. These are rungs on the ladder up which we must climb to attain a correct logical point of view from which we shall see that what they try to say cannot be said but is shown by features of our means of representation. Diamond, to be sure, can try to explain this while denying the conclusion. These strings of words tempt us to think that they

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make sense, and we need to be disabused of this illusion. Not only are they nonsense in her view, but they are not attempts to say what cannot be said—for it is a further illusion to think that there is any such thing. One cannot but sympathize with Diamond and Ramsey: nonsense is nonsense. But the question is whether Ramsey is right in thinking that Wittgenstein was trying to whistle it, or whether Diamond is right that he was not. To be sure, the later Wittgenstein would deny that 'A is an object' is nonsense at all—it is a grammatical proposition, a rule (in a misleading guise) licensing, for example, the inference from 'A is on the table' to 'There is an object on the table' (although other examples end p.115

would be handled differently). But that is not what he thought when he wrote the Tractatus, for he did not then think (as he later did) that the concept of a proposition is a family resemblance concept, admitting grammatical propositions, as well as many others excluded by the Tractatus, into the family. Did he then think that such pseudo-propositions, as he then conceived of them, are attempts to say something that is, or, if correct, would be, shown by features of our symbolism? Yes: 'What the axiom of infinity is intended to say would express itself in language through the existence of infinitely many names with different meanings' (TLP 5.535). And, by parity of reasoning, the denial of the axiom of infinity is nonsense too, but what it intends to say would be shown through the existence of finitely many names with different meanings. What Wittgenstein is saying to Russell when he denies that one can say that there are o objects is precisely, pace Diamond (see above p. 107): if there are, all right, only that there are has to be expressed—has to be shown—in another way, namely by features of our symbolism. How do these pseudo-propositions differ from 'A is a frabble'? In four ways. First, in that they involve the use of expressions that do indeed have a use in our language. For 'object', 'number', and so on, unlike 'frabble', do have a use—as variables. The fact that they will not occur in fully analysed propositions does not mean that they are not legitimate signs when used as bound variables. Furthermore, 'The propositional variable signifies the formal concept, and its values signify the objects that fall under the concept' (TLP 4.127)—so: a name shows that it signifies an object, a numeral shows that it signifies a number, and so on (TLP 4.126). Secondly, in that they involve misuses of these expressions, incorrect uses—uses that do not accord with the rules of logical syntax or grammar. For pseudo-propositions such as 'A is an object' employ formal concept-words as if they were genuine concept-words rather than variables. Consequently 'A is an object' is not a proposition, since the rules for the use of 'object' preclude its occurrence as a predicate name and we have given no meaning to any homonym that can occur as a predicate.

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Thirdly, with the exception of the axiom of infinity, they are, unlike 'A is a frabble', attempts to state necessary truths that are not tautologies—truths the denial of which is traditionally taken to be inconceivable. Finally, and this is the nub of the dispute, unlike 'A is a frabble' and 'Socrates is identical', they are attempts to say what can only be shown. Forms, pace Russell, are not logical constants, logical objects of which end p.116

we must have logical experience.2 9 Expressions for forms are not names but variables. So one cannot say what the form of an object is; but it is shown by features of the name of the relevant object—namely, those features that it has in common with all other names of objects of the same general form—that is, the combinatorial possibilities in logical syntax of the relevant name. These are represented by the variable of which the name, and all other names of the same logico-syntactical category, are substitution instances. 'A is an object', 'R nis a colour', and so on are nonsense, in the same sense in which 'A is a frabble' is nonsense, for there are no different senses of the word 'nonsense'. Nor are there different kinds of nonsense—nonsense no more comes in kinds than it comes in degrees. But the nonsense of the pseudo-propositions of philosophy, in particular of the philosophy of the Tractatus, differs from the nonsense of 'A is a frabble', for it is held to be an attempt to say what cannot be said but only shown. In this sense it can be said to be 'illuminating nonsense'. It is the motive behind it and the means chosen for the objective (for example, the illegitimate use of formal concepts) that earmark the nonsense of the Tractatus. Unlike such gibberish as 'A is a frabble', the propositions of the Tractatus are rungs on the ladder whereby to climb to a correct logical point of view, from which one will apprehend what cannot be said but which manifests itself in what can be said—the essence of the world, the transcendence of good and evil, what the solipsist means, and so on.3 0 (c ) Diamond and Conant make much of the fact that Wittgenstein never uses the phrase 'in violation of the rules of logical syntax'. Indeed, B. Russell, Theory of Knowledge: the 1913 Manuscript, ed. E. R. Eames and K. Blackwell, vol. vii of The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell (London: Allen & Unwin, 1984), 97 ff.

29

Goldfarb holds that 'irresolute' interpretations of the Tractatus cannot adequately answer Ramsey's question of how the nonsensical sentences of the book can be helpful. To say that the sentences of the text gesture at the 'what' that is shown—i.e. the 'unutterable' features of reality—is not a good answer. For no account of gesturing has or can be given ('Metaphysics and Nonsense', 71). The expression 'gesturing at' unutterable features of reality is Diamond's 30

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phrase (see above, p. 104), not mine. The well-formed sentences of language do not 'gesture at' categorial truths and truths concerning internal properties and relations, they show them by their form and their form and their formal relations (TLP 4.126-4.1272, 6.1201). The sentences of the Tractatus 'gesture' at the truths that they futilely try to state only in the sense that they try to say what cannot be said, but is shown by other sentences. They do so by studiously employing the relevant formal concepts in illicit ways, since these formal concepts represent the forms exhibited by the appropriate well-formed sentences and constituent names (TLP 4.1271) that do show what the Tractatus tries to say. It is, however, noteworthy that the self-styled 'resolute' interpretation of the Tractatus does not make it clear how 'plain nonsense' can be 'transitional', let alone how some bits of 'transitional nonsense' can make it evident that other bits of nonsense are nonsense—since they can neither say this nor show it.

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on the authority of TLP 5.473, they suggest that according to Wittgenstein there is no such thing as violating the rules of logical syntax. As they conceive matters, it seems, a rule can be violated only if its violation results in doing something that is prohibited, as when we violate the rule against murder. But violating the rules of logical syntax does not result in doing something—for example, describing something—the doing of which is illicit. So there is no such thing as violating the rules of logical syntax. But this is at best misleading. For not all rules prohibit something that can be done but should not be done. And one can follow or fail to follow rules even when they do not prohibit something that can be done—as when one follows the rules for making contracts. Failure to follow such rules does not result in illegal contracts, rather it results in invalid contracts. And an invalid contract is not a kind of contract. The pertinent passage in the Tractatus runs as follows: Logic must look after itself If a sign is possible, then it is also capable of signifying. Whatever is possible in logic is also permitted. (The reason why 'Socrates is identical' means nothing is that there is no property called 'identical'. The proposition is nonsensical because we have failed to make an arbitrary determination, and not because the symbol, in itself, would be illegitimate.) In a certain sense, we cannot make mistakes in logic. (TLP 5.473) It seems to me that in taking this to mean that rules of logical syntax cannot be transgressed they have misinterpreted the import of this passage.3 1 There is no such thing as a linguistic rule that cannot (in principle) be followed, and, by the same token, no such thing as a linguistic rule that cannot be transgressed (that is, not complied with, not followed, or not observed). Syntax consists of the grammatical rules governing a sign-language (TLP 3.334, 3.325). Logical syntax consists of logical grammar . A sign-language governed by logical grammar obeys (gehorcht) the rules of logical syntax (TLP 3.325).

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These rules exclude logical mistakes. (The conceptual notation of Frege and Russell is such a language, though an imperfect one since it fails to exclude all mistakes (TLP 3.325, emphasis added).)3 2 Logical syntax allows us, for example, Goldfarb takes it to mean that there is no such thing as a theory of language ('Metaphysics and Nonsense', 71). 31

It is surprising to see Floyd assert that in the Tractatus no appeal is ever made to definite rules, and claim that, according to Wittgenstein, there is no such thing as a correct logical notation, either in Frege's or Russell's sense or in a correct philosophical account of adequate notation. Genuine 'logical syntax', she claims, is a matter of use. 'Of course', she adds, 'Wittgenstein does not say this. . . . In fact Wittgenstein seems to say the opposite in several retrospective remarks, where he appears to say that at the time of writing the Tractatus he held the goal of a complete analysis to be achievable and desirable (WWK 42, 73 ff., 182 ff., 250). However, these remarks make clear that Wittgenstein always rejected as nonsensical the idea that logical analysis could specify the forms of elementary propositions either a priori or in general' ('The Uncaptive Eye', 87 and n. 9). This is deconstruction with a vengeance. According to the Tractatus logical grammar consists of rules of logical syntax. In order to avoid philosophical mistakes 'we must make use' of such a sign language (TLP 3.325). He later explained that in the book 'I laid down rules for the syntactical use of logical constants' (WWK 74). He introduced a notation for the logical constants (the T/F notation), 'which has the advantage of rendering some things more clearly recognizable. It shows for example what all propositions of logic have in common . . . The multiplicity of my symbolic system is correct from the beginning, and for that reason I do not need Russell's syntactical rules' (WWK 80). Wittgenstein does not appear to say the opposite of the view Floyd ascribes to him, he does say the opposite—not only in the passages she cites from WWK, but also in 'Some Remarks on Logical Form' (see n. 33 below). It is true that he always thought that logic could not specify the forms of elementary propositions a priori. But all his remarks make clear that he thought that this is to be done, but: 'in a certain sense a posteriori' (RLF 163)—for it belongs to 'the application of logic' (see below, p. 131). 32

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to substitute certain symbols for certain other symbols (TLP 3.344). By the same token, it does not permit substituting certain signs for others; in particular, it prohibits using the same sign for different symbols or using in a superficially similar way signs that have different modes of signification (TLP 3.325). To use the term 'object' as a variable name (formal concept) is correct (for this is the use we have assigned to it), but to use it as a proper concept-word is incorrect—for no meaning has been assigned to it as a concept-word (and to do so would generate undesirable ambiguity). To fail to follow or observe, to transgress, go against, or disobey (to use the negation of Wittgenstein's gehorcht) the rules of logical syntax is to string together words in a manner that is excluded, not permitted,

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by logical syntax.3 3 Once we have assigned a use to the sign 'object' as a variable, it will be incorrect to go on to use it in a form of words such as 'A is an object' (or 'A is not an object'), for there it does not occur as a variable but as a genuine name—and no such use has been assigned to the term 'object'; nor should it be, since Later Wittgenstein explained matters more explicitly. In 'Some Remarks on Logical Form' he wrote: 'The rules of syntax which applied to the constants must apply to the variables also. By syntax in this general sense of the word I mean the rules which tell us in which connections only a word gives sense, thus excluding nonsensical structures. The syntax of ordinary language, as is well known, is not quite adequate for this purpose. It does not in all cases prevent the construction of nonsensical pseudo-propositions. . . . The idea is to express in an appropriate symbolism what in ordinary language leads to endless misunderstandings. That is to say, where ordinary language disguises logical structure, where it allows the formation of pseudo-propositions, where it uses one term in an infinity of different meanings, we must replace it by a symbolism which gives a clear picture of the logical structure, excludes pseudopropositions, and uses its terms unambiguously' (RLF 162-3). 33

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the term already has a use. However, the rules of logical syntax are constitutive rules. Failure to follow them does not result in a form of words that describes a logical impossibility, for logical impossibilities are expressed by logical contradictions—which describe nothing since they are senseless (limiting cases of propositions with a sense). Nor does it result in the description of a metaphysical impossibility, for there is no such thing. To repeat, a logical or metaphysical 'impossibility' is not a possibility that is impossible. A fortiori, there is no such thing as describing one. Hence, too, failure to comply with the rules of logical syntax does not result in a form of words that describes a logical or metaphysical necessity either—for the only expressible necessities are logical necessities, which are expressed by tautologies that describe nothing since they are senseless. And internal, formal, and structural properties and relations, which metaphysics aspires to articulate, cannot, by the very nature of a symbolism, be stated or described. But 'they make themselves manifest in the propositions that represent the relevant states of affairs and are concerned with the relevant objects' (TLP 4.122). Failure to comply with the rules of logical syntax results in nonsense. Consequently, like other constitutive rules such as contract law, they do not need a sanction. Their 'sanction' is nonsense, just as the 'sanction' of contract law is invalidity—and, to be sure, these are not properly speaking sanctions. It is in this sense that logic, like contract law, 'looks after itself'.3 4 In a certain sense , we cannot make mistakes in logic—although that is precious little consolation for Frege and Russell, whose notation does not exclude certain mistakes. The point is that, if we fail to comply with the rules of logical syntax, the result is not the expression of a thought

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that is illogical (since there is no such thing), but a nonsense. So it is nonsense to do as Russell did in prefixing the symbol ' p p' (intended to mean ' p is a proposition'—which is, anyway, a nonsense) to certain propositions in order to exclude from their argument-places everything but propositions. For arguments that are not propositions render the sentence nonsensical anyway, without the assistance of the prefix (TLP 5.5351). So one can, contrary to Diamond and Conant, fail to follow the rules of logical syntax. The (constitutive) laws of contract look after themselves in as much as if one fails to observe them one has not made a wrong contract, rather, one has not made a contract at all. An invalid contract is no more a kind of contract than counterfeit money is a kind of currency. But that does not stop people from making invalid contracts when they fail to observe the laws of contractformation. There is another sense in which 'logic must look after itself'—namely, that logic cannot be justified by reference to reality. 34

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To this it might be replied that to make an invalid contract is not to violate the law. There is no law against making invalid contracts, only against intentionally passing them off as valid ones. Hence, too, there is nothing illicit in combining words in ways that make no sense—only something dishonest in trying to pass them off as good sense. This is correct. But it does not follow that there is no such thing as failing to comply with, or to follow, the laws of contract formation, and no more does it follow that there is no such thing as failing to comply with, or to follow, the rules of logical syntax. So, one may concede that it is misleading to speak of 'violating' the rules of contract formation and equally misleading to speak of 'violating' the rules of logical syntax. One should confine oneself to speaking of failing to comply with them, of failing to follow or observe them. But this concession does nothing to salvage Diamond's case. If one fails to comply with, observe, or follow the rules of logical syntax, one transgresses the bounds of sense, which are given by logical syntax, and to transgress the bounds of sense is to talk nonsense. The result of failing to comply with the laws of contract formation is an invalid contract and the result of failure to comply with the rules of logical syntax is nonsense, a mistaken form of words—that is, a form of words that is excluded from the language as a nonsensical pseudo-proposition. But one may, so the author of the Tractatus thought, deliberately and self-consciously flout the rules of logical syntax with the intention of bringing one's readers to apprehend something that cannot be said but is shown. It is, incidentally, noteworthy that Wittgenstein did not share Diamond's and Conant's qualms about speaking of transgressing rules of grammar or logical syntax. In MS 110, 83 (cf. BT 425), he wrote: 'Just as laws only become interesting when there is an inclination to transgress them (sie übertreten) // when they are

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transgressed // underline ceunderline rtunderline aiunderline n grammatical rules are only interesting when philosophers want to transgress them.' It would, of course, be a mistake to suppose that logical syntax is given in advance of propositions with a sense, just as it would be a mistake to suppose that names have a meaning independently of the propositions in which they occur. On the contrary, logical syntax is constitutive of propositions with a sense, since it is a necessary feature of representational employment. Precisely because a nonsensical form of words is not a form of words that has a 'nonsensical sense', but simply one that has no sense, it would be altogether misguided to suppose that the rules of logical syntax determine which senses are genuine and which are not. Rather, the rules of logical syntax are conditions of the possibility of representation. They are not conventional stipulations, but end p.121

essential conditions of sense (hence implicit in every possible conventional grammar). Transgressing, or failing to comply with, the rules of logical syntax results in a form of words that has no sense. Putative philosophical propositions, such as the metaphysical pronouncements of previous philosophers, are such forms of words, as indeed are the pronouncements of the Tractatus itself. However, the latter, unlike the former, do not arise out of misunderstandings of the logic of our language. On the contrary, the author of the Tractatus deliberately and self-consciously fails to comply with the rules of logical syntax in order to bring his readers to apprehend necessary features of reality that cannot be stated in language and to see that these features are shown by the propositions of our language. (iv) The Tractatus—trying to say what can only be shown. Diamond and Conant, like Ramsey, argue (rightly) that, if you can't say it, you can't say it, and you can't whistle it either. Unlike Ramsey, they think that Wittgenstein was not trying to whistle it. On their interpretation, there is nothing that the nonsensical pseudo-propositions of the Tractatus are trying to say, for one cannot mean something that cannot be said. But is this what Wittgenstein thought? Since Diamond and Conant allow reference to the 'nonsensical' remarks of TLP 4.126-4.1272, 5.473, and 5.4733, it is presumably equally legitimate to refer to related passages in the attempt to fathom Wittgenstein's intentions. If we do so, it is immediately evident that he did think that one can mean something that cannot be said, but rather expresses itself in a different way—namely, is shown by features of our language. Moreover, he insisted, we can apprehend, indeed, can see some things that are thus meant but cannot be said. As noted, he asserted that what Russell's axiom of infinity was meant to say would (if true) be shown by the existence of infinitely many names with different meanings (TLP 5.535). Similarly, what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest (TLP

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5.62). We cannot say that ' q' follows from ' p' and ' p q', for this is an internal relation between propositions. But it is shown by the tautology '(p q). (p): :(q)' (TLP 6.1201). We can recognize that a proposition of logic is true from the symbol alone—indeed, that is a characteristic mark (hence an internal property) of a proposition of logic (TLP 6.113). We can see that the truth of one proposition follows from the truth of another, although that is an internal relation that cannot be described (TLP 6.1221). In complicated cases it is difficult to see these internal relations; hence we need a mechanical expedient to facilitate their recognition—namely, a proof (TLP 6.1262), which enables us to recognize end p.122

something that cannot be said. In the T/F notation of the Tractatus, we can recognize such formal properties of propositions as being tautologous by mere inspection of the propositions themselves (TLP 6.122). So there are, according to the author of the Tractatus, ineffable truths that can be apprehended. Indeed, in some cases, they can literally be perceived—for one can see that dark blue is darker than light blue, even though, being an internal relation between colours, this cannot be said. (v) The Tractatus criticisms of frege and russell. In the preface, Wittgenstein wrote that the truth of the thoughts set forth in the book 'seems to me unassailable and definitive'. Among the thoughts set forth are numerous profound criticisms of Frege and Russell on the nature of logic. There are no 'logical objects' or 'logical constants' (in Frege's and Russell's sense)—that is, the logical connectives are not names of concepts or relations as Frege and Russell thought (TLP 5.4-5.42). In a different sense of 'logical constants', the 'logical constants' are not representatives—this, Wittgenstein declared, is his Grundgedanke. By this he meant that, pace Russell, 'object', 'property', 'relation', and so on are not names of indefinable logical entities (pure forms), which are the most general constituents of the universe, obtainable through abstraction, with which we must be acquainted through logical experience. There can be no representatives of the logic of facts (TLP 4.0312). The two truth-values are not objects (TLP 4.431). A proposition is not a composite name (TLP 3.143). Frege's and Russell's 'primitive signs of logic' (the truth-functional connectives) are not primitive signs at all (TLP 5.42) and can be dispensed with in the T/F notation. The propositions of logic, contrary to Frege and Russell, say nothing—are senseless (TLP 5.43). Frege's and Russell's axiomatization of logic is misleading and redundant, since all the propositions of logic are of equal status, none being more primitive than others (TLP 6.127), and the appeal to self-evidence to vindicate their axioms is misguided (TLP 6.1271). There are also many positive claims about the nature of logic made in the wake of his criticisms of Frege and Russell—for example, that the propositions of logic say nothing, are senseless tautologies (TLP 4.461, 6.1 ff.), that logic must look after itself (TLP 5.473), or, anticipating (and perhaps influencing) Ramsey, a deflationary account of truth: 'A proposition is true if we use it to say that things stand in a certain way, and they do' (TLP 4.062).3 5 These claims, and many more

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Indeed, this was nothing new in Wittgenstein's reflections: ' "p" is true' says nothing else but p (NB 9, cf. 94, 112). On this too he never changed his mind (see PG 123; PI § 136). It is surprising to see Ricketts attributing to the Tractatus a correspondence conception of truth ('Pictures, Logic and the Limits of Sense', 64). This is mistaken. In so far as there is a correspondence conception of anything in the Tractatus, it is a correspondence conception of sense. The fact that Wittgenstein speaks of a proposition's agreeing with reality if it is true does not imply any commitment to a 'truth-relation' or 'correspondence-relation' between propositions and facts, of which being true consists. To assert that a proposition ' p' agrees with reality is to assert that ' p' says that p and it is in fact the case that p. It is noteworthy that, unlike proponents of a correspondence theory of truth, Wittgenstein held that one and the same readily corresponds to both ' p' and ' p' (TLP 4.0621). 35

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too, are backed with solid argument. And they are all claims about which Wittgenstein never changed his mind, even after the abandonment of his early philosophy (and of the Tractatus distinction between what can be said and what cannot be said but only shown). But none of these important claims is a bipolar proposition with a sense. All of them involve the use of formal concepts, and by the lights of the Tractatus they are illegitimate in as much as they try to say something that can only be shown. Is it really credible that the author of the Tractatus regarded these hard-won insights into the nature of logic as 'plain nonsense'? Diamond and Conant would presumably reply that points (iv) and (v) too are part of the 'ladder' that is to be thrown away. But, whatever prima facie plausibility this may have with regard to Wittgenstein's observation on solipsism (and that is a contested matter) or perhaps on his remark on the axiom of infinity, it has none at all with respect to his observations on logical propositions, to his criticisms of Frege and Russell, and to his deflationary account of truth. Throwing away the ladder is one thing, throwing away the baby together with the bath-water is another. (vi) The Tractatus conception of philosophy. Diamond claims that her paper 'Throwing away the ladder: How to read the Tractatus' is an attempt to show what is involved in taking seriously what the Tractatus says about the remarks of which it is composed and about philosophy and its possibility.3 6 In her view, the metaphysical remarks in the main body of the book are apparently metaphysical only 'in a way that is disposed of by the sentences which frame the book, in the Preface and the final remarks'. According to Diamond, these remarks do not indicate that there are things that one cannot talk about, things that can be shown but not said. On the contrary, that there are any such things is an illusion that the book is intended to dispell. Surprisingly, Diamond does not attend to Tractatus 4.11-4.116—the methodological remarks on philosophy. Here too Wittgenstein reiterates points made in the Preface: Tractatus 4.116 says, analogously to the Preface, that everything that can be thought at all

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C. Diamond, 'Introduction II, Wittgenstein and Metaphysics', in The Realistic Spirit, 18.

36

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can be thought clearly; everything that can be put into words can be put clearly. Tractatus 4.114, like the Preface, says that the task of philosophy is to set limits to what can be thought, and also to what cannot be thought—by working outwards through what can be thought. Tractatus 4.112 says that philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts, and 6.53 correspondingly explains that, when someone tries to say something metaphysical, one must demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions. In this sense, philosophy does not result in 'philosophical propositions', but rather in the clarification of propositions (TLP 4.112). So it seems that the methodological remarks on philosophy in Tractatus 4.11-4.116 are neither 'transitional' (as Diamond would have it) nor ironical (as Conant intimates). Unlike much of the book, they are to be taken seriously. This makes it puzzling that, tucked in between the serious claim that philosophy must set limits to what can and what cannot be thought and the claim that everything that can be put into words can be put clearly, Wittgenstein wrote: 'It will signify what cannot be said [das Unsagbare], by presenting clearly what can be said' (TLP 4.115). It seems implausible to suppose that this is a sudden intrusion of irony into an otherwise serious sequence of remarks, and equally implausible to think that das Unsagebare intimates that there is not anything that cannot be said. It seems to me similarly implausible to suppose ironic or 'transitional' the fourth remark from the end of the book (TLP 6.522), which Diamond excludes from what she calls 'the frame'—namely 'There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words ("das Unaussprechliches"). They make themselves manifest ("Dies zeigt sich")'. If we are to take seriously what the Tractatus says about philosophy and its possibility, then, I suggest, we should, above all things, take this seriously. Wittgenstein's crucial observation at the end of the book says that anyone who understands him will eventually recognize his propositions as nonsensical and transcend them (TLP 6.54). Diamond and Conant take 'understanding him' to signify understanding his temptation to engage in philosophical nonsense. The clarifications or elucidating propositions of the Tractatus (which are not to be confused with the 'elucidations' referred to in TLP 3.263 or 4.112),3 7 on their account, The verb erläutern and noun Erläuterung are not technical terms, but common or garden ones. The elucidations referred to in TLP 3.263 are precisely parallel to Russell's 'explanations' of indefinables in Principia *1. The sense in which the (pseudo-) propositions of the Tractatus elucidate (TLP 6.54) is quite different—they clarify the philosophical matters discussed in the book, inter alia by bringing one to apprehend that what the Tractatus tries to say cannot be said and that the attempt merely results in pseudo-propositions; and by bringing one to understand that what cannot be thus spoken about is nevertheless shown by well-formed propositions. 37

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are not meant to indicate, by an attempt to say what can only be shown, an array of ineffable truths about the logical structure of the world and about any possible form of representation. They are meant to indicate that the temptation to think that there are any such truths is no more than an illusion, that beyond the limits of language lie not ineffable truths, but plain nonsense. But this is curious, since no philosopher other than Wittgenstein had ever been tempted to think that necessary truths, or synthetic a priori truths, are ineffable. This is not a disease of which anyone had ever needed to be cured. For philosophers throughout the ages have thought that such truths could readily be stated in language—in the form of what have traditionally been conceived to be necessarily true propositions. The innovation of the Tractatus was to argue that the necessary truths of logic are senseless, and that all other putatively necessary truths cannot be said but can only be shown. And there is every reason to think, with Ramsey and Russell, Anscombe and Geach, that this was precisely what Wittgenstein meant. Of course, it does not follow that what he meant makes sense. It is a mistake of Diamond to suppose that the Tractatus is a self-consistent work. It is a mistake to suppose that it is a work consisting of transitional nonsenses culminating in wholesale repudiation, or a work of Kierkegaardian irony or of a Zen-like dialectic. The exegetical task is to make sense of his thinking what he thought, not to make sense of what he thought, since we have it on his own (later) authority that what he thought was confused. And he later elaborated, in great detail, precisely what was confused about his earlier thought.3 8

4. The Postmodernist Interpretation: External Criticism Were the Tractatus the sole surviving text, there would be no option but to focus upon it and to construct the most coherent explanation of its argument possible. In fact, we are fortunate enough to possess a wealth of source material prior to the Tractatus, documents contemporaneous with the Tractatus, and a vast quantity of post-1929 writings and lecture notes in which Wittgenstein often discusses the Tractatus. If Wittgenstein did not really believe that there are ineffable truths that For a detailed examination of the later fate of the various things that, according to the Tractatus, cannot be said but are shown by the forms of the propositions of language, see Chapter 5 below. With respect to many of the salient points, the young Wittgenstein had indeed apprehended important truths, only 'through a glass darkly'. 38

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can be shown but cannot be said, if he intended the ladder metaphor to indicate that the whole of the Tractatus was nothing but plain, though misleading, nonsense, then one should expect there to be some trace of this in his numerous later references to the book. If this expectation is disappointed, one would nevertheless not expect his later explanations of and allusions to what he thought in his early work to be flatly inconsistent with an adequate interpretation of his early views. Diamond and her followers make no attempt to demonstrate either the consistency of these discussions with their interpretation of the book or to explain any inconsistency. This is hermeneutically unsound. I shall, therefore, go

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through a selection of this material, each item of which by itself constitutes weighty evidence against their interpretation. It should be stressed that it is no less crucial for them to confront this part of the pincer movement than it is for them to block the whole of the argument thus far. For either by itself suffices to undermine their position. (i) Pre-Tractatus Writings. A detailed examination of the early emergence of the showing/saying distinction and of its subsequent elaboration would be a very lengthy task which I shall not undertake here. I believe that it would not even suggest that Wittgenstein thought that the distinction and its consequences were themselves to be 'thrown away'. But it would always be open to Diamond et al. to claim that the Tractatus doctrine —according to their interpretation of it—occurred to him only later. Nevertheless, a few observations are in order. It is evident that the distinction emerged in the final section of the 'Notes on Logic' of September 1913. It resulted from reflecting on Russell's theory of types, and not, as Diamond and Conant assert without textual support, from reflecting upon Frege's puzzlement about the assertion that the concept horse is (or is not) a concept.3 9 The 'Notes dictated to Moore in Norway' (April 1914) are largely concerned with the distinction between what can be said and what cannot be said but is shown. There Wittgenstein insisted that logical propositions show the logical properties of language and therefore of the Universe, but say nothing. This means that, merely by looking at them, you can see these properties. But it is impossible to say what these properties are, because, in order to do Diamond, in 'Throwing away the Ladder', 179, takes this on the authority of Geach in his article 'Saying and Showing in Frege and Wittgenstein'. However, Geach presents no evidence for this claim. Conant similarly asserts it to be so, without presenting any textual evidence for the claim. That the showing/saying distinction derived from reflection on Russell's theory of types was already argued by J. Griffin in his Wittgenstein's Logical Atomism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964) ch. III, and further elaborated in Hacker, Insight and Illusion, ch. I. For a recent defense of this claim, see H.-J. Glock, A Wittgenstein Dictionary (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 332-5. 39

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so, you would need a language which had not got those properties, and it is impossible that this should be a proper language. A language that can express everything mirrors certain properties of the world by the properties it must have; and logical propositions show those properties in a systematic way. Indeed, every real (non-logical) proposition shows something, besides what it says, about the Universe (NB 107). And so on. Nowhere is there an intimation that all this is mere illusion. Nowhere, either here, or in the subsequent Notebooks 1914-16, is there any suggestion that what he is trying to do is to explode the illusion (whose illusion?) that there are things that cannot be said but are shown. On the contrary, he presents this idea as a profound insight: Logical propositions show something, because the language in which they are expressed can say everything that can be said. This same distinction between what can be shown by the language

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but not said, explains the difficulty that is felt about types—e.g., as to [the] difference between things, facts, properties, relations. That M is a thing can't be said; it is nonsense: but something is shown by the symbol "M". . . . Therefore a THEORY of types is impossible. . . . . . . Even if there were propositions of [the] form 'M is a thing' they would be superfluous (tautologous) because what this tries to say is something that is already seen when you see 'M'. ( NB 108-9) (ii) Letters at the time of the Tractatus. If we turn to Wittgenstein's correspondence at the time of the composition of the Tractatus and immediately after its completion, two letters bear on our concerns. According to Diamond and her followers, Wittgenstein did not really think that there were ineffable things that could not be said but that manifest themselves. This makes his letter to Engelmann of 9 April 1917 either unintelligible, or a bizarre form of irony. Apropos Uhland's poem 'Graf Eberhards Weissdorn', Wittgenstein wrote: 'The poem by Uhland is really magnificent. And this is how it is: if only you do not try to utter what is unutterable then nothing gets lost. But the unutterable will be—unutterably— contained in what has been uttered.' 4 0 This suggests that he took very seriously indeed the idea that there were things that are inexpressible. This was certainly what it suggested to Engelmann, who wrote apropos this letter, 'I attach immense significance to the way in which he formulated his impression [of the poem]. It seems to me indeed that his discovery of what a proposition cannot make explicit because it Paul Engelmann, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein with a Memoir , trans. L. Furtmüller (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), 7. Note that Wittgenstein's expression is 'das Unaussprechliche', as in TLP 6.522 (there translated as 'things that cannot be put into words'). 40

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is manifest in it—in my view the essential core of the Tractatus although only adumbrated in the book—has found a lasting expression in this letter.' 4 1 Though not a 'professional philosopher', indeed because not a 'professional philosopher', Paul Engelmann is not an insignificant witness. Wittgenstein enjoyed numerous conversations with Engelmann, both in Olmütz in 1916, when he was still writing the Tractatus, and in later years. He not only gave Engelmann one of the original typescripts of the book, but also discussed his work in detail with Engelmann.4 2 As Engelmann understood the Tractatus and what Wittgenstein explained about it, Wittgenstein and the logical positivists shared a common endeavour in trying to draw 'the line between what we can speak about and what we must be silent about'. 'The difference is only that they have nothing to be silent about. . . . Whereas Wittgenstein passionately believes that all that really matters in human life is precisely what, in his view, we must be silent about.' Among Wittgenstein's 'mystical conclusions', Engelmann thought, are, for example, that the sense of the world must lie outside the world (TLP 6.41)—yet, he observed, 'he (Wittgenstein) does not doubt that there is such a sense'; that no value exists in the world, yet 'that which endows things with the value they have, which

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they show, is therefore simply not in the world . . . but that cannot be said'; that 'There is indeed that which is unutterable. This makes itself manifest, it is the mystical' (cf. TLP 6.522)—'(but not a "bluish haze surrounding things" and giving them an interesting appearance [as Wittgenstein once said in conversation])'.4 3 There can be no doubt at all that the idea that the punctum saliens of the Tractatus is that it is plain nonsense to suppose that there are things that cannot be said but show themselves would have horrified Engelmann and been inimical to everything that Wittgenstein had imparted to him—as far as he understood it. The second letter is that written to Russell on 19 August 1919, shortly after completing the book. Wittgenstein wrote that his main contention in the book 'is the theory of what can be expressed [gesagt] by prop[osition]s—i.e. by language—(and, which comes to the same, what can be thought) and what cannot be expressed by prop[osition]s, but only shown (gezeigt); which I believe is the cardinal problem of philosophy.' In the same letter he explained that one cannot say in a proposition that 41

Ibid. 85.

Engelmann wrote: 'The best way to approach an understanding of the Tractatus—and one that leads in medias res—is the way that Wittgenstein himself, steeped in these thoughts as he then was, took, almost as a matter of course, in the conversations at the start of our acquaintance' (ibid. 100). 42

43

Ibid. 97-8.

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there are two things, but it is shown by there being two names with different meanings. A proposition such as 'φ (a,b)' does not say that there are two things, ' but whether it is true or false, it SHOWS what you want to express by saying: "there are two things" '. Similarly, he insists that one cannot say that all elementary propositions are given, but this is shown by there being none having an elementary sense that is not given (CL 68). It is implausible to suppose that he was pulling Russell's leg, and that the real point of the book is that there is nothing at all to be shown. (iii) Discussions with friends. On the assumption that Diamond's interpretation of the Tractatus is correct, it is surprising that Wittgenstein failed to convey what she takes to be his fundamental insight to either Russell or Ramsey. He spent a week with Russell in The Hague going over the book line by line in 1919. Deeply impressed though Russell was by it, he came away with the idea that what Wittgenstein had earlier told him (CL 68) was the main point of the book (namely, 'the theory of what can be expressed by propositions and what cannot be expressed by propositions, but only shown') was indeed its main point. 'I had felt in his book a flavour of mysticism', he wrote to Lady Ottoline Morrell, alluding no doubt both to TLP 6.44-6.45 and to the final assertion of the doctrine: 'There are indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical' (TLP 6.522). But he was astonished, he continued, 'when I found he has become a complete mystic'.4 4 It is characteristic of mystics to claim that there are ineffable truths, not to indulge in elaborate existentialist wit. Russell's doubts about the validity of the idea of logico-metaphysical ineffabilia are

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expressed in his introduction to the Tractatus, which partly explains Wittgenstein's vehement repudiation of the introduction. It seemed clear to Russell that this idea was 'the part [of the book] upon which he [Wittgenstein] himself would wish to lay most stress' (Introduction, p. xxii). It is equally surprising, if Diamond's interpretation is correct, that Wittgenstein failed to convey it to Ramsey. For Ramsey spent two weeks with Wittgenstein in Puchberg in 1923, during which time Wittgenstein devoted five hours a day to going over the text of the Tractatus line by line with him. Nevertheless, Ramsey retained the impression that Wittgenstein was 'trying to whistle it'. And, despite the extensive, almost daily, conversations the two had in Cambridge in 1929, Ramsey still thought that Wittgenstein was 'pretending that philosophy is See R. Monk, Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (London: Jonathan Cape, 1990), 183-4, and also his Bertrand Russell, the Spirit of Solitude (London: Jonathan Cape, 1996), 568.

44

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important nonsense', and that he failed to take seriously his own argument that it is just nonsense.4 5 (iv) The Aristotelian Society Paper. 'Some Remarks on Logical Form' was written no later than the summer of 1929. Here Wittgenstein turned, for the first and only time, to elaborate what he had called 'the application of logic'. The Tractatus, as its German title ' Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung' indicates, was intended to be a treatise on logic. He had argued that one cannot say a priori what the possible forms of elementary propositions are (TLP 5.55). For, if a question can be decided by logic at all, it must be possible to decide it without more ado, without looking to the world for an answer to the problem (TLP 5.551). The 'experience' that we need in order to understand logic is not that something or other is the state of things, but that something is, and that is not an experience. Logic is prior to every experience that something is so (TLP 5.552).4 6 It is the application of logic that decides what elementary propositions there are. But logic cannot anticipate what belongs to its application. It cannot clash with its application, but it must be in contact with its application. Therefore logic and its application must not overlap (TLP 5.557). Accordingly, any investigation into the application of logic was excluded from the Tractatus. In 'Some Remarks on Logical Form', he turned to this task. He spelt it out clearly: if analysis is carried out far enough, it will reach atomic propositions that represent the ultimate connection of terms that cannot be broken without destroying the propositional form as such. The task is to disclose the inner structure of atomic propositions. Now we can only substitute a clear symbolism for the unprecise one [of ordinary language] by inspecting the phenomena we want to describe, thus trying to understand their logical multiplicity. That is to say, we can only arrive at a correct analysis by, what might be called, the logical investigation of the phenomena themselves, i.e. in a certain sense a posteriori, and not by

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conjecturing about a priori possibilities. . . . An atomic form cannot be foreseen. And it would be surprising if the actual phenomena had nothing more to teach us about their structure. (RLF 163-4) The programme coheres perfectly with the Tractatus. In the course of the paper, Wittgenstein repeats without more ado 4 5 The paper entitled 'Philosophy' from which this remark is taken was written in the summer of 1929. 4 6 Logic 'is prior to the question "How?", not prior to the question "What?" '. This is explained in WWK 54: 'A relation that says "how?" is external. It is expressed by a proposition. "Internal"—we have two propositions between which a formal relation holds.' Hence logic is prior to statements concerning external relations, and internal relations cannot be described.

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numerous central doctrines of the Tractatus. Some are metaphysical. For example: space and time are forms of spatial and temporal objects (RLF 165; TLP 2.0251). Colours and sounds are objects (RLF 165; TLP 2.0131). Other doctrines are logico-syntactical. For example: all propositions are truthfunctions of elementary propositions (RLF 162; TLP 5). Yet others are logicometaphysical. For example: internal relations in reality are represented by an internal relation between the statements describing the items that stand in such internal relations (RLF 168; TLP 4.125). The forms of entities described by a proposition are contained in the form of the proposition that is about those entities (RLF 169; cf. TLP 3.13). A proposition must have the same logical multiplicity as what it represents (RLF 169-70; TLP 4.04). Some are general remarks about language. For example: that ordinary language disguises logical structure [form], allows the formation of pseudopropositions, uses one term in an infinity of meanings (RLF 163, 165; TLP 3.323, 4.002). Apart from these numerous and striking reaffirmations of Tractatus claims, there are also points of disagreement. 'I used to think', Wittgenstein writes, 'that statements of degree were analyzable' (RLF 168, emphasis added), referring to TLP 6.3751. 'One might think—and I thought so not long ago—that a statement expressing the degree of a quality could be analyzed into a logical product of single statements of quantity and a completing supplementary statement' (RLF 167, emphasis added). 'The mutual exclusion of unanalyzable statements of degree contradicts an opinion of mine which was published by me several years ago and which necessitated that atomic propositions could not exclude one another' (RLF 168, emphasis added). It is obvious, and well known, that 'Some Remarks on Logical Form' represents the last phase of Wittgenstein's adherence to the overall philosophy of the Tractatus. Indeed, it was, in part, his realization in this paper that elementary propositions are not independent, that not all logical relations are consequences of truth-functional composition (since determinate-exclusion is not), that led to the collapse of the philosophy of the Tractatus. But, if Diamond's interpretation were correct, it would be unintelligible that Wittgenstein should repeat in this paper central metaphysical, logico-syntactical, and logico-metaphysical claims made in the

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book which had been demonstrated by him to be plain nonsense. It would be equally unintelligible that he should refer to sentences in the book as expressions of his opinions and as statements of what he used to think. It might be argued that 'Some Remarks on Logical Form' was a temporary aberration. After all, Wittgenstein never delivered it at the end p.132

Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society and the Mind Association in 1929, and later described it to Elizabeth Anscombe as 'quite worthless'. To block this move, we can turn to reports of Wittgenstein's lectures and discussions in 1929-32. (v) Lectures and discussions. In Desmond Lee's notes of Wittgenstein's lectures of 1930-2, we find-in the early lectures (prior to Wittgenstein's rapid shift away from his first philosophy)—that he reaffirms numerous Tractatus doctrines. Some of these are points upon which he never changed his mind. For example: Words have no meaning save in propositions; they function only in propositions, like levers in a machine (LWL 2; TLP 3.3); such words as 'and', 'not', 'or', and so on obviously do not stand for anything (LWL 45; TLP 5.4-5.44); all grammar is a theory of logical types; and logical types do not talk about the application of language (LWL 13; TLP 3.33-3.333). Others are cardinal doctrines of the Tractatus, which he was subsequently to repudiate or drastically to reinterpret. For example: the proposition is a picture of reality (LWL 4; TLP 4.01); mathematical propositions so called are not propositions at all (LWL 13; TLP 6.2-6.21); the relation of proposition to fact . . . is an internal relation (LWL 9; TLP 4.014); in order that propositions may be able to represent at all, something further is needed which is the same both in language and in reality . . . thought must have the logical form of reality if it is to be thought at all (LWL 10; TLP 2.16-2.171, 2.18-2.2); there are no logical concepts, such, for example, as 'thing', 'complex', 'number'—such terms are expressions for logical forms, not concepts—they are properly expressed by a variable (LWL 10; TLP 4.126-4.1272). And yet others concern the Tractatus doctrine of what cannot be said but only shown by language. What can be expressed about the world by grammar being what it is cannot be expressed in a proposition (LWL 9). Language cannot express what cannot be otherwise. We never arrive at fundamental propositions in the course of our investigations; we get to the boundary of language which stops us from asking further questions. We don't get to the bottom of things, but reach a point where we can go no further, where we cannot ask further questions. What is essential to the world cannot be said about the world; for then it could be otherwise, as any proposition can be negated (LWL 34). What expression (of expectation) and fulfilment have in common is shown by the use of the same expression to describe both what we expect and its fulfilment—this common element in expectation and fulfilment cannot be described or expressed in any proposition (LWL 35-6). All these assertions immediately become baffling if, as Diamond end p.133

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claims, the ladder metaphor of the Tractatus (and the Preface) show that Wittgenstein threw away all the claims apparently made in the book, including the idea that there are ineffable truths concerning the logical form of the world, the essential nature of representation, and so on and so forth. If that was the lesson that the Tractatus was trying to convey by Kierkegaardian means, as Conant holds, how could Wittgenstein reaffirm them in his lectures in 1930/1? If we turn to Wittgenstein's discussions with Schlick and Waismann in Vienna in 1929-31, the same picture emerges. He explicitly refers to things he said in the Tractatus in order to reaffirm them. For example, that we cannot foresee the form of elementary propositions; only when we analyse phenomena logically shall we know what form elementary propositions have (WWK 42; TLP 5.55-5.557). Logic is prior to the question 'How?', not prior to the question 'What?' (WWK 77; TLP 5.552). It is the essential feature of the proposition that it is a picture and has compositeness (WWK 90; TLP 4.01, 4.032). A proposition reaches through the whole of logical space; otherwise negation would be unintelligible (WWK 91; TLP 3.42). To understand a proposition is to know what is the case if it is true and what is the case if it is false (WWK 86; TLP 2.223, 4.024; NB 93-4). He reaffirms the correctness of his T/F notation: the multiplicity of this notation is correct from the beginning, which is why he does not need Russell's syntactical rules (WWK 80). He reaffirms his claim that there are things that cannot be said, but that are shown by other well-formed propositions. For example, that 2 > 1.5, which makes itself manifest by the statement that a (which is 2 metres long) is 0.5 metres longer than b (which is 1.5 metres long) (WWK 54). Similarly, that one colour is darker than another, cannot be said, 'for this is of the essence of colour; without it, after all, a colour cannot be thought'. But this makes itself manifest in the proposition that this (dark blue) suit is darker than that (light blue) one4 7 (WWK 55; TLP 4.123-4.124). He refers to other things he wrote in the Tractatus in order to repudiate or qualify them. These, he said, are things he used to believe . He once wrote, he remarks, 'A proposition is laid against reality like ruler. Only the end points of the graduating lines actually touch the object that is to be measured' (TLP 2.1512-2.15121). He now prefers to say that a ' system of propositions is laid This modifies the position of the Tractatus, for Wittgenstein distinguishes here between complete and incomplete descriptions. To say that this line is longer than that one, or that this suit is darker than that one, is to give incomplete descriptions. But, he claims, if we describe such states of affairs completely, the external relation disappears, and no expressible relation is left—only an ineffable internal relation between lengths or between colours (WWK 55). 47

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against reality like a ruler'. When he was writing the Tractatus, he did not know this: 'At that time I thought that all inference is based on tautological form. At that time I had not seen that an inference can also have the form: This man is 2m tall, therefore he is not 3m tall. This is connected with the fact that I believed that elementary propositions must be independent of one another, that you could not infer the non-existence of one state of affairs from the existence of another' (WWK 63; see also TLP 2.062, 4.211,

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5.1314-5.135). In the same vein he refers to TLP 2.0131: namely, that a visual object is surrounded by colour-space, an audible object by sound-space, and so on. 'When I wrote this', he continues, 'I had not yet seen that the number of positions in this space form the graduating marks of a yardstick as it were and that we always lay the entire system of propositions against reality like a yardstick' (WWK 89). He explained to Waismann his views on elementary propositions. First I want to say what I used to believe and what part of that seems right to me now. I used to have two conceptions of an elementary proposition, one of which seems correct to me, while I was completely wrong in holding the other. My first assumption was this: that in analysing propositions we must eventually reach propositions that are immediate connections of objects without any help from the logical constants, for 'not', 'and', 'or', and 'if' do not connect objects. And I stlll adhere to that. Secondly, I had the idea that elementary propositions must be independent of one another. A complete description of the world would be a product of elementary propositions . . . In holding this I was wrong, and the following is what was wrong with it. I laid down rules for the syntactical use of logical constants, for example ' p.q', and did not think that these rules might have something to do with the inner structure of propositions. What was wrong about my conception was that I believed that the syntax of logical constants could be laid down without paying attention to the inner connection of propositions. That is not how things actually are. . . . The rules for the logical constants form only a part of a more comprehensive syntax about which I did not yet know anything at that time. . . . Thus I can, for example, construct the logical product p.q only if p and q do not determine the same coordinate twice. But in cases where propositions are independent everything remains valid—the whole theory of inference and so forth. (WWK 73-4, 76) In the final recorded discussion in July 1932, by which time his views had changed dramatically, he remarked, alluding inter alia to TLP 2.1511, 'At that time [when he wrote the Tractatus] I thought that there was "a connection between language and reality" ' (WWK 210). Nowhere is there any suggestion that, of course, he did not really believe end p.135

these things, that he knew at the time that all these assertions were 'plain nonsense', written in a spirit of Kierkegaardian irony or in the manner of a Zen master. On the contrary, what he explicitly accused himself of was dogmatism (WWK 182 ff.). In response it might be held that these reports of discussions and lectures are unreliable, that we can rely only upon what Wittgenstein himself wrote. So I now turn to that. (vi) The post-1929 manuscript volumes and typescripts. The early MS volumes from 1929-30 convey exactly the same picture. It is evident, even from brief scrutiny, that Wittgenstein continued (for a while) to

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adhere to his distinction between what can be said and what cannot be said but only shown. He wrote: 'Remember that "the length a is divisible" is not a proposition, but nonsense; that it is divisible is shown by the form of its symbol' (MS 106, 205, my translation). Again, 'What belongs to the essence of the world cannot be expressed by language. For this reason, it cannot say that everything flows. Language can only say those things that we can also imagine otherwise' (MS 108, 1 (= PR 84)). 'But the essence of language is a picture of the essence of the world; and philosophy as custodian of grammar can in fact grasp the essence of the world, only not in the propositions of language, but in rules for this language which exclude nonsensical combinations of signs' (MS 108, 2 (= PR 85)).4 8 Similarly, he continued to hold that the harmony between language, thought, and reality cannot be described in language, but only shown. He wrote: The agreement of thought as such with reality cannot be expressed. If one takes the word agreement in the sense in which a true proposition agrees with reality, then it is wrong, because there are also false propositions. But another sense cannot be reproduced by means of language. Like everything metaphysical the (pre-established) harmony between this thought and that reality is given us by the limits of language. (MS 109, 31, my translation) More generally, he remarks, 'What is common to thought and reality which is expressed in language by common components of the expression / shows itself through something common in the expression / in the expressions / can for that very reason not be represented (described) in language. Here we are again at the limits of language . One cannot describe in language the essence of language' (MS 109, 53, my translation). It is noteworthy that this remark signals the beginning of his move away from the Tractatus conception that ineffable necessities are shown by features of the symbolism to his later view that what seemed to be attempts to express ineffable necessities are no more than grammatical rules that owe no homage to reality. 48

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According to Diamond and her colleagues, Wittgenstein never cleaved to an ontology of facts constituted of objects, and of objects as sempiternal simples.4 9 The ontological statements of the Tractatus, according to their interpretation, are plain nonsense—not anything Wittgenstein ever believed, and believed to be shown by well-formed analysed propositions of language. In MS 110, 250 (= PG 200), written in July 1931, he examined in detail the use and abuse of the terms 'object' and 'complex'. To say that a red circle is composed of redness and circularity, or is a complex with these component parts, is a misuse of these words and is misleading. (Frege was aware of this and told me.)' And he proceeds to anatomize the confusions of the Tractatus ontology of facts, complexes, and objects. Is he criticizing himself? Or merely making clear the plain nonsense of which he had already been aware when he wrote the Tractatus? He resumed the discussion in the following MS

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volume the same year. He noted that one can speak intelligibly of combinations of colours and shapes—for example, of combinations of the colours red and blue and the shapes square and circle. (I suppose that one might describe a Matisse cut-out thus.) This, Wittgenstein observes, is the root of the confusing expression: a fact is a complex of objects (MS 111, 19). Is this a criticism of the Tractatus or merely an amplification of what he then knew was plain nonsense? It is still unclear. The topic was resumed in 1937/8 when he composed MS 142—the first draft of the early version of the Investigations, which was then made into a polished typescript (TS 220). §108 of this 'Proto-Philosophical Investigations' was evidently derived from MS 111, 19, since the same remark is repeated. But now he writes 'This is the root of my erroneous expression: a fact is a complex of objects.5 0 To say: a red circle " consists of " redness and circularity, is a complex [consisting] of these constituents is a misuse of these words, and misleading . . . The Floyd remarks that 'It is one of the great myths of twentieth century philosophy that the early Wittgenstein was a "logical atomist" ' ('The Uncaptive Eye', 85). If this is a myth, it is one Wittgenstein accepted in 1929, for he wrote 'our analysis, if carried far enough, must come to the point where it reaches propositional forms which are not themselves composed of simpler propositional forms. We must eventually reach the ultimate connection of the terms, the immediate connection which cannot be broken without destroying the propositional form as such. The propositions which represent this ultimate connection of terms I call, after B. Russell, atomic propositions. They, then, are the kernels of every proposition, they contain the material, and all the rest is only a development of this material. It is to them that we must look for the subject matter of propositions' (RLF 162-3). For further evidence regarding his own ideas about his earlier logical atomism, see the above discussion. 49

He is inaccurate here, since he was more careful in the Tractatus to distinguish fact from complex, and said that a fact consists of, or is constituted of, objects.

50

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fact that this circle is red does not consist of anything. (Frege objected to my expression, in that he said: "the part is smaller than the whole.")' This looks fairly clearly as if it is a recantation. And this impression can be strengthened by tracing Frege's remark. For now that we have Frege's letters to Wittgenstein, we know that this was a criticism Frege directed against the Tractatus ontology after completion of the book. In his letter of 28 June 1919, he observed: 'You write "It is essential to things that they should be possible constituents of states of affairs".5 1 Can a thing also be a constituent of a fact? The part of a part is part of the whole. If a thing is a constituent of a fact and every fact is part of the world, then the thing is also part of the world.' It is patently to this criticism that Wittgenstein is referring (probably from memory), and it is a criticism to which he had paid no attention whatsoever at the time. It was only in 1929 and later that he realized the nature of his misleading and erroneous expression, came to recognize that he had misused the expressions 'object', 'complex', 'fact', 'constituent', and 'to be constituted of', and that Frege's criticism, though not

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exactly on target, was correct. Interestingly, as late as 1 March 1944, Wittgenstein was pre-occupied with the same error. On that day, in MS 127, he copied out TLP 4.22, 3.21, 3.22, 3.14, 2.03, 2.0272, and 2.01. He then wrote: 'the ungrammatical use of the words "object" and "configuration"! A configuration may consist of five balls in certain spatial relations; but not of the balls and their spatial relations. And if I say "I see here three objects", I don't mean: two balls and their respective position.' He then repeats the passage from MS 111, 19, and remarks yet again: 'Here is the root of my mistaken expression.' There can be no serious doubt that this is self-criticism. Moreover, it should be noted that the criticism is not that 'object' and 'fact' are formal concepts that may not occur in a well-formed elementary proposition. It is rather that it is a grammatical mistake to call spatial positions or relations 'objects' and to speak of facts as having 'constituents' or as 'being composed' of anything. It might be replied that all Wittgenstein is doing is noting that he had not found the very best way of articulating the nonsenses of the Tractatus, that he knew that it was all nonsense, but that Frege pointed out to him that the nonsense should be more persuasively put. This is wildly implausible, and there is not a shred of evidence to support any such hypothesis. A few further points to confirm his later critical stance. In TS 220, the ProtoPhilosophical Investigations, §92, in a passage that was meant as a sequel to Investigations, §102, he wrote: 'The ideal, strict 51

TLP 2.011.

end p.138

construction seemed to me like something concrete. I used a simile; but due to the grammatical illusion that a concept-word corresponds to one thing, that which is common to all its objects, it did not seem like a simile.' A different version of this, discussing the illusion of strict clear rules of the logical structure of propositions, is to be found in MS 157b, 10-11 (also written in 1937): 'I used a simile (of a method of projection, etc.) But through a grammatical illusion of the actual concepts it did not seem like a simile.' In MS 142, 114, commenting on the general propositional form, he wrote: ' "Every proposition says: Things are thus and so." Here is a form that can mislead us. (And did mislead me.)' And in TS 220, §95b, in a passage that is actually repeated in the Philosophical Investigations, §108, he remarked: 'We see that what we call "sentence" and "language" has not the formal unity that I imagined, but is a family of structures more or less united.' But, if the Tractatus, preface and conclusion apart, is nothing but plain nonsense and was intended by its author as such, it cannot be true that he imagined any such thing, or that he was misled by the propositional variable 'things are thus and so', or that he succumbed to illusions of determinacy of sense. It is striking that defenders of Diamond's interpretation have produced no evidence at all from the post-1929 documents to support their view. If Wittgenstein was, as they argue, practising a subtle form of 'dialectic', or Kierkegaardian irony, or Zen pedagogy, it would be little short of miraculous that among the 20,000 pages of Nachlass and the further thousands of pages of students' lecture notes and records of conversations, there is not a single trace

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of any such strategy. It would be extra-ordinary that in all his conversations with and dictations to his friends and pupils, with Engelmann, Russell, Ramsey, Waismann, Schlick, Lee, Drury, Rhees, Malcolm, von Wright, Anscombe, and so on, of which we have records, he never , even once, mentioned or explained what he was up to. If the internal and external evidence mustered in the foregoing arguments against this interpretation does not suffice to undermine it, it would be instructive of Diamond and her followers to inform us what would count as sufficient or telling evidence against their account. I suggest that all the evidence points to the conclusion that, when he wrote the Tractatus, Wittgenstein did indeed embrace the very view Diamond and her colleagues reject. 'There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical' (TLP 6.522). They cannot be said or indeed thought (for thought too 'is a kind of language')—a conception to which any doctrine of the ineffability of mystical insight into the essence of the world or the transcendence of all that is higher must cleave. But they can end p.139

be apprehended, inter alia by a grasp of the forms of what can be expressed. He did indeed think that, when one has thrown away the ladder, one is left with a correct logical point of view and that this point of view includes an understanding of why the essence of the world and the nature of the sublime—of absolute value—are inexpressible.5 2 Any attempt to state such insights inevitably runs up against the limits of language. What one means when one tries to state these insights is perfectly correct, but the endeavour must unavoidably fail. For the ineffable manifests itself, and cannot be said. He was indeed, as Ramsey claimed, trying to whistle it. Moreover, it seems that, when he did finally realize the untenability of this position, his reaction was to jettison the ladder metaphor, rather than to jettison the philosophical insights of the Tractatus that he wished to preserve and sometimes to reinterpret. 'I might say: If the place I want to get to could only be reached by a ladder, I would give up trying to get there. For the place I really have to get to is a place I must already be at now. Anything that I might reach by climbing a ladder does not interest me' ( MS 109, 207; CV 7). The ladder metaphor goes back to Sextus Empiricus. But it is of some interest to note that Schopenhauer, in The World as Will and Representation (Dover, New York, 1966), vol. ii, p. 80, a book we know Wittgenstein read, invokes the ladder metaphor as a metaphor for attaining insight, not for something that self-destructively consumes itself. (I am grateful to Jonathan Witztum for pointing this out to me.) 52

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5 When the Whistling had to Stop Abstract: Ten propositional types that, according to the Tractatus, cannot 'be said' are identified. Wittgenstein's post-Tractatus account of each of these types of proposition is examined. Keywords: harmony between language and reality, ineffability, internal relations, limits of language, nonsense, showing and saying, Tractatus

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P. M. S Hacker

1. The Tractatus Doctrine of Saying and Showing In a letter to Russell dated 19 August 1919, written shortly after he had finished the Tractatus, Wittgenstein told Russell that the main contention of the book, to which all else, including the account of logic, is subsidiary, 'is the theory of what can be expressed [gesagt] by prop[osition]s—i.e. by language—(and, which comes to the same, what can be thought) and what cannot be expressed by prop[osition]s, but only shown [gezeigt]; which I believe is the cardinal problem of philosophy' (CL 68). This was emphasized in both Preface and conclusion of the book. The Preface observes that the whole sense of the book can be summed up in the following words: 'what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence' (TLP , p. 3). The conclusion of the book (TLP 7) simply repeats this. The preceding three remarks, however, are noteworthy. They make three claims. First, 'There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical' (TLP 6.522). This reiterates the leitmotif of the book namely, that there are things that cannot, by the very nature of representation, be said. But though they cannot be said, they are shown by features of the relevant system of representation. Secondly, the correct method in philosophy would really be to say nothing except what can be said—that is, empirical propositions that have nothing to do with philosophy, and then, when someone wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give meaning to certain signs in his propositions (TLP 6.53). This method, of course, is not the method that has been followed throughout the book, which consists almost exclusively of modal assertions concerning what must, can, or cannot be thus and so in reality, in language and in the relation between language and reality. Hence, thirdly, the propositions of the book clarify in as much as I am grateful to Dr H.-J. Glock, Professor O. Hanfling, Dr J. Hyman, Professor H. Philipse, and Professor W. Waxman for their comments on the first draft of this paper.

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anyone who understands their author recognizes in the end that they are nonsense. The reader must use them as steps to climb up beyond them. He must, so to speak, 'throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it' (TLP 6.54). This dramatic conclusion unsurprisingly baffled the early readers of the Tractatus. For it looks remarkably like a reductio ad absurdum. For the very argument to establish that the kinds of 'propositions' of which the book consists are illegitimate pseudo-propositions is itself part of the book, couched in the very same kinds of 'propositions' that are condemned as nonsensical attempts to say what cannot be said but is shown. Russell remonstrated in his Introduction to the book that, 'after all, Mr Wittgenstein manages to say a good deal about what cannot be said, thus suggesting to the sceptical reader that possibly there may be some loophole through a hierarchy of languages, or by some other exit' (Introduction, p. xxi). Ramsey famously objected that what we can't say, we can't say, but then we can't whistle it either.1 If the chief proposition of

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philosophy is that philosophy is nonsense, then 'we must take seriously that it is nonsense, and not pretend, as Wittgenstein does, that it is important nonsense'.2 Over the years there have been various attempts to defend Wittgenstein's Tractatus from this apparent reductio ad absurdum. Some have argued that the book may not say anything, but its propositions surely show us a great deal about the nature of logic and language.3 Others have argued that the book's self-condemnation is to be taken with the utmost seriousness—it does indeed condemn as nonsense everything that is within it, including the claim that there are things that cannot be said but only shown. The idea that there are ineffable truths at which the nonsensical sentences of the book gesture is itself a rung upon the ladder that is to be thrown away. Pace Ramsey, Wittgenstein was not trying to whistle it at all.4 I have argued elsewhere5 that, although we should indeed take seriously the claim that the sentences of the Tractatus fail to conform with the logical syntax of language and are accordingly nonsensical, we should take equally seriously the claim that those sentences are F. P. Ramsey, 'General Propositions and Causality', in F. P. Ramsey: The Foundations of Mathematics, ed. R. B. Braithwaite (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, & Co., 1931), 238. I am indebted to Professor D. H. Mellor for locating the quotation for me 1

2

F. P. Ramsey, 'Philosophy', in ibid. 263.

M. Black, A Companion to Wittgenstein's Tractatus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), 378 ff. 3

C. Diamond, 'Throwing away the Ladder: How to Read the Tractatus', repr. in The Realistic Spirit (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991). 5 See Ch 4 above. 4

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a self-conscious attempt to say what can only be, and indeed is, shown by features of the relevant symbolism. Only thus conceived can they be thought of as a ladder up which we can climb to attain the correct logical point of view; however the metaphor of the ladder is to be taken, we can hardly claim that a 'ladder' consisting of mere gibberish can lead anywhere. We should take seriously the claims of the Preface and conclusion that what we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence—that is, that there are things we cannot speak about, and indeed that these are things which make themselves manifest. Accordingly, in the Tractatus Wittgenstein was, as Ramsey suggested, 'trying to whistle it'. I shall not repeat the arguments in favour of this. My present concern is with the afterlife of the conception of 'what can only be shown'. For in the course of the couple of years after his return to philosophy in 1929, Wittgenstein came to realize that the position he had defended in the Tractatus was untenable. When the whistling had to stop, what became of the numerous ineffable truths, which the book had tried to articulate in its self-confessed pseudo-propositions?

2. What Could Not be Said But Manifested Itself The rationale for the doctrine of the ineffable must be seen against the background of what can with some justice be said to be a, if not the fundamental putative insight of the whole book—namely, the principle of the bipolarity of the

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proposition.6 It is a cardinal claim of the book that it is of the essence of a proposition with sense not merely to be bivalent—that is, either true or false—but to be bipolar—that is, to be capable of being true and capable of being false. While Frege had ensured bivalency for any proposition in his artificial conceptscript, he had argued that natural languages unfortunately permit the formation of To be sure, this is not Wittgenstein's judgement but mine. He characterizes as his Grundgedanke the idea that the 'logical constants' are not representatives—that there can be no representatives of the logic of facts (TLP 4.0312). This is an allusion to Russell's doctrine, according to which logical forms—for example, particular, relation, dual complex, etc.—are the logical constants that result from abstraction and with which we must be acquainted by logical experience (see B. Russell, Theory of Knowledge: The 1913 Manuscript, ed. E. R. Eames and K. Blackwell, vol. vii of The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell (London: Allen & Unwin, 1984), pt. I, ch. IX). This is not to be confused with TLP 5.4, where the claim that there are no logical constants alludes more specifically to the logical connectives. The insight that logical forms are not kinds of entities for which names go proxy is doubtless fundamental for the philosophy of logic of the Tractatus, but I suggest that bipolarity is no less so. 6

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sentences expressing thoughts with no truth-value because they contain expressions lacking a reference. Russell, invoking the theory of descriptions to eliminate apparent singular referring expressions lacking reference, argued that bivalency was a defining feature of a proposition. But neither Frege nor Russell dreamt of the principle of bipolarity. That is not surprising, since the propositions with which they were above all concerned—namely, the propositions of logic and mathematics—are patently not bipolar. Yet both Frege and Russell thought of such propositions as having a sense, as describing relations between abstract objects or as describing the most general facts of the universe. Wittgenstein's principle of bipolarity was built into his conception of the general propositional form—namely, 'Thus and so is how things stand' ('Es verhält sich so und so'). This variable, the general propositional form, gives the essence of the proposition; also the essence of all description, and hence too the essence of the world (TLP 5.471-5.4711). It is of the essence of reality that it consists of the existence and non-existence of states of affairs (TLP 2.06). It is of the essence of a proposition to describe a state of affairs; and it is of the nature of states of affairs that they may exist (obtain) or not exist (not obtain). The proposition, therefore, is a logical picture of a possibility—which may or may not be instantiated. Hence any proposition with a sense must be capable of being true (and is so if the state of affairs it describes obtains) and capable of being false (and is so if the state of affairs it describes does not obtain). A proposition is true if things are as it describes them as being (TLP 4.062). Of course, the propositions of logic are not bipolar. They are tautologies—molecular propositions combined by means of truth-functional connectives in such a manner as to be true come what may, no matter what the truth-values of their constituent elementary propositions are. They are well formed, but are unconditionally true—which is why they say nothing at all. Their truth rules out nothing—hence they lack any sense. They are not nonsense, but senseless—that is, have, in a

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manner of speaking, zero sense. The bipolarity thesis rules out any necessarily true propositions other than the vacuous tautologies of logic. In particular, it rules out the possibility of any elementary propositions that are necessary truths. For they would not meet the condition of bipolarity. There are in natural language numerous apparent elementary propositions—that is, apparent propositions that do not contain a truth-functional connective, which appear to state necessary truths. For example, that red is a colour, that space is three dimensional, or that time is linear. Indeed, the Tractatus itself consists largely of such. If these are illegitimate pseudo-propositions, and not simply counter-examples to the bipolarity thesis, reasons must be given for their illegitimacy. Wittgenstein offers two general reasons. end p.144

First, any proposition in which a formal concept occurs other than as a bound variable is ill-formed. Formal concepts are categorial concepts. They include, with respect to our descriptions of the world, such concepts as 'object', 'complex', 'property', 'state of affairs', 'fact', but also more specific concepts such as 'space', 'time', 'colour (being coloured)', and so presumably also 'pitch', '(degree of) hardness (warmth, etc.)', 'taste', and so on (cf. TLP 2.0131). With respect to descriptions of symbolisms, such expressions as 'proposition', 'concept', 'function', 'number' are all characterized as formal concept-words. As these are represented in natural languages, they look like proper concept-words. But they are in effect variable names, and would be so represented in a perspicuous notation. Forms are not kinds of objects, and variable names are not real names. So one cannot say of a that it is an object, not only because the pseudo-proposition ' a is an object' is not bipolar, but also because this form of words is not well formed since 'object' is not a name. It has a use as an expression for a form (formal concept), but we have given it none as a name of an object. Expressions for forms, which Russell had called 'logical constants' (see n. 6), are not representatives (vertreten nicht)—that is, are not proxies for forms, but variables; there can be no representatives of the logic of facts (TLP 4.0312). Every variable is the sign for a formal concept, for every variable represents (darstellt) a constant form that all its values possess. Its constant form is a formal property of its values ( TLP 4.1271). The characteristic marks of a formal concept are formal properties that are expressed not by means of functions, but rather by features of the symbols whose meanings fall under the formal concept. So one cannot say of objects, for example, that they are spatial, since being spatial is a formal property, a characteristic mark of the formal concept 'object'. Secondly, one cannot ascribe internal (structural) properties and relations to things (objects, situations, facts). Internal properties and relations are properties and relations that are such that it is unthinkable that the thing should not possess them. It is unthinkable that Cambridge blue should not be lighter than Oxford blue, or that the proposition p v p should not be a tautology, or that ' p & (p q)' should not imply ' q'. In so far as the property or relation in question is not exhibited by a variable (as being a tautology , or being lighter than are not), it seems that Wittgenstein is here relying upon the principle of bipolarity to exclude ascriptions of internal properties and relations from well-formed propositions

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with a sense.7 Internal properties are structural, and they are 7 At least in cases in which the internal relation or property in question is not ascribed to a form, as in the case of light blue being lighter than dark blue (as opposed to the ascription of tautologousness to a proposition).

end p.145

shown by the structure of the propositions describing the relevant possible situations. Internal relations between possible situations are shown by structural relations between the propositions representing those possible situations (TLP 4.124, 4.125). In the course of the book, Wittgenstein asserts many different kinds of truths that stricto sensu cannot be said, but that are held to show themselves in features of the symbolism. To be sure, they only do so perspicuously in a correct conceptscript. Among the numerous kinds of truths that allegedly cannot be stated we can distinguish the following ten topics. (i) The harmony between language and reality. The heart of the picture theory of representation consists of the alleged insight that there is a harmony (or, as he later put it, with Leibnizean allusion, a 'pre-established harmony' (BT 189)) between language and the world. This harmony, he later remarked, seems evident in the fact that 'if I say falsely that something is red, then, for all that, it isn't red' (PI §429). Even if a proposition is false, it describes something, in particular it describes how things are not. The 'harmony' does not consist in the agreement of a true proposition with reality, since there are also false propositions. According to the Tractatus, it consists in the agreement of form between a proposition and the reality it depicts truly or falsely . For a proposition to represent a possible situation, it must have the same logical form as what it depicts, no matter whether the situation obtains or not, and must have the same logical (mathematical) multiplicity. The names in a fully analysed proposition have as their meanings the simple objects in reality that they represent, and the combinatorial possibilities of those names in logical syntax mirror the combinatorial possibilities of their meanings—that is, of objects—in the world. However, neither the shared form (TLP 2.172) nor the multiplicity (TLP 4.04-4.041) can be depicted. For the harmony between language and reality is an internal relation between a proposition and what makes it true or false. It is unthinkable that the proposition that p should not be made true by the fact that p, and equally unthinkable that it should be made false by anything other than the fact that p. Propositions can represent the whole of reality, but they cannot represent what they must have in common with reality in order to be able to represent it—namely, logical form. Rather it is mirrored in them. Propositions show the logical form of reality (TLP 4.12-4.121). (ii) Semantics. One cannot say what the meaning of a name is. A name has both form and content, its form being its logico-syntactical combinatorial possibilities, represented by the variable of which it is a value, and end p.146

its content being its meaning, the object for which it goes proxy. But one cannot say of a name—for example, the name of a simple colour R—that

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it is the name of a colour, or that it means such-and-such a colour.8 For one would be using the formal concepts of name and colour in order to do so. Objects can only be named. Propositions can only say how things are, describe the contingent states of affairs in which objects are concatenated. They cannot say what they are (TLP 3.221). To say what a thing is would be to describe its essential nature, which would involve describing the thing in terms of its internal properties (see below). Similarly, it is impossible to assert the identity of meaning of two expressions (TLP 6.2322). For expressions of identity are neither elementary propositions nor reducible to such (TLP 4.243). Nor can one say what the sense of a proposition is—for example, that the proposition 'fa' has as its sense the situation that contains the objects a and f in concatentation, for that again involves the use of formal concepts. Rather, a proposition shows its sense—'fa' shows that f and a occur in its sense. A proposition shows how things stand if it is true (indeed, that is what it represents ( darstellt)—its sense (TLP 2.221)), and it says that they do so stand (TLP 4.022). (iii) Internal properties of things, situations, and propositions. One cannot ascribe internal properties or relations to things. For any attempt to do so would result in a form of words that did not satisfy the requirement of bipolarity on a proposition with sense. So one cannot say that a proposition is a tautology, both because the concept of a proposition is a formal concept and because being a tautology is a formal, structural, property of propositions that are tautologies—they would not be the propositions they are were they not tautologies. But every such proposition shows that it is a tautology (TLP 6.127). Similarly, one cannot say that Oxford blue is darker than Cambridge blue, since this is an internal relation between these two colours. The existence of this internal relation between the possible situations that a is dark blue and b is light blue is expressed by an internal relation between the propositions describing the two situations—namely, ' a is dark blue' and ' b is light blue' (TLP 4.123-4.125). (iv) Internal relations between propositions. One cannot say that one proposition follows from another or that one proposition contradicts I am disregarding here, as Wittgenstein himself does in TLP 2.0131, 2.0251, and 4.123, the fact that colours, at least 'gross colours', are not objects. He probably thought of minimally discriminable shades of colours as among the objects of the Tractatus, and only later realized that determinates of a determinable do not satisfy the independence requirement on objects (and hence on elementary propositions). But, once that is recognized, the whole conception of objects collapses—as it did for him in 1929/30. 8

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another. For these are internal relations between propositions. But that the propositions ' p' and ' p' in the combination ' (p. p)' yield a tautology shows that they contradict each other. That the propositions ' p q', ' p' and ' q', combined with one another in the form '(p q).(p): :(q)' yield a tautology shows that ' q' follows from ' p' and ' p q' (TLP 6.1201). A tautology shows the internal relations between its constituent

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propositions. Rules of inference, which seemed necessary to Frege and Russell in order to justify inferences, are neither necessary nor possible (TLP 5.132). For it makes no sense to attempt to justify internal relations—that is, to try to justify what, by its essential nature, cannot be otherwise. (v) Categorial features of things and type classifications. One cannot say of a thing that it belongs to a given category—for example, that red is a colour. For the ontological category of a thing is given by its logical form, which consists in its combinatorial possibilities with other objects. A spatial object must have some spatial location, a visual object must have some colour, a sound must have some pitch (TLP 2.0131). But the form of an object cannot be named, since it is not itself an object, but the common features of a whole class of objects. The formal concept colour is the common form of all colours, their shared combinatorial possibilities with spatial objects (and their combinatorial impossibilities with auditory objects). This, as we have seen, is represented in a perspicuous notation by the variable of which colour names are values. One cannot, therefore, say that red is a colour, but that it is so is shown by any proposition of the form ' a is red'. In particular, the combinatorial possibilities of 'red', which is the form of the name, show this. Hence one cannot say of an object of a certain kind that it belongs to one type rather than to another. (vi) The limits of thought. One cannot, as Wittgenstein emphasized in the Preface, circumscribe the limits of thought in language. For it is nonsense to say that such-and-such cannot be thought. Nor can one justify excluding a form of words by reference to reality, as Russell had done in the theory of types. But one can circumscribe the limits of thought from within, by drawing the limits of language. One can explain the nature of symbolism and thereby indicate which forms of words are licit. Forms of words that are not permitted are not descriptions of the unthinkable nor are they descriptions of logical impossibilities. For there cannot be such a thing as an intelligible description of something that cannot be thought. To be sure, these claims immediately condemn the propositions of the Tractatus as nonsense, since they employ formal concepts and describe internal relations—a paradox, end p.148

which its author gladly embraced. They are attempts to say what cannot be said, but manifests itself. Their role is fulfilled when one comes to understand both that they are nonsense and that what they were trying to say is shown. (vii) The limits of reality and the logical structure of the world. Empirical reality is limited by the totality of objects. This limit makes itself manifest in the totality of elementary propositions (TLP 5.5561). The limits of the world are also the limits of logic—that is, the limits of all possible worlds are the limits of logical possibility. Tautologies and contradictions constitute as it were the upper and lower limits of what is possible. Between these two limits, the possible truth-functional combinations of the constituent propositions exhaust the range of possibilities describable by those propositions. But, of course, one

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cannot say that the world contains such-and-such possibilities and not such-and-such other possibilities. For that would appear to presuppose that we were excluding certain possibilities (TLP 5.61), whereas no possibility is excluded. But the fact that the propositions of logic are tautologies shows the formal, logical, properties of language and the world. (viii) The metaphysics of science. The laws of causality, of least action, of conservation, of continuity, and so on, which have been thought of as the metaphysical principles of natural science, are neither logical truths nor empirical propositions. They are forms of law. One cannot say that there are laws of nature, but it makes itself manifest in the fact that it is possible to describe nature by means of propositions of these forms (TLP 6.32-6.36). (ix) The metaphysics of experience. What the solipsist means is quite correct, only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest in the limits of my language being the limits of my world (TLP 5.62). What shows that what the solipsist means is correct? Apparently the fact that 'the world is my world', that the limits of language (of my language, the only language that I understand) mean the limits of my world (TLP 5.62). Arguably what Wittgenstein had in mind is that signs (names) become symbols for me only through my using them to signify things, by meaning by the sign such-and-such an object. Sentential signs become symbols, propositions, for me only through thought (and understanding). The signs serve as a projection of what they represent, and the method of projection is 'thinking the sense of the sentence'—that is, thinking that p (TLP 3.11), and hence meaning by the sentence ' p' the state of affairs that p that is its sense. This could not be otherwise, hence it cannot be said. If so, then the ineffable end p.149

truth of solipsism is manifest in the relation between the proposition and reality—as he was later to remark in the Big Typescript: 'the I is replaced by the proposition and the relation between the I and reality is replaced by the relation between the proposition and reality' (BT 499). Whether the relation between the proposition and reality can be said to be a feature of the proposition is perhaps debatable. It would have been more plausible to argue that the truth of solipsism is shown by the structural difference between a fully analysed first-person experiential proposition and a third-person one. For the first-person pronoun will not be a constituent of the fully analysed first-person proposition ('the subject does not belong to the world: rather it is the limit of the world' (TLP 5.632)). 'I have . . . ' will disappear on analysis, to be replaced by 'There is . . . '. And the analysed third-person psychological proposition will only mention the behaviour of bodies. 'He has . . . ' will disappear, being replaced by 'Such-and-such a body behaves . . . ' (as in the methodological solipsism of Philosophical Remarks, ch. VI). Similarly, one cannot say that there is no soul 'as conceived in the superficial psychology of the present day', but this is shown by the logical form of such propositions as 'A believes that p'. For they do not involve

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the correlation of a fact with an object (an ego), but rather the correlation of facts by means of the correlation of their objects (TLP 5.542-5.5421).9 (x) Ethics and aesthetics. Propositions can express nothing that is higher. Hence it is impossible for there to be propositions of ethics or aesthetics (TLP 6.42-6.421). The argument for this is thin. Everything in the world, everything that is the case or that takes place, is contingent, accidental. But absolute value is non-contingent. So what makes it non-contingent must lie outside the world (TLP 6.41). On the assumption that statements of absolute value are non-contingent, they obviously cannot be bipolar. But, if absolute value is thus ineffable, it ought, presumably, to manifest itself in the forms of some set of well-formed propositions. Wittgenstein gives us no indication of what these might be. If the concepts of absolute ethical and aesthetic value are formal concepts, then they ought to be expressed by variables that are the constant forms of their values. But Wittgenstein nowhere suggests what might be the values of these variables. It is clear from his correspondence The constituent objects of the representing fact are the psychical constituents of a thought, and they are correlated with the objects of the represented fact. (It would have been more accurate here to talk of correlating a fact with a state of affairs, since what one believes may not be a fact.) 9

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at the time that he thought that such values manifest themselves. In a letter to Paul Engelmann apropos Uhland's poem 'Graf Eberhards Weissdorn', he wrote: 'The poem by Uhland is really magnificent. And this is how it is: if only you do not try to utter what is unutterable then nothing gets lost. But, the unutterable will be—unutterably— contained in what has been uttered!' 1 0 But although the poem may express something that cannot be put into words, it is by no means clear that it does so in virtue of features of the symbolism employed in it. If the claim is that 'the unutterable' is manifest in attitudes and actions, then this form of ineffability is independent of the official doctrine of saying and showing, since what shows the ineffable is not a formal feature of a well-formed formula. Although it is (allegedly) not possible to say, describe, or put into words the kinds of truths above classified, there can be no doubt that Wittgenstein thought that there are such truths, and indeed that they can be apprehended. They manifest themselves, and can be seen to do so, if one understands correctly what the author of the Tractatus means. Thus, for example, we cannot say that ' p' and ' p' contradict each other (since that is an internal relation), but that they yield a tautology in the combination ' (p. p)' shows that they contradict each other. One cannot say that ' q' follows from ' p' and ' p q', but that these propositions combined in the form '(p q).(p): :(q)' yield a tautology shows that ' q' follows thus (TLP 6.1201). One cannot say that a proposition is a tautology, but it is a mark of the propositions of logic that 'one can recognize that they are true from the symbol alone' (TLP 6.113). To recognize that a proposition of the propositional calculus is (ineffably) a tautology, we can employ Wittgenstein's method of brackets (heir to his ab-notation), which shows whether a proposition is a

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tautology (TLP 6.1203). Indeed, proof in logic is merely the mechanical expedient to facilitate the recognition of tautologies in complicated cases (TLP 6.1262). One cannot say what the meaning of a name is, but one can explain it by means of an elucidation, which is a proposition containing the primitive sign (TLP 3.263). One cannot say that dark blue is darker than light blue, but one can see it to be so. So what cannot be said is not ineffable in the sense of being either incommunicable or imperceptible—it just cannot be expressed by the sense of a significant proposition. Paul Engelmann, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein with a Memoir , trans. F. Furtmüller (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), 7. Wittgenstein's expression here is 'das Unaussprechliche', as in TLP 6.421 and 6.522. 10

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3. When the Whistling Stopped It is evident that, when Wittgenstein returned to philosophy in 1929, he had by no means abandoned the idea that there are ineffable truths about language, reality, and the relation between language and reality. In his lectures of 1930, he remarked that there are no logical concepts—for example, 'thing', 'complex', 'number'—for such terms are expressions for logical forms, and are not concepts. They are properly expressed by a variable (LWL 10). He insisted that language cannot express what cannot be otherwise. What is essential to the world cannot be said about the world; for then it could be otherwise, since any proposition can be negated (LWL 34). The same thought is expressed in his notebooks of that time: 'What belongs to the essence of the world cannot be expressed by language. For this reason it cannot say that everything flows. Language can only say those things that we can also imagine otherwise. That everything flows must be expressed in the application of language' (MS 108, 1 = PR 84). He continued for a while to insist that language cannot describe internal relations between situations, but that these manifest themselves in structural relations between the descriptions of the situations (WWK 54-5). Hence the ineffable isomorphism of proposition and what it describes continues to be affirmed. The relation of proposition to fact is internal (LWL 9); what the expression of expectation and its fulfilment must have in common is shown by the use of the same expression to describe both what we expect and its fulfilment, but this common element in expectation and fulfilment cannot be described or expressed in any proposition (LWL 35-6; cf. MS 109, 31, 53). So too the ineffability of absolute value is reaffirmed both in the 'Lecture on Ethics' of 1929 and in conversations with Schlick and Waismann in December 1929 (WWK 68-9) and again in December the following year (WWK 115-17). By the time he had written the Big Typescript, however, his philosophy had become transformed (although here and there one can still find residues of the earlier ideas sticking to the new thoughts, like pieces of the eggshell out of which he has broken (cf. CV 23)). Categorial concepts are no longer 'on the Index'; the metaphysics of logical atomism disappears without a trace; the refrain 'but that cannot be said' is no longer audible; the 'harmony between language and reality' is now orchestrated within language—not between language and reality; internal relations are specified by grammatical statements—which are no more than statements of grammatical rules. And grammar, far from ineffably reflecting the logical

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structure of the world, is 'arbitrary'—it owes no end p.152

homage to reality. What were the underlying reasons for this astonishing transformation? To trace in detail the story of the change in Wittgenstein's views between 1929 and 1932/3 is a task for a book-length study. It would have to trace simultaneous developments on many fronts, noting how some lagged behind when Wittgenstein initially failed to realize the implications of some of his advances. And it would have to examine his extensive writings on the philosophy of mathematics in this period, for that work played an important role in the general change of his ideas. All that I shall attempt here is to pinpoint some of the major insights that led to the collapse of his old philosophy, to the rejection of most of its major ideas, and to the transformation of many others into elements of a diametrically opposed philosophical viewpoint that comes to fruition in the Philosophical Investigations. The realization that colour-exclusion cannot be budgeted for by the logical apparatus of the Tractatus was the first domino to topple. Ascription of a determinate of a determinable to an object has logical implications that are not attributable to any hidden truth-functional combination embedded in the proposition. 'A is red' implies that A is not green, not yellow, and so on. So what had been conceived of as elementary propositions need not be logically independent. But, if so, not all logical relations are determined by truth-functional composition. Hence, too, the logical connectives are not topic neutral, since different truth-tables must be laid down for propositions containing determinates of a determinable (in the case of 'A is red & A is green' the line TT must be deleted, since it is not possible for an object to be both red all over and green all over simultaneously). But the logical theory of the Tractatus rested firmly upon the independence thesis for the elementary proposition, on the thesis that the logical connectives (and quantifiers) are topic neutral, and on the idea that all logical relations are determined by truth-functional composition. The independence thesis had also been the linchpin of the Tractatus account of the quantifiers. They had been construed as operators on finite or infinite classes of elementary propositions. '(x ).f x ' expresses an operation of simultaneous assertion of all propositions of the form 'f x '. Quantified propositions were thus construed as finite or infinite logical sums or products. And the quantifiers were assumed to be topic neutral. On the assumption that all propositions of the form of 'f x ' are logically independent, then '(x ).f x ', '( x ).f x ', '(x ) f x ', ' ( x ).f x ', ' (x ).f x ', and '( x ). f x ' all make sense. Moreover, the explanation of universal quantification applied to higher-order quantification too. For the proposition 'fa' determines not only the class of all propositions of the form 'f x ' but end p.153

also the class of all proposition of the form 'φa'. The simultaneous assertion of all propositions of the form 'φa' is the proposition '(φ).φa'. But if 'fa' ascribes a determinate of a determinable to a, then other determinates of the determinable f are incompatible with the truth of 'fa' and the truth-table representing '(φ).φa' will contain excessive logical multiplicity, and so be nonsensical.1 1 Hence the thought that the quantifiers are topic neutral must be relinquished in response to

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the realization that there are non-independent elementary propositions. It is evident 'There is a circle in the square' ['( x ).f x '] makes sense, whereas 'All circles are in the square' [' x . f x '] does not (PG 266), or that it makes sense to say 'Write down any cardinal number', but not 'Write down all cardinal numbers' (ibid.). Far from generality being topic neutral, Wittgenstein concluded, there are as many different 'alls' as there are 'ones'—that is, as many different forms of generality as there are forms of singular propositions, so 'it is no use using the word "all" for clarification unless we know its grammar in this particular case' (PG 269). With the disintegration of his earlier conception of the elementary proposition and of the topic neutrality of the logical operators, the idea of a general propositional form collapsed too. The concept of a proposition is not a formal concept determined by formal properties that are its characteristic marks. Rather, it is a family resemblance concept. Some propositions are indeed bipolar, but others are not. There are many different kinds of empirical proposition, including expressions (in the first-person present tense case) and ascriptions of experience, of memory and intention, descriptions of objects of experience, of the past, of our 'world-picture', hypotheses, and so on, and many further kinds of non-empirical ones, including the propositions of logic and mathematics, of ethics, aesthetics, and religion. Not only is the concept of the proposition demoted to the ranks, but so too are all the other 'formal concepts' of the Tractatus. The concepts of space and time, of object, colour, sound, and taste, of shape and number, and so on may indeed have different roles from such concepts as 'in central Oxford', 'at 2 p.m.', 'tree', 'red', 'F-sharp', '24', but they are not 'metalogical concepts' or 'super-concepts' between which a super-order holds, mirroring the logical form of the world, correctly represented in an ideal notation by variables. Rather these terms have a use, which 'must be as humble a one as that of the words "table", "lamp", "door" ' (PI §97). And so too do such concepts as 'darker than', 'follows from', or 'tautology'. 1 1 For a detailed discussion, see G. P. Baker, Wittgenstein, Frege and the Vienna Circle (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), ch. 4, to which I am indebted.

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With this rude awakening, Wittgenstein came to realize that what he had conceived of as objects are in fact elements of representation (WWK 43). The sempiternal objects of the Tractatus had been postulated to ensure determinacy of sense (impossibility of reference failure, vagueness, and hence of truth-value gaps) and had been conceived to be the substance of the world. But the legitimate needs that objects were postulated to fulfil are satisfied by the use of samples in ostensive definitions. And the samples belong to the means of representation; they are instruments of the language. The ostensive definition does not describe the sample it invokes in explaining the meaning of the word it defines. As he later wrote: 'What looks as if it had to exist, is part of the language' (PI §50). Simples were merely samples 'seen through a glass darkly'. If so, then the connection between names and objects had to be reconsidered. Far from simple names being connected to sempiternalia in reality by mental acts of meaning by such-and-such a name THIS ☞ object (cf. NB 53, 68, 70), such

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names as 'red', 'hard', 'sweet', 'hot', and so on (cf. PI §87), are not 'indefinables'—they are merely defined not by analytic but by ostensive definitions. The meanings of these names are not objects in reality with which they must be connected by mental acts of meaning (the meaning of an expression is never an object in reality, and there is no such thing as an act of meaning). They are given by reference to a sample. So the ostensive definition forges no connection between language and reality. In the sense in which he had thought that there is 'a connection between language and reality', there is no connection (WWK 209-10). Ostensive definitions are rules, and they connect the definiendum with a sample, ostensive gesture and the indexical phrase 'This C' (where 'C' specifies the logico-grammatical category of the definiendum—for example, that it is a colour). These together constitute a symbol, which can indeed be used in place of the definiendum—as in the sentence 'The curtains are this colour ☞ □'—hence the ostensive definition can be viewed as a substitution rule. So there is no exit from language: 'What is spoken can only be explained in language, and so in this sense language itself cannot be explained. Language must speak for itself' (PG 40). There are doubtless indefinitely many connections between language and reality, between names and nominata (we stick names on bottles, write names on doors, hang nameplates on objects, wear name labels on lapels, and so on, but none of them determines sense. If there is, in the requisite sense, no meaning-endowing or sense-determining connection between language and reality, then the thought that representation and what it represents share a common logical form, that the form of a name shows the form of the object that is its meaning and end p.155

that the form of the proposition shows the form of the situation that it describes, must be revised too. Initially, it seems, he continued to think that the essence of the world is ineffable, but rather than being shown by the forms of legitimate propositions, as he had suggested in the Tractatus, he now suggested that it is exhibited by the rules of language. 'The essence of language is a picture of the essence of the world; and philosophy as custodian of grammar can in fact grasp the essence of the world, only not in the propositions of language, but in rules for this language which exclude nonsensical combinations of signs' (PR 85). This suggests that the rules of grammar manifest the ineffable essence of the world. But, although Wittgenstein briefly toyed with this idea, he rapidly abandoned it. For, as he came to realize, the rules of grammar are, in an important sense, arbitrary—they owe no homage to reality. They are not answerable to reality, to objective, language-independent essences of things, for their correctness. On the contrary, grammar determines what we call 'the essence' of a thing. And what appears to be a necessity in the world, far from being reflected in the rules of grammar, is merely the shadow they cast upon the world. The realization that grammar is thus autonomous necessitated the rejection of the fundamental thought informing the Tractatus conception of the nature of representation, the repudiation of its account of intentionality (namely, the picture theory of the proposition) and hence too of the metaphysics of logical atomism and the attendant metaphysics of symbolism (that is, that the proposition is a fact, that only facts can represent facts, that only simple names can represent simple objects, that only relations can represent relations, and so on).

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This meant that all the claims concerning what he had told Russell was the main point of the Tractatus—namely, 'the theory of what can be expressed by propositions . . . and what cannot be expressed by propositions but only shown'—had to be abandoned or radically transformed.

4. The Afterlife of the Ineffable Against this background we can now return to the list of kinds of things that, according to the Tractatus, cannot be said, but make themselves manifest. I shall not follow the above list exactly, since some of the items can be dealt with conjointly. (i) The harmony between language and reality . The idea of an ineffable harmony between language and reality which is shown by the logical form of a proposition but cannot be described, was an illusion. It is a end p.156

paradigmatic case of mistaking the shadow of grammar for the form of reality. It was a mistake to take the world to consist of facts—that was a distortion of the grammatical proposition that a description of the world consists of a statement of facts not of a list of things. Facts are not in the world (or anywhere else), and factual propositions do not describe the facts, but state them. One cannot point at, but only point out a fact (PG 200). Facts do not consist of objects concatenated together like links in a chain. The fact that there is a red circle at such- and-such a place does not consist of a concatenation of a circle (or of circularity) and redness, since facts do not consist of anything (ibid.). It makes no sense to talk of the languageindependent logical form of facts (or states of affairs). Hence the thought that the factual propositions of language mirror the logical forms of facts is misconceived. Similarly, the thought that a proposition must possess the same logical multiplicity as the state of affairs it describes was confused. 'For what I said really boils down to this: that every projection must have something in common with what is projected no matter what is the method of projection. But that only means that I am here extending the concept of "having in common" and am making it equivalent to the general concept of projection' (PG 163). So far from identical logical multiplicity being a condition of projectibility, he had rendered projectibility a criterion for possession of identical logical multiplicity, and invented an elaborate metaphysical mythology to satisfy the consequent demand. Nevertheless, one fundamental insight was retained and transformed. It had been correct to insist that the relation between a proposition and the fact that makes it true is an internal one. Similarly, the relations between an expectation and the event whose occurrence fulfils it, between an order and the act performance of which complies with it, between a desire and what satisfies it are all internal relations. Failure to grasp that these relations are internal wreaks havoc with any account of the nature of intentionality, of belief, expectation, and desire—as in the case of Russell's theory of desire and Frege's account of belief.1 2 But internal relations are autonomously determined by grammar . They are not de re relations between language and reality

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Russell's theory of desire is elaborated in The Analysis of Mind (London: Allen & Unwin, 1921), lecture III, and is criticized by Wittgenstein in Philosophical Remarks, ch. III. Frege's account of belief is in 'On Sense and Meaning', repr. in Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), 157-77. On Russell's account, what satisfies a desire (its objective) is to be discovered in experience, and cannot be read off the characterization of the content of the desire. On Frege's account, what is believed is the customary sense of a sentence, which is distinct from what is the case if one's belief is true. But when one believes that p, and it is the case that p, then that is precisely what one believed to be the case; what one believed is not something—a Gedanke—that stands in some obscure relation to what is the case. 12

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or between thought and reality. It is a rule of grammar that 'the proposition that p' = 'the proposition made true by the fact that p', and similarly it is a grammatical rule that the expectation that p is the expectation that is fulfilled by the occurrence of the event that p (PG 161-2). Expectation and its fulfilment make contact in language (PI §445)—not between language and reality. 'Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language' (PG 162). There is nothing that is to be shown, and nothing that cannot be said by spelling out such grammatical rules. But what is said is not a description of a relation between proposition and fact but a convention—namely, that the expression 'the proposition that p' is equivalent to the expression 'the proposition made true by the fact that p'. 'It is in language that it's all done' ( PG 143). (ii) Semantics. It had been a dire error to conceive of the meanings of names as objects in reality for which names go proxy. Meanings are not objects of any kind. And names do not go proxy for what they name, since, unlike proxies that can be replaced by that for which they go proxy, nominata cannot replace their names in sentences.1 3 Rather, the meaning of an expression is given by an explanation of its meaning. And an explanation of meaning is a rule for the use of the explanandum. So, of course one can explain what a word means. But such an explanation does not 'link language and reality'. Of course, one may explain that red is a colour, namely THAT ☞ colour. The concept of colour is misconstrued as a variable name representing the constant form of all its values. Different colour names need not have the same logical form, since they are not everywhere inter-substitutable salva significatione —it makes sense to say that the traffic lights shone red, but not that they shone black, just as it makes sense to talk of transparent red glass but not of transparent white glass. 'Colour' is not, to be sure, the name of a determinate, but of a determinable. Nevertheless, it has a perfectly respectable use in the language. For we can say that the windowpane is colourless glass or that the church windows are coloured glass, as we can admire the colour of a rose or tell a child to colour the black-and-white drawing in his drawing book, ask someone what his favourite colour is, or tell someone to look at the colour of the sunset. It is possible to assert the identity of meaning of two expressions; but to

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do so is not absurdly to assert that two objects are one object. Rather, to do so is to give a rule for the use of the two expressions, a rule that 1 3 Although an ostensive gesture, the indexical 'this' and the object pointed at can replace the word defined by the correlative ostensive definition in a sentence, as when we say 'The curtains are this ☞ □ colour'.

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permits the transformation of 'Fa' into 'F b' salva veritate , and excludes 'Fa & Fb'. ' a = a' is a nonsensical degenerate identity statement that results from applying the substitution rule ' a = b' to itself. And 'Everything is identical with itself' is a nonsensical proposition, like 'Everything fits into itself' or 'Everything fits into its own shape' (PI §§215-16). Again, there is nothing here that cannot be said by spelling out grammatical rules, and there is nothing ineffable to be shown. Similarly, one can say what the sense of a sentence is. To do so is not to link the sentence with a possible state of affairs the constituent objects of which are the meanings of the simple names in the analysed sentence. Rather it is to paraphrase the sentence by another that means the same. The sense of a sentence is not a possibility correlated with it by a method of projection (which was held to be thinking the sense —that is, meaning by ' p' the state of affairs that p), and the question 'What is the sense of this sentence?' merely asks for the translation of the sentence into another sentence that can be used in its place and that is understood by the questioner. (iii) Describing objects. According to the Tractatus, (simple) objects cannot be described, but only named. Propositions cannot say what things are, only describe how they are, for to say what an object is would be to describe it in terms of its internal properties. But this is confused. First, the term 'object' is being used here to signify the reference of an expression that is not defined by analytic definition. Examples of such are red, dark, sweet (cf. PI §87), which appear to constitute the terminus of analysis, where analysis hits the bedrock of simple terms that are directly connected to reality. But, as Wittgenstein came to realize, the term 'object' was being misused here, there is no 'connection between language and reality' in that sense, and the samples of red, sweet, and so on that we employ in giving ostensive definitions of such terms are instruments of language. They are being employed as part of the means of representation, and are not described or represented by the ostensive definitions that explain what the terms 'red' or 'sweet' mean and that constitute rules for the use of these words. One can say that red is a colour, or that sweetness is a taste, but this is not to describe redness or sweetness by their internal properties. It is rather to give further rules for the use of these terms—namely that, if something can be said to be red, it can also be said to have a colour, and if something can be said to be sweet, it can be said to have a taste. What appeared to be illicit non-bipolar propositions describing objects by their internal properties and relations were in fact grammatical propositions (in Wittgenstein's sense of the term). To say that red is darker

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than pink is to assert that, if one object is red and another object is pink, then one may say without more ado that the first is darker than the second. This is not a description of red, but a rule for the use of the word 'red' that is partly constitutive of its meaning, as is the (grammatical) proposition that red is more like orange than it is like yellow—which merely means that, if A is red, B orange, and C yellow, then one may say without more ado that A is more similar in colour to B than to C (and one need not look to see). What appeared to be ineffable necessary truths about colours were no more than conventions for the use of colour words and colour-relation words. Where does this leave the claim that such 'objects' cannot be described? We are tempted to say such things as 'The aroma of coffee is indescribable'. And, in the spirit of William James, we may add: 'Our vocabulary is inadequate' (PI §610). But this is confused. For, if we attribute the indescribability of the aroma to the inadequacy of our language, then, first, it is surely open to us to invent a new language, to introduce a more refined terminology; and, secondly, we must have some conception of a description that a more subtle language would provide—that is, we must think that the aroma is describable, only not in our inadequate language. Whence then this conception of a description? And what is it that it would be able to say that we cannot say? Wittgenstein's discussion of this issue can be seen as taking up again the idea of ineffability and reaching the opposite conclusion to the Tractatus. That idea of ineffability confused indefinability by analytic definition with absolute indefinability, indefinability with indescribability and the awesome or impressive (see also (ix) below) with the ineffable. Is it true that we cannot describe the aroma of coffee? After all, we can say that the aroma in the coffee shop is fresh, well roasted, rich, and delicious, that the aroma of the old coffee in the coffee jar is faint and stale, or that the aroma of this coffee is fresher, richer, better roasted than the aroma of that coffee. Such a description may be insufficient to enable unerring identification, but that does not imply that it is not a description. If the defender of the ineffability thesis insists that it is not really a description of an aroma, that it does not describe the essential thing—which cannot be put into words—then it is evident that his inclination to say that the aroma is indescribable has nothing to do with the poverty of our language, but is rather concerned with a paradigm of description that such descriptions do not satisfy. That the aroma is indescribable amounts to the claim that one form of description is inapplicable to this kind of case, and to the rejection of the form of description that does apply to this kind of case. He refuses to count end p.160

what is describable about the aroma of coffee—that is, what it does make sense to call 'a description of the aroma', as a description. What is the paradigm of description, presupposed by the ineffability claim, that leads one to reject as inadequate the descriptions of the aroma that can be given? It is the description of a substance by specification of its properties. We describe a table as being circular, made of mahogany, three feet in diameter, and so on, just as we describe a cup of coffee as being black, hot, bitter, with a rich aroma. To describe a substance is to give its

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properties. But obviously, when asked to describe properties rather than substances, this paradigm does not apply. The question is: what do we call 'the description of a property'? We might compare the description of the cup of coffee as being hot, black, and sweet with the description of the aroma of coffee as fresh, rich, and well roasted, as we might compare the description of a rose as well shaped, sweet scented, and red with the description of its colour as dark and matt. It is a perfectly decent analogy, but only an analogy. For being dark and matt do not stand to being red as being red stands to a rose. For being matt red as opposed to glossy red can also be said simply to be two different complex properties that coloured things may have. A different analogy would be that between describing a substance by specifying its properties and 'describing' (identifying) a property by specifying the substances that have it. We often do just that, as when we say that red is the colour of our true love's lips. But again, it is only an analogy. Far from being the same as describing a substance in terms of its properties, we are inverting that paradigm. To be sure, one cannot force an analogy upon a person who has set his face against it. But it is evident that his claim that an aroma, a colour, or a sound is indescribable simply means that there is no such thing as describing properties in the manner of a favoured paradigm—namely, the paradigm of describing a substance. Even if we are willing to pay heed to such qualms, it is clear that the 'indescribability' in question has nothing to do with the limitations of language, but only to do with the convention we are willing to accept regarding what is to be called 'a description (of a property)'. Of course, one might say that words cannot convey the quite particular character of, for example, the aroma of coffee or the glorious flaming colours of a sunset. It is true that words are no substitute for what they describe. A description of the aroma of coffee is no substitute for the aroma itself. But then words are no substitute for a cup of coffee either—and the latter is uncontroversially describable. It is also true that we often say that a description is no substitute for acquaintance. No matter how well X is described, one cannot properly appreciate its wonder or horror unless one experiences it. But that too is no peculiarity of simple ostensively defined end p.161

properties. Words cannot convey the glory of the Sistine ceiling or the horrors of Guernica—you must see it for yourself. For the impression of such a description is different from the impression of what it describes. But to go further and say that only one who has experienced such a thing really knows its quite particular character, is in possession of a distinctively ineffable kind of information, is again confused. For, as we shall see below, this use of 'quite particular character' is what Wittgenstein calls 'intransitive'. It is not as if someone who has smelled the aroma of coffee or seen the Sistine ceiling is in possession of ineffable information that others lack. But, precisely because 'the quite particular character' is intransitively used, there is nothing ineffable here that can be attributed to the limitations of language. (iv) Categorial features of things and internal relations. Since the conception of what can, loosely speaking, be called 'categorial (or formal) concepts' as variables is rejected, the idea that one cannot say that, for example, 3

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is a number or that red is a colour had to be re-evaluated. It should be noted that Wittgenstein not only insisted that such concepts have a perfectly respectable use, he also came to realize that such concepts, far from being sharply circumscribed by the essential forms of a class of objects, are not sharply defined at all and are typically family resemblance concepts—as are the concepts of proposition and number. The concept of colour is not determinate: for some purposes black, white, and grey count as colours, for others they do not. Moreover, the rules for the use of the various colour words (or number words) are not homogeneous. In particular, as noted above, they are not uniformly intersubstitutable salva significatione . One can say that 3 is a number or that red is a colour. To say such things is not to transgress any rule of language. Of course, the proposition expressed is not bipolar; but then it is not an empirical proposition. Nor is it either analytic or synthetic a priori. It is the expression of a grammatical rule—namely, that, if an object is red then it can be said to have a colour, or that, if there are three objects on the table, then there is some number of objects on the table. This plumbs no metaphysical depths, but merely registers a grammatical convention. One can, to be sure, say that the proposition 'if p, and if p then q, then q' is a tautology. But it is wrong to say that these propositions, thus combined by ' ', yield a tautology or that the tautology follows from the meaning of ' '. They do not yield anything (as carbon and oxygen yield carbon dioxide), they are something; and that they are a tautology does not follow from the meaning of the conditional, but is constitutive of its meaning (PG 52). The tautology says nothing, but to say end p.162

that it is a tautology is to express a rule—namely, that from ' p' and 'if p then q' one may infer ' q' (LFM 277 ff.). To recognize that it is a tautology is to recognize the inference rule. For every tautology can be rewritten in the form of a modus ponens, and every such tautology is correlative to an inference rule. In this sense, as the Tractatus had observed, every tautology is a form of a proof. Similarly, that Cambridge blue is lighter than Oxford blue is the expression of a rule for the use of the expressions 'Cambridge blue', 'Oxford blue', and 'lighter than'—informative only to one who does not know what one or another of these expressions mean. (v) Type classifications—justifying grammar by reference to reality, and the limits of thought. The Tractatus had argued against Russell that one cannot justify rules of logical syntax by reference to reality. One cannot argue that, whereas it makes sense to say that Leo is a lion, it is nonsense to say that the class of lions is a lion because no property of an object is a property of a class. According to the Tractatus, what the theory of types had tried to say is ineffably shown by the symbolism. While he came to reject the thought that there are ineffable metaphysical necessities in the world as a mythology of symbolism, the thought that it makes no sense to justify grammar by reference to reality was retained. We do not need, and could not have, a 'theory of logical types' on the Russellian model. But one might say that 'grammar is a "theory of logical types" ' (PR 54)—that is, that what was demanded of a theory of logical types is done

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by rules of grammar (in Wittgenstein's use of the term) that exclude (or that we may lay down to exclude) certain forms of words from the language. However, one cannot say that a grammatical rule that excludes a form of words from the language is ineffably justified by certain properties of things. The rule that excludes the words 'transparent white (glass)' or 'flashing black (lights)' cannot be justified by saying that white is not transparent or that black is not radiant. For, if one could say this, then it would make sense, even though it would be false, to say that this white glass is transparent or that the traffic lights flashed black. A justification of grammar by reference to reality would take the form of saying that, since reality is thus and so, the rules of grammar must be such-and-such. But then one would have to be able to say that, if reality were otherwise, the rules of grammar would have to be different. But one cannot sensibly say how reality would have to be in order for a different grammar to be justified. For, in order to describe such a different reality, one would have to use the very combination of words that our existing grammar excludes—that is, one would have to talk nonsense (LWL 46-7). But, if something counts end p.163

as nonsense in the grammar that is to be justified, it cannot at the same time pass for sense in the grammar of the propositions purporting to justify it (PR 55). Could one not say that the rule excluding the form of words 'transparent white' or that the rule Russell wanted to lay down that the expression 'the class of classes that are members of themselves' is illicit are respectively justified by reference to the fact that nothing can be transparent white and the fact that no class can be a member of itself? No—for these are not facts, which might be otherwise. If they were, then the rules would not be justified, since then it would make sense for something to be transparent white or for a class to be a member of itself, even though as a matter of fact nothing is transparent white and (on Russell's view) no class is a member of itself. But, if the 'can' is the 'can' of logical impossibility, then, far from justifying the rule that the form of words 'transparent white' is excluded from the language, the proposition that nothing can be transparent white is an expression of that very rule. Glass cannot be transparent white just as one cannot castle in draughts. The ineffable, but essential, answerability of the logical syntax of any possible language to the logical structure of the world was indeed an illusion. But it was the precursor to Wittgenstein's later view that there is no such thing as justifying grammar by reference to reality, and hence too to his later insistence upon the autonomy of grammar. It had, of course, been perfectly correct to say that one cannot circumscribe the limits of thinking by saying what cannot be thought. But it was mistaken to suppose that there is anything beyond the limits of language that is shown by the features of logical syntax but that cannot be put into words. That idea illegitimately satisfies philosophers' 'longing for the super-natural // transcendental //, for in believing that they see the "limits of human understanding" of course they believe that they can see beyond them' (BT 424). That 'longing' is exhibited in the endeavour of traditional philosophical

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attempts to describe the essential features of the world by means of necessarily true propositions that state what must be thus and so, what is or is not possible, or what is thus and so and cannot be otherwise. The science that purported to describe such truths was metaphysics. The Tractatus had argued that metaphysical propositions are impossible. Not only do they not satisfy the bipolarity condition on propositions with a sense; they also involve the illegitimate use of formal concepts. But what they try to say is shown by features of the symbolism of any system of representation. The Tractatus circumscribed the bounds of sense in order to make room for ineffable metaphysics. But the bounds of sense do not fence us in from end p.164

the ineffable, which can be apprehended from within those bounds but not described. They fence us in from the void. One can say that nothing can be red and green all over, that if something is coloured it must be extended, or that one cannot enumerate all the cardinal numbers. But these are grammatical statements, expressions of rules, not metaphysical justifications of grammar. Such statements can mislead, if we think of them on the model of statements of physical necessity, such as 'Nothing can run faster than n m.p.h.', or 'If something is made of solid ebony it must sink in water'. But this misleading appearance can readily be dispelled: Do not say 'one cannot', but say instead: 'it doesn't exist in this game'. Not: 'one can't castle in draughts' but—'there is no castling in draughts'; and instead of 'I can't exhibit my sensation'—'in the use of the word "sensation", there is no such thing as exhibiting what one has got'; instead of 'one cannot enumerate all the cardinal numbers'—'there is no such thing here as enumerating all the members'. (Z §134) (vi) The limits of reality . If the legitimate features of the objects of the Tractatus were in effect features of samples belonging to the means of representation, and if something is a sample only if we choose to use it as a sample, then obviously the thoughts that objects constitute the sempiternal substance of the world and that the limits of reality are determined by the totality of objects are incoherent. So too is the idea that the totality of elementary propositions is given by the totality of objects. Hence too the thought that the totality of elementary propositions makes manifest the limits of logical possibility cannot be sustained. Indeed, the whole conception of de re logical possibilities in nature collapses. We have a picture of reality as moving in the tracks of logical possibility (PLP 341), as if the logically possible were the Spielraum of the actual, which is constrained by its limits—namely, by what is logically impossible. What is merely logically possible is not what is actually the case. It is what would be the case, were that possibility realized. Nevertheless, it seems to have a shadowy reality of its own ( AWL 64-5). We know what the possibility is and can say what it is. It seems as it were potentially present, unlike logical impossibilities. For something

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that is not the case, but which might have been the case, is logically possible. And that seems more the case than if it could not be the case (TS 302, 16). So it seems as if grammar, to be correct, must mirror the objective range of possibilities in reality. For it fixes the degree of freedom in language, and a proposition must have the same degree of freedom as what it signifies—we must be able to do as much with language end p.165

as can happen in reality ( LWL 8). The order of logical possibilities in nature must surely be determined, independently of language and of human conventions about the use of words, by the essential natures of things. And grammar must reflect that objective order if language is to be able to say everything that can be said. This attractive picture is wholly misguided. Far from reflecting the essential natures of things, grammar determines their essential natures. In laying down rules for the use of words, in fixing what is to count as such-and-such a thing and in determining its criteria of identity, grammar tells us what kind of entity anything is (PI §373). The picture of a logical possibility as a shadow of an actuality, as something potentially present, as more real than a logical impossibility, is misconceived. The metaphor of a shadow is awry, for how can something that is merely logically possible cast a shadow? After all, it does not exist. To say that it is potentially present is merely a restatement, rather than an explanation, of its possibility (AWL 64-5). It is absurd to suppose that a logical possibility is more the case than an impossibility. For nothing in reality corresponds to a mere logical possibility, and there cannot be less than nothing to correspond to an impossibility (PI §521). Where in the world is the phenomenon of logical possibility to be found? Not in the factual constitution of things—for that can disclose only physical, causal possibilities. Rather, logical possibility is laid down in the rules of our symbolism (AWL 162). It is not that grammar determines what makes sense, and in so doing reflects the order of possibilities in nature. Rather, in determining what makes sense, it determines what we are to call 'possible' and 'impossible'. No more corresponds in nature to a logical possibility than to a logical impossibility. What 'corresponds' to a logical possibility is a sentence with a sense. To say that such-and-such is logically impossible is not to exclude something from nature. For a logical impossibility is not a possibility that is impossible. Rather, what is excluded is a form of words, and it is excluded not from nature but from language. Such a form of words has no sense, since we have given it no sense. To be sure, we could give it a sense—lay down criteria of application for this hitherto nonsensical form of words. But then we should be changing the meanings of its constituent words, allowing this combination that was previously excluded. And that change will ramify through the multitudinous uses of these words in other sentences. (vii) The metaphysics of science. Though there are scattered remarks on science and scientific method in Wittgenstein's later writings, there is no direct, let alone detailed, discussion of the nature of scientific explanation. Nevertheless, it is evident that he retained the core of his

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Tractatus end p.166

view, while relinquishing the wrappings of the ineffability thesis that prohibited the statement that there are laws of nature. Fundamental principles of scientific theories, which philosophers had sometimes represented as metaphysical principles of natural science (Kant, Collingwood), are in fact norms of representation (hence, in a sense, 'about the net and not about what the net describes' (TLP 6.35)). When Hertz remarks that, if something does not conform to his laws of mechanics, there must be invisible masses in the vicinity of the object to account for the deviation, it appears as if he is invoking an a priori law of nature. But, in fact, he is invoking a norm of description, which he has laid down. The law of causality is a norm of explanation, which may or may not be fruitful. But it is not a property of the objects described in classical mechanics. Rather, it is a property of the system of description, which we have chosen to adopt (AWL 16). (viii) The metaphysics of experience. What the solipsist means is anything but quite correct. It is a thoroughgoing muddle. But it is not mere folly. For confused though it is, it points to important features of our language. The first-person pronoun is a degenerate referring expression, which fulfils a role importantly unlike that of the other personal pronouns.1 4 It is akin to the designation of the point of origin in a system of coordinates, whereas other referring expressions are akin to designations of points on the graph. Psychological predicates occurring in expressions (Äusserungen) of experience are employed without any criteria, whereas in third-person ascriptions they are justified by behavioural criteria for their application. An inchoate grasp of these features can be seen to underlie the solipsist's confusions, and this explains his confused dissatisfaction with our notation or system of representation (cf. BB 58-9). But there is nothing ineffable here—only the description of grammatical rules. Similarly, there is indeed no such thing as the soul, conceived as a res cogitans. But that is not shown by the analysis of belief propositions in terms of a correlation of facts by means of the correlation of their objects. Indeed, that analysis is misconceived, inter alia because the principle of extensionality is to be rejected. (ix) Ethics and aesthetics. After the 'Lecture on Ethics' of 1929, Wittgenstein wrote nothing further on ethics, save for occasional asides. He did, however, lecture on aesthetics. It is evident that the doctrine of the ineffability of absolute value was abandoned. There is an interesting For a discussion of Wittgenstein's account of the first-person pronoun, see P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind, vol. iii of An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), in an essay entitled 'I and my self'. 14

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diagnosis of one impulse towards such a conception in the lectures on aesthetics (LA 37) and in the Brown Book (BB 178-83). As might be expected, the diagnosis is deflationary. The expressions 'has meaning', 'says something', 'is meaningful' all have uses in aesthetic appreciation (and elsewhere) in which we go on and say 'namely . . . ', explaining what meaning the object of the aesthetic appreciation has or what it says. We may say 'This melody makes a quite particular impression: it is redolent with power; it surges forward ever faster, the strings join in to increase the tension, and the blare of trumpets brings it to a triumphant conclusion', and, in the case of programmatic music, we may remark how wonderfully the music conveys the impression of calm seas, of sunrise, or of a passing summer shower. Such uses Wittgenstein calls 'transitive'. But we also use the same form of words intransitively . It sometimes occurs that we are impressed on hearing a piece of music played in a certain way, and we say 'This musical phrase, played thus, has meaning' or 'This piece of music says something'. This may be no more than an expression of how impressed we are, how striking we find the object of our attention. Or we may say that, played thus and so, the musical phrase is meaningless, but played in such-and-such another way it is meaningful—without a 'namely '. Here one cannot ask 'What does it mean?' or 'What does it say?', although we might say that the music 'tells one itself' ( PI §523), 'conveys to us itself ' (BB 178). In philosophical reflection we are liable to misconstrue this rather special use of these words, and think that, in such cases of aesthetic appreciation, language is too impoverished to express the impression the music makes—that is, that the music says something, but what it says is ineffable. But this is confused, projecting the use of such expressions when they are employed transitively on to these quite different contexts in which they are used intransitively. If asked 'What impression?', one may reply 'Well, it just is very striking—listen to it'. Here 'a quite particular impression' does not serve as a preface to a 'namely . . . '. It is not a confession of the limits of language, nor an intimation that one has grasped something ineffable, but is merely a form of emphasis: the melody really did impress one. Did nothing more remain of the Tractatus ineffability thesis than these deflationary explanations? There is a deliberate echo of the Tractatus in On Certainty , in the context of a discussion of the groundlessness of induction, which may incline one to think that the ghost of the Tractatus still walked. The 'law of induction', Wittgenstein remarks, cannot be grounded, but neither can one sensibly say that one knows it to be true. It would be more correct to say 'I believe in the law of induction', where 'believe' has nothing to do with surmising (C §500). He end p.168

then continues thus: 'Am I not getting closer and closer to saying that in the end logic cannot be described? You must look at the practice of language, then you will see it' (C §501). But what this affirms is not the ineffability of something that shows itself, but rather that 'In the beginning was the deed'.1 5 Less than two weeks later, only a few days before his death, he wrote: 'Doesn't it seem obvious that the possibility of a language-game is conditioned by certain facts? In that case it would seem as if the language-game must " show " the facts that make it

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possible. (But that is not how it is)' (C §§617-18). Rather, 'In particular circumstances one says "you can rely on this"; and this assurance may be justified or unjustified in every day language, and it may also count as justified even when what was foretold does not occur. A language-game exists in which this assurance is employed' (C §620). The ghost of the Tractatus had been exorcised. That there are things that cannot be said but are shown by language was an illusion. In most cases, the illusion sprang from unwittingly projecting upon reality features of the grammar of expressions of our language. In particular, much of what was thought to be ineffable was merely the shadow cast by rules for the use of words. As Wittgenstein later observed: 'We predicate of the thing what lies in the method of representing it' (PI §104). Logic appeared to present 'the a priori order of the world: that is the order of possibilities, which must be common to both world and thought'. It was conceived to be ' prior to all experience', 'of the purest crystal', yet to run through all experience; not an abstraction, but something concrete, 'indeed, as the most concrete, as it were the hardest thing there is' ( PI §97). The picture presented by the Tractatus had great beauty—like a picture illustrating a fairy tale. When the tale was over, the whistling had to stop. Cf. C §204: 'Giving grounds, however, justifying the evidence, comes to an end;—but the end is not certain propositions' striking us immediately as true, i.e. it is not a kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of our language-game.' The quotation 'In the beginning was the deed' is from Goethe's Faust. 15

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6 #6 Naming, Thinking, and Meaning In the Tractatus Abstract: The controversy between Norman Malcolm and Peter Winch over the correct interpretation of the Tractatus conception of names, naming, and the method of projection of names is discussed. Evidence in favour of Malcolm's realist interpretation of the Tractatus doctrine is elaborated: the meaning of a Tractatus name is not exhausted by its logico-syntactical role, which determines only its form. The method of projection is meaning by a name in an elementary proposition the object that is its meaning. In an appendix, Professor Cora Diamond's objections to this interpretation are rebutted. Keywords: C. Diamond, elucidations, logical syntax, meaning, method of projection, N. Malcolm, names, P. Winch, Tractatus

P. M. S Hacker

1. Malcolm and Winch On the Tractatus In his paper 'Language, Thought and World in Wittgenstein's Tractatus',1 Peter Winch criticized Norman Malcolm's interpretation of the Tractatus in his book Memory and Mind.2 In his subsequent book Nothing is Hidden3 Malcolm defended his interpretation against Winch. I believe that Malcolm's defence is largely successful. However, there are a number of lacunae in his criticism of

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Winch's interpretation. I shall try to fill them. First I shall sketch Malcolm's interpretation. Malcolm defended the view that, according to the Tractatus, the logical syntax of language is ineffably answerable to the logical form of the world. The logical form of the world consists in the combinatorial possibilities of the sempiternal objects that constitute the substance of the world and the consequent truthfunctional combinatorial possibilities of elementary states of affairs. On analysis, language consists (inter alia) of simple names. The meaning of a name is the simple object of which it is a representative. The logical form of a name consists in its combinatorial possibilities in syntax. A name and its meaning—that is, the object that is its meaning—must possess the same multiplicity. If a sign occurring in a proposition is a name, then it must admit of the very same range of combinatorial possibilities in syntax as the object that is its meaning has in reality. Hence a two-place predicate cannot represent a three-place relation —there is no such thing, and the two-place predicate in question P. Winch, 'Language, Thought and World in Wittgenstein's Tractatus', in Trying to Make Sense (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), 3-18. 1

N. Malcolm, Memory and Mind (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 132-9. 2

N. Malcolm, Nothing is Hidden: Wittgenstein's Criticism of his Early Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986). 3

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either means a certain two-place relation or nothing at all. A proposition, which is a representing fact, a sentence in its projective relation to reality, must have the same logical form as the state of affairs the existence of which it affirms. The logical (metaphysical) forms of states of affairs are language independent— de re possibilities do not depend upon our descriptions of them. The proposition that describes a given state of affairs must be isomorphic with the state of affairs it describes—that is, a (metaphysical) condition of the possibility of representation. It is in this sense that logical syntax is answerable to the logical form of the world. It mirrors it. But, to be sure, this isomorphism between word and object, and between proposition and state of affairs, is not something that can be said in language, since it is not contingent. Describing it in language would fail to accord with the bipolarity requirement on propositions with a sense—that is, that they must be capable of being true and also capable of being false, and would also involve the use of formal concepts, which cannot occur in a fully analysed proposition. The isomorphism is necessary, being a metaphysical condition of the possibility of representation, and ineffable. But, although one cannot describe these internal relations between language and reality, they are shown by features of well-formed propositions. Malcolm claimed that the simple names which constitute the final product of analysis of sentences of language are linked to the simple sempiternal objects that are their meanings. The names, the logicosyntactical forms of which mirror the metaphysical forms of these objects, are given content by being connected to objects. The connection is effected by means of mental acts of thinking and meaning that take place when a sentence is used with thought and understanding. When a sentence 'Fa' is so used, then the speaker means by the sentence the

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state of affairs that Fa, and uses the constituent names of the sentence to mean the corresponding objects in the state of affairs the obtaining of which makes the proposition asserted true. Winch argued against Malcolm that it is inadmissible to try to account for the meaning of a name by reference to its (internal) relation to something non-linguistic—that is, to an object. What distinguishes an expression that has a meaning (that is, a name) from one that does not can only be something to do with its role in language. Hence Wittgenstein's remark (TLP 3.203) that 'A name means an object. The object is its meaning' must be interpreted as saying something about that role. This, he claims, rules out as either unnecessary or even meaningless any talk about a psychic act that links the name with something outside language. Rather, the role of the word 'object' lies in its logicosyntactic relation with the word 'name', and not in signifying something end p.171

extralinguistic with which a name is linked. And what it is for a name to have a meaning just consists in its significant use. A name's meaning (or, better, a name's having a meaning) is not something other than and prior to its logicosyntactical role. Surprisingly, Winch says nothing to clarify what distinguishes one name from another, whether the role of ' a' differs from the role of ' b', and how the use of ' a' differs from the use of ' b'. But, unless he claims that each name has a different logico-syntactical form, a claim that cannot be sustained, then this is a fatal flaw in his interpretation.

2. Names and Their Meanings I agree that the role of the word 'object' lies in its logico-syntactical relation with the word 'name'. For the word 'object', according to the Tractatus, functions as a variable the values of which are objects and the substitution instances of which are names. I also agree that a name's having a meaning is not something prior to its having the logical syntax that it has. For a name fulfils a representational role—goes proxy for the object that is its meaning—only in the context of a proposition that depicts a state of affairs. But the claim that a name's meaning, or a name's having a meaning, is not something other than its logico-syntactical role or than its having the logico-syntactical role it has, seems to me to be mistaken. In support of his interpretation Winch lays emphasis on two pieces of evidence. First, the preface to the Tractatus, in which Wittgenstein observes that the aim of the book is to set the limits to the expression of thoughts, and that this can be done only in language. Secondly, the remarks 3.326-3.33, which run as follows: In order to recognize a symbol by its sign we must observe how it is used with a sense. A sign does not determine a logical form unless it is taken together with its logico-syntactical employment. If a sign is not needed, then it is meaningless. That is the point of Occam's maxim.4 (If everything behaves as if a sign had meaning, then it does have meaning.) In logical syntax the meaning of a sign should never play a role. It must be

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possible to establish logical syntax without mentioning the meaning of a sign: only the description of expressions may be presupposed. I have corrected the mistranslation. The translation 'If a sign is useless, then it is meaningless' is inaccurate.

4

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This, Winch suggests, shows that what is essential to a name is not its correlation with something extra-linguistic. Of course, names do stand for objects. But what it is for a name to stand for an object is not for it to be correlated with an object by some psychic act, but rather for it to have a significant use. A name has a meaning if everything behaves as if it has a meaning. I shall not comment on Winch's points concerning the Preface to the Tractatus, since they have been adequately dealt with by Malcolm. On his interpretation of Tractatus 3.326-3.33, however, there is, I think, more to be said. It is unclear what Winch means by 'accounting for the meanings of names by reference to something non-linguistic'. After all, the meaning of a name is an object, and objects, which constitute the substance of the world, are certainly 'non-linguistic'. They are, inter alia, the constituents of all possible facts. It is unclear what Winch meant by 'accounting for the meanings of names', for, stricto sensu, that means the same as 'accounting for objects'—a phrase that is itself none too perspicuous. I shall assume that what Winch has in mind is accounting for the mode of connection between a name and its meaning, its meaning being the object for which it is representative. Or, if the phrase 'mode of connection' is contentious, as it evidently is, then we can restate the assumption without it: what is needed is to account for a name's having the meaning that it has. Winch's thesis is that logical syntax alone suffices for any such account. It is not obvious that 3.326-3.33 give any support to the idea that what meaning a name has is wholly determined by its logico-syntactical role. It is important to note the context of these remarks. It concerns the fact that the same sign may be common to different symbols, which signify in different ways, as when we use 'is' as a copula, as a sign for identity and as an expression for existence. A perfected conceptual notation would ensure that this does not happen. So, in order to recognize a symbol by its sign we must observe how it is used with a sense—that is, in sentences that have sense. The copula, the identity sign, and the existential quantifier, for example, are not used in the same way. Their syntax is quite different, as is evident when one employs three distinct signs and then tries to substitute one for another, thus transforming sense into nonsense. (It makes sense to say that this apple is red, but not that it is identical with red.) For the logical form of a sign (its combinatorial possibilities) is determined only by the sign together with its logico-syntactical employment. With 'is' we have one sign, but three distinct modes of employment. But, if ambiguity needs to be eliminated by analysis, so too does redundancy. Hence: 'if a sign is not needed, it is end p.173

meaningless.' So, for example, the copula is not needed at all. It is note-worthy that in the Prototractatus these remarks occur as a sequel to TLP 3.44: 'What signifies in a symbol is what is common to all the symbols that the rules of logical

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syntax allow us to substitute for it.' Hence for example, what is common to all notations for truth-functions is that the notation that uses ' ξ' and 'ζvζ' can be substituted for them. So the usual notation, which employs the signs 'ξ ζ' and 'ξ & ζ' as well, displays a redundancy that obscures the fact that ' pv p', ' (p& p)' and ' p p' are all the same symbol. Tractatus 3.328(b) adds in parenthesis: 'If everything behaves as if a sign had meaning, then it does have meaning.' It is not clear, either in the Tractatus or in the Prototractatus, what Wittgenstein has in mind here. The remark is inept for the examples of the logical connectives under discussion in the Prototractatus, since they are not names and have no meaning. In the Tractatus it may be that the example of 'is', under discussion in 3.323, is pertinent. But this too is unhappy, since presumably the copula is redundant, so too, on analysis, is the sign of identity, and the quantifier certainly is not a name and therefore has no meaning. Nevertheless, the import of the remark is clear. In the ordo cognoscendi, we can tell from the sensible ('senseful') use of a sentence that its constituent signs have a meaning (or otherwise contribute, in the surface grammar, to the sense of the sentence). Be that as it may, 3.33—namely, 'In logical syntax the meaning of a sign should never play a role. It must be possible to establish logical syntax without mentioning the meaning of a sign: only the description of expressions may be presupposed'—is not the conclusion of the previous remarks, but the beginning of a new strand of argument. It is the opening of the criticism of Russell's theory of types. Wittgenstein's criticism is that Russell tried to justify his logical syntax by reference to reality. Russell argued that one cannot predicate such-and-such a feature of something, because things of the kind or type in question cannot possess that feature (Leo may be a lion, but a class of lions cannot be a lion). But this is nonsense. For it only makes sense to say that something cannot be so, if it also makes sense to say that it can be so. This does not demonstrate that the logical syntax of a name also determines its meaning, without reference to anything extralinguistic. It merely demonstrates that there is no such thing as justifying logical syntax by reference to the facts. In particular, it makes no sense to say that the logical syntax of the word 'red' (assuming for the sake of illustration that colour words are names) is correct in permitting the combination 'this point is red' and excluding the combination 'this sound is end p.174

red' because a spatio-temporal point can be red, but a sound cannot. It does not follow that, if one knows the logical syntax of a given name, one thereby also knows its meaning. And that should be obvious from the simple fact that many different names have the same logical syntax—that is, the same logical form. For the logical form of a name is represented in a perspicuous notation by the variable for which the name is a substitution instance. The variable is in effect a formal concept, and its characteristic marks are 'distinctive features of all symbols whose meanings fall under the concept' (TLP 4.126-4.127). So, if 'colour' is a formal concept (cf. TLP 2.0131, 2.0251), then all colour names, or names of minimally discriminable shades of colour, are its substitution instances. Hence all the objects that fall under the formal concept in question share the same logical form. 'Every variable represents a constant form that all its values possess, and this can be regarded as a formal property of those values' ( TLP 4.1271). So to

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know that ' a' is a name, and to know that a falls under a certain formal concept, is not yet to know the meaning of ' a'. Again, if colour is a formal concept, then one may know that ' a' is a colour name by knowing its logical syntax, but without knowing its meaning. For it may be the name of any of a myriad (shades of) colours. Indeed, 'If two objects have the same logical form, end p.175

the only difference between them, apart from their external properties, is that they are different' ( TLP 2.0233). Interestingly, in Philosophical Grammar this is glossed thus: 'When asked "what is the distinction between blue and red?" we feel like answering: one is blue and the other is red. But of course that means nothing and in reality what we are thinking of is the distinction between the surfaces or places that have these colours. For otherwise the question makes no sense at all' (PG 208). The logical syntax of a name determines a form, the correlation with an object determines its content in sentences. The name 'red' (assuming for the sake of argument that it is a name) has the same logicosyntactical form as the name 'blue'—both are substitution instances of the same categorial variable—but the two names are names of different objects, and so have different meanings. How is the meaning of a simple name explained? By elucidations (TLP 3.263), which are propositions containing the relevant simple name. This remark (namely TLP 3.263) is, at first glance, baffling: 'The meanings of primitive signs can be explained by means of elucidations. Elucidations are propositions that contain the primitive signs. So they can only be understood if the meanings of the signs are already known.' But, though expressed with needless obscurity, the idea is a simple and straightforward one. It is much the same as Russell's account of the explanation of primitive signs in Principia *1: 'The primitive ideas are explained by means of descriptions intended to point out to the reader what is meant; but the explanations do not constitute definitions, because they really involve the ideas they explain.' There is some reason for thinking that an example of an elucidation would be a proposition of the form 'This is A'. It was only much later that it dawned on Wittgenstein that he had here conflated the role of description with that of ostensive definition. So, in Philosophical Remarks §6 he wrote: If I explain the meaning of a word 'A' to someone by pointing to something and saying 'This is A', then this proposition may be meant in two different ways. Either it is itself a proposition already, in which case it can only be understood once the meaning of 'A' is known, i.e. I must now leave it to chance whether he takes it as I meant it or not. Or the sentence is a definition. I suggest that the first alternative is the one that is prominent in Tractatus 3.263 (the wording of the last sentence of which is very similar to the second clause of the second sentence of the passage from the Remarks). It was only in 1929 that his new conception of ostensive definition occurred to him. He then realized that we can and do explain the meaning of 'primitive signs' perfectly decently, not by elucidations consisting of empirical propositions such as 'This is A'—which are descriptions—but by ostensive definitions that use the very same words. However, the ostensive definition does not 'exit from language'. It explains what a word means by reference to a sample. The sample provides a standard of

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comparison for future uses of the word. But the sample belongs to the means of representation, not to what is represented; and the ostensive definition does not forge a 'connection between language and reality', but remains within language (WWK 210; PR §6). It connects the definiendum with a sample, a deictic gesture, and the relevant indexical words—as is patent from the fact that instead of saying 'A is black' one can equally say 'A is this ☞ ▪ colour'.

Tractatus 3.263 explains how a primitive name is understood, how its meaning is to be gathered by a hearer. But it does not shed light on what it is to use such a name with a given meaning. Malcolm argued that the Tractatus assumed a philosophy of mind in order to account for the relation between language and reality. In particular, he claimed that psychic acts of thinking are necessary to transmute a sentential sign into a proposition, for the proposition (the sentence in its projective relation end p.176

to the world) includes the pictorial relationship that makes it into a picture ( TLP 2.1513). The pictorial relationship consists of the correlations of the picture's elements with things, these correlations being, as it were, the feelers of the names of which the propositional picture consists, with which the picture touches reality (TLP 2.1514-2.1515). The picture, therefore, includes the lines of projection. According to Malcolm's interpretation, it is acts of thinking that project the intended state of affairs into the sentential picture. (The details of Malcolm's account, which seem to me not altogether right, need not concern us.) On Winch's interpretation, according to which the meaning of a name is wholly determined by its role in the language, all this is unnecessary. Moreover, he claims, it is not Wittgenstein's view. Winch examines three pieces of evidence to try to refute Malcolm's claim: Wittgenstein's letter to Russell of 19 August 1919, Tractatus 3.11, and Tractatus 5.541-5.5423. The letter to Russell asserted that a thought consists of psychic constituents that have the same sort of relation to reality as words. According to Malcolm, this suggests that every significant use of a sentence is backed up by a concurrent thought, which is isomorphic with the proposition expressed by the use of the sentence. Winch rightly objects that this interpretation is not unambiguously justified. Taken together with Tractatus 3: 'A logical picture of facts is a thought', and 3.1: 'In a proposition a thought finds expression that can be perceived by the senses', all the letter affirms is that, in the case of unexpressed thoughts, the representing picture consists of psychic constituents (a language of thought, as it were). But it falls short of claiming that, for every meaningful use of a sentence, there must in addition be a psychic sentence that is projected into it, infusing it with a sense and endowing its constituent names with meanings. It may well be that Wittgenstein did think thus—that he did not cleave to such a 'dual process' conception of speaking with thought. But the alternative is not that he invoked no psychological processes to distinguish speaking with thought from mindless mouthing of words. Rather, it is that he thought that what accompanies the utterance of a sentence with a sense is the speaker's meaning (meinen), misconstrued as a psychic act or process. But the evidence for either alternative is not conclusive.5

Tractatus 3.11 asserts 'We use the perceptible sign of a proposition (spoken or

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written, etc.) as a projection of a possible situation. The 5 For more detailed discussion of the two horns of this dilemma, see P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind, vol. iii of An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 313-15, and Wittgenstein: Mind and Will vol. iv of An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 23-6.

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method of projection is to think of the sense of the proposition.' Winch rightly corrects the translation to read 'The method of projection is to think the sense of the proposition'. The question he raises is whether, as Malcolm must insist, this passage is meant to explain what the method of projection consists in—that is, that it consists in thinking the sense of the sentence (the sentence being the perceptible sign of the proposition (TLP 3.11) or thought (TLP 3.1)), or whether it is meant to explain what thinking the sense of a sentence consists in—that is, that it consists in the method of projection. Winch defends the latter interpretation. In his view, Tractatus 3 introduces the notion of a thought, conceived as a logical picture of facts. Tractatus 3.1 characterizes a proposition (or sentence) as a perceptible expression of a thought. Tractatus 3.11 then explains that we use the sentence as a projection of a possible situation, and, relying on that conception of projection, explains what thinking the sense of the sentence is—namely, that it consists in the method of projection. This is ingenious, but mistaken. First, it is a forced reading of the German, in which 'Die Projektionsmethode' picks up the phrase 'als Projektion' from the previous sentence and is naturally read as explaining it. Secondly, it leaves the method of projection unexplained and unspecified. Thirdly, if we turn to the Prototractatus, we find an unambiguous statement of the matter. 3.1 The perceptible expression of a thought is a propositional sign. 3.11 A propositional sign is a projection of a thought. 3.111 It is a projection of the possibility of a situation. 3.12 The method of projection is the manner of applying the propositional sign. 3.13 Applying the propositional sign is thinking its sense. Remarks 3.1-3.11 explain what Wittgenstein calls 'a propositional sign' in terms of the notion of a thought, which has already been explained as a logical picture of facts. It uses the familiar idea of a projection. We have already been told that a thought contains the possibility of the situation of which it is a thought (PTLP 3.02; TLP 3.02). Section 3.111 explains further that the propositional sign, the sentence in use, is a projection of the possibility of a situation—a possibility contained in the thought of which the propositional sign is the expression. This suggests, although does not prove, Malcolm's interpretation that according to the Tractatus a thought underlies every meaningful (sinnvolle) use of a sentence. Be that as it may, it is evident that nothing so far has been said regarding the method of projection. If the propositional sign is to be understood as a projection of the possibility of a situation, how is that end p.178

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projection effected? What is the method of projection? Sections 3.12 and 3.13 are perspicuously explanations of what the method of projection is—and are not, as Winch argues, explanations of what 'thinking the sense of the proposition' means. Rather, 'the method of projection' is explained as being the manner of applying the propositional sign. By itself, this phrase might be interpreted as anticipating the conception of meaning with which we are now familiar from the Investigations, an interpretation that has indeed been suggested with regard to Tractatus 3.326: 'In order to recognize a symbol by its sign we must observe how it is used with a sense.' But that is misconceived. In the Prototractatus the phrase 'the manner of applying the propositional sign' is immediately glossed as equivalent to 'thinking the sense of the propositional sign' (that is, of the sentence). It seems that Wittgenstein assumed that the phrase 'thinking the sense of the propositional sign' was perspicuous. After all, he had already explained that a picture represents a possible situation in logical space (TLP 2.202) and that what it represents is its sense (TLP 2.221). So presumably he took it for granted that it would be clear that to use a propositional sign as a projection of a possible situation that is the intended sense of the propositional sign ' p' is to use the sentence ' p' as a representation of the situation one thinks obtains, has in mind, or means. So too, Tractatus 3.326 is not an anticipation of Wittgenstein's later conception of meaning, but rather an insistence that to recognize a symbol by its sign we must observe how it is meant—that is, what state of affairs is meant by the sentential sign and what objects are meant by the constituent names (cf. NB 67-71). This is a perfectly consistent interpretation. What support can it be given? First, the Notebooks 1914-16 strongly intimate such a conception. Wittgenstein argued that it is 'By my correlating the components of the picture with objects, it comes to represent a situation and to be right or wrong' (NB 33-4). So I do the correlating (cf. NB 53). How? 'What I mean by the verb ["lying on" in the sentence "The book is lying on the table"] is perhaps a quite special relation which the book now actually has to the table . . . It seems that what we MEAN must always be "sharp" ' (NB 67-8). And, again, 'It is clear that I know what I mean by the vague proposition . . . If someone were to drive me into a corner [by asking me under what conditions I should say that such-and-such is lying on this or that] in order to show that I didn't know what I meant, I should say: " I know what I mean; I mean just THIS " pointing to the appropriate complex with my finger' (NB 70). Here it seems to be 'acts of meaning' that are envisaged as determining the meaning of names and rendering apparently vague propositions sharp. end p.179

Winch argues rightly that the Notebooks must be used with caution, since they record Wittgenstein's struggles with the problems and the temptations to which he was subject. On Winch's view, these passages, which seem to confirm what Winch calls 'the mentalistic conception of the sense of propositions', are the target of the criticisms of the Tractatus, and not confirmation for their mentalistic interpretation. To this it may be replied (a) that the issue does not concern a mentalistic interpretation of the sense of propositions. The sense of a proposition is its agreement and disagreement with the possibilities of existence and non-existence of the state of affairs it represents—and there is nothing

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mentalistic about that. The question under debate is whether the connection between names and their meanings, and hence too between the picture and what it represents, is effected by mental acts of thinking, meaning, and understanding. (b) Granted that the Notebooks must be used with caution, there is a presumption in their favour. Winch supplies no independent defeating evidence. The question is: is there any further evidence in support of a 'mentalistic' conception of conferring sense on the propositional sign? In MS 108, on 19 July 1930, at a time when fragments of the eggshell of the Tractatus were still sticking to his ideas, Wittgenstein was struggling yet again with the concept of thought, its internal relation to what it depicts, and the connection between the thought and reality. On pages 218-19, Wittgenstein wrote: Thinking is forming pictures in various ways. But conceiving of them as pictures, which is what is essential, is not to be conceived of as establishing an external connection / link /, for that would again merely be the establishing of intermediate links but rather it must be, like the relation of a mould and its cast, something which lies in the existence of the thought. It is certain that there is a similarity between our fantasies and real experiences. But they are only thoughts when they are connected to reality and conceived of as pictures of it. On the other hand, the thought need by no means have that similarity with reality. (It only has to be a logical picture.) If I dreamt today that A visits me and A actually visits me, that dream fantasy was not therefore an expectation, and the fact that A visited me would not be the fulfilment of an expectation / of the dream /. The intention is lacking. But can the intention be an external relation? Because the intention brings it about that this process is a picture which gets confirmed or disconfirmed and because this constitutes the real essence of intention, therefore the intention can be no relation6 of the picture to something else. 6 Evidently 'relation' here means an external relation, as specified in the previous sentence.

end p.180

I see before me how the thought—the meant sentence—reaches right up to reality, i.e. already models its form in advance. As does the ruler, or perhaps just two gradation marks on it, with which reality now is especially compared7 One could say that the intention is the method of projection The picture (in the narrower sense) does not suffice because how it is to be compared with reality is not given with it. Together with it must be the method of projection; but then the picture indeed reaches right into the place where the object of the picture is. In the sequel, and to a much greater degree in subsequent manuscript volumes, Wittgenstein slowly freed himself of the misconceptions of the Tractatus. But, it seems to me, there can be little doubt that in these passages he is discussing the

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Tractatus conception of the connection between picture and what it depicts, and affirming what I have argued he was committed to in the Tractatus—namely, that meaning or intending was cast in the role of the method of projection. There is one further piece of evidence to which, in a different context, Winch himself drew our attention. Wittgenstein is reported as having remarked to Rhees that in the Tractatus he had confused the method of projection with the lines of projection.8 Interestingly, in Zettel §291, Wittgenstein wrote: 'The lines of projection might be called the "connection between the picture and what it depicts"; but so too might the technique of projection' (cf. MS 116, 124). Reading these remarks in our present context is illuminatingly suggestive. For, if 'thinking the sense of the proposition' is construed as 'meaning by the propositional sign such-and-such a state of affairs', as I have suggested, and if the method of projection was construed as thinking the sense of the proposition, then Wittgenstein's criticism becomes fully intelligible. For, while one might want to construe meaning by the sentence ' p' the state of affairs that p, and meaning by the constituent names of the sentence ' p' the constituent objects of the state of affairs that p, as determining the lines of projection, nothing is thereby said about the method of projection. For merely meaning by ' p' the state of affairs that p does not distinguish one method of projection from another. Yet different grammars, and different notations, involve different techniques of projection—and Wittgenstein had inadvertently conflated the lines of projection with the method or technique of projection (cf. PG 213). Again, it is striking how 7 A little sketch of a ruler alongside an object to be measured accompanies this sentence.

P. Winch, 'Introduction: The Unity of Wittgenstein's Philosophy', in Winch (ed.) Studies in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), 12. Winch's interpretation of this remark seems to me to be questionable. 8

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smoothly these passages cohere with the interpretation of the Tractatus according to which speaker's meaning or intention was construed as the method of projection. If the above arguments are correct, then the familiar remark from the Blue Book that Malcolm cites must indeed be directed against Wittgenstein's earlier ideas, as Malcolm suggested: It seems that there are certain definite mental processes bound up with the working of language, processes through which alone language can function. I mean the processes of understanding and meaning. The signs of our language seem dead without these mental processes; and it might seem that the only function of the signs is to induce such processes, and that these are the things we ought really to be interested in. . . . We are tempted to think that the action of language consists of two parts; an inorganic part, the handling of signs, and an organic part, which we may call understanding these signs, meaning them, interpreting them, thinking. (BB 3) Winch cites one more passage from the Tractatus, which, in his view, militates against the mentalist interpretation of the conferral of sense on the 'dead signs'

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of language. Tractatus 5.541-5.5423 argue against construing 'A believes (thinks, judges) that p' as describing a relation between the proposition p and A. Against this, Wittgenstein contends that such propositions are of the form ' " p" says p', which does not involve a correlation of a fact (namely, that p) with an object (namely, A) but rather the correlation of facts by means of the correlation of their objects. Against Russell's theory of judgement in particular, Wittgenstein claims that it fails to satisfy the requirement that it is impossible to judge a nonsense. Winch holds that the interpretation of 3.11 that construes 'thinking the sense of the proposition' as explaining what the method of projection is falls foul of this criticism. For, on that interpretation, it is thinking that actually gives the proposition its sense. But, he suggests, this, like Russell's theory of judgement, would not ensure that it is impossible to think or judge a nonsense. Rather, any account of thought must be based on what it is for an expression to have a sense. This is mistaken. It was an unargued assumption of the Tractatus that one cannot think a nonsense. Similarly, one cannot mean a nonsense. One can utter a nonsensical string of words—but that is not to say anything. It is just to talk nonsense. By contrast, there is no such thing, so Wittgenstein thought, as thinking a nonsense. To say that one thought (or meant) that this table penholders the book (NB 96) is not to describe what one thought (or meant), but to say that one thought nothing. For 'thinking is a kind of language. For a thought too is a logical picture of end p.182

the proposition, and therefore it just is a kind of proposition' (NB 82).9 The thoughts one thinks must have the same logical form as the state of affairs that would make them true—hence 'What is thinkable is possible too' (TLP 3.02). Indeed, it was this misleading conception that he later criticized in the Investigations §§511-21.1 0 But, although misleading, it was not open to the criticism that he directed against relational theories of thought and belief, and against Russell's theory of judgement. For A to think that p is not, according to the Tractatus, for A to stand in a relation to a proposition. Rather it is for A to have a thought, consisting of psychic constituents, which possess appropriate logical forms, combined to constitute a representing fact, which fact represents a state of affairs in reality. Here a thought (a representing fact in the mind) represents, if it is true, a fact in reality, and it does so by the correlation of the constituent objects of the thought and the constituent objects of the fact. Russell's multiple relation theory of judgement failed to ensure that one cannot judge a nonsense because acquaintance with the constituents of the judgement that aR b and standing in the judging relation to a, R, and b does not ensure that ' aR b' is intelligible and does not preclude judging that R ba, abR, and so on. Nor, on Russell's account, does it follow immediately from the fact that A judges that p that it is either the case that p or it is not the case that p.1 1 But Wittgenstein's picture theory of thoughts, being a special case of his picture theory of the proposition, does ensure that, if A has the thought that p, then it follows without more ado that either it is the case that p or it is not the case that p. For it is of the essence of a logical picture to be bipolar. The final point that Winch makes in defence of his interpretation is to draw attention to Tractatus 4.112-4.1121, in which Wittgenstein explicitly excludes any consideration of thought-processes from the philosophy of logic. These are

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unessential psychological investigations, and should be avoided. In Winch's view, this precludes any mentalist explanation of the manner in which names are endowed with meanings and sentences given a sense. This is mistaken. What Wittgenstein is claiming is that his study of sign-language does indeed correspond to the study of thought-processes, 9 It is curious that Wittgenstein should write that a thought too is a logical picture of a proposition, rather than that it is a logical picture of a situation. But, however that is to be explained, what is important for present purposes is that a thought is itself a proposition, i.e. a representing fact—albeit in the medium of psychical constituents.

It was misleading in as much as there is an innocuous sense in which one can think a nonsense no less than one can draw a nonsense (as Escher did deliberately in his ingenious etchings). For detailed explanation, see Hacker, Wittgenstein: Mind and Will Exegesis §§511-21. 10

1 1 For more detailed criticism, see P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein's Place in Twentieth Century Analytic Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 26.

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which philosophers used to consider essential for the philosophy of logic. But it has the great advantage of excluding any psychological investigations, which belong to the province of psychology. All that is presupposed by the study of logic is that names have meanings and propositions sense. Just as it is not the business of the philosopher of logic to give us examples of elementary propositions, since this is a matter of the application of logic (TLP 5.557-5.5571)—which Wittgenstein deferred until the abortive 'Some Remarks on Logical Form' of 1929—so too it is not the business of the philosopher of logic to investigate the nature of psychological processes. But the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung, is a treatise on logic . That is why Wittgenstein could be so insouciant in replying to Russell 'I don't know what the constituents of a thought are but I know that it must have constituents which correspond to the words of Language. Again the kind of relation of the constituents of the thought and of the pictured fact is irrelevant. It would be a matter of psychology to find out' (NB 129). The psychological processes of thinking, meaning, and understanding do indeed underpin the use of language, but they are of no concern to logic . In MS 165, 9-11, probably composed in 1944, Wittgenstein wrote: Doesn't the sentence have a sense because I am conscious and I mean it? (And, of course, I can't mean a senseless combination of words.) And this meaning is, of course, something mental. And it is something private. It is the elusive object. What happens when I mean a sentence? I say, e.g. 'I don't feel very well', and mean it. But it can't actually be like that; for can't I mean the sentence even though it is a lie? I would, when I mean it, e.g. pull a face corresponding to the sense. But we can suppose that it is true, and then the meaning seems like an arrow or arrows, which point at something from the sentence. What a strange phenomenon this is (almost like a fever // like a dream in a fever //). Here too, I think, there is little doubt that the dream is a dream that Wittgenstein

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himself had dreamt and it had left its mark upon the Tractatus. But by the time he wrote the above passage, of course, he had long cured himself of the fever that had once beset him, and adumbrated a host of prophylactic arguments. It is sad that the very same fever still rages among philosophers, who hypothesize a language of thought in order to explain the learning of a language and the nature of thought, belief, and judgement. Postscript The interpretation of the Tractatus given in the above article was criticized by Professor Cora Diamond in a lecture she delivered at the end p.184

University of Swansea in 1999. She kindly let me see a copy of her lecture. On reading it, it seemed to me to contain misunderstandings of my arguments and of Wittgenstein's writings, which, whether Professor Diamond still cleaves to the views there expressed or not, are worth rectifying.

1. Hermeneutic Method Against Winch, I argued that the Tractatus holds that there are semantic connections between language and reality. The simple names of any language are connected to their meanings, which are objects in the world that are constituents of states of affairs. With regard to the question of how names get linked to objects, I suggested that, when a speaker uses a name in a sentence, then he means by the name such-and-such an object. Equally, he means by the sentence, which he utters with understanding, such-and-such a state of affairs. So it is meaning something by signs that connects language and reality. The method of projection of a propositional sign, I claimed, is thinking or meaning the state of affairs that it is used to represent. But ascribing such a flawed conception to Wittgenstein, Professor Diamond argues, involves treating him as 'either singularly dense or as remarkably well-provided with blind spots', since such mentalism is untenable for easily graspable reasons that Wittgenstein himself points out. But, she continues, we should be wary of interpreting the Tractatus in such as way as to imply incompetence or denseness on the part of its author, especially when the evidence within the text is limited at best. To this there are three replies. First, the flaws in the conception are indeed easily grasped— once they have been pointed out. But antecedently to their being pointed out, they are anything but easy to apprehend. Achievement in philosophy, as Wittgenstein observed, is like finding the number to a combination lock—once it has been discovered, even a child can open it (BT 417). Having had the benefit of Wittgenstein's later criticisms of the confusions associated with the concept of meaning something, it should be easy for us to avoid these pitfalls.1 2 But it does not follow Athough both Grice's account of meaning in terms of intentions and Searle's account of the intentionality of language in terms of the intrinsic intentionality of thinking and intending do, I fancy, succumb to similar, though not identical, 12

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confusions.

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that they are so trivial that only the dense and blind can succumb to them—as Professor Diamond intimates. Certainly Wittgenstein did not think so. He wrote: 'The conception of "meaning him" as a connection is like a myth. And a very powerful myth. For whatever I imagine as a connection, none will do what I want. No image that I imagine suffices, and consequently it seems that meaning is a specific connection which is altogether incomparable to any other connection' (MS 116, 275). Not only is it a powerful myth, it is also one to which he dedicated hundreds of remarks throughout the 1930s—which he would hardly have done had it seemed to him as obvious and trivial as it apparently does to Professor Diamond. Nor was this a temporary aberration, for the theme runs like a leitmotif through his masterwork, the Investigations (PI §§22, 33, 35, p. 18 n., p. 33 n., §§81, 186-8, 358, 504-13, 592), which ends with a long discussion of thirty-two remarks on the subject (§§661-93). Secondly, it is true that the evidence within the text is limited, since the subject of the connection between language and reality is barely discussed for reasons of principle—namely, to avoid getting entangled with psychological considerations (TLP 4.1121). The sparsity of discussion is as much a difficulty for an anti-mentalist interpretation as for a mentalist one. However, as I pointed out, the mentalist interpretation is greatly strengthened by evidence from the Notebooks 1914-16 (NB 33-4, 53, 67-8, 70). For there it is evident that Wittgenstein invoked meaning something, (mis)conceived as a mental act, in order (i) to explain the correlation of the components of a propositional picture with objects, (ii) to explain how what appears superficially to be a vague proposition is in reality sharp. Thirdly, when Wittgenstein returned to philosophy in 1929, it is evident that he initially cleaved to the same conception (see MS 108, quoted above, p. 180-1), casting intention in the role of the method of projection. Furthermore, he later clearly attributed some of the mistakes he himself had made to misconceptions about meaning something. In Philosophical Investigations §81, he remarks that achieving clarity about understanding, meaning ('meinen'), and thinking is a sine qua non for clarifying 'what can lead us (and did lead me) to think that if any one utters a sentence and means or understands it he is operating a calculus according to definite rules'. This self-accusation is born out by the discussion in the Notebooks 1914-16 of securing determinacy of sense by reference to knowing exactly what I mean by a vague sentence. end p.186

2. On Logic Being Able To Take Care Of Itself and the Connection Between Language and Reality TLP 3.11 is agreed to be pivotal for clarification of the idea of a method of projection, clarification that is required of any interpreter of the Tractatus. According to the interpretation that I (Malcolm and others) gave, a language is linked to reality by means of names the meanings of which are objects constituting the substance of the world. Indeed, any possible language is

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necessarily and ineffably answerable to the metaphysical structure of the world. But, Professor Diamond queries, does not this fly in the face of Wittgenstein's claim that logic looks after itself—that, in a certain sense, we cannot make mistakes in logic? For, if logic were answerable to reality in any way, if there were metaphysical possibilities to which language is responsible, then, she suggests, we obviously could make mistakes in logic. For we could have a logic that did not match those possibilities. But this is misguided—precisely since logic takes care of itself. So logic is not founded on or responsible to anything else. This is, I think, mistaken. First, according to the Tractatus, logic does have presuppositions (TLP 6.124). For logic presupposes that (i) simple names have meanings—which are simple objects constituting the substance of the world; and (ii) that elementary propositions have sense—their sense being their agreement and disagreement with possibilities of the obtaining and non-obtaining of states of affairs (TLP 4.2). Consequently, the bipolarity of the elementary proposition is likewise presupposed by logic. (It reflects the metaphysical truth that it is of the essence of states of affairs to obtain or not to obtain.1 3 To these two presuppositions one must add the further crucial ideas that (iii) elementary propositions are logically independent ( TLP 4.211)—a flawed presupposition that, when detected in 1929, brought the Tractatus down like a house of cards, since the logic of the book depended on the independence postulate; and (iv) the thesis of extensionality—namely, that all propositions are the results of truth-functional operations on elementary propositions (TLP 5.3). These presuppositions are not empirical, but formal. Logic does not presuppose that the facts of which the world consists are thus or otherwise—all it presupposes is that the world consists of the obtaining and non-obtaining of states of affairs (which is no matter of fact). What states of affairs there might be concerns not logic but the application of logic (TLP 5.557)—hence See dictation from Wittgenstein to Waismann entitled 'Satzkalkül', p. 2 (FW 55). 13

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something that must be investigated, in a certain sense (sic !), a posteriori (RLF 163). What states of affairs there actually are is a matter of experience. Secondly, these presuppositions do not imply that we might have a logic that failed to match the range of possibilities available to the facts. The independence postulate for elementary propositions together with the thesis of extensionality ensured that the mathematical multiplicity of non-elementary propositions precisely matches the range of possibilities available to reality. For all possible combinations of states of affairs are describable by truth-operations on the appropriate set of elementary propositions. What then of the inner structure of the elementary proposition? Could we not have a language in which we correlated a two-place predicate with a three-place relation? No; for we cannot give a sign the wrong sense (TLP 5.4732). One cannot mean by a binary relation-name in a sentence ' aR b' a tertiary relation. Why not? One cannot think or mean a nonsense, for there is no such thing as an illogical thought (TLP 5.4731). All that would result in this case, Wittgenstein thought, is that we would have failed to give any meaning at all to the term in question. So we could not have a language the names of which were not isomorphic with the objects that are their meanings. To be sure, the idea that we cannot think or mean a nonsense

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was later to be subjected to critical scrutiny.1 4 Thirdly, the claim that logic must look after itself does not mean that logic presupposes nothing. In particular, it does not imply that logic does not presuppose that names have meaning (and hence are connected to reality) and that elementary sentences have sense (and hence are bipolar). Nor does it mean that language is not ineffably and necessarily answerable to reality for such formal features. On the contrary, these features are partly constitutive of being a language, and are aspects of the metaphysics of symbolism of the Tractatus (for example, that only simple names can represent simple objects (TLP 3.2-3.23), only relations can represent relations (TLP 3.1432), and only facts can represent facts (TLP 3.142)), and hence too of the ineffable isomorphism between language and reality. What it does mean is that it is neither necessary nor possible to lay down rules, as Russell had tried to do in his Theory of Types, prohibiting one from asserting impossibilities. Russell thought that, for example, although Leo is a lion, the class of lions is not a lion, and consequently we must lay down formation rules that will prohibit us from asserting such impossibilities. Wittgenstein thought that this For detailed examination, see Hacker, Wittgenstein: Mind and Will, Exegesis §§512-13. 14

end p.188

was doubly mistaken. First, it presents a nonsense as a justification for a rule. For the sentence 'The class of lions is not a lion' is the negation of a nonsense —namely, 'The class of lions is a lion', and the negation of a nonsense is nonsense. Secondly, it suggests that we need to prohibit speakers from doing something —namely, from thinking and asserting something that is not logically possible—as if, without the prohibition, one might do so. But a logical or metaphysical impossibility is not a possibility that is impossible. It is merely a form of words to which we have given no sense, and so is excluded from our language. There is, so the author of the Tractatus insisted, no such thing as thinking or meaning a logical impossibility, or thinking or meaning a nonsense. There is only thinking, meaning, and talking sense, on the one hand, and talking nonsense, on the other. To say 'The class of lions is a lion' is to talk nonsense—and there is no need to prohibit anything. If you want to talk nonsense, talk nonsense—it does not matter. But one cannot think or mean that the class of lions is (or is not) a lion—there is nothing to think or mean, since this form of words makes no sense. It is in this sense that 'logic takes care of itself'. It is not like the criminal law, which must prohibit murder (which is something a person might do) and lay down a sanction to deter people from committing murder. The criminal law cannot take care of itself—it needs a penal code. Logic is akin to the law of contract, which lays down the correct ways of making a contract. Failure to comply with the laws of contract-formation does not involve doing anything that needs to be prohibited; it simply involves making an invalid contract. But an invalid contract is not a kind of contract. So too, a 'nonsensical thought', so to speak, would not be a kind of thought. So the law of contract-formation takes care of itself. Failure to accord with it results in invalidity—hence no sanction is necessary. The laws of logic likewise take care of themselves. Failure to accord with them results in nonsensical forms of words, not in impossible thoughts. So it is neither necessary nor possible to prohibit, on the pain of sanction, thinking, or meaning something

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impossible or nonsensical. The worst that can happen is that one will think nothing.

3. Different Objects Of the Same Form I argued that Winch's claim that a name's meaning is not something other than its logico-syntactical role is mistaken. For that would exclude the possibility, explicitly allowed for in the Tractatus (TLP 2.0131, 2.0251, 4.126-4.1271), of different names having the same logical form. And I quoted Wittgenstein's remark, 'If two objects have the same logical form, end p.189

the only difference between them, apart from their external properties, is that they are different' ( TLP 2.0233). Professor Diamond thinks that this passage rejects the idea that we can distinguish between objects of the same form, that it affirms that two such objects are only distinguishable by their external properties and not by their intrinsic nature. And she suggests that I must claim that, if there are two objects of the same form, then 'we cannot distinguish in anything we say between the two objects, but can distinguish between them through some kind of pre-linguistic apprehension of them that is beyond words.' I am astonished to find such views attributed to me, and will try again to explain the matter. Nothing in the Tractatus suggests that there are not different objects with the same logical form. Every visual object must have some colour, every note must have some pitch, every tactile object some degree of hardness, and so on (TLP 2.0131). Colours have the same logical form;1 5 so do notes, and so forth. Objects are constituents of states of affairs; different objects may have different external properties—that is, be concatenated with different objects. But does that imply that the only thing that distinguishes different objects that have the same form is their external properties? That is nowhere asserted.1 6 Tractatus 2.0233 is opaque—but rendered clear by Philosophical Grammar , p. 208 (see above, p. 175). If we follow Wittgenstein and take colours (or shades of colour) as the closest we can get to the incoherent Tractatus notion of an object, then red and green (or scarlet and magenta) are a pair of objects with the same logical form—that is, the same combinatorial possibilities. Are they indistinguishable in everything we say? Not at all; one is called 'red' and the other 'green'. And the state of affairs that consists of (Red) S 2 t 3is a quite different state of affairs from (Green)S 2 t 3 , and is described by different sentences, which have different senses and different truthgrounds. We can distinguish here between the distinct objects that possess the same form by the use of our eyes, and we can say that there are here two different situations. But it seems as if we cannot say what the difference is between red and green. That is, to be sure, a muddle —which Wittgenstein pointed out in the Grammar . Being coloured ('Färbigkeit') is a form of visual objects (PTLP 2.0252; cf. TLP 2.0251). But it was mistaken to suppose that all colours have the same form, since while it makes sense for the lights to flash red, it makes no sense for them to flash black, and, whereas it makes sense for glass to be transparent blue, it makes no sense for it to be transparent white. When Wittgenstein 15

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realized these differences, he abandoned the faith he had once had in the requirement of sharp categorial differentiations. It is not even asserted that different objects with the same logical form may not have the identical external properties. A perfectly reasonable candidate would be two different notes that are audible at the same time. 16

end p.190

7 #7 Frege and the Early Wittgenstein Abstract: Frege's conceptions of sense, truth, and falsehood, assertion, thought, the logical connectives, the laws of thought, and the laws of logic is described as Wittgenstein understood them. Wittgenstein's criticisms of Frege's conceptions as elaborated in the Tractatus and associated early writings are described and analysed. The criticisms are shown to be powerful and to undermine Frege's conception of logic and the primary supports of his philosophy of logic. Keywords: assertion, assumption and assertion sign, Frege, function theoretic logic, laws of logic, logic, logical connectives, sense and meaning (reference), the True and the False, Tractatus

P. M. S Hacker

1. A Question Of Influence Wittgenstein probably became acquainted with the works of Frege through reading Russell's The Principles of Mathematics, Appendix A of which contains a detailed description of Frege's logical and arithmetical doctrines. But it is also possible that he was referred to the works of Frege by Samuel Alexander, professor of philosophy at Manchester, where Wittgenstein studied aeronautical engineering between 1908 and 1911. Be that as it may, by 1911 he had evidently read Russell's book and Frege's Grundgesetze der Arithmetik carefully, and had become deeply preoccupied with the philosophy of mathematics and logic— sufficiently so to correspond with Jourdain in 1909 on the matter of Russell's paradox of classes. He went to visit Frege in Jena, apparently in the summer of 1911, in order to discuss with him some objections he had to Frege's theories. Frege, as Wittgenstein reminisced to Geach after the Second World War, 'wiped the floor' with him1 —but also encouragingly invited him to come again, and, more importantly, advised him to go to Cambridge to work with Russell. That fortunate advice set the young Wittgenstein on the path of his lifelong vocation. Wittgenstein visited Frege again a number of times before the First World War in order to discuss his ideas about the philosophy of logic that were ultimately to grow into the Tractatus. How much Frege understood of Wittgenstein's embryonic ideas is unclear. After a visit in December 1912, Wittgenstein wrote to Russell 'I had a long discussion with Frege about our Theory of Symbolism of which, I think, he roughly understood the general outline. He said he would think the matter over.' 1 G. E. M. Anscombe and P. T. Geach, Three Philosophers (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), 130.

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On 22 October 1913, Wittgenstein wrote to Frege asking for his permission to visit him, and at the end of November 1913, he wrote Frege an important letter about Frege's theory of truth, in particular against his conception of the determination of the meaning (Bedeutung) of a function.2 It is surely no coincidence that between 1 and 11 October, Wittgenstein had dictated to Russell the 'Notes on Logic', which contain some of his most penetrating criticisms of Frege, in particular the material that was later embodied in the Tractatus, 4.0621, 4.063, and 4.442, which will be examined below. Wittgenstein visited Frege on his way home to Vienna in December 1913, presumably to present his criticisms to Frege. As Frege later wrote to Jourdain (28 January 1914), they had lengthy conversations together. These meetings seem to have been their last. There is no evidence from Frege's Nachlass that he understood in what ways Wittgenstein's ideas about logic were diverging dramatically from his own or that he made any attempt to meet Wittgenstein's criticisms.3 In a conversation with Goodstein in the early 1930s, Wittgenstein remarked that, on one of these later visits, he in turn 'wiped the floor with Frege'.4 This may be an allusion to these criticisms. There is some reason for supposing that Wittgenstein did not think Frege did, or would, understand his ideas. When Wittgenstein was in prisonerof-war camp in Monte Cassino in 1919, before any further philosophical exchanges with Frege had taken place, he explained the ideas of the Tractatus to Franz Parak. In response to Parak's enthusiasm, he remarked, 'If only Frege would receive the Tractatus thus' (that is, as Parak did).5 Although Frege and Wittgenstein never met after 1914, they corresponded throughout the war—though not on philosophical matters. Frege's letters to Wittgenstein, but not Wittgenstein's replies, 2 Wittgenstein's letters to Frege have not survived. They were destroyed by bombing in the second World War. The catalogue of those letters, compiled by Heinrich Scholtz, has survived. The letter of 29 November 1913 is described in that catalogue as 'Wichtige Argumente gegen Freges Wahrheitstheorie. Insbesondere die Bedeutungsfestsetzung von Functionen'. (See G. Frege, Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1976), 265-6.) 3 But it is striking, as Wolfgang Künne has pointed out to me, that in the last three essays, of which Frege's 'Logical Investigations' consist, there is no mention of the True and the False as objects. One cannot but wonder whether this might not be a consequence of Wittgenstein's criticisms in the Tractatus.

R. L. Goodstein, 'Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mathematics', in A. Ambrose and M. Lazerowitz (eds.), Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophy and Language (London: Allen & Unwin, 1972), 272. 4

'Als ich den Traktat gelesen hatte und wir an die hundertmal den freien Platz unter den Baracken umkreisten, meinte Wittgenstein auf meine Begeisterung hin: "Ja, wenn auch Frege den Tractat so aufnehmen würde!" Und nun verstand Frege, den er so verehrte, den Traktat überhaupt nicht' ( F. Parak, 'Wittgenstein in Monte Cassino', in L. Wittgenstein, Geheime Tagebücher 1914-1916 (Vienna: Turia & Kant, 1991), 154 n. 5

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have survived. From prisoner-of-war camp in 1919, he arranged for Frege to be sent a typescript copy of the Tractatus. Frege's response evidently confirmed Wittgenstein's worst fears. For, as Wittgenstein wrote to Russell, '[Frege]

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doesn't understand a single word of my work', and he remarked to his sister Hermine that he had always thought that Frege would not understand his work.6 Frege's first letter in response to the book consists largely of not very profound quibbles over the propositions on the first page, and the subsequent letter is no better. He did, however, make a good mereological point about objects qua constituents of facts, which Wittgenstein came to appreciate only much later (cf. PG 200). Frege sent Wittgenstein a copy of his paper 'The Thought', recently published in the journal Beiträgen zur Philosophie des Deutschen Idealismus. But, when Wittgenstein solicited his help in getting the book published in that journal, Frege was lukewarm, suggesting that Wittgenstein split the book up into a series of short articles. Wittgenstein's chagrin was understandably great, but he did respond to Frege's paper, evidently criticizing it for failure to grasp the deep grounds for cleaving to a form of idealism—presumably alluding to his own ideas concerning the truth of what the solipsist means, which he had so opaquely sketched in the Tractatus. Frege's last surviving letter responded to this criticism with bewilderment, and discussed at pedantic length the opening sentence of the Tractatus. There is no evidence of any further communication between the two philosophers. Despite this rather unhappy terminus to their relationship, Wittgenstein never wavered in his admiration for Frege as a philosopher. In the preface to the Tractatus he acknowledged his indebtedness to 'Frege's great works and to the writings of my friend Mr Bertrand Russell for much of the stimulation of my thoughts'. In a manuscript notebook of 1931 (MS 154, 15v ) he listed Frege (together with Boltzmann, Hertz, Schopenhauer, Russell, Kraus, Loos, Weininger, Spengler, and Sraffa) as one of the influences upon him, and at much the same time he noted that the style of his own sentences was extraordinarily influenced by Frege (Z §712; MS 112, 20); indeed, his admiration for Frege's style did not cease—a fortnight before his death in 1951 he observed that 'Frege's style of writing is sometimes great' (CV 87). In his lectures in 1939, he referred to Frege as 'a great thinker' (LFM 144). 6 Undated letter to Hermine from prisoner-of-war camp at Cassino, probably early August 1919 ( Wittgenstein: Familienbriefe, ed. B. McGuinness, M. C. Ascher, and O. Pfersmann (Vienna: Verlag Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1996), 65); letter to Russell R 39, dated 6 Oct. 1919 (CL 131, letter 72).

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There can be no doubt that Frege's work in logic greatly influenced Wittgenstein. His function-theoretic logic, like that of Russell's and Whitehead's Principia, put new questions on the agenda of twentieth-century philosophy and placed old questions in a new light. Frege and Russell had discovered, or invented, a new calculus of logic, far more powerful than the old logic of syllogistic and the new logical algebras of Boole and Schröder. What then was the significance of the new logic? Did it reveal something about the nature of reality? Or about the nature of thought? How is the logical language of Grundgesetze or of Principia related to the natural languages of mankind? What is the nature of the logical propositions that are proved by these systems? What is their subject matter? And how do they differ from other propositions? Both systems of logic are axiomatic. What is the status of the axioms? And how do we know their truth? These are the kinds of questions that confronted the young Wittgenstein as a result of the

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labours of Frege and Russell, and his struggles with these questions were, to a considerable extent, struggles with the ideas of his great predecessors. Granted all this, it remains a controversial issue what Frege's influence was and whether Wittgenstein's admiration for Frege did or did not imply an extensive or deep agreement with Frege on philosophical matters, even though, as is obvious, there are many differences. Professor Dummett, for example, has argued that 'some of Wittgenstein's work builds on, elaborates or complements that of Frege' and that it is then that he 'is at his happiest', but that 'In other cases, Wittgenstein fought against the power of Frege's thought', and in such cases 'he was almost always at his worst', for in most of them, Dummett contends, 'Frege was in the right and Wittgenstein in the wrong', and that, even when this is not so, 'Wittgenstein seldom succeeded in framing cogent arguments to show that Frege was wrong'.7 This judgement is debatable. In the compass of a paper, it is, of course, not possible to compare and contrast the two thinkers on every major disagreement. What I shall attempt to do is to rehearse some of Wittgenstein's main arguments against Frege in the Tractatus. Pace Dummett, these seem to me to be anything but lacking in cogency. On the contrary, they are powerful criticisms, which undermine Frege's conception of logic and the primary supports of his philosophy of logic. M. A. E. Dummett, 'Frege and Wittgenstein', in I. Block (ed.), Perspectives on the Philosophy of Wittgenstein (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), 31, 33. 7

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2. Frege's Achievement Frege's works had a single overarching goal—namely, to prove the logicist thesis that arithmetic is derivable from pure logic alone, and that it involves no principles of reasoning other than purely logical ones. To this end he invented a new logical calculus firmly based, as he always insisted, upon the generalization of the mathematical concept of a function. His crucial innovation relative to traditional logic was, he declared, 'the replacement of the concepts of subject and predicate by argument and function' (BS, Preface). Frege's generalization of function theory was highly original, but nevertheless intelligibly within the mainstream of nineteenth-century logico-mathematical reflection. The mathematicization of logic was the inspiration for the logical work of Boole, who invented a novel calculus of logical algebra by generalizing the domain of algebra, thereby making it possible to represent syllogistic reasoning by equations and inequations of algebraic operations on sets rather than numbers. He viewed logic as the algebra of thought and characterized this abstract algebra as a 'cross section' of rational thinking. The idea was pursued further by Jevons, Venn, Huntington, Peirce, and Schröder. By contrast, Frege sought to show not that logic is a part of arithmetic, but that arithmetic is an extension of pure logic. For this purpose, he turned to a different branch of mathematics—namely, function theory. Earlier in the century, mathematicians had extended the application of the concept of a function, incorporating as arguments and values of functions complex numbers and functions of real variables, thus making possible the systematic investigation of functions of second and higher level. The theory of mathematical functions differentiated

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types of mathematical entities—namely, numbers, first-level functions with one, two, or more arguments, second-level functions with one, two, or more arguments, and so forth. No diminution of Frege's originality is involved in pointing out that the idea of representing generalizations, and in particular propositions involving multiple generality, as second-level functions whose arguments are functions taking any object whatever (and not just numbers) as arguments would not have been possible without these mathematical developments. Frege's fundamental idea was to extend the range of the arguments and values of functions to any objects whatsoever. From a logical point of view what is denoted by the expression 'The capital of ξ' is no less a function than x 2 , the latter taking the value 4 for the argument 2 and the former taking the value London for the argument United Kingdom. end p.195

So too, he viewed x 2 = 1 no less than ξ is the capital of the United Kingdom as functions mapping objects onto truth-values, the former taking the value true for the argument 1 or −1 and otherwise the value false, the latter taking the value true for the argument London and the value false for any other argument. A corollary of this was that he took sentences that are expressions of the contents of possible judgements or thoughts as names of truth-values. Just as an expression that results from completing the function-name ' x 2 ' with the name of an argument, for example, '4', is a name of its value (that is, 16), so too the equation that results from completing the function-name ' x 2 = 16' with an argument-expression '4' is the name of its value, which is a truth-value. Since objects in general are admissible as arguments of functions, the sentence 'London is the capital of the United Kingdom' can be viewed as decomposing into the function-name or concept-word 'ξ is the capital of the United Kingdom' and the name of an argument 'London', and hence the sentence as a whole is to be viewed as the name of a truth-value. A concept is a function whose value is always a truth-value, and concept-words are names of such functions. The truth-value of a sentence is the circumstance that it is true or false (SM 34), which, for brevity, Frege called 'the True' and 'the False' respectively, and conceived of as objects in his generalized sense of the term 'object'.8 It is noteworthy that this explanation of what he meant by 'the True' and 'the False' does not cohere with his claim that all sentences expressing true thoughts are names of one and the same object—the True, and that all sentences expressing a false thought are the names of one and the same object—the False. For the circumstance that it is true that grass is green is not the same circumstance as the circumstance that it is true that the sky is blue. But the two 'objects', the True and the False, were essential to Frege's identification of the extension of a concept with the course of values or value range of a function. So we must understand the claim to be, for example, that the-circumstance-that-grassis-green is the True just as 2 − 1 is the number 1. That-it-is-not-the-casethat-grass-is-pink is the True because that-grass-is-pink is the False , just as (1 + 1) −1 is the number 1 just because 1 + 1 is the number 2. 'The True', which that-it-is-not-the-case-that-grass-is-pink 'is', is the 8 It is important to bear in mind just how extensively Frege deviated from our ordinary, and imprecise, notion of an object. Wittgenstein reported Frege as

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having no qualms about countenancing the simultaneous occurrence of a court case and a lunar eclipse as an object, which, as he noted, is a misuse of the concept of an object (MS 107, 14). Frege's extension of the concept of an object is far from clear, for he laid down no sharp criteria for being an object. For more detailed qualms, see G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker, Frege: Logical Excavations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), 250-2.

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very same object which it-is-not-the-case-that-grass-is-blue 'is', just as the number 1, which (1 + 1) − 1 'is', is the very same number 1 which (3 − 1) − 1 'is'.9 Obviously, construing objects in general as possible arguments and values of functions meant recognizing as functions entities that had never been so recognized. Frege went beyond mathematical practice in including among functions not only the relations greater than, lesser than and = (which he, unlike Wittgenstein, construed as a relation), but also concepts (and relations) in general. As already noted, he viewed first-level concepts of the form 'ξ is F' (for example, 'ξ is red' or 'ξ is a man') as functions from objects to truth-values. Having gone this far, he now went farther, and construed the logical connectives —namely, negation, conjunction, disjunction, and conditionality—as concepts or relations—that is, as unary or binary functions. What is peculiar about them is that they are taken to be, and later became called, truth-functions—that is, functions from truth-values to truth-values. Negation is conceived as a concept, that is, a unary function mapping a truth-value onto the converse truth-value. The argument expression for the negation-sign is a sentence (the name of a truthvalue), and the sentence ' p' is the name of the value of the negation-function for the argument p—that is, the name of a truth-value. The remaining logical connectives are conceived of as relations between truth-values—that is, as binary functions. With this apparatus, Frege gave a complete formalization of the propositional calculus. The quantifiers, everything and something, he viewed as second-level functions taking first-level functions as arguments. This generalization of the concept of a function enabled him to dispense with the traditional logicians' distinction between subject and predicate in logic. Where Aristotelian syllogistic had construed 'All men are mortal' as composed of a subject-term—namely, 'All men'—and a predicate-term—namely, 'are mortal', Frege analysed such a sentence as decomposing into an argument-expression consisting of the first-level function-name 'if x is a man, then x is mortal' and a second-level functionname—namely, the quantifier 'whatever x may be'. Such second-level functions map first-level functions, in particular concepts, onto truth-values. It was this invention that enabled him to give, for the first time in the history of logic, a complete formalization of the logic of generality—the predicate calculus. More particularly, it enabled him for the first time to formalize statements, crucial for mathematical and non-mathematical reasoning alike, involving multiple generality, such as 'For every x , there is some y , such that x R y '. 9

See A. N. Prior, Objects of Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 50-1.

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One of the many advantages of Frege's functional analysis over subject/predicate logic was, he thought, that it both vindicated the idea, anticipated by Kant,1 0 of

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the logical primacy of judgements over concepts and provided a new, functiontheoretic, rationale for it—while also modifying the concept of a concept.1 1 Syllogistic had represented judgements as composed of independently given terms, a subject-term and a predicate-term. Frege, by contrast, took judgements (that is, what is judged to be true, the content of a possible judgement) or thoughts as primary. He argued that a word has a meaning only in the context of a sentence expressing a content of a possible judgement. For the content of judgement is correlative to its inferential powers, and a word contributes to inferences only as a constituent of an expression of a judgeable content or thought. He viewed concepts as arising (inter alia) through function-theoretic analysis, given that any expression of the content of a possible judgement can be viewed as splitting up in different ways into argument-expression and function-name. The formula '24 = 16' can be decomposed into ' x 4 = 16' and the argument-expression '2', or into '2x = 16' and '4'—the first form of functional abstraction yielding the concept 4th root of sixteen, the second yielding the concept of logarithm of 16 to the base 2 (BLC 16-17). Similarly, the content of In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant held that 'the only use which the understanding can make of . . . concepts is to judge by means of them' (A 68/B 93), that 'we can reduce all acts of the understanding to judgements', and that concepts are 'predicates of possible judgements' (A 69/B 94). The categories are derived from the fundamental forms of judgement. 10

Prior to Frege, no one would have thought of a concept as a function from objects to truth-values, let alone have viewed an expression such as '(Fx & Gx ) H x ' as the expression or name of a concept or indeed. of 'ξ is a law' as the expression or name of the concept of a law. The idea that concepts are functions can hardly be deemed a discovery about our concept of a concept, since many of Frege's characterizations of what he called 'concepts' are unintelligible if predicated of what we call 'concepts'. His account is committed to the view that the relation between an object and a concept under which it falls (or does not fall) is always internal (PW 181, 183). For it is an intrinsic feature of any function that it takes a particular value for a given argument. According to our ordinary concept of a concept, an invariant concept may have different extensions in different possible worlds, different concepts may as a matter of fact have identical extensions, and it is not necessary that it be laid down in advance whether or not an arbitrary object falls under a given concept. But, according to Frege's concept of a concept, the extension of a concept is intrinsic to it, for the extension of a concept is defined as the course of values of a function, and any alteration to its course of values amounts to an alteration of the function in question. Hence, had the curtains in my room been red rather than blue, the concept of being red would have differed from what it is. He took co-extensionality to be a criterion of concept identity (PW 118, 122), or, more accurately, that co-extensionality defines a second-level relation among concepts analogous to the relation of identity among objects (PW 120). And he laid down the requirement of completeness of definition for concepts, thus stipulating that there can be no genuine concept with borderline cases of application. (For more detailed criticisms of Frege's concept of a concept, see Baker and Hacker, Frege: Logical Excavations, 252-60.) 11

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the judgement that Cato killed Cato can be decomposed into different

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functions—for example, ξ killed Cato, Cato killed ξ, or ξ killed ξ, yielding the concepts of killing Cato, being killed by Cato, and killing oneself (committing suicide) (BS §9). So what a word means depends upon its occurrence in a sentential context and upon the manner in which the sentence is analysed into argument-expression and function-name. In his mature works of the 1890s, Frege distinguished sense (Sinn) from meaning (Bedeutung).1 2 Every logically significant expression in a well-formed formula of concept-script is taken to have both a sense and a meaning. '2 + 2' has a different sense from '22 ' although they have the same meaning—namely, the number 4, which is the value of the function ξ + 2 for the argument 2 no less than it is the value of the function ξ 2 for the argument 2. Likewise '2 + 2 = 4' and '22 = 4' have different senses but the same meaning, which is their truth-value. For the value of the function 2 + 2 = ξ for the argument 4 and the value of the function 22 = ξ for the argument 4 are the truth-value True. The sense of a sentence is the thought it expresses, and its meaning is a truth-value. The sense is what we understand when we understand a sentence, and is characterized as a mode of presentation of a meaning. It is less than clear what this means, but at least plausible to suppose that the sense of a sentence is to be construed as the mode of presentation of a truth-value as the value of a function for an argument.1 3 Sub-sentential expressions likewise have both a sense and a meaning. So, on one legitimate construal (Auffassungsweise),1 4 the meaning of a singular referring expression is 1 2 In 'On Sense and Meaning', Frege introduced his distinction first with reference to proper names and definite descriptions and then generalized it to sentences. However, in the Introduction to The Basic Laws of Arithmetic , he glosses this 'thoroughgoing development of [his] logical views' exclusively with regard to sentences (BLA, p. x). In the body of the book (BLA §2) it is introduced for '22 ' and '2 + 2' in the very same sentence as for '22 = 4' and '2 + 2 = 4', and his explanation gives primacy to the sense of sentences (names of truth-values). Since The Basic Laws was intended as his authoritative masterwork, and since it is evident that Wittgenstein concentrated upon this text, I have followed Frege's practice here, rather than taking a detour via the explanation of sense for sub-sentential proper names, as he did in the more popular exposition of 'On Sense and Meaning'.

The sentences correctly compounded out of the primitive names of the first-level functions of Basic Laws, §31, are shown to mean the True or the False by showing that it follows from Frege's stipulations that if these functions take truth-values as their arguments, they always yield truth-values as their values. These stipulations are said to determine the conditions under which the resultant name means the True, and the sense of the name—i.e. the thought it expresses—is the thought that these conditions are fulfilled ( BLA §32). So the thought expressed presents a truth-value as the value of the function in question for the argument in question. 13

Frege licensed alternative forms of function/argument decomposition. As long as function and argument are completely determinate, i.e. as long as a formula contains no free variable (cf. BS §1), the mode of decomposition is a matter of interpretation, of the way we look at the formula (eine Sache der Auffassung). See BS §9. 14

end p.199

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an object and the meaning of a first-level function-name of one argument is a concept. Their sense is characterized either, as before, as the mode of presentation of a meaning or as the contribution they make to the sense of the sentence expressing a thought in which they occur. Replacing the analysis of judgements into subject and predicate by functional analysis involved a further complication. The traditional view was that assertoric force in sentences of natural language is carried by the indicative form of the grammatical predicate. Frege did not deny this mistaken doctrine (see PW 129, 149, 184-5, 194, 198, 252), although he thought that it was a misleading feature of natural language, leading to the conflation of predicating and judging. Since in his formal system of logic the formulae decompose into argument-name and function-name rather than into subject-term and predicate-term, he held it to be necessary to dissociate assertoric force from the predicate and signify it by a special composite sign. His assertion-sign is composed of a horizontal stroke that signifies a function mapping any object whatsoever onto a truth-value, and a vertical stroke (the 'judgement stroke') of assertion. In his concept-script, an expression such as '2 + 2 = 4' is a name of a truth-value; it has a sense, which is the thought it expresses, and a meaning, which is the truth-value it designates. But it makes no assertion and does not say what truth-value it designates. In order to be able to assert it as true, we must prefix to it an assertionsign to yield an expression—namely, '⊦2 + 2 = 4', which 'does not designate anything; it asserts something' (FC 22 n. 7)—namely, the judgement that 2 + 2 = 4, which is the acknowledgement of the truth of the thought that 2 + 2 = 4. Bereft of the assertion-sign, the symbols merely constitute names of truth-values. This apparatus reflects, according to Frege, the difference between an expression for a truth-value, that is, a mere supposition or assumption—'the putting of a case without a simultaneous judgement as to its arising or not'—and the expression of a judgement—an assertion that is 'at the same time saying that it is the True' (FC 22). On Frege's view one can draw inferences only from true assertions (PMC 79) or from true thoughts or thoughts recognized to be true (PW 3, 261; PMC 16-17). Consequently every proposition of his system is preceded by an assertion sign (BLA §5). Inference from an assumption, in the ordinary sense of the term 'assumption', is interpreted as the acknowledgement of the truth of a conditional, the assumption being conceived of as the antecedent of the conditional. Frege's system of logic, like Euclidean geometry, was axiomatic. From half a dozen axioms or 'basic laws', such as 'if p, then if q then p' or 'what holds for every object holds for any specific object' or 'every object is identical with and only with itself', he was able, he thought, to end p.200

derive all the truths of logic. The axioms were held to be self-evident truths, neither admitting of nor needing proof. Propositions of logic he held to be absolutely general truths—what we today would call (in the case of the sentential calculus) 'generalizations of tautologies', and he represented the generality of his laws of truth by the use of Roman letters as free variables (BS §§ 1, 14 ff.; BLA §§ 17-18). Hence he would not have considered the proposition 'Either it is raining or it is not raining' to be a proposition of logic at all, but an instance or application of the proposition of logic (that is, the generalization) that a v a, derivable from it by the principle of universal instantiation. Propositions of logic

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are laws of thought, generalizations about the relations between truth-values that are the meanings of thoughts, no matter what is the specific content of the thoughts in question. Logic is the science of the most general laws of truth, laws that are topic neutral, and hence hold 'with the utmost generality for all thinking, no matter what its subject matter' (PW 128). Different propositions of logic have a different sense, say something different. Hence the logical truth '(a v a)' (the Law of Excluded Middle) says that every proposition is either true or false, whereas the logical truth ' (a & a)' (the Law of Non-Contradiction) says that no proposition is both true and false. The laws of logic are also laws of thought that tell us how we should think, infer, if we want to think truly. For, on the one hand, they describe eternal relations between abstract entities, and, on the other hand, they 'ought to be guiding principles for thought in the attainment of truth' (BLA, Introduction, p. xv), prescribing the way in which one ought to judge (BLA, Introduction, p. xvii).

3. What Wittgenstein Took From Frege As noted above, Wittgenstein acknowledged Frege and Russell as the primary sources for the stimulation of his thoughts in the Tractatus. They had discovered or invented a novel and powerful logical calculus that purported to disclose the forms of any thought whatsoever. Their purpose in so doing was to display arithmetic as derivable from pure logic alone. The latter was not the focus of the young Wittgenstein's interest—both then and later Wittgenstein viewed the logicist enterprise as misconceived and argued against it. Frege and Russell did not think of their logical invention as a mere notation, but as a logically perfect language—a 'formalized language of pure thought', as Frege called his Begriffsschrift—which did not suffer from the endless logical defects of end p.201

natural languages, and was accordingly indispensable for prooftheoretic purposes in the exact sciences. Wittgenstein disagreed with the view that natural languages were logically defective. Logic, he held, is a condition of sense, and there can be no intermediate betwixt sense and nonsense. Ordinary language is logically in good order, even though that order is not visible to view and can be made so only by analysis. For sentences of language that make sense make perfect sense, and in so far as there are sentences that do not make sense then they are only apparent sentences and not parts of a language. But what Frege and Russell conceived of as logically perfect languages are or purport to be, according to Wittgenstein, logically perfect notations, which, in so far as they are indeed perfect, display the underlying logical syntax of any possible language. In his view, every language is in good logical order. But the surface grammar of language disguises the logical forms of the thoughts expressed. A perfected conceptual notation, governed by logical grammar, will disclose the logical forms of the thoughts we express in natural language and prevent us from falling into the philosophical confusions induced by the misleading forms of surface grammar.1 5 This was the focus of Wittgenstein's attention. His primary interest was philosophical—namely, to elucidate the necessary conditions of the possibility of representation and to clarify the transcendental character of logic as a condition of sense. Frege and Russell were the primary stimulus to his

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thoughts in so far as their conceptual notations (defective though they still were) brought to prominence (for him) the fundamental questions of the nature of any possible language or system of representation and of the character of the truths of logic. Far from building upon Fregean foundations, the young Wittgenstein disagreed with Frege on most of the latter's philosophico-logical claims and accordingly criticized Frege explicitly or implicitly. Nevertheless, he did accept some of Frege's ideas. First, he accepted Frege's anti-psychologism. Secondly, he accepted Frege's context principle that a word has a meaning only in the context of a sentence, together with the accompanying principle of the primacy of judgement over concepts. Thirdly, he accepted from Frege and Russell the idea that traditional subject/predicate analysis of judgements is defective, and that function/argument analysis is the route to clarification of logical form. Unlike them, he proceeded to argue that the underlying depth grammar of any possible language displays a function/argument structure. Fourthly, he accepted Frege's demand for It is noteworthy that Wittgenstein, unlike Frege, thought that, in the final analysis, every proposition has a unique logical form. 15

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determinacy of sense—that is, the requirement that every concept-word must be sharply defined so as to determine for any possible object whether it falls under the concept or not. Fifthly, like Frege and Russell (and others), he held that the logical connectives and quantifiers are topic neutral. Finally, like Frege and Russell, he held that, after logical form has been laid bare (by appropriate logical parsing of sentences (Frege) or by logical analysis (Russell), every logically significant subsentential expression that contributes to the determination of the sense of a sentence stands for a meaning (but not, pace Frege and Russell, the logical operators). These agreements are important. But two points are noteworthy. First, Wittgenstein's reasons for accepting these doctrines by no means always coincide with Frege's. Thus, for example, Frege's anti-psychologism was inter alia intended to purify the subject matter of the science of logic from contamination by material that properly belongs to psychology. Wittgenstein agreed on the objective truth of the propositions of logic, but he denied that logic had a genuine subject matter, denied that the propositions of logic had any sense, and denied that logic was a science. Again, Wittgenstein's reason for accepting the context principle did not turn on Frege's function-theoretic considerations or on the possibility of alternative function-theoretic decomposition of the content of judgement. Rather it turned on his metaphysics of symbolism. A word has a meaning only in so far as it is used to represent the object that is its meaning, and it is so used only in the context of a proposition—that is, a representing fact, which is employed as a projection of a possible situation. For only in that context is a name connected with the object that is its meaning, the connection being effected by the method of projection, which is thinking the sense of the proposition—that is, meaning by the proposition the situation that is its sense (TLP 3.11). Similarly, his commitment to the topic neutrality of the logical operators differed from Frege's. For Frege, the topic neutrality of the truth-

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functions was a corollary of the absolute generality of logic. Logic was the science of the most general laws of truth, and the truth-functional connectives articulated the most general laws of truth in the propositions of logic, laws that are valid for anything thinkable. Wittgenstein, as we shall see, rejected this conception of logic. On his view the topic neutrality of the truth-functions was a sine qua non of displaying all logical relations as consequences of truth-functional combinations of logically independent elementary propositions, hence as independent of the content of any elementary proposition. The second noteworthy matter is that these points of partial agreement with Frege do not survive intact in Wittgenstein's later philosophy. end p.203

Most he rejected altogether, as in the case of the idea of a function/argument deep structure of language, of the requirement of determinacy of sense, of the topic neutrality of the logical operators, and of the idea that every logically significant sub-sentential expression save the operators stands for a meaning. Indeed, that conception of meaning, he declared in 1929/30, is wholly obsolete. Those points he retained—namely, anti-psychologism and the context principle —underwent transformation. His later anti-psychologism is no longer taken as a licence to allocate the investigation of meaning something, thinking, or understanding to empirical psychology, and the psychologicians' idea that the laws of logic are descriptions of the way we think is held, pace Frege, to contain a grain of truth. For 'the laws of logic are indeed the expression of "thinking habits" '—they show (although they do not describe) 'how human beings think'. But, to be sure, they are also constitutive of thinking—a point Frege failed to appreciate1 6 —and show what we call 'thinking' (RFM 89). His later advocacy of the context principle is not concerned with the obsolete conception of meaning that characterized the Tractatus; and it no longer rests upon a metaphysics of symbolism, but approximates Bentham's rationale.1 7 Nevertheless, in respect of these six points of agreement, the young Wittgenstein can indeed be said (with appropriate qualifications) to build on the foundations of Frege (and Russell). But whether what he built can be deemed an elaboration of, or to complement, Frege's work is debatable. For he in effect removed the keystones of Frege's arches, finding fault with them for good reasons. Since he thought it made sense to say that there are beings who think according to different laws of thought (BLA, p. xvii). Although thinking thus would be a 'hitherto unknown form of madness', we know that we are right and they are wrong. For our laws of thinking accord with the laws of truth, and theirs do not. 16

Namely, 'By anything less than an entire proposition, i.e. the import of an entire proposition, no communication can have place. In language, therefore, the integer to be looked for is the entire proposition—that which the logicians mean by the term logical proposition. Of this integer, no one part of speech, not even that which is most significant, is anything more than a fragment' (Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. J. Bowring (Edinburgh: Tait, 1843), viii. 188). For the later Wittgenstein, the rationale for the context principle is that the sentence (even a one-word sentence) is the minimal move in a language-game. He remarks (PI §49) that this is what Frege meant by the 17

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context principle—an observation that obscures Frege's motivation and his function-theoretic inspiration. Naming is not on the same level as describing (or ordering, or questioning). In the Tractatus he held that a sign fulfils a representational role only in the context of a representing fact. In the Investigations he held that a name contributes to saying something (i.e. to a move in the language-game) only in the context of a sentence or if it is employed as a one-word sentence. (For more detailed discussion of Wittgenstein's later interpretation of the context principle, see G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning, vol. i of An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), 258-83, where qualifications on the principle are canvassed.)

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4. Wittgenstein's Criticisms Of Frege: Sense, Assertion, and Truth Wittgenstein used the Fregean terminology of 'sense' and 'meaning' throughout the Tractatus, but he understood something quite different from Frege by the term 'sense' and he thought Frege's conception of sense failed to capture the nature of propositional representation, of assertion, and of the relation of both to truth. (i) On the concept of sense. According to Frege, the sense of a simple unasserted sentence of the form 'Ga' is its mode of presentation of its meaning—that is, a truth-value—as the value of the concept (function) Gξ for the argument a. The thought expressed by '173 = 4,913' presents the True as the value of the concept is the third power of 17 for the argument 4,913. The function 173 = ξ and the argument 4,913 alone determine the meaning of the sentence '173 = 4,913'. Whether its meaning is the True or the False is wholly determined by the function and argument. For specification of a function determines its value for any admissible argument, and the extension of a function is intrinsic to the identity of the function. Indeed, that is why one can calculate its value, given its argument. According to Frege, 'the extension of a concept simply has its being in the concept, not in the objects which belong to it' (PW 183) and 'by means of our logical faculties we lay hold upon the extension of a concept, by starting out from the concept' (PW 181). This conception immediately generates difficulties when extended to empirical sentences. If 'Ga' is an empirical sentence, then whether the meaning of 'Ga' is the True or the False depends upon the facts, and not exclusively upon the function Gξ and its argument a. So either the sense of 'Ga' alone does not determine its meaning as the value of Gξ for the argument a, or it must be taken to express a sense only together with the facts, somewhat as tensed expressions and indexicals express a sense only if taken together with the time and place of utterance. To this extent, what sense an empirical sentence expresses is not independent of the facts.1 8 Moreover, if, as a matter of fact, the value of Gξ for the argument a is the True, then 'Ga' has a different sense from the sense it would have 18

There is an irreconcilable tension between the ideas that concepts are

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functions, that the relation between a function and its extension is logical, i.e. internal (so that difference of extension implies difference of concept (PW 118)), and that for an object to fall under a concept is for the object to belong to the extension of that concept, on the one hand, and the fact that whether an empirical object has some inessential property F is contingent, and could be otherwise, on the other.

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if its value were the False—for the True is a different object from the False and could not be presented as the value of the same function for the same argument. But that is problematic. For we would surely insist that the thought we think when we think that Ga and it is true that Ga is exactly the same thought as the thought we would think if we thought that Ga and it were false that Ga. Any empirical thought could have had a truth-value different from the one it actually has and yet remain the same thought. But, if the value of Gξ for the argument a were the False rather than the True, then the function (concept) Gξ would be a different function, since it would have a different extension. So, if the sense of a sentence is the mode in which it presents a particular truth-value as the value of a certain function for a given argument, then, if 'Ga' is an empirical sentence, it must have a different sense if it is true from the sense it would have had if it were false. (The function x 2 would not be the function that it is were its value for the argument 2 not 4 but 5, and so too the function 22 = ξ would not be the function it is were its value for the argument 4 the False rather than the True.) These little noticed features of Frege's conception of sense were a focal point of Wittgenstein's criticisms. Wittgenstein's conception of sense is quite different from Frege's. The sense of a sentence, the thought it expresses, is not a mode of presentation of an object—the True or the False—that is named by the unasserted sentence. Sentences have sense, but they do not have a meaning. For a sentence is not a name and does not stand for a meaning. It depicts a circumstance, a certain situation, and says that it obtains. It does not name the circumstance that it is true or the circumstance that it is false or the Truth or Falsity that that circumstance 'is'; rather the sentence is a description of a circumstance (a state of affairs) and it is true if that circumstance obtains and false if it does not ( TLP 4.023). The sense of a proposition is its agreement and disagreement with possibilities of existence and non-existence of states of affairs (TLP 4.2). An elementary proposition 'Ga' expresses an agreement with the existence of the state of affairs Ga and disagreement with its non-existence, for it is true if it is a fact that Ga and it is false if it is a fact that not-Ga. The proposition must restrict reality to two alternatives: yes or no—but it must leave reality two alternatives. And it has exactly the same sense whether it is a fact that Ga or it is a fact that not-Ga. A proposition has a sense that is independent of the facts (TLP 4.061). But, as argued above, Frege's conception of sense does not satisfy this requirement. For one and the same empirical sentence would present a different object as its meaning if the facts were different. But any well-defined function must be uniquely determined for any possible object as argument and is end p.206

internally or logically related to its extension. Hence, if ' Ga' presents the True as its value in one possible world and the False in another, then it cannot have the

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same sense. For the function (concept) Gξ has a different extension in each possible world. Hence ' Gξ' cannot signify the same function. If so, then 'Ga' does not present its value as the value of the same function for the argument a. So it does not have the same sense. Hence, either the expression 'Ga' is not a proper expression of an unequivocal thought or sense is dependent upon the facts, since what sense is expressed by 'Ga' depends upon which possibilities of existence and non-existence of states of affairs are, as a matter of fact, realized. In short, Frege's conception of sense is ill-suited to account for the essential nature of empirical propositions in general. It is interesting, in this context, that in 1929 Wittgenstein wrote: 'It is noteworthy that in the case of tautologies and contradictions one could really speak of sense and meaning in Frege's sense. If one calls the property of being a tautology the meaning of the tautology, then one can call the sense of the tautology the manner in which the tautology is brought about. And so too for the contradiction' (MS 105, 130-1). Accordingly, Frege's conception of sense (and meaning) gets a grip at best only on logical propositions —precisely those that, according to Wittgenstein's conception of sense, have no sense at all. Furthermore, if the meaning that corresponds to 'Ga' is the True, then the meaning that corresponds to its negation ' Ga' is a quite different object —namely, the False. But, Wittgenstein remonstrated, while the propositions ' p' and ' p' have opposite sense, there corresponds to them one and the same reality —for ' p' is made true by the existence of the very same state of affairs as makes ' p' false, and vice versa (TLP 4.0621). In Fregean jargon one might, and Wittgenstein once did, put it thus: ' p' has the same meaning as ' p' (NB 94), for ' p' affirms the very same situation as ' p' denies. A proposition and its negation present the very same situation, for the occurrence of negation in a proposition does not characterize its sense, is not a feature of what it depicts—it merely reverses the sense. In short, propositions are bipolar, not unipolar—they have a true pole and a false pole. They are like arrows, not like points—they have a direction (Sinn) and they always point in the direction of their true pole and away from their false pole. For they express agreement with the existence of the possibility they describe (depict) and disagreement with the non-existence of that possibility. Wittgenstein's disagreements with Frege's conception of sense ramify further. What we think, according to Frege, is the sense of a sentence—a thought, which is an abstract entity. And he construed 'A thinks that p' and 'A believes that p' as relational propositions, signifying a relation end p.207

of thinking or believing between the person A and an object—namely, the sense of a sentence (the noun-clause 'that p' being construed as denoting the sense of ' p'). But according to Wittgenstein, 'A thinks that p' does not represent a relation between A and an object called 'that p'. What is thought when it is thought that p is not an object of any kind. The consequence of Frege's conception is disastrous for any account of the intentionality of thought. For, as Wittgenstein insisted, when we think the sense of the sentence ' p' (cf. TLP 3.11) and we think truly, then what we think is precisely what is the case, namely that p. For a proposition ' p' (the sentence ' p' in its projective relation to the world) represents the possible state of affairs that p. To use the sentence with thought (understanding) is to

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mean by the sentence the state of affairs (which is not an object) of which it is a picture, and to affirm the existence of that state of affairs. Our proposition reaches right up to reality, and what we mean does not fall short of how things, in fact, are (cf. PI §95). But according to Frege, what we think is never what is the case, but only something, an abstract object—the sense of a sentence, a mode of presentation of an object as the value of a function for an argument—that is obscurely connected with what is the case.1 9 Similarly, as Arthur Prior put the point many decades later, 'To have a false belief is to believe precisely what is not the case, not to believe something else which is merely connected in some obscure way with what is not the case. . . . We must resist above all things the madness which insulates what we think from any possibility of directly clashing with what is so.' 2 0 Wittgenstein's conception of sense avoids this madness. What we think when we think that p is that a certain state of affairs (a possibility) obtains (is realized). If we think truly, then what we think is precisely what is the case. If we think falsely, what we think is precisely what is not the case. (ii) Assumption and judgement. If the sense of an unasserted sentence presents one of two objects as the value of a function for an argument without saying which—as Frege insisted, then it merely indicates that Frege thought that facts just are true thoughts (propositions). But, while he was right to reject the Tractatus view that the world consists of facts, he was wrong to think this (see B. Rundle, Grammar in Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), §40). The supposition that what we think is always a proposition (a fact when we think truly and not a fact when we think falsely) stands in the way of an acceptable resolution to the problems of intentionality that lie at the heart of the Tractatus and that find their resolution in the Investigations. For an account of Wittgenstein's struggles with the problems of intentionality, see P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Mind and Will, vol. iv of An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), ch. 1. 19

20

Prior, Objects of Thought, 52.

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object, whichever it may be, as its meaning—as Frege admitted. So an unasserted sentence is merely the name of an object—of the True or of the False. To assert something, however, is not merely to put forward a supposition but to say that it is true, or, as Frege puts it, to say 'that it is the True' (FC 22). It is to acknowledge the truth of a thought (BLA §5). But, Wittgenstein remonstrated, in order to be able to say ' " p" is true (or false)', I must first have determined in what circumstances I call ' p' true (TLP 4.063). This is puzzling. Has Frege not done so? Not by his explanation of the sense of an elementary unasserted sentence as the mode of presentation of a truth-value. The sense of the empirical sentence 'Gb' presents a truth-value as the value of the function Gξ for the argument b, but that does not determine under what circumstances it is to be said to be true (or false). But, surely, Frege explains the sense of all the well-formed formulae of his concept-script as being their truth conditions! He wrote 'by our stipulations it is determined under what conditions the name denotes the True. The sense of this name—the thought—is the thought that these conditions are fulfilled' (BLA §32). How can Wittgenstein accuse him of not having done so? Has he not overlooked the punctum saliens of Frege's

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theory? This reaction is precipitate. What Frege was alluding to in that passage were his stipulations for his eight primitive function-names—for example, the horizontal function that maps objects onto truth-values, the negation function that maps a truth-value onto the converse truth-value, the definite article function, conditionality, and identity as well as further higher-level functions. In each of the first five cases, the function in question is indeed defined for truth-values as arguments, and the definitions are such as to specify the conditions under which the resultant formula denotes the True— given that their argument-expressions are names of one or the other of the two truth-values. So the negation-function, for example, is defined (roughly) as having the value false for the True as argument and the value true for the False as argument. This does indeed specify the truth-conditions of expressions formed from the negation function-name and an unasserted name of a truth-value (a 'supposition' or 'assumption'). But the latter merely presents a truth-value as the value of a function for an argument, and its sense says nothing about the circumstances under which it is to be called true or false. This was precisely Wittgenstein's point. An unasserted sentence, for Frege, merely sets up an assumption to be decided upon, but it does not tell us under what circumstances to call it true and under what circumstances to call it false (NB 95). But in order to be able to assert it, I must know just that. And to determine the circumstances under which a sentence (proposition) ' p' is true and the end p.209

circumstances under which it is false is precisely to determine its sense. If that has not been determined, then the sentence does not have a sense. But, if a sentence has no sense, if it is not determined under what circumstances it is to be called 'true' (or 'false'), then it does not designate anything. In particular, it does not designate a thing, a truth-value that that p IS , which might have properties called 'false' or 'true' (TLP 4.063). Perhaps it would have been more accurate here to say: which might have properties called 'is the False' or 'is the True', which might be asserted of it. For, according to Frege, the horizontal function '—ξ', which is requisite 'to be able to assert something as true', is the concept of being a truth-value (BLA §5). The horizontal is explained thus: —Δ is the True if Δ is the True, and otherwise it is the False. 'Δ', which might be an equation such as '2 + 3 = 5', 'only designates a truth-value, without its being said which of the two it is' (ibid.). So to assert it by writing down '⊦Δ' it is to assert that Δ is the True, that Δ falls under the concept of being the True. But if so, then the unasserted sentence (in Frege's concept-script) cannot be represented in natural language by a sentence at all. Rather, it must be represented by a noun-clause—for example, 'The circumstance that such-and-such' or by a nominalized sentence such as 'The violent death of Archimedes at Syracuse' (as Frege had suggested in BS §3). But, Wittgenstein objected, 'The verb of a proposition is not "is true" or "is false", as Frege thought: rather, that which "is true" must already contain the verb' (TLP 4.063). This is prima facie puzzling, for Frege never claimed any such thing.2 1 Indeed, he explicitly denied that the relation between the thought and the True is that of subject to predicate, insisting that it is a relation of sense to meaning (SM 34). That is so; but he is in effect committed to viewing the unasserted thought as

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being expressed by a noun-clause, hence as lacking a main verb, which is added to it only by prefixing an assertion-sign to it. If so, then the assertion-sign must be equivalent to the verb 'is true', or better: 'is the True', and '⊦ ' to 'is false' or 'is the False'. It is indeed no coincidence that Frege explains his horizontal stroke as a concept—namely, as the But he did claim something very similar. In BS §3, he explained the assertion-sign '⊦' as equivalent to the predicate 'is a fact' as a common predicate for the content of any possible judgement expressed in the form of a nominalized clause, e.g. 'The violent death of Archimedes at Syracuse is a fact'. In §7 he paraphrased '⊦A' as 'A is not the case', construing the compound symbol of negation, horizontal, and vertical strokes as equivalent to the predicate 'is not the case'. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to construe Wittgenstein's criticism as directed merely at Begriffsschrift §3—it is a direct criticism of Frege's formal account of assertion in The Basic Laws of Arithmetic . For that account, no less than the earlier one, is committed to the same incoherence. 21

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concept of being a truth-value (BLA §6), and the judgement stroke as effecting the act of asserting that the value of this concept for the truth-value that is its argument is the True. And Wittgenstein's criticism is that what can be said to bear a truth-value must already contain the verb. What has, in effect, gone wrong in Frege's system is a direct result of his acceptance of the traditional thought that the assertoric force of a sentence is carried by the indicative form of the predicate. Having abandoned the subjectpredicate form in his concept-script (and in logical analysis in general), he felt compelled to introduce a special sign to carry assertoric force and to represent the content of assertion by a sign or complex of signs that cannot be used to make an assertion, but that nevertheless expresses a thought that is true (or false)—which is what is to be asserted. But this is not coherent. For, as Wittgenstein urged, 'Every proposition must already have a sense: it cannot be given a sense by affirmation. Indeed, its sense is just what is affirmed' (TLP 4.064). This is a direct criticism of Frege, although it does not appear to be. For, to be sure, Frege insisted that his 'assumption', the unasserted sentence (construed as the name of a truth-value), has a sense—it presents a truth-value as the value of a function for an argument. But, of course, this is not what Wittgenstein meant—he is using 'sense' here in his sense, not in Frege's. In his terminology, the Fregean assumption has no sense—it is merely a name; it is only given a sense (a direction) by being asserted, and to be asserted is to be asserted to be true (or the True). But that is not coherent, since to assert a proposition (or thought) is precisely to affirm (or deny) a sense. The idea that there might be a form of words that can be said to be true (express a true thought) and yet cannot be used to make an assertion is not coherent. Nor is the idea that there might be a symbol that can be used to make an assertion, but cannot be used without making an assertion.2 2 It is no wonder that Wittgenstein concluded that Frege's careful insertion of an assertion-sign in front of every asserted proposition of The Basic Laws was, pace Frege, logically quite meaningless (TLP 4.442). Not only was Frege mistaken to hold that one can draw inferences only from true propositions (TLP 4.023) or from assertions of true propositions, but, further, the prefixed assertion-sign that

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accompanies all his For much more detailed analysis of Frege's doctrine of assertion, see G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker, Frege: Logical Excavations (Oxford: Blackwell, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 83-103, 339-43. For general criticism of the attempted deployment of a sense/force distinction by contemporary theorists of meaning, see G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker, Language, Sense and Nonsense (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), chs. 2-3. For a discussion of Wittgenstein's later criticisms of Frege's doctrine, see Baker and Hacker, Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning, Exegesis of section 22 and p. 11 n. 22

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propositions does no more than indicate that he thinks those propositions are true (TLP 4.442). For the assertion-sign is no more a component part of a proposition than its number. (iii) Truth. Right throughout his life Wittgenstein cleaved to a deflationary account of truth. In his 1913 dictation to Russell (NB 95), in his 1914-16 notebooks (NB 9), and in the Tractatus, he insisted that 'a proposition is true if we use it to say that things stand in a certain way and they do' (TLP 4.062), that 'It is true that p' = ' p'.2 3 His criticism of Frege's account of truth, however, focused on a fundamental point, which he saw as a direct consequence of the requirement that sense be independent of the facts. If one does not appreciate this principle, then 'one can easily suppose that true and false are relations of equal status between signs and what they signify' (TLP 4.061). Although Frege did not think that being true or false are relations, this misconception characterizes Frege's theory. On his view, concepts are functions that map objects onto truth-values, the True or the False. Neither of these has special priority over the other, and there is no essential connection between the proposition and both truth-values. The True is simply a different object from the False. To be sure, these two objects are linked by the negation function, which takes either as its argument and maps it onto the other as its value. But that does not indicate an essential relation between a proposition and the joint possibilities of its being true and its being false, since it depends upon the availability of the negation function and does not follow from the essential nature of the proposition as such. On Wittgenstein's account, it is of the essence of the proposition to have both a true and a false pole, to be capable of being true and capable of being false. A proposition and its negation are not two names of two distinct objects, rather they conjointly exhaust logical space. Not only did Frege fail to characterize correctly the essential relation between the proposition and the possibility of its being true and the possibility of its being false; he also failed to assign priority to the True. The True and the False are, according to his account, coordinate objects—'relations of equal status between signs and what they signify' (TLP 4.061). Some sentences happen to name the True, others name the False, and prefixing the expression for the negationfunction converts In NB 9 and 95, he seems to take a disquotational line. But appearances may be deceptive here, given the instability in the conventions for the use of 23

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quotation marks in 1913. At any rate, it is clear enough that he does not construe ' p' as the name of an inscription. PG 123-4 clarifies matters (and does not appear to be a self-criticism). Curiously, in PI §134, he reverts to the disquotational format.

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one kind of sentence into the other. But, Wittgenstein remonstrated, a proposition depicts a state of affairs—its sense. It shows how things stand if it is true, and it says that they do so stand (TLP 4.022). Hence negation must be related to the logical space determined by the negated proposition. It is parasitic on the sense of the proposition negated, for it determines a logical space with the help of the negated proposition and describes it as lying outside the latter's logical space (TLP 4.0641). Negation is misrepresented if it is conceived as a function from one object to another, for that represents truth and falsehood as coordinate. But truth has priority—it is what is the case if things are as the proposition represents them as being. Negation is an operation on a proposition, not a function on its meaning (indeed, a proposition has a sense but no meaning, it depicts but is not a representative)—it is an operation that reverses the sense of the proposition. A proposition depicts a situation and expresses an agreement with its existence. The negation of a proposition depicts the same situation and expresses disagreement with its existence. 'If "the true" and "the false" were really objects, and were the arguments in p etc., then Frege's method of determining the sense of " p" would leave it absolutely undetermined' (TLP 4.431). For, according to Frege, negation is a function (a concept) the argument of which is one of the two truth values,2 4 so provided that ' p' has the same truth-value as ' q', it seems that ' p' must have the same sense as ' q'. For each such proposition presents the same object as the value of the same function for the same argument. It expresses the thought that a given truth-value falls under the concept of negation. But that is not what Frege wanted at all, for ' p' has the same sense as ' q' if and only if ' p' has the same sense as ' q'. The sense of a truthfunction of p is a function of the sense of p (TLP 5.2341).

5. Wittgenstein's Criticisms Of Frege: Logical Connectives and Logical Truths (i) Logical connectives. The latter point brings us to yet deeper criticism. It was a pivotal point in Frege's understanding of the logical system that he invented that the logical connectives (and quantifiers) be construed as functions. Negation was construed as a concept, the binary 2 4 For present purposes we may disregard the case in which the negationfunction takes an object other than a truth-value as argument—such cases are only introduced to meet Frege's demand for completeness of definition and nothing intelligible corresponds to them in natural language.

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connectives were taken to signify two-place relations between truth-values. Hence the logical connectives are conceived to characterize the sense of the sentence in which they occur as does any other function-name. The connective 'or' in the molecular sentence ' pv q' characterizes the sense of

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' pv q' no less than does the binary relation 'ξRζ' in the relational sentence 'aRb'—it contributes to the mode of presentation of a truth-value. The connectives are conceived to be names of functions, and molecular sentences are about these functions no less than the sentence 'aRb' is about the relation ξRζ. For a molecular sentence presents a truth-value as the value of alternation (a binary function) for a pair of truth-values as arguments, just as 'aRb' presents a truth-value as the value of the relation (binary function) ξRζ for a and b as arguments. Wittgenstein thought that this was misconceived. First, the occurrence of negation in a proposition does not characterize its sense (TLP 4.0621)—it does not characterize what is presented, depicted, by the proposition. Negation is not a feature of the state of affairs the proposition represents. Rather the negated proposition must already have a sense, which the negation of the proposition reverses—for the negation of ' p' agrees with the non-existence of the situation depicted by ' p' and disagrees with its existence (which is why it is said to reverse the sense of ' p' (TLP 5.2341)). And this point applies to the other logical connectives likewise (TLP 5.25). Secondly, molecular propositions are not about entities named by the logical connectives. If they were, then (as, indeed, Frege held)2 5 ' p' would say something different from ' p', since the former would be about ' ' whereas the latter would not (TLP 5.44). ' pv q' does not have the logical form of 'aRb', for 'or' is not the name of a relation that ' pv q' describes as holding between ' p' and ' q', any more than the sentences ' p' and ' q' are names of objects. Thirdly, the logical connectives are not names at all, a fortiori not names of logical entities. Indeed, there are no logical constants (TLP 5.4). The logical connectives signify operations, and do not stand for any entity that constitutes their meaning. Wittgenstein's invented T/F notation makes this evident in the case of the propositional calculus, for it dispenses altogether with logical connectives, making the truth-function of a given set of elementary propositions patent by the truth-table—used as a propositional symbol. Fourthly, the connectives are not primitive signs, let alone signs for relations. For (i) they are interdefinable, and (ii) propositions such as It is again interesting to note that, by the time he wrote 'Compound Thoughts', Frege had changed his mind on this matter (CT 44).

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' p q', ' pv q', ' (p q)', which seem to describe different relations between p and q, are in fact all expressions for one and the same proposition, since they all signify the same truth-function of p and q—as is evident from their symbol in T/F notation—namely, (TTFT) (p, q). This criticism of Frege's understanding of the logical connectives and their role undermines his conception of logic. (ii) Logical truth and the axiomatization of logic . Frege conceived the propositions of logic to be laws of truth. They resemble laws of physics and geometry in asserting what is the case (BLA, Preface, p. xv). Like the laws of the special sciences, they are objective and mind-independent. The hallmark of the laws (propositions) of logic is their generality. It is

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this that distinguishes them from the laws of the special sciences, which are concerned with a special subject matter expressed in the distinctive propositions of the science in question. By contrast, the laws of logic are topic neutral. 'The task we assign logic is only that of saying what holds with the utmost generality for all thinking, whatever its subject-matter . . . Consequently logic is the science of the most general laws of truth' (PW 128). He conceived of the propositions of logic as generalizations about propositions (judgements or thoughts), or, in the case of the predicate calculus, about objects and concepts in general. The laws of logic govern whatever is thinkable, and its subject matter is judgements as such and the logical relations between them, no matter what the judgements are concerned with. For 'Thought is in essentials the same everywhere; it is not true that there are different kinds of laws of thought to suit the different kinds of objects thought about' (FA, Introduction, p. iii). Consequently, like Russell, he did not conceive of a proposition such as 'Either it is raining or it is not raining' as a proposition of logic, but as a particular instance (CT 50) of the proposition of logic '(av a)' (the roman letter being used as a free variable and the whole being understood as a generalization—namely, '(p)(p v p)'). The laws of logic, however, are not merely descriptions of the logical relations between judgements, thoughts, or propositions; they are also, indirectly, normative laws of thought. For logic, like ethics, is a normative science. Its laws also prescribe how one ought to think. They 'ought to be guiding principles for thought in the attainment of truth' (BLA, Introduction, p. xv). For 'any law asserting what is, can be conceived as prescribing that one ought to think in conformity with it, and is in that sense a law of thought'. The laws of logic are 'the most general laws, which prescribe universally the way in which one ought to think if one is to think at all' (ibid.). Just as the law of physics that ice melts if heated yields the hypothetical imperative 'If you want to melt ice, heat it', so end p.215

too the law of logic '(p)(q)(p&(p q q)' yields the hypothetical imperative 'If you want to ensure truth in reasoning, then, for any pair of propositions, given the truth of one and the truth of a conditional of which it is the antecedent, infer the truth of the consequent'. The laws of logic, like the laws of physics, are objective laws concerning what is, and are independent of human thought and experience. They are not descriptive laws of psychology describing how human beings actually think and reason. The normative laws of thought do not describe how we are constrained to think by the nature or constitution of the human mind; rather they prescribe how we ought to think. There are indefinitely many laws of logic. Hence, to render logic surveyable to reason, the task of the logician, like that of the geometrician, is to isolate a set of basic laws, which, as Frege put it, 'by their power contain all of them' (BS §13) and which can accordingly function as axioms. Hence he presented his logic in the form of an axiomatic system, resting on half a dozen basic laws. The truth of these axioms Frege took to be unprovable. For, if we ask 'why and with what right we acknowledge a law of logic to be true, logic can answer only by reducing it to another law of logic. Where that is not possible, logic can give no

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answer' (BLA, Introduction, p. xvii). The axioms of a system of logic neither admit of nor require proof, for they are self-evident, known to us by our logical faculty. This 'logical source of knowledge' is distinct from the faculty of spatial intuition that Frege, like Kant, thought of as delivering the axioms of geometry (PMC 100; PW 269 ff., 278). The Tractatus undermined this traditional conception of logic altogether. As we have seen, Wittgenstein argued that the logical connectives are not names of concepts and relations at all. They signify not material functions, but operations on propositions. Not only are they systematically inter-definable, not only are they all on the same level—none being 'more primitive' or 'indefinable' than another—but they are one and all eliminable by means of the T/F notation that symbolizes propositions in the propositional calculus by a truth-tabular notation. Hence it must be misconceived to represent the propositions of logic as being descriptions of relations between abstract entities. Indeed, it is a misconception to think that the propositions of logic are essentially generalizations. 'Either it is raining or it is not raining' is no less of a proposition of logic than 'If everything that is F is G, and everything that is G is H, then everything that is F is H' (where F, G, and H are appropriate properties). Moreover, the putative proposition ' av a' (or '(p)(pv p)') is not actually a proposition of logic at all, but a statement of a formal property of the formal concept of a proposition—namely, that end p.216

every proposition is either true or false. 'The mark of a logical proposition is not general validity. To be general means no more than to be accidentally valid for all things' (TLP 6.1231). The mark of propositions of logic is not general validity but essential validity—the propositions of logic are necessarily true (TLP 6.1232). They are true under all possible conditions, are unconditionally true—for they are tautologies, true for all possible assignments of truth-values to their constituent propositions. Hence 'An ungeneralized proposition can be tautological just as well as a generalized one' (TLP 6.1231). But precisely because the propositions of logic are unconditionally true, they exclude nothing—they are true in all possible circumstances. So they convey no information whatsoever—they are senseless, limiting cases of a proposition with a sense. Contrary to Frege's view, they have no subject matter (TLP 6.124). All propositions of logic say exactly the same thing—namely, nothing. But they are one and all forms of proof , and different logical propositions display different forms of proof (TLP 6.1264). Accordingly, the proof of logical propositions consists in producing them out of other logical propositions by successively applying truth-operations that always generate further tautologies out of the initial ones (TLP 6.126). One can calculate whether a proposition belongs to logic by calculating the logical properties of the symbol—namely, by constructing it out of others using only rules that deal with signs. To be sure, the propositions from which the proof starts must themselves be tautologies, and show without proof that they are tautologies. And that is perspicuously shown in Wittgenstein's T/F notation. But it is mistaken to think that the propositions from which proofs start are privileged or more fundamental than others—axioms or basic laws that are known by logical intuition and are

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self-evident. 'All the propositions of logic are of equal status: it is not the case that some of them are essentially primitive propositions and others essentially derived propositions.' Every tautology, in T/F notation, itself shows that it is a tautology (TLP 6.127). Hence Frege's appeal to self-evidence for the axioms of a system of logic is misguided. For so-called axioms, in so far as they are indeed logical propositions, are no less and no more tautologies than the tautologies that can be derived from them. Whether or not they are self-evident is irrelevant. For self-evidence is not a criterion for any proposition's being a proposition of logic— rather the criterion is its being a tautology (TLP 6.1271). Wittgenstein's account of logic overturned traditional conceptions of the nature of logic and the truths of logic, and thereby also Frege's conception. For, despite Frege's great originality in devising his function-theoretic calculus, his philosophical reflections upon the nature of logic end p.217

were firmly rooted in traditional thought. Like earlier logicians, he thought that logical truths had a subject matter, that they described relations between abstract objects, that they constitute laws of thought in as much as they constitute the anankastic foundation for hypothetical imperatives as do laws of nature. He imagined different laws of logic to describe different relations among thoughts, concepts, or truth-values, and he thought that the propositions of logic have a sense or content. Finally, he saw no alternative but to construct logic on axiomatic foundations, the axioms of which are unprovable self-evident truths. Far from building on this conception, Wittgenstein definitively demonstrated its inadequacies in the Tractatus. Although his own conception was, as he later realized, still flawed, his criticisms of Frege's conception of logic and of the mainstream tradition of reflections upon the nature of logic stood firm. end p.218

8 Frege and the Later Wittgenstein Abstract: In his later writings, Wittgenstein explicitly discusses Frege relatively rarely; nevertheless, those criticisms add significantly to the criticisms of Frege in the Tractatus. This paper clarifies the later criticisms, and explains the deep incompatibilities between Wittgenstein's later philosophy of logic and language and Frege's philosophical logic. Keywords: Augustinian picture of language, explanations of meaning, Frege, function-theoretic logic, propositions of logic, the status of logic, topic neutrality of the logical operators, understanding

P. M. S Hacker

1. Preliminaries In the preface to the Tractatus Wittgenstein acknowledged 'Frege's great works' as one of the two primary stimulations for his thoughts. Throughout his life he admired Frege both as a great thinker and as a great stylist. This much is indisputable. What is disputable is how he viewed his own philosophical work in

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relation to Frege's and, equally, how we should view his work in this respect. Some followers of Frege are inclined to think that Wittgenstein's work builds on or complements that of Frege. If that were true it would be plausible to suppose that the joint legacy of these two great philosophers can provide a coherent foundation for our own endeavours. But it is debatable whether their fundamental ideas can be synthesized thus. The philosophy of Wittgenstein, both early and late, is propounded to a very large extent in opposition to Frege's. They can no more be mixed than oil and water—or so I shall argue. Frege's logical works did indeed stimulate the young Wittgenstein's thoughts. His formalization of the propositional and predicate calculi was the most momentous advance in formal logic since Aristotle. In many ways it, together with Russell's and Whitehead's Principia, set the agenda for twentieth-century philosophy of logic and for modern philosophical reflection on the relation between logical calculi, thought, and language. For, given the power of the new calculus of logic to formalize arguments that had been beyond the scope of previous systems of logic and to display their validity (or invalidity), the moot philosophical question was: what does the new logic signify? What does it show us about the nature of thought, or of language, or of the world? Frege argued that his new logic freed thought 'from that which only the nature of the linguistic means of expression attaches to it' (BS , Preface). For, I am indebted to Dr Hanoch Ben-Yami for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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It cannot be the task of logic to investigate language and determine what is contained in a linguistic expression. Someone who wants to learn logic from language is like an adult who wants to learn how to think from a child. When men created language, they were at a stage of childish pictorial thinking. Languages are not made so as to match logic's ruler. (PMC 67-8) The subject matter of logic is the nature of thoughts (the contents of judgements) and their logical relations. Thoughts, according to Frege, are abstract entities, expressible in, but independent of, language. It is thoughts that can be true or false, and logic is 'the science of the most general laws of truth' (PW 128). The propositions of logic are the laws of truth—laws that govern all thoughts, irrespective of their specific subject matter. Like the laws of the special sciences, the laws of logic describe what is the case—they describe the truthfunctional relationships involved in valid reasoning. What is distinctive about them is their absolute generality and topic neutrality. All propositions of logic are generalizations—what we would now call 'generalizations of tautologies', particular tautologies such as 'Either it is raining or it is not raining' being thought of as applications or instances of the general laws of logic, derivable from them by universal instantiation. The laws of logic, in this sense, are valid for any thoughts whatsoever, irrespective of their subject matter. It is because of this that they are also perfectly general laws of thought—not descriptive psychological laws of thinking, but normative laws of how one ought to think if one is to preserve truth in reasoning concerning any domain whatsoever. The

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relation of the descriptive laws of truth (the laws of logic) to the normative laws of thinking is similar to the relation between laws of physics and technical rules that specify how to achieve certain ends—for example, build bridges or aeroplanes. Of course, since language is a vehicle for the expression of thoughts, language must model itself upon what happens at the level of thought; hence scrutiny of the linguistic expression of thoughts has its place in logical investigation—it is, as it were, a bridge from the perceptible to the imperceptible (PW 259). Nevertheless, 'we should not overlook the deep gulf that yet separates the level of language from that of thought, and which imposes certain limits on the mutual correspondence of the two levels' (ibid.). Language is full of logical imperfections that make logical investigations especially difficult, but 'Fortunately as a result of our logical work we have acquired a yardstick by which we are apprised of these defects' (PW 266). The yardstick is Frege's concept-script, conceived as a logically perfect language—ideally suited for proof-theoretic purposes in the exact sciences. Frege did not conceive of his logical system as a description of the underlying depth grammar of any, let alone every, possible language. end p.220

On the contrary: natural languages are logically defective, but concept-script is a logically perfect language that accurately mirrors the logical forms and structures of thoughts. It was against this conception of logic that Wittgenstein set his face from the beginning of his philosophical work in 1912 until the end of his life. The Tractatus is to a large extent a dialogue with Frege and Russell. They were the greatest philosophers of his day, and they had advanced logic beyond anything achieved by their predecessors. Nevertheless, he thought that they had misunderstood the nature of their invention—the new logical calculus—misconstrued its relation to language and thought, and, indeed, misunderstood the nature of logic itself. As far as the relation between logic and natural languages is concerned, he parted company from his two predecessors straight away. Sentences of natural language in use express thoughts—that is, have a sense—and if so then they are in good logical order, even though the forms of natural languages may not disclose their underlying logical forms. For there can be no halfway house between sense and nonsense, and, if a sentence in use expresses a sense, it expresses a sense perfectly. Logic is a condition of sense, so the sentences of natural language—the expressions of thoughts in the medium of natural language—are in good logical order. This conception of logic and language marks a gulf between Wittgenstein and Frege and Russell. One consequence of it is that he approaches the philosophical problems of logic from a completely different perspective from theirs. On this matter, he never changed his mind. But whereas in the Tractatus he adjusted his conception of language, its role and deep structure, to his conception of logic, in his later philosophy he liberalized his conception of logic to fit the contours of natural language and its use. The Tractatus is Wittgenstein's most extensive confrontation with the philosophy of Frege.1 He criticized Frege's conception of the sense of a sentence (what we understand when we understand an utterance) as a mode of presentation of an object. The sense of a sentence—for example, 'Fa'—is, according to Frege, the mode in which its meaning—a truth-value—is presented as the value of a function

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—namely, the function Fξ, for an argument—namely, a. Wittgenstein found this conception wanting and replaced it by a completely different one, construing the sense of a sentence as its agreement and disagreement with possibilities of existence and non-existence of a state of affairs. He criticized Frege's conception of a sentence as having a meaning—that is, as the 1 For detailed discussion of Wittgenstein's Tractatus criticisms of Frege, see Chapter 6, 'Frege and the Early Wittgenstein'. Here I merely summarize his conclusions.

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name of a truth-value that is its meaning, arguing that there is a categorial difference between sentences and names. He held that Frege had misunderstood the essential nature of the proposition, which is not bivalency, let alone the mere possibility of bivalency—as Frege held—but bipolarity. It is of the nature of a proposition to be capable of being true and capable of being false, and it must be the one or the other. Frege's account of sense, the young Wittgenstein argued, failed to meet the requirement that sense be independent of the facts. For, according to Frege, if a proposition 'Fa' is true, then it presents the True as the value of the function Fξ for the argument a. But, had the world been different, had it not been the case that Fa, then 'Fa' would have been false—that is, its sense would have been the mode in which it presents the False as the value of the function Fξ for the argument a, and the function would accordingly be different. However, Wittgenstein argued, a proposition—a sentence in its projective relation to reality, what we understand when we understand what is said—must have the same sense no matter how the facts might be or might have been. Not only was Frege's account of sense and meaning inadequate, but so too was his account of judgement and assertion. His formal theory of assertion in The Basic Laws of Arithmetic was defective, for, according to Frege's stipulations, the symbol for the content of an assertion is required to be a symbol that, on the one hand, expresses a thought (which is to be asserted) and, on the other hand, cannot by itself be used to assert anything—it merely names a truth-value. But it is not coherent to suppose that there might be a symbol that expresses a thought but that cannot by itself be used to make an assertion, or that there might be a symbol that says something true and yet can only be used to make an assertion. The defects in Frege's account of assertion, in Wittgenstein's view, ramify further. For, while Frege connected the notion of a proposition or thought with the ideas of truth and falsehood, a proposition being construed as the sense of a sentence that presents the True or the False as its meaning, he represented these two objects as coordinate, neither having any special priority over the other. But, Wittgenstein remonstrated, truth has priority. For a proposition depicts how things are if it is true. Its sense is the possible state of affairs that obtains if it is true. Negation is an operation on a proposition that reverses its sense. Hence it presupposes the determination of what is the case if it is true. Frege's failure to apprehend correctly the relation of the proposition and its truth-value and hence of the nature of negation is, Wittgenstein argued, an aspect of a more general flaw—namely, of construing the logical connectives as functions—that is, as a concept (in the case of end p.222

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negation) or as relations (in the case of the binary connectives) between truthvalues that are the meanings of sentences. In Wittgenstein's view, the logical connectives are not function-names and do not represent any entities at all, let alone concepts or relations. Rather they signify truth-operations on propositions. They can all be reduced to the single operation of joint negation, from which all truth-functions of any set of elementary propositions can be generated. The propositions of logic—that is, tautologies—are a limiting case of truth-operations upon a set of elementary propositions. They are not, pace Frege, characterized by their generality but by their necessity, by the fact that they are unconditionally true—true no matter what the assignment of truth-values to their constituent elementary propositions. The proposition that it is either raining or not raining is no less a proposition of logic than the generalization that, if anything that is F is G, and if anything that is G is H, then anything that is F is H. Moreover, the generalization of a tautology, such as (p)(pv p), is not a genuine proposition at all, but a formal statement about the formal concept of a proposition—namely, that any proposition is either true or false. But the necessary truth of tautologies is purchased at the price of their vacuity, for they say nothing at all, since they exclude no possibility. Hence they are, technically speaking senseless; they have zero sense. If so, then they are not about anything and do not describe anything—and logic is not a science with a subject matter. So Frege's conception of logic as the general science of the laws of truth is misconceived. And, if that is so, then his conception of logic as also being a normative science of the laws of thought is equally misguided. So his conception of the relation of the propositions of logic to thinking and reasoning is likewise awry. Wittgenstein saw matters differently. The propositions of logic are limiting cases of propositions with a sense—they say nothing and describe nothing. Although they are tautologies that, one and all, say nothing, each distinct logical proposition is internally related to, and displays, a distinct general form of valid inference. So-called laws of thought are not related to the tautologies of logic as technical (means/ends) rules are related to regularities (laws) of nature. Indeed, at this stage in the development of his thinking, Wittgenstein held rules of inference to be redundant, in as much as they attempt to justify internal relations between propositions. But it makes no sense to seek for a justification of what cannot be otherwise. In a perspicuous notation, such as the T/F notation he invented in the Tractatus, the internal relations between propositions are literally shown by their representation. Furthermore, Frege's conception of the science of logic as an axiomatic science akin to geometry, in which indefinitely many truths can be end p.223

derived from axioms that are self-evident, is likewise awry. For the axioms of an axiomatized system of logic must be logical propositions no less than the theorems. Hence they are tautologies no less than the theorems. So there are no 'privileged' propositions in logic that are more fundamental than others. For all logical truths stand on the same level—they are all true under every possible circumstance, and they all say the same thing—namely, nothing. Whether or not they are self-evident is irrelevant to their status as propositions of logic. For, being self-evident, unlike being tautologous, is not a criterion of a proposition of

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logic at all. It should be evident from this synoptic survey of Wittgenstein's early criticisms of Frege's philosophy of logic that he conceived of himself, not as building on it, but as demolishing it and replacing it by a sound conception of the nature of logic.

2. Wittgenstein's Transitional Period Between 1929 and 1932 Wittgenstein's philosophy underwent radical transformation. He repudiated the linchpin of the Tractatus—namely, the logical independence of the elementary proposition. For he became aware of the insolubility of the problem of determinate exclusion within the framework of the logic of the Tractatus. Colour exclusion—that is, the fact that A is red all over implies that it is not green, or yellow, and so on—is but a special case of logical relations determined, not by truth-functional combinations of elementary propositions, but by the content of elementary propositions. If that is so, then the logic of the Tractatus requires radical rethinking. For the idea that all logical relations are generated by operations upon logically independent elementary propositions was pivotal for the Tractatus conception of logic. The thought that every possible truth-function of a set of elementary propositions is already given with the set of propositions in question collapses. That idea depended on the bipolarity of the proposition, for ' p is false' = 'not-p', and the possibility of joint assertion of a pair of propositions is given with the possibility of their successive assertion. If negation and conjunction are given, then so too is joint negation, and, if joint negation is given, then so too are all the truth-functions. By the operation of joint negation, 2n truth-combinations can be constructed for any set of n elementary propositions, given that they are logically independent. For, with that proviso, no combination is excluded by the content of the relevant elementary propositions. But if they are not independent, as 'A end p.224

is red' and 'A is green' are evidently not, that does not hold—for the TT line in any truth-table for combinations of propositions ascribing different determinates of the same determinable to an object must be excluded as possessing greater logical multiplicity than that of which the facts admit. Similar flaws infected the Tractatus account of the quantifiers.2 With the collapse of these pivotal Tractatus ideas, much else disintegrated too (for example, the metaphysics and ontology of logical atomism, the conception of a meaning-endowing connection between language and reality, the account of the intentionality of thought and language that was given by the picture theory of representation). This is not the concern of this paper. The moot question is whether Wittgenstein's attitude towards Frege's philosophy changed significantly. It seems to me that it did not. Most of his criticisms of Frege stand firm independently of his own (defective) constructive account in the Tractatus. For most of them do not depend for their correctness upon the metaphysics of symbolism or the ontology of logical atomism that marred Wittgenstein's account of logic in that book. The detailed technical criticisms of the philosophical

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apparatus of Frege's logical system are by and large not repeated in Wittgenstein's later writings, but taken for granted. So, for example, he does not repeat his criticisms of Frege's conception of sense—although it is interesting that in one notebook (MS 105, 130-1) he observed that Frege's conception of sense and meaning might indeed be applied to tautologies and contradictions. Frege's conception of sense has no intelligible application to empirical propositions but only to logical truths—that is, only to those propositions that, according to Wittgenstein's conception of sense, are senseless.3 Similarly, Wittgenstein does not repeat in detail his criticisms of Frege's conception of the logical connectives as names of concepts or relations, although he continued to insist that the logical connectives do not stand for anything and that logical propositions are not about relations or indeed about anything else. He continued to argue that the propositions of logic are vacuous, say nothing—and, by implication, that Frege's idea that they have a sense in the sense in which empirical propositions do, and that different logical propositions have different For a more detailed discussion, see G. P. Baker, Wittgenstein, Frege and the Vienna Circle (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), 116-25. 3 In MS 161, 55, he observed that he was inclined to invoke Frege's notion of sense in application to mathematical propositions. Both remarks implicitly confirm his earlier criticisms of the Fregean conception of sense for the central case of the empirical proposition. 2

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senses, is misconceived. Rather, logical propositions all have the same sense— namely, none. And he still emphasized that any appeal to intuition to justify the propositions of logic as resting on self-evident axioms is misguided. In his lectures, he repeated points he took himself to have established in the Tractatus—for example, that one can discard the idea Russell and Frege had that logic is a science of certain objects—propositions, functions, the logical constants—and that logic is like a natural science such as zoology and talks about these objects as zoology talks of certain animals. Like a natural science, it could supposedly discover certain relations. . . . But logic is a calculus, and in it one can make inventions but not discoveries. (AWL 138-9) He reiterated one of his earliest insights—namely, that 'Logic must turn out to be of a TOTALLY different kind than any other science' (letter to Russell, 22 June 1912)—indeed, not a science at all. In his later philosophy, this idea had to be cut loose from its Tractatus underpinnings.4 But it already fundamentally differentiated his conception of logic from Frege's, who thought that the propositions of logic are not categorially distinct from all other propositions. Their hallmark, in his view, is generality—they express genuine thoughts, as do the propositions of any other science, and their arrangement in an axiomatic system does not differ in principle from an axiomatization of the laws of mechanics or geometry. Logic is the science of the general laws of truth, and its subject matter is the truth of thoughts and their logical relations, no matter what their content. On the falsity of this conception Wittgenstein never changed his mind.

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3. Re-Evaluation of What Wittgenstein had Accepted from Frege If Wittgenstein by and large conceived of himself as having settled his accounts with Frege in the Tractatus, what can we hope to find by way of criticisms of Frege in his later work (excluding his philosophy of mathematics)? There are three kinds of consideration that might be explored. First, although the Tractatus was highly critical of Frege, there were some respects in which Wittgenstein accepted, in whole or in part, 4 To use Wittgenstein's own Blue Book metaphor, 'Some of the greatest achievements in philosophy could only be compared with taking up some books which seemed to belong together, and putting them on different shelves; nothing more being final about their positions than that they no longer lie side by side' (BB 44-5).

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some Fregean principles. After 1929, he came to reconsider these. His self-criticism is often, by implication, also a criticism of Frege. Secondly, as he came to revise the Tractatus conception of logic, he sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly, reformulated his differences with Frege, probing deeper than hitherto. Finally, it is possible to compare his later philosophy with Frege's at a global level. Various comparisons are possible, and in the compass of this lecture only one can be essayed. Their philosophies will be compared with respect to Augustine's picture of language.5 Among the things that the young Wittgenstein did accept from Frege, with or without modification and with or without a similar rationale, are (i) a methodological commitment to anti-psychologism in philosophical analysis; (ii) the functional structure of propositions; and (iii) the topic neutrality of the logical operators. On each of these he was led to rethink his position.6 (i) Anti-psychologism. Frege's anti-psychologist polemic against Erdmann and Husserl was motivated by the desire to ensure the objectivity of the laws of truth and the objective validity of the normative laws of thought. These had been jeopardized by the psychologicians, who held that the laws of logic describe the ways in which we are constrained to think by the nature of our minds. But the laws of logic are not laws of psychology. Not psychologism, but realism, or more specifically Platonism, is the key to a correct understanding of logic. In Frege's view, this had an important methodological corollary. If the laws of truth are objective laws concerning a mind-independent subject matter, then psychological considerations of how human beings think and reason must be excluded from the philosophy of logic. Hence, although thoughts and their truth-functional relationships are the proper subject matter of the science of logic and thoughts are what we understand It is noteworthy that Frege's brief foray into epistemology in 'The Thought' (as well as in some remarks on ideas, colour perception, and subjective experience in The Foundations of Arithmetic and in the preface to the Basic Laws) is implicitly and by intimation criticized in the private-language arguments (cf. PI §273, in which the phrase 'uns Allen Gegenüberstehendes' is quoted from Basic Laws, Introduction, p. xviii (see P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Meaning and 5

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Mind, vol. iii of An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), Exegesis §273)). Frege was committed to the two fundamental misconceptions that lie at the root of the galaxy of confusions that Wittgenstein assails—namely, the epistemic privacy of experience and the privacy of ownership of experience. For detailed discussion of these two doctrines, see Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind, 'Privacy' and Exegesis of §§246-54. 6 Other important points of convergence between the Tractatus and Frege are (i) the context principle and (ii) the requirement of determinacy of sense. These will not be discussed in this paper.

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when we 'grasp' a truth, the investigation of understanding belongs to psychology. To be sure, 'this process [of grasping a thought] is perhaps the most mysterious of all. But just because it is mental in character we do not need to concern ourselves with it in logic' ('Logic', PW 145). In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein denied that logic is a science with a subject matter of its own, and a fortiori rejected Frege's Platonist conception of the laws of truth. Logic is not a (Platonist) body of doctrine, 'but a mirror-image of the world' (TLP 6.13). This 'transcendental', essentialist but not Platonist, conception of logic was no less committed than Frege's to the objectivity and mind-independence of the truths of logic, and hence to the rejection of psychologism. Consequently, Wittgenstein argued (parallel to, but not in agreement with, Frege) that his 'study of sign-language' must not get 'entangled in unessential psychological investigations' (TLP 4.1121).7 So he too excluded from philosophical consideration any investigation of the nature of understanding. With the transformation of his philosophy in the early 1930s, Wittgenstein came to realize that anti-psychologism in logic does not justify the exclusion of philosophical investigation into the concepts of thinking, meaning something, and understanding. Indeed, the examination of these concepts is essential for a correct account of the concept of the meaning of an expression. Like Frege, Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus, had misused the concept of meaning or Bedeutung. That conception of meaning, he declared, is now obsolete, and the use of the expression should be restricted to such phrases as 'This expression means the same as that' or 'That expression has no meaning'. The meaning of an expression is what is explained by an explanation of its meaning, and we should look to the manifold forms of explanations of meaning in our linguistic practices in order to get clear about the concept of meaning. Similarly, the meaning of an expression is the correlate of understanding, for it is what we understand when we understand an utterance, what we know when we know the meaning of a word. So an investigation of understanding is directly relevant to the clarification of the concept of meaning. One criterion of understanding is giving an explanation of what an expression in use means. An explanation of meaning Frege did not conceive of his logical investigations as being a 'study of signlanguage', but rather a study of thoughts and their logical relations conducted by the use of a sign-language, preferably the ideal sign-language of his concept-script. By contrast, according to Wittgenstein, 'It is the peculiar mark of logical propositions that one can recognize that they are true from the 7

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symbol alone' (TLP 6.113), that 'If we know the logical syntax of any sign-language, then we have already been given all the propositions of logic' (TLP 6.124).

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in effect provides a rule for the use of an expression—a standard of correct use. Hence another criterion of understanding an expression is using it correctly—that is, using it in accordance with the customarily accepted rules for its use. And a third criterion is responding appropriately to its use. Understanding is not a mental state of entertaining or 'grasping' an abstract entity, nor is it a process of meaning something by the words one utters or of interpreting the words one hears in accordance with a theory of meaning. Rather, it is mastery of a technique of use, hence akin to an ability, not to a state or process. It is an ability exhibited in using an expression correctly, giving explanations of what is meant by an expression, and in responding appropriately to the use of an expression in an utterance. The meanings of words are not entities correlated with the words by 'a method of projection' (as had been argued in the Tractatus) or by the abstract machinery of 'senses' (modes of presentation of a meaning—as Frege had argued). To know what a word means is not to 'grasp' an abstract entity, a sense, which is associated with the word, nor to know what entity a word stands for, but rather to know its use. The meaning of an expression is best conceived as its use—that is, the manner in which it is to be, and normally is, used. It is no coincidence that the opening chapters of the 'Big Typescript' are concerned with the investigation of understanding, meaning, and explanation, for it is this that signals the transformation in Wittgenstein's conception of language and representation. For the thought that a speaker might know or understand what an expression that he uses correctly means, but be altogether incapable of saying what he means by it, is incoherent. And, if what he means by it does not coincide with what it means (in context), then he was misusing it. If a speaker cannot, in some way or other, say what he means by an expression he has used, then we would be entitled to conclude that he does not understand what he has said in using it and was speaking without understanding. But, if this is correct, then what counts as a correct explanation of meaning must be liberalized. And, since a correct explanation of meaning is a rule for the use of the word in question, the conception of a rule for the use of a word must be taken in a far more homely manner than philosophers from Plato onwards have done. It is misguided to suppose, as Frege did, that mankind has been using number words since time immemorial without knowing what they mean, and had to wait upon Frege to be told that the number word 'one' means 'the number which belongs to the concept "identical with 0" ' (FA §77). And it must be equally misconceived to suppose that Frege's explanation constitutes the essential rule for the use of the word 'one', for most English speakers who use this number word would be incapable of understanding Frege's explanation and hence end p.229

incapable of following the rule that it expresses and of justifying their use of this word, from case to case, by reference to it. In fact, one can give ostensive definitions of the initial terms of the series of integers8 and such explanations are perfectly correct. 'The definition of the number two, "That is called

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'two' "—pointing to two nuts—is perfectly exact' (PI §28). Wittgenstein's realization of the error of assuming that anti-psychologism licenses the neglect of a philosophical investigation of understanding and his consequent exploration of understanding and its relation to meaning led him to part company with Frege over a host of ramifying issues. First, the idea that only a Merkmal definition in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions of application is a genuine explanation of meaning is chimerical. We must recognize numerous legitimate forms of explanation, including ostensive definition, explanation by a series of examples, by paraphrase or contrastive paraphrase, and so on. Hence, secondly, the Fregean requirement that an explanation must determine for any object whether or not it falls under the concept in question must be mistaken—irrespective of whether it is or is not appropriate for prooftheoretic purposes in mathematics. For a perfectly decent explanation of a family-resemblance concept by reference to a series of examples together with a similarity rider does not do that, and many other licit explanations of meaning do not do so either. Yet explanations by examples are 'decent signs, not rubbish or hocus-pocus' (PG 273),9 and ostensive definitions are perfectly proper explanations of what certain words mean—they are not descriptions (as Russell and Wittgenstein had thought), but rules, standards of correct use. Hence, thirdly, Frege's thought that, when it comes to simple expressions that cannot be defined by analytic definition, the best we can do is 'to lead the reader or hearer by means of hints, to understand the words as intended' misconstrues the character of the so-called 'hints' and obscures the fact that explanations of meaning by examples or by ostensive definition constitute rules for the use of a word no less than analytic definitions. Finally, since understanding an expression is not a matter of 'grasping' an abstract entity, since the rules for the use of an expression are given by the humdrum explanations of meaning that play a manifest One might distinguish here between 'visual number' and 'inductive number' (cf. PLP 105). 8

To be sure, there are many other reasons that Wittgenstein explored for faulting the Fregean and Tractatus demand for determinacy of sense. For detailed discussion, see G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning, vol. i of An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), 367-85. 9

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role in our linguistic practices of explaining, justifying, criticizing uses of words, and since there can be no such thing as following, as opposed to acting in accordance with, a rule of language with which one is unacquainted or that one does not understand, there can be no such thing as hidden rules awaiting discovery—such as the definitions of number words that Frege produced or the hidden logical syntax of language that the Tractatus supposed would be disclosed by analysis. Hence, too, it must be mistaken to suppose that the rules for the use of an expression follow from the nature of what the expression signifies—as Frege supposed,1 0 or ineffably and necessarily mirror the essence of what the expression means—as the Tractatus had argued. The rules of grammar are not answerable to the language-independent essence of things; rather they constitute it (PI §§371, 373).

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(ii) Function/argument depth structure. Although it is evident that in the Tractatus Wittgenstein's understanding of function-theoretic analysis of propositions differed from Frege's,1 1 and although he did not think that Frege's and Russell's logical systems—by contrast with natural languages—were ideal languages, it is clear that he thought that they approximated an ideal notation which would, as Frege supposed, reflect the logical forms of what is represented. Unlike Frege, he thought that the depth structure of any possible language has a function-theoretic form. However, with the transformation of his views in the early 1930s, he came to think that the very idea that a natural language has a concealed depth structure is misconceived. To be sure, he continued to think that the surface grammatical forms of natural languages are profoundly misleading, but not because Frege, in his polemic against formalists in arithmetic, argued that mathematics is no mere game with signs, in which the rules for the use of signs may be arbitrarily stipulated. The mathematician is concerned not with numerals but with the numbers that are their meanings. Hence it is not the case that 'the numerals are contentless marks, which are used according to arbitrary rules. Rather, the rules follow necessarily from the meaning of the signs' (Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, ii, §158 (Jena: H. Pohle, 1903), quoted in translation in PLP 234). Wittgenstein characterized this as 'the meaning-body conception' and criticized it extensively (see G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity , vol. ii of An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 312-17. 10

1 1 Unlike Frege, he did not think that the value of a first-level concept for an object as argument is a truth-value. Nor did he think that the quantifiers are correctly construed as second-level functions taking first-level functions as arguments and mapping them onto truth-values—they are logical operations on elementary propositions (not functions whose arguments are first-level concepts), and the sense of a generalization is a function of the senses of the elementary propositions in question. And he did not think that the sense of a sentence, what we understand when we understand an utterance, is the mode of presentation of its meaning as the value of a function for an argument.

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they conceal a hidden, underlying logical syntax that shows the logical forms of the facts, but rather because they deceptively suggest a uniformity of use where there is a diversity. The resultant awareness of the diversity of use of sentences similar in grammatical form, a diversity manifest inter alia in the 'multitude of familiar paths leading off in different directions' (PI §534) from such sentences, led Wittgenstein to reassess his attitude to the function-theoretic calculus introduced by Frege and Russell. Far from approximating a logically ideal notation that reveals the logical forms of thought and/or reality, it is merely a calculus, which has no special privileges. To be sure, it makes some things clearer, makes perspicuous some distinctions that are obscured by the forms of natural languages—for example, differences between A, B, and C's being red and being three, or between A's flourishing and A's existing. To that extent, it may be a useful object of comparison for natural languages—making clear that a different

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notation is possible, and that such a notation may reveal on its surface features that become evident in natural language only through a painstaking description of use. But no less than natural languages, and indeed no less than the calculus of syllogistic, the predicate calculus obscures logical differences. It treats fundamentally different concepts as if they were similar, representing them in the symbolism by signs of the same form—governed by the same rules. In his lectures he observed: All this symbolism comes from ordinary language. It could have been written in English or German, except for a few dodges, like brackets and dots.—It's all right as far as it goes. But apart from that, it doesn't clear anything up. In fact, it makes confusions. I do not mean that it is valueless. But it does not show the point of anything; it leaves everything as it is. It makes language a trifle more explicit, leaving all the confusions. (LFM 264) I shall select from his remarks three salient issues. (a) Frege's distinction between objects and concepts (first-level functions) distorts no less than the subject/predicate distinction in ordinary grammar; indeed, it is, in certain respects, the same distinction (PG 205).1 2 1 2 Wittgenstein does not qualify his remark thus. But in other respects Frege's distinction is obviously not the same one. No one, prior to Frege, would have called 'If ξ is F, then if ς is G, ξ is H' 'a predicate' or 'the expression of a concept', or have held that the expression 'ξ is a law' is a form of words that signifies the concept of law. Our concept of a concept is not that of a function from objects to truth-values, and much of what Frege says about what he calls 'a concept' makes no sense if predicated of what we call 'concepts'. Since for Frege a concept is a function, the relation between a concept and an object that falls (or does not fall) under it is internal, for it is an intrinsic feature of any function that it takes a particular value (e.g. the True) for a given argument. But, according to our concept of a concept, a singular empirical judgement states that an external relation holds between an object and a concept. An invariant concept might have different extensions in different possible circumstances, and different concepts might as a matter of fact have the same extension. Frege required that every concept be defined for every possible object as argument, whereas we countenance vague concepts. Frege would take the expression 'a round square' to signify an empty concept, like 'a unicorn', whereas we would claim that it expresses no concept at all but is a meaningless form of words. And so on. Similarly, Frege's concept of an object extends our ordinary, imprecise concept of an object far beyond anything we would countenance. On his account, the simultaneous occurrence of a court case and a lunar eclipse is an object. But his liberality is not correlated with any sharp criterion for what is and what is not an object in his technical sense of the term.

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It is no coincidence that his calculus became known as 'the predicate calculus'. For Frege's object is in effect a thing (or perhaps a sublimation of our ordinary concept of a thing)—the subject of predication, and his concept is a property (or a sublimation of our ordinary concept of a

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property). Hence he would treat 'A is red' and 'Red is a colour' as having the same form; and he would represent 'Jack is taller than Jill' and 'Red is darker than pink' in the same way; 'I have a pain', 'He has a pain', and 'A has a penny' would all be represented in the form 'Fa'. But this altogether obliterates the logical differences between such sentences, and obscures their radically different roles. 'Jack is taller than Jill' is an empirical proposition, whereas 'Red is darker than pink' is the expression of a rule for the use of its constituent terms. The negation of the former makes sense, whereas the negation of the latter is nonsense. 'I have a pain' is typically used as an expression of pain, and does not accept the epistemic prefixes (such as 'I doubt whether', 'I think but am not sure that', 'I wonder whether'), which the description 'He has a pain' does. 'Having a penny' signifies a relation of ownership, whereas 'having a pain' does not. And so on. (b) Frege's notation fails to distinguish sortal nouns from adjectives, representing both by undifferentiated predicate-letters. The resultant distortion becomes evident in quantified propositions. In natural language we have the form 'There is a . . . with such-and-such properties', where the gap can be filled with such expressions as 'book from my library' or 'chair in my room', and so on. Here we identify an object of a certain kind and ascribe a property to it, and think of the substance thus identified as the bearer of the property (PG 205). But the form of the predicate calculus sublimates this form into 'There is an x that . . . ' ( PG 265; LFM 167). So a sentence such as 'A man is in the quad' or 'There is a red circle in the square' is represented by 'There is an x that is a man and is in the quad', or 'There is an x such that x is a circle and is red and is in the square'. But what is the x that is a man? What has the property of being a circle? The model of bearer of property disintegrates here: 'man', 'circle', and so on are not names of properties of a end p.233

substratum (PR 120). We may say that the circle has the property of being red, but not that there is something that has the properties of being a circle and being red—for we have no idea what thing is being referred to. We can say 'In this circle there are only crosses', but to represent this sentence by the form 'For all x , if x is in the circle, then x is a cross' is nonsense—for what on earth might the x be? It might be all sorts of thing—chalk marks, figures I have just drawn, pieces of wood, and so on. But any such elucidation would itself immediately be represented by an additional predicate-letter in this notation. Of course, one can stipulate that the ' x ' in ' x ' means 'circle in the square', in which case '( x )(Fx )' makes sense (that is, 'There is a circle in the square that is red'); but then '( x )' and ' ( x )' should be well-formed propositions (that is, 'There is (or: is not) a circle in the square'), but in the calculus they are not (PG 266). One can say that there are only two men who have climbed a certain mountain, but not that there are only two things that are circles in this square (what things?), let alone that there is no object that has the property of being a circle in this square without being circle A or circle B. 'Nothing is to be gained by forcing the proposition "There are two circles in the square" into that form; it only helps to conceal that we haven't

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cleared up the grammar of the proposition' (PG 265). In short, 'F x ' must be an external description of x (PG 207), and that is not provided for in the notation of the new logic. (c ) The formation-rules for the Fregean (and Russellian) predicate calculus presuppose that if '(x )(Fx )' or '( x )(Fx )' makes sense, then so too do '(x )( Fx )', ' ( x )(Fx )', ' (x )(Fx )', and '( x )( Fx )'. In other words, the quantifiers are topic neutral. But this again is a distortion of thought and language. For our quantifiers are not topic neutral. It makes sense to say that there is a circle in the square, but none to say that all circles are in the square; it makes sense to say 'A wrote down a cardinal number', but not 'A wrote down all cardinal numbers'; it makes sense to say that some of the rules can be broken some of the time, but not to say that all of the rules can be broken all of the time; and so on. The Fregean idea that the function-theoretic structure is 'founded deep in the nature of things' (FC 31) is misconceived, projecting a feature of a particular mode of representation onto reality. And so too is the Tractatus idea that every possible language has a function-theoretic depth structure. The functiontheoretic form of representation of the predicate calculus distorts our thought and its linguistic expression no less than the subject/predicate form of traditional syllogistic. There is no mechanical short cut to the elucidation of the logic of our language—one must describe the uses of expressions in particular cases. end p.234

(iii) The topic neutrality of the logical connectives. Just as the quantifiers are not topic neutral, so too, Wittgenstein came to realize, the logical connectives are not topic neutral either. His original reasons for having thought them to be so had been different from Frege's. Frege had conceived of the connectives as names of functions from truth-values to truth-values. Wittgenstein had conceived of them as operations on elementary propositions, indifferent to the content of the propositions upon which they operate. But, with his realization of the possibility of logical relations that are determined by the content of propositions that contain no logical connective—namely, determinate exclusion—it became evident that the connectives are not indifferent to the content of the propositions to which they are affixed. It makes no sense to conjoin the proposition that A is red with the proposition that A is green, for it makes no sense to say that A is simultaneously both red and green. If A is 1 metre long, it follows that it is not also 2 metres long. A fourth point merits mention, even though it is never explicitly brought to bear on Frege. At the heart of the Tractatus is the thought that there is such a thing as the general propositional form—'Thus and so is how things stand'—shared by anything that can be deemed to be a proposition. This idea was pivotal to the doctrine that every proposition can be generated by truth-functional operations upon elementary propositions. Frege too cleaved to a (different) conception of the general propositional form—the presentation of a truth-value as the value of a function for an argument. After 1930 Wittgenstein repudiated the whole idea. The concept of a proposition is a family-resemblance concept and it does not have the unity that he had earlier envisaged. In the Tractatus he had wrongly excluded propositions of arithmetic, of ethics, aesthetics, and religion, as well as

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the formal (metaphysical) propositions of the Tractatus itself from the category of well-formed propositions. They are neither bipolar, nor degenerate senseless propositions—so they are condemned as nonsense, attempts to say what can only be shown. By implication, he also condemned Frege for treating them all as genuine propositions with a sense, as he condemned him for treating the senseless propositions of logic and the propositions of arithmetic as having a sense. The realization that the concept of a proposition lacks the formal unity he had ascribed to it did not rehabilitate Frege's vision. On the contrary. For, if Frege had been castigated for failing to see that logical and arithmetical propositions (not to mention ethical or metaphysical ones) are categorially different from empirical propositions with a sense, Wittgenstein's realization that there is far greater diversity within the family of propositions than he had originally thought signalled even end p.235

greater flaws in Frege's conception. The greatest mistake of the philosophers of his day, Wittgenstein remarked in 1938, was to focus upon the forms of expressions rather than upon their uses (LA 2). Clearly, Frege was unimpressed by the grammatical forms of expression in natural language; rather, he imposed a single set of function-theoretic forms upon all expressions of thought, in total disregard of the different uses and roles of propositions that are uniformly represented in function-theoretic notation. But the family of what we call 'propositions' is diverse. Thus, for example, among members of the family one must recognize grammatical propositions such as 'Red is a colour' or 'One is a number', which are expressions of rules for the use of the constituent terms in the misleading guise of factual propositions. But, if so, then the negation of a grammatical proposition is neither a grammatical proposition nor a falsehood. 'Red is a colour' expresses the rule that anything that can be said to be red can also be said to be coloured. But 'Red is not a colour', although it is the negation of a (grammatical) proposition, is mere nonsense—being neither a rule for the use of 'red' and 'colour', nor a true or false empirical proposition. Similarly, the negation of a mathematical proposition is not like the negation of an empirical proposition. Whereas the negation of a true empirical proposition is a false empirical proposition—that is, a proposition that does not correspond to the facts, does not correctly describe how things are—the negation of a true mathematical proposition is not a proposition that fails to correspond to the mathematical facts, that does not correctly describe how things are 'in the realm of numbers'. Rather it stigmatizes a proposition that has the form of a mathematical proposition as not having the standard role of mathematical propositions—namely, as licensing the transformation of empirical propositions in accordance with the rule expressed by the true mathematical proposition—even though it may have a role within mathematics, for example, in indirect proofs. 'True' and 'false' in mathematics correspond to valid and invalid in the transformation of empirical propositions about the relevant magnitudes of things. So what results from the negation of a proposition depends upon the role of the proposition negated. Similarly, the propositions of ethics, aesthetics, or religion, propositions of geometry, first- and third-person present tense psychological propositions, propositions of our 'world-picture', and so forth, all display forms

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that conceal their distinctive uses and conceptual involvements. In short, there can be no swifter path to confusion than to impose a single form upon all propositions and then take the chosen form of representation as a guide to philosophical elucidation—which is precisely what Frege did. end p.236

4. Rethinking the Role of the Propositions Of Logic Wittgenstein continued to think that the propositions of the calculus of logic are degenerate senseless propositions. But he ceased to think that they flow from the essential nature of the elementary proposition as such or that they are mirror images of the logical structure of the world. It was true that each distinct proposition of logic is internally related to—and shows—a form of valid inference, but wrong to claim that rules of inference are neither necessary nor possible. On the contrary, internal relations are reflections of grammatical rules that determine how expressions are to be used. Rules of inference are grammatical rules, and they are constitutive of the senses of the logical operators. The tautologies of logic are not rules of grammar, but that a certain proposition is a tautology —that is, that a certain well-formed proposition says nothing, that it is so constructed that all content is cancelled out, can be said to be a rule. '(x )(Fx ) Fa' is a tautology, and to recognize it as a tautology—that is, to recognize that this implication is true come what may— is to recognize the rule of inference '(x )(Fx )' ⊦ 'Fa'. To fail to recognize this tautology is a criterion of not understanding the quantifier, of not grasping the rule for its use. This transformation in Wittgenstein's thinking strengthened his criticisms of Frege's conception of the relation between the propositions of logic and the laws of thought. Frege, as noted above, held the latter to be related to the former, as technical rules concerning how best to achieve certain goals—for example, build bridges or aeroplanes—are related to the laws of physics. Wittgenstein had repudiated that conception in the Tractatus. But now he elaborated further. Frege argued that the laws of truth are distinct from any psychological laws of taking-to-be-true. 'Every object is identical with itself', he claimed, is a law of truth. 'It is impossible for us to acknowledge an object as being different from itself' is a psychological law of human beings' taking-to-be-true (BLA, Introduction, p. xvii). But 'this impossibility of our rejecting the law in question hinders us not at all in supposing beings who do reject it' (ibid.). If such beings whose laws of thought flatly contradicted ours, leading to contrary results in practice, were to be found, then Frege would say, 'we have here a hitherto unknown type of madness' (BLA, Introduction, p. xvi). But, Wittgenstein remonstrated, he never said what this type of madness would be like (RFM 95). What was Wittgenstein driving at in this obscure riposte? Frege represents the impossibility of our thinking contrary to the law of identity as end p.237

a psychological impossibility. But it is no such thing. If it were a psychological impossibility, one might try to think thus, as one might try to run a mile in three minutes. But, Wittgenstein notes, when I look at my lamp and say: 'This lamp is different from itself', nothing stirs. It is not that I see that it is false; I cannot do

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anything with it at all (RFM 89). It is not too difficult, but impossible—because there is nothing to think. The impossibility is akin to the impossibility of checkmating in draughts. The 'laws of truth' are not descriptions of relations between thoughts or truth-values, but vacuous tautologies, internally related to inference rules. These are not technical rules, but grammatical rules that are constitutive of the meanings of the logical operators. They partially define what we call 'thinking', 'inferring', 'reasoning'. Hence Frege was wrong to concede that the 'impossibility' of our rejecting a law of thought 'hinders us not at all in supposing beings who do reject it', and mistaken to think that, if there are such beings, we are right and they are wrong. Had he tried to describe the 'hitherto unknown type of madness', he would have seen that what he was describing was not a case of inferring, reasoning, or thinking, but something else (cf. LFM 203-4). The laws of logic show: how human beings think, and also what human beings call 'thinking'. The propositions of logic are 'laws of thought', 'because they bring out the essence of human thinking'—to put it more correctly: because they bring out, or show, the essence, the technique, of thinking. They show what thinking is and also show kinds of thinking. (RFM 89-90)1 3

5. Frege and the Augustinian Picture of Language The Philosophical Investigations opens with a quotation from the autobiography of St Augustine in which he adumbrates the manner in which he takes himself to have learnt language as a child. From this unselfconscious description, Wittgenstein precipitated a number of theses that, he thought, with sophisticated qualifications and refinements, inform numerous philosophical accounts of the nature of language. For present purposes, the relevant theses are two. First, that To be sure, Wittgenstein recognized the intelligibility of alternative forms of thought—within limits. But the limits are indeterminate, as indeterminate as our concepts of thinking, inferring, and calculating. Nevertheless, they are not arbitrary, but circumscribed 'by natural limits corresponding to the body of what can be called the role of thinking and inferring in our life' (RFM 80). 13

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(after due logical parsing or analysis) every significant expression that contributes to the determination of the sense of a sentence has a meaning, which is the entity it stands for. So the essential function of words is to stand for a meaning in the context of a sentence. Secondly, sentences are combinations of words the essential function of which is to describe. These two components of the Augustinian picture constitute a leitmotif of the Philosophical Investigations, and indeed of much of Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics. If one takes for granted this conception of sub-sentential expressions, one will think that the central questions to be asked are not: What is the use of such and such an expression? What is its role? What need does it meet in discourse?—but rather: What kind of entity does it stand for? What is the mechanism whereby it represents the entity it stands for? Does it adequately reflect the essential nature of the meaning it represents? If one thinks that the essential function of sentences is to describe, the pivotal differences between sentences will turn on

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what exactly it is that they describe. What do arithmetical propositions describe? Do geometrical propositions describe ideal shapes? Or the properties of space? Or the way the human mind is constrained to apprehend the data of sense? Do psychological propositions describe behaviour or mental states, processes, and events? Do first-person psychological propositions describe the same phenomena as third-person ones? What is described by imperative and interrogative sentences? And so on. Wittgenstein's aim was to turn philosophers away from the unthinking temptation to succumb to the charms of the Augustinian picture, to abandon these misguided questions and to replace them with more fruitful questions that do not presuppose that the essential function of words is to stand for entities or of sentences to describe something.1 4 In Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning, Gordon Baker and I argued that Wittgenstein, in expounding Augustine's picture of language, had Frege, Russell, and the Tractatus in his target area. Their philosophies lay within the field of force of these misguided presuppositions, despite the sophisticated overlay of distinctions between surface and depth grammar, between subject/predicate parsing and alternative function/argument forms of decomposition, between sense and meaning, and between unanalysed and fully analysed sentences. Professor P. T. Geach has written that what he heard about Frege from Wittgenstein's lips makes him confident that this interpretation is For detailed discussion of the Augustinian picture as Wittgenstein conceived it, see Baker and Hacker, 'Augustine's Picture of Meaning: das Wesen der Sprache', in Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning, and 'Two Fruits upon One Tree', in Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity . 14

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perverse,1 5 although he does not recount what it was that he heard from Wittgenstein's lips. Elsewhere Geach has claimed that it is easy to show that Frege was so far from thinking that every word named an object or function; he did not ascribe even a meaning to every expression, whether in ordinary language or in his symbolism. For Frege expressly denies that quantified phrases like 'some man' have a meaning in ordinary language or that bound variables have a meaning in his symbolism.1 6 To be sure, Wittgenstein did not even 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 this fact does not derogate from its importance, let alone show that Wittgenstein was ill-advised to begin his masterwork with this quotation. So we must answer the question of why he did so. It would be wildly implausible to suppose that he began his major book by delineating a theory that no one has ever held. In fact, Augustine's picture of language is not a theory, but an Urbild that moulds the form of different theories—with endless possible refinements and qualifications. Of course Frege did not think that 'some man' in the sentence 'Some man is rich' has a meaning, since it does not form a logically significant unit contributing to the sense of the sentence of which it is a part. But, properly parsed, each significant expression does have a meaning; for example, if parsed 'For some x ' and 'if x is a man, then x is rich', the first expression (called 'a second-level concept-word') has as its meaning a second-level function and the second (called 'a first-level concept-word') has as its meaning a concept. Pari

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passu, a bound variable in concept-script does not have a meaning, but the quantifier has a meaning, and the 'indicating' variable is to be treated as a feature of the name that has a first-level concept as its meaning. As Frege wrote in the Introduction to The Basic Laws, 'every well-formed name must have a meaning' (BLA, p. xii), but a complex name may contain signs that indicate but do not have a meaning—namely, variables. A well-formed name is either a proper name that has an object as its meaning, or a concept-word such as 'Fξ' or 'if Fξ, then Gξ' that has a first-level concept as its meaning, or an n-level concept-word that has an n-level function as its meaning, or a sentence that has a truth-value as its meaning, and so forth. To be sure, an expression has a meaning only in the context of a sentence, and how the sentence is to be parsed into names P. T. Geach, (ed.), Wittgenstein's Lectures on Philosophical Psychology 1946-7 (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester · Wheatsheaf, 1988), Editor's Preface, p. xiv. 15

P. T. Geach, 'Wittgenstein on Names', in J.-M. Terricabras (ed.), A Wittgenstein Symposium (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993), 72-3. 16

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that stand for meanings depends, in the case of some kinds of sentences, upon our mode of apprehension (Auffassungsweise). A sign of conceptscript that does not have a meaning, yet is not part of a name, is the judgement stroke, which 'contains the act of assertion' (BLA i, §6); similarly, the double-stroke of definition has no meaning. With these provisos (and others), Frege's conception of the functioning of any symbolism for the expression of thoughts perspicuously lies within the force field of the Augustinian proto-picture (Urbild). Similarly, Frege thought that the essential function of sentences is to describe. Sentences concerning physical objects describe phenomena in the 'physical world'. Psychological sentences describe psychological phenomena in the 'mental world'. Logical and arithmetical sentences describe relations between abstract objects in the 'third world'. Geometrical sentences describe the synthetic a priori properties of space. Frege therefore converges upon the Augustinian paradigm in this respect as well (although here too there are exceptions—as with all other philosophers, including Russell and the young Wittgenstein). But it is a cardinal error in philosophy to treat these different classes of sentences as having a uniform role, as differentiated only by what they describe—for many do not describe anything. How did Wittgenstein see matters? Simplifying somewhat, he held that the propositions of logic are senseless tautologies that say nothing, that the propositions of arithmetic form a body of rules for the transformation of empirical propositions about magnitudes or quantities, and so on, and that the propositions of geometry are norms of representation for the description of spatial relations and forms. Many first-person psychological propositions in the present tense are not descriptions at all, but expressions of what we think of as 'the inner', whereas third-person ones are descriptions. And so on. Where Frege by and large saw uniformity of function, Wittgenstein saw diversity; where Frege discerned common logical forms in regimented structures, Wittgenstein detected endless multiplicity manifest in use rather than form; where Frege identified fields for the advancement of science, Wittgenstein identified a multitude of

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cases for philosophical, therapeutic, treatment—for the dispelling of illusion. Frege, like so many of the greatest of philosophers, such as Plato, Descartes, or Spinoza, was a spinner of wonderful webs of illusion. Wittgenstein was the paradigmatic destroyer of philosophical illusion. Their philosophies can no more fruitfully be put to work together than Lachesis and Atropos. end p.241

9 Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: The Exaltation and Deposition Of Ostensive Definition Abstract: Wittgenstein's account of ostensive definition is examined. Its influence upon the reflections of members of the Vienna Circle is outlined, and their misunderstandings of Wittgenstein's account are clarified. Keywords: autonomy of language, defining samples, F. Waismann, logical empiricism, M. Schlick, ostensive definition, principle of verification, Vienna Circle

P. M. S Hacker

1. The Origins Of Logical Empiricism Viewed from afar, the pattern of evolution in philosophy resembles the superposition of a series of sinusoidal waves of different frequencies. There are characteristic oscillations between empiricism and rationalism, psychologism and Platonism, realism and idealism, and on top of these is a pendulum swing between periods of theory construction on a grand scale and times of critical demolition. After passing through two decades of predominantly piecemeal linguistic analysis in the 1950s and 1960s, the tradition of analytical philosophy entered into an era of theory building. This was rooted in widespread preconceptions that language is a complex integrated system and that speaking a language is a matter of operating a sophisticated calculus of whose rules speakers are for the most part unconscious. This faith was manifested in works. A logic of adverbs was sought by extending quantification theory to encompass events; demonstratives, proper names, and names of natural kinds were anatomized with the tools of possible world semantics; and analogies between the force of an utterance and modality were exploited to generate logical analyses of non-declarative inferences. The general hope was to explain the apparent mystery of the 'creativity of language'. Optimism nurtured, and was nurtured by, elaborate constructions in formal syntax, formal semantics, and formal pragmatics. Furthermore, philosophers of language discerned a convergence of aim and method with work in theoretical linguistics. They were inspired by a vision of philosophy as a coordinated advance on many fronts towards the completion of an all-embracing science of language. This idea was crystallized in characterizing analytical Co-authored with G. P. Baker.

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philosophy by its alleged adherence to the tenet that 'the philosophy of language

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is the foundation of the rest of the subject' 1 or that 'the theory of meaning. . .is the foundation of all philosophy'.2 The previous great effluence of this conception of philosophy was the flood of writings emanating from the Vienna Circle in the inter-war years. This movement too gave prominence to considerations about language. Sentences were segregated into the categories of empirical, analytic, and meaningless. The analytic ones, in particular truths of pure logic, were held to be true solely in virtue of linguistic conventions. The non-analytic ones were pruned down to empirical ones by applying the principle 'The sense of a sentence is the method of its verification'. The so-called linguistic turn in philosophy was clear in the reformulation of traditional problems. In epistemology, for example, the conflict between idealists and realists was transformed into a dispute about what kinds of sentences should be treated as protocol sentences, and it was often viewed as a quarrel about whether 'material object sentences' are (in principle) translatable into 'sense datum sentences'. The principle of verification seemed to constitute the key to the solution of perennial philosophical problems. Schlick declared his guiding maxim to be that 'It is the peculiar business of philosophy to ascertain the sense of assertions and questions'.3 Indirectly, philosophy reveals the foundation of knowledge, since 'the philosophical activity of determining meaning is . . .the Alpha and Omega of all scientific knowledge'.4 The Vienna Circle acknowledged Wittgenstein as a leading representative of the scientific world-conception and pinpointed the Tractatus as a primary source of inspiration. In Schlick's view, this book pushed philosophy forward to its decisive turning point, and he proclaimed it 'the most important work of philosophy of our day'.5 This conception had practical consequences. Members of the Circle conducted intensive discussions of the Tractatus during the academic years 1924/5 and 1925/6. Obscurities prompted Schlick to seek clarification from Wittgenstein himself, and the contact between them eventually expanded into meetings between Wittgenstein and a select group (Schlick, Waismann, Feigl, and Carnap) originally conceived to be devoted to 1

M. A. E. Dummett, Truth and Other Enigmas (London: Duckworth, 1978), 441.

M. A. E. Dummett, Frege: Philosophy of Language (London: Duckworth, 1973), 669. 2

M. Schlick, 'Positivismus und Realismus', repr. in Gesammelte Aufsatze 1926-1936 (Vienna: Gerold, 1938), 89. 4 M. Schlick, 'Die Wende der Philosophie', repr. in ibid. 36. 5 M. Schlick, 'Vorrede', in F. Waismann, Logik, Sprache, Philosophie (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1976), 20. 3

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clarifying the sybilline and programmatic pronouncements of the Tractatus in preparation for elaborating a definitive version of scientific philosophy. Early by-products of these meetings were what purported to be synopses of the main doctrines of the Tractatus constructed by Waismann under Wittgenstein's guidance.6 Schlick also launched a more ambitious project: Waismann was to write a book entitled Logik, Sprache, Philosophie in collaboration with Wittgenstein. This work would present a perspicuous account of the main doctrines of the Tractatus, thereby laying down the programme and methods for

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the whole series of publications by members of the Circle. Since Waismann's book would give 'the clearest expression to the spirit, programme, and aim' 7 of the Schriften zur wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung, Schlick thought it appropriate to advertise it as the first volume of this series, and other members of the Circle accorded great importance to the project. Their vision, they thought, rested on the fundamental ideas of the Tractatus. In some respects this historical claim seems correct: the idea that the clarification of philosophically problematic concepts turns on the unearthing of a calculus of meaning-rules governing the uses of symbols visibly stems from the Tractatus, and so too does the disproof of the possibility of synthetic a priori truth. But in other respects the historical claim is puzzling: the hallmark of logical positivism, the principle of verification, is absent from the Tractatus, and so too is any explicit doctrine relating concept-formation to experience—even if there is an implicit one. But these ideas have another independent source in classical empiricism. Indeed, the empiricist framework for the thought of the Vienna Circle was visible prior to any exposure to the Tractatus. Hence members of the Circle did not need to puzzle over the implicit doctrine of concept-formation in the Tractatus. Their empiricism was presaged by Schlick's Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre (1918), and it was inspired in Carnap by his reading Russell. In their Manifesto the Circle openly acknowledged their empiricist debts, especially to Mach, Boltzmann, Russell, and Einstein. Consequently, it would be best to describe logical positivism as the confluence of two streams of thought. Seen from the perspective of traditional empiricism, the work of the Circle is a modulation of old ideas into a new key. Concern with concepts, judgements, and inferences is transformed into the logical study of words, sentences, and arguments; moreover, the idea that the conditions of concept-formation hold the secret to the possibilities of making intelligible These included unpublished lectures and duplicated Thesen, one version of which is published as an appendix to WWK.

6

7

Schlick, 'Vorrede', 23.

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judgements is replaced by the Fregean doctrine (which was also adopted by the Tractatus, albeit with a different rationale) that sentences, not words, have priority in an account of the conditions for the meaningfulness of language. This metamorphosis of empiricism under the impact of Wittgenstein's Tractatus becomes conspicuous by comparing the central doctrines of Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre with Schlick's papers from the 1930s. That he himself held this conviction of an amalgamation of influences is apparent from his preference for the expression 'logical empiricism' as a label for the work of the Vienna Circle. It was in this solution of ideas concocted by mixing the accumulated residue of empiricism with the solvent of the Tractatus that the notion of ostensive definition first crystallized out. The very expression 'ostensive definition' (or 'hinweisende Definition') first attained prominence in publications by members of the Circle. It began life in the relative obscurity of W. E. Johnson's Logic (1921), and then, fostered by Wittgenstein's conversations and writings in the early 1930s, it made a dramatic entry onto the philosophical stage in the works of Carnap and Schlick, displacing a cast of obscure cousins (for example,

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'demonstration' (Aufweisung) and 'concrete definition'). This terminological change had philosophical consequences: it precipitated out of the empiricist tradition a whole body of doctrine about concept-formation and the foundations of language in experience, presenting familiar ideas in the novel guise of theses about ostensive definition. The product had immense charm. Traditional reflections about the relation of language to the world seemed to snap suddenly into sharp focus, and the demand that any cognitively significant sentence must be verifiable was revealed to be an immediate consequence of the principle that concepts must ultimately be grounded directly in experience. Doctrines about ostensive definition are a key to understanding the suspension of ideas in logical empiricism. Equally, reflection on ostensive definition provides a key to uncovering some of the most fundamental defects in logical positivism. By a peculiar irony of fate, as the seeds sown by the Tractatus came to fruition in the soil of the Vienna Circle, their sower was ploughing the field afresh. For Wittgenstein had embarked on a campaign to eradicate what he called 'the Augustinian picture of language', a central tenet of which he held to be that ostensive definition provides the foundation of language by correlating words with items in the world (BT 25). The distillation of his extensive criticism was contained in the Philosophical Investigations (1953). Here Wittgenstein addressed powerful objections to the conception of ostensive definition characteristic of logical positivism, though he also attacked precursors of this conception, especially end p.245

in Russell's writings and in the Tractatus. The confrontation of Wittgenstein's reflections on ostensive definition with the doctrines of the logical positivists simultaneously illuminates two important landmarks of twentieth-century philosophy. By a second irony of fate, this confrontation has never been properly staged. By 1953 logical positivism had been killed off, and analytic philosophers engaged its ideas only to the extent of undertaking ritual mutilations of the corpse. The central mythology surrounding ostensive definition never received careful scrutiny. Consequently, the renaissance of interest in constructing global theories of meaning in the 1970s and 1980s suffered from congenital weaknesses in the conceptions, misconceptions, or lack of any conception of ostensive definition. Though very different, the modern view is just as misguided as the logical positivists'. It treats ostensive definition as something altogether irrelevant to a proper investigation of meaning. This condemnation is supported partly by citation of Wittgenstein's remark 'an ostensive definition can be variously interpreted in every case' (PI §28), partly by dismissing ostensive definitions as only causally related to the possession by speakers of the ability to recognize to what items words are applicable. Banishing ostensive definitions from serious consideration in semantics is a prerequisite for exhibiting language as an axiomatized calculus of meaning-rules, since the hardware of samples and gestures is not a fit medium for the operation of formal transformation-rules. While the positivists assigned to ostensive definition the august role of constituting the foundation of language and a determinant of the limits of sense, contemporary philosophers treat it as something quite peripheral to the real business of revealing the roots of reference, the nature of sense, or the structure

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of thought and language. What Wittgenstein strove to show is that ostensive definition is one among a variety of forms of explanation of word-meanings, each of which is a reputable citizen in the Republic of Letters. Confrontation with his reasoning is capable of throwing as much light on philosophical reflections on language and linguistic meaning of the 1980s as it does on those of the 1930s.

2. The Role Of Ostensive Definition In Logical Empiricism The union of ideas in logical empiricism started from a highly selective picture of the Tractatus and then proceeded to distort this more and more in conformity with preconceptions drawn from empiricism. From end p.246

the outset the Vienna Circle purged the Tractatus of its metaphysics and dismissed its mysticism. Nor was any notice taken of its criticism of logicism. Four central themes usurped attention: (i) the doctrine that any meaningful proposition can be uniquely analysed into elementary propositions, (ii) the thesis of extensionality, (iii) the claim that every elementary proposition represents an elementary state of affairs, and (iv) the conception of philosophy as an activity of clarifying sense (rather than a body of doctrines). On this foundation was erected a schematic picture of language and its relation to reality. Every possible language is conceived on the model of a formal calculus. It is a complex system of expressions interrelated by definitions, formation- and transformation-rules, the exact delineation of which is the business of philosophical analysis. This network of symbols is given content by its projection onto reality—that is, by correlations of names with objects that bring elementary propositions into immediate contact with states of affairs. The 'interpretation' of unanalysable symbols (indefinables) transforms an empty calculus into a language capable of expressing thoughts. There is a meaning-endowing connection between language and reality. The Tractatus left the matter of correlating language and reality almost wholly opaque. We now know from Wittgenstein's Notebooks 1914-16 that he entertained the idea that names are correlated with their meanings—that is, with the simple objects that are allegedly their meanings—by putative mental acts of meaning by the name that ☞ object. But there is no reason to suppose that members of the Circle were aware of this (misguided) conception. The Tractatus unhelpfully remarked that the meanings of primitive signs can be explained by elucidations, which are propositions containing them; hence an elucidation can be understood only if the meanings of those signs are already understood (TLP 3.263). Again, with hindsight, it seems clear that what Wittgenstein had in mind was simply a version of Russell's observation in Principia *1 that the meanings of primitive signs are explained by means of descriptions intended to point out to the reader what is meant; but the explanations do not constitute definitions, because they really involve the ideas they explain. But it is not clear whether members of the Circle made this connection between Principia and the Tractatus. It is striking that in Philosophical Remarks §6 Wittgenstein discussed the error of failing to distinguish the use of 'This is A' as a description and as an ostensive definition, arguably with the Tractatus in mind. It is interesting that, in conversation with Waismann in 1932, he remarked that 'In the Tractatus logical

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analysis and ostensive definition were unclear to me. At that time I thought that there was "a connection between language and reality" ' ( WWK 210). end p.247

The Tractatus unclarity regarding the correlation of language with reality facilitated the Vienna Circle's marriage of Tractatus doctrines with empiricism. To the Circle the only admissible candidate for giving interpretations to unanalysable names were demonstrations of or confrontations with instances to which these names could be correctly applied—that is, what came to be called 'ostensive definition' was conceived to be indispensable to securing content to the symbols of any possible language. This fundamental idea carried a characteristic embroidery. Understanding an indefinable consists simply in the capacity to apply it correctly to presented entities—that is, in the ability to recognize an entity as the same as the entity to which the indefinable was previously applied in the giving of an ostensive definition. The capacity for recognition is therefore presupposed for the foundation of language and of knowledge alike. Ostensive definition and recognition are the twin pillars on which, according to the conception of the Vienna Circle, the Tractatus rested. On this slender basis arose a fresh version of the Tractatus. Its skeleton was, as it were, fleshed out with the doctrines of empiricism. The most notorious example was reading the principle of verification into the text of the Tractatus (especially into the remark 'To understand a proposition means to know what is the case if it is true' (TLP 4.024)). This interpretation is readily explicable, even if not excusable, since the principle of verification can be presented as a direct consequence of the thesis that language is grounded ultimately in ostensive definitions. The reasoning seemed straightforward. The elementary sentences that are the products of analysing any given sentence must be compared directly with reality to establish their truth or falsity. To understand an elementary sentence is simply to know how to compare it with reality—that is, to know its method of verification. But this boils down to knowing how to apply each constituent indefinable term—that is, to have the ability to recognize the relevant entities in the world. 'We conclude that there is no way of understanding any meaning without ultimate reference to ostensive definitions, and this means, in an obvious sense, reference to "experience" or "possibility of verification".' 8 The principle of verification seemed to ride into the Tractatus on the back of the interpretation that ostensive definition constitutes the intended method of projection correlating indefinables with simples. 'In so far as I am able [to interpret the sentence by passing from the words, with the aid of the definitions, to possible experiences] I am also able in the same way to state at least in principle the method of verification.' 9 8

M. Schlick, 'Meaning and Verification', repr. in Gesammelte Aufsätze, 341.

9

Schlick, 'Positivismus und Realismus', 90.

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The rational reconstruction of the Tractatus effected by the Vienna Circle was extensive. An early version, succinctly formulated, was Waismann's Thesen (c.1930). It is unclear to what extent this 'interpretation' was viewed as a deliberate modification, to what extent as an unfolding of what was implicit in the Tractatus. Both this unclarity and the direction of development of the

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interpretation owed much to Wittgenstein's fresh philosophical reflections from 1928 onwards, the substance of which was imparted to Schlick and Waismann. Some doctrines must have been regarded as express departures from the Tractatus, especially the retraction of the thesis of the logical independence of elementary propositions and the introduction of grammatical structures ('hypotheses') not considered to be truth-functions of elementary propositions. On the other hand, the pivotal role assigned to ostensive definitions and the principle of verification are presented as if they were integral parts of the fundamental ideas of the Tractatus. According to Waismann's summary, There are two ways of giving a sign meaning: 1. By means of ostension [Aufweisung]. . .2. By means of definition. . . . . .Ostension steps outside language and connects signs with reality. If we analyse the signs in a statement, replacing them by other signs in accordance with their definitions and replacing those others by yet other signs, etc., the verification-path becomes visible step by step. Definitions are signposts. They show the path leading to verification. . .a verification-path cannot lead to infinity. . . .but ultimately we must reach propositions that point to reality. . . If it were otherwise. . .there would be no connection between language and the world. The propositions that deal with reality immediately are called elementary propositions. (WWK 246 ff.) Schlick carried this empiricist reinterpretation of the Tractatus even farther. He connected the primacy of ostensive definition with Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy as an activity of clarifying meaning: 'The final giving of meaning always takes place. . .through deeds . . .which constitute philosophical activity.' 1 0 Furthermore he invoked the celebrated distinction between saying and showing as support for the foundational role assigned to ostensive definition: after analysis has been carried as far as possible, 'the meaning of a word must in the end be shown, it must be given. . .by an act of indication, of pointing'.1 1 Schlick, 'Die Wende der Philosophie', 36; cf. 'Form and Content: An Introduction to Philosophical Thinking', repr. in Gesammelte Aufsätze, 181.

10

11

Schlick, 'Positivismus und Realismus', 90.

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Considerable effort and ingenuity were devoted to harnessing the Tractatus to the wagon laden with the doctrines of logical empiricism. But the fact that the reinterpretation of the Tractatus by the Vienna Circle involves fundamental distortions of Wittgenstein's ideas does not detract from its importance. For it sets the stage for considering the conception of ostensive definition characteristic of logical empiricism. The Vienna Circle shared a simple picture of the structure of language and its relation to reality. Language is conceived on the model of a formal calculus together with an interpretation. Explanations of word-meaning fall into two mutually exclusive types: intralinguistic verbal definitions or analyses and extralinguistic ostensive definitions of the indefinables. Ostensive definitions carry the entire burden of the interpretation of the calculus of language, since

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they alone mediate between the network of symbols and the reality described by language. They are essential in order to connect language with reality. At first sight this proto-picture seems innocuous; it gives the impression of leaving no scope for serious criticism. But, like all philosophical pictures, it provides the sinopia upon which vast frescos of weird and unfamiliar objects come to be painted. The Vienna Circle filled in numerous important theses about ostensive definition, some quite explicit in their writings, others implicit but nonetheless patent and influential in their reflections.

(A) General Theses (1) Language has a hierarchical structure, and every expression occupies a unique position within that structure. The position of a sentence is determined by its analysis into a truth-function of elementary propositions. The position of a word is determined by its reduction to indefinables. In both cases, the ultimate analysis of any expression is unique. (2) Ostensive definitions give explanations of indefinables or primitive signs. They are the termini of explanations of word-meanings, and they alone suffice to bestow content on the elementary propositions yielded by full analyses of sentences (WWK 246 ff., 253). (3) Every word has a unique explanation, either verbal or ostensive. If its meaning can be analysed, then it must be explained by giving an analytic definition in terms of 'characteristic marks' (analysis). Hence any word can be correctly explained by an ostensive definition only if its meaning cannot be analysed (WWK 250). No expression can legitimately be explained both verbally and ostensively. (4) Philosophy pursues the goal of clarifying the senses of sentences by a combination of analysis and ostensive definition. Reduction to end p.250

elementary propositions dissolves puzzles generated by unclarities about the meanings of utterances, in particular revealing the meaninglessness of metaphysical assertions by displaying their unverifiability.

(B) Logical Aspects Of Ostensive Definitions (1) Ostensive definitions are an essential feature in any possible language. 'There is no way of understanding any meaning without ultimate reference to ostensive definitions.' 1 2 In other words, 'the ostensive steps that connect a purely formal array of signs (for example, words) with something outside of language' are a precondition for any sign or any combination of signs to have 'factual meaning'.1 3 It seems evident that 'our ordinary verbal language must be supplemented by pointing to objects and presenting them in order to make our words and sentences a useful means of communication'.1 4 In short, ostensive definitions are the foundation of language. 'A sentence is connected with reality only if it is

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possible to analyse it far enough to obtain its primitive signs; only in that case does it have sense' (WWK 253). (2) To constitute the (complete) foundations of language, ostensive definitions must meet stringent requirements. Every ostensive definition must be unambiguous (or at least capable of being formulated altogether unambiguously), since otherwise even the fully interpreted calculus of language might have no determinate content. Moreover, all explanation 'must end by some demonstration, some activity' 1 5 —that is, 'in actual pointings, in exhibiting what is meant';1 6 ostensive definitions must therefore be final. They must not stand in need of further explanations, since otherwise the method of ostensive definition would not constitute something 'which alone, in the last analysis, relates our concepts to the world'.1 7 Consequently, ostensive definitions must, in some mysterious way, be immune to misinterpretation, for there is, as it were, no room behind them to insert further explanations to remove any misunderstanding of the connection between language and the world. They make no presuppositions; 'only these acts are no longer capable of, or in need of, further explanation'.1 8 12

Schlick, 'Meaning and Verification', 341.

H. Feigl, 'Logical Empiricism', in H. Feigl and W. Sellars (eds.), Readings in Philosophical Analysis (New York: Appleton-Century-Croft, 1949), 9. 1 4 Schlick, 'Form and Content', 194. 1 5 M. Schlick, 'The Future of Philosophy', repr. in Gesammelte Aufsätze , 129. 1 6 Schlick, 'Die Wende der Philosophie', 36. 1 7 M. Schlick, 'Über die Beziehung zwischen den psychologischen und den physikalischen Begriffen', repr. in Gesammelte Aufsätze, 275. 1 8 Schlick, 'Die Wende der Philosophie', 36. 13

end p.251

In ostensive definitions symbols and elements of reality seem to be brought into direct contact with each other, and this picture seems to guarantee their being unequivocal, final, and infallible (notwithstanding empirical data about failures to understand ostensively defined expressions). (3) An ostensive definition correlates a word with an entity. The essence of a word's designating, representing, or meaning something is coordination or correspondence, and a criterion for synonymy is whether two expression are thus correlated with the same object. Ostensive definitions effect immediate correlations with 'what is actually observed'.1 9 (How it establishes a non-transient meaning for a word is left rather mysterious. Presumably the speaker must remember the object with which the word was correlated, and perhaps be able to call up a mental image of it.) (4) The meaning of any indefinable is the entity for which it stands. Ostensive definition works in virtue of the fact that the meaning of the definiendum is shown or pointed out. Explanation here takes the form of 'exhibiting what is meant'; here 'the meaning of a word [is] shown' or 'the meaning. . .[is] given by direct acquaintance'.2 0

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(5) Because it is final and infallible and because it correlates a word directly with its meaning, an ostensive definition must settle all aspects of the correct use of an indefinable expression. If, for example, colour words such as 'green', 'yellow', and 'red' are indefinables, then ostensive definitions must alone determine the whole 'network of internal relations' which constitute colour-space, and this in turn must be ' shown forth. . .in the various possibilities of using the word "green" ["yellow", "red", etc.]'.2 1 The Vienna Circle did not explain how this is possible (the physics, as it were, of what Wittgenstein later called 'meaning-bodies'). They implicitly borrowed from the Tractatus a strong thesis of isomorphism between fully analysed language and reality: the combinatorial possibilities of expressions mirror the languageindependent combinatorial possibilities of the objects that are themselves the meanings of the indefinables. According to their (mis)conception of the Tractatus, the logical syntax of language flows from the nature of the entities exhibited in ostensive definitions.2 2 A. J. Ayer, The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge (London: Macmillan, 1969), 88. 19

20

Schlick, Gesammelte Aufsätze, 36, 90, 194.

21

Ibid. 162.

This conception generates a serious tension with the logical positivists' principle that all necessary truths are analytic. It may have seemed intelligible to hold that the sentence 'Nothing is simultaneously red and green all over' expresses a natural necessity or synthetic incompatibility of colours (cf. L. Wittgenstein, 'Some Remarks on Logical Form', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , supplementary volume 9 (1929), 7 ff., and W. Kneale, Probability and Induction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949), 34 ff.). Alternatively, it may have seemed intelligible to maintain that it expressed an analytic truth in virtue of the possibility of giving an analysis of the words 'red' and 'green' (cf. TLP 6.3751). But it is doubtful whether there was any via media available to the logical positivists between these two positions. They obviously wished to hold that ostensive definitions could give rise to analytic statements, e.g. that the principle of the mutual exclusion of red and green is 'true by ostensive definition' ( A. Pap, 'Indubitable Existential Statements', Mind, 55 (1946), and Semantics and Necessary Truth (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958), 249 ff.). Though the spirit of this proposal can be understood, the suggestion itself is literally unintelligible (cf. D. F. Pears, 'Incompatibilities of Colours', in A. Flew (ed.), Logic and Language, Second Series (Oxford: Blackwell, 1961), 118). 22

end p.252

(C) Normativity Ostensive definitions are rules. Like verbal explanations, they have an important role in teaching and learning language, and they are precepts that can be followed or broken and that may be cited to justify or criticize uses of words. To the logical positivists this seemed platitudinous. Ostensive definitions obviously constituted rules for the correct use of signs.2 3 This idea should have seemed puzzling. How does an ostensive definition 'lay

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down a rule' for the use of a word? How does it have a place among 'rules of the application of language'?2 4 The model for an application-rule is an analytic definition—that is, a specification of conditions necessary and sufficient for the applicability of the definiendum. And an ostensive definition obviously does not explicitly take the form of an analytic definition. How then does it count as an application-rule? The Vienna Circle was inclined to draw on the traditional empiricist doctrines of concept-formation by abstraction. Thus, 'if I teach someone the meaning of. . ."elephant" by pointing to a particular animal, the information he receives is that an elephant is an animal of the same kind as that which he is observing'.2 5 In an ostensive definition a correct application of the definiendum is made, and from this act the learner is to carry away the general rule (not explicitly formulated) that anything similar to the exemplar (in relevant respects and to a sufficient degree) may have the definiendum correctly applied to it. An application-rule is held to lurk behind the statement made in giving an ostensive explanation. This conception has four important corollaries. (i) Ostensive definitions are actual applications of the definienda. They 'put the words to actual use';2 6 they explain how words are to be used 'by actually 23

Schlick, 'Form and Content', 180 ff., and 'Meaning and Verification', 340.

24

Schlick, 'Form and Content', 352.

25

Ayer, The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge, 88.

26

Schlick, 'Meaning and Verification', 340.

end p.253

applying them in definite situations'.2 7 The sentences uttered in giving ostensive definitions have the role of descriptions.2 8 (ii) Consequently, the rule established by an ostensive definition is something different from what is said by someone who gives such a definition. This rule is not given, but inferred. (iii) A single ostensive definition cannot be expected to make clear in what respects and to what degree objects must resemble the paradigm in order to merit application of the definiendum. From a logical point of view, a series of ostensions is always necessary. 'Ostension really consists in. . .pointing to various facts and. . .learning what they have in common.' 2 9 (And perhaps too it should include pointing to entities to which the definiendum is not applicable.) (iv) Ostensive definition presupposes the possibility of isolating language-independent common properties among sets of things. To understand a concept-word, whether defined analytically or ostensively, is to grasp a property common to all and only those things to which it is applicable.

(D) Psychological Theses (1) The logical self-sufficiency of ostensive definitions suggests the doctrine that it alone provides the foundations of linguistic competence. This corollary was widely accepted. Ostensive definition does not presuppose any prior mastery of language; it is 'the only explanation which can work without any previous knowledge'.3 0 Hence it is the ultimate basis of language-acquisition.

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(2) Learning the meaning of a word through an ostensive definition consists in making a mental association between a symbol and what it signifies. The account of the normativity of ostensive definitions imposes an abstractionist gloss on this thesis. Consequently, coming to understand through ostension is a matter of apprehending the characteristic common to a set of entities to which a definiendum is applied in a succession of acts of ostension. 27

Schlick, 'Form and Content', 180.

2 8 A striking corollary is a tendency towards a dramatic widening of the notion of ostensive definition. Whenever somebody learns what a word means from hearing it used in an utterance, if the utterance cannot be classified as an analytical definition, it must, apparently be an ostensive explanation. Any application of a word may play this role, and therefore what are standardly offered as paradigms of ostensive definitions (namely, utterances of the form 'This ☞ is a. . . ' or 'This ☞ is. . . ') are singled out only by an inessential characteristic (cf. J. Hospers, An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956), 58 ff.). On this view the fundamental distinction between explanations and descriptions or statements disappears altogether from sight.

WWK 246; cf. Hospers, An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis, 58. 3 0 Schlick, 'Meaning and Verification', 341 (cf. Ayer, The Foundations of Empirical Knowlege , 94). 29

end p.254

(3) Knowing the meaning of an indefinable consists in a mental association between a symbol and an object. (As noted above, since what is presented in ostension is typically neither constantly available nor permanent, there is an apparent problem in accounting for the persistence of an association with a transient entity, and this generates pressure to conceive of it as something mental—for example, an image.) (4) Applying an indefinable involves a mental act of recognition 'In order to give [the name "blue"] to the colour I am seeing I have to recognize the colour as that particular one I was taught to call "blue". This involves an act of comparison, or association.' 3 1 Indeed, if the application-rule for an indefinable is formulated in terms of similarity with certain paradigms, then the recognition of an instance to which the term is applicable seems to decompose into an act of remembering something (the paradigms) and an act of comparing a given object with another.3 2 (Hence all judgements seem to rest on comparisons—and to be vulnerable to scepticism about the reliability of memory.) Precisely because the foundation of language is ostensive definition, the foundation of all empirical knowledge is recognition.3 3 (5) Since understanding indefinables must give one the capacity to apply them correctly, and since this capacity consists in the ability to recognize objects, the foundation of understanding must be acquaintance with these objects (the given). Recognition presupposes prior acquaintance. 'The meaning [of indefinables] must be given by direct acquaintance: one can learn the meaning of the words "joy" or "green" only by being joyful or by seeing green.' 3 4 This commitment to the pivotal importance of

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acquaintance is affirmed in the traditional empiricist thesis that a blind person can have no understanding of colour words.3 5 'The meaning of a word must in the end be shown, it must be given. This is done by an act of indication, of pointing; and what is pointed at must be given, otherwise I cannot be referred to it.' 3 6 Agreement on this matter was matched in the Vienna Circle by chronic inability to agree on the nature of the given. Some held a physicalist conception, while others advanced the doctrine that what is given are subjective experiences. Hence there were endless debates about the character of the 'protocol sentences' in which verification was thought to terminate. 31

Schlick, 'Form and Content', 195.

Ibid. 179, 189. These two ingredients of recognition are transparent in Carnap's term 'Ähnlichkeitserinnerung' ( R. Carnap, Der Logische Aufbau der Welt (Hamburg: Meiner, 1961), §§78, 106). 32

M. Schlick, Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre (Vienna: Springer, 1925), §§2 ff., and 'Form and Content', 186.

33

34

Ibid. 194.

35

Schlick, 'The Future of Philosophy', 129.

36

Schlick, 'Positivismus und Realismus', 90.

end p.255

So, as explanations of the indefinables yielded by logical analysis, ostensive definitions are the foundations of language. As the underpinning of languageacquisition and of acts of recognition, they are the foundations of understanding. And, as what alone gives content to the elementary propositions upon which all empirical knowledge rests, they indirectly provide the foundations of knowledge. In little more than a decade from its christening, ostensive definition had become the brightest star in the philosophical firmament.

3. A Survey Of Wittgenstein's Remarks On Ostensive Definition Although Wittgenstein's initial resumption of philosophical activity took the form of modifying and extending the doctrines of the Tractatus, in the early 1930s his work evolved into the presentation of fundamental criticisms and culminated in a decisive repudiation of its whole framework of thinking. He rejected the contention that the business of philosophy is logical analysis; he attacked the conception of language as a calculus together with an interpretation, and the conception that speaking a language consists in operating a calculus of hidden rules. He repudiated the idea that there is a meaning-endowing connection between language and reality in the sense in which he had espoused this thought in the Tractatus. It was an error to suppose that language has foundations in an array of indefinables whose meanings are simple objects given in experience. In addition, he warred against the dogma that knowledge has foundations, in particular undermining the empiricist conception that such foundations lie in immediate experience. This campaign of argument and conceptual clarification amounted to a sweeping condemnation of a large number of the central doctrines

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of logical empiricism. Wittgenstein's critical elucidations of the concept of ostensive definition must be viewed against the background of this radical shift in his general conception of language and knowledge. Otherwise we are liable to miss the point of a remark and then to use it to impute to him an opinion altogether at odds with his thought. Distortion of his account is conspicuous in a common interpretation given to his most familiar critical observation about ostensive definition: 'an ostensive definition can be variously interpreted in every case.' This remark, together with his comments about the importance of appropriate stage-setting, is often taken to be his proof that ostensive definition is a peculiarly and ineradicably defective form of end p.256

explanation of word-meaning, a form to be contrasted unfavourably with analytic definition. This is a misinterpretation. Ostensive definitions have an obvious and legitimate place in the practice of explaining what words mean. Wittgenstein indeed emphasized that they have a wider competence than commonly acknowledged by philosophers. One can ostensively define not only proper names and colour words, but also numerals and names of points of the compass (PG 61). Moreover, the fact that a word can be given an analytic definition does not exclude the possibility of correctly explaining it by ostension. His point is clearly not that ostensive definitions are worthless; rather he objects to the logical empiricists' conception that they are uniquely privileged, that they alone among explanations of word-meaning are unambiguous, final, and even immune to misinterpretation. Ostensive definition is reduced to the ranks, not cashiered. Any explanation can be misinterpreted, presupposes stage-setting, and presumes a degree of linguistic mastery. We do not generally misinterpret ostensive definitions, and we typically are in possession of the necessary skills and stage props that we need for understanding them. An ostensive definition does function as a standard for correctness of word-applications, and giving it constitutes a criterion for understanding the word defined (PG 83). The possibility of misinterpreting an ostensive definition is only worth calling to the attention of someone who needs to be reminded of something familiar that he has lost sight of under the influence of a misguided picture of language. Wittgenstein made a series of related points against the sublimation of ostensive definition characteristic of logical empiricism. The meaning of a word is not what is pointed at in giving an ostensive definition of this word; for example, the meaning of a proper name is not its bearer (PG 63-4). Nor does knowing the meaning of an ostensively defined word consist in acquaintance with the indicated 'object', for the ability to apply this word correctly must be merely contingently (externally) related to a speaker's prior experience. The essence of word-meaning is not the correlation of words with things by ostension. Rather 'the use of the word in practice is its meaning' (BB 65). Hence the crucial question is to explain what it means to say that ' in the technique of using the language' an object is correlated with a word (PI §51). An ostensive definition must, as it were, be something dynamic, not static. The conception that understanding an ostensively defined word consists in some uniform mental connection of the word with a thing obscures the variability of the ways that understanding is manifested in behaviour (PG 80). Moreover, it distracts

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attention from the important fact that a single connection can justify divergent patterns of behaviour; for example, that the explanation 'That is the note c' might be interpreted as a end p.257

definition of the proper name of a particular token-tone or as an explanation of an expression for a type-tone or even of different type-tones (separated by intervals of an octave). The normative trajectory of a correlation is not an intrinsic feature of this correlation. Similarly the criteria of understanding a word cannot simply be read off from an ostensive definition coordinating the word with something. These points expose a further misconception typical of logical empiricism. An ostensive definition in no way lays down the complete set of rules for the correct use of the defined expression. The rule that nothing can be red and green all over at the same time (that is, the rule that licenses the inference from the proposition that A is red all over to the proposition that it is not green all over) does not follow from the ostensive definitions of 'red' and 'green'. Here we stand on the verge of a mythology of symbolism, as if the whole grammar of a word flowed from a meaning-body somehow correlated with it by an ostensive definition (PG 53 ff.). Rather one might say that 'this ☞ is red' and 'that ☞ is green' need further supplementation by the rule that this ☞ is not—that is, does not count as—the same colour as that ☞. So, if something is this ☞ colour (that is, red) all over, it is not also that ☞ colour (that is, green) all over. Logical empiricists were misguided so to depict ostensive definition that it ruled out the possibility that further independent explanations might be required to secure an understanding of the definiendum. This cataloguing of detailed misconceptions is not a very effective prophylactic against succumbing again to the enchantment of the picture of language underlying the doctrines of logical empiricism. A counter-picture seems necessary to complete the cure, an overview of the role of ostensive definition in the use of symbols. Wittgenstein sketched such a positive account. The key to his thought here is the clarification of the notions of explanation, of rules, and of rule-following. His remarks about explanation explore the ramifications of three apparent truisms: (1) 'the meaning of a word is what the explanation of its meaning explains'; (2) 'the explanation of meaning explains the use of the word'; and (3) 'meaning. . .is embodied in the explanation of meaning' (PG 59-60). Meaning is the content of explanation and the correlate of understanding. Wittgenstein extracted five linked corollaries. First, the meaning of an expression cannot transcend the explanations of its meaning, which are recognized in our actual practice of word-explanation. Its meaning is what accepted explanations explain, not something that they uniformly fail to express but merely hint at. Secondly, explanations do not await discovery or invention, rather description and synopsis. Thirdly, like meaning, understanding cannot end p.258

transcend the practice of explanation of linguistic expressions. Fourthly, understanding is not ineffable. What is understood can be clearly explained; we

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do not know more about meanings of expressions than we can say. Language contains no inexplicable expressions or ineffable rules for their use. Fifthly, understanding an expression is akin to an ability, an ability manifested alike in correct use, appropriate reaction to use, and correct explanations of how to use the expression. Use, reaction, and explanation are multiple criteria for understanding. These observations about explanation have immediate application in the clarification of ostensive definition, since ostensive definitions are obvious and acknowledged explanations of word-meaning. The idea that every explanation must be either an analytic definition or an ostensive definition is plainly absurd. Explanations may take many different forms, including contextual paraphrase, contrastive paraphrase, explanation by a series of examples together with a similarity-rider, explanation by gesture or exemplification, and so on. Similarly, the assumption of logical empiricism that the legitimacy of analysis excludes the possibility of ostensive definition (and vice versa) is also unjustifiable—our actual practice of explanation often countenances both forms for a single expression. In addition, characterizing certain expressions as 'indefinables' is deeply suspect (BT 256 ff.). This rests on an artificial and too restricted conception of what constitutes a definition (parallel to the distorted conception of a description that fosters the illusion that the aroma of coffee is indescribable (PI §610)). In suggesting that ostensively defined terms are inexplicable, it nourishes the idea that ostensive definitions lie at the limits of what can be said and mysteriously accomplish a correlation of words with reality that is beyond the powers of merely 'verbal' definition. It is mistaken to suppose that ostensive definition is especially privileged, essential, or fundamental to language. Our practices of explanation include explanations of various forms, and they supply no intrinsic grounds for distinguishing the essential from the inessential among them. Finally, the conception that an ostensive definition contains a tacit application-rule based on similarity to a paradigm mistakenly divorces the real form of an explanation from its apparent form. The ostensive definition of an adjective 'F' (for example, 'This ☞ is round') does not state that any object resembling the ostended object to a sufficient degree is also F. For judgements of shape, colour, and so on are not essentially comparative. The actual rule is exactly what is formulated, not something else to be inferred somehow from the formulation 'This ☞ is F'. Hence anything that is this ☞ shape may be said to be round. Wittgenstein emphasized and clarified the normative role of ostensive end p.259

definitions. Like other explanations of meaning, they are rules for the use of expressions; they belong to the grammar of language. They constitute standards for judging the correctness of applications of symbols (BB 12, 90; PG 88). Though widely conceded by philosophers, this aspect of ostensive definitions is easily distorted or even lost sight of altogether. The standard form of ostensive definition—namely, 'This is F'—is a sentence-form also used for applying the expression 'F' in the description or identification of an object. Hence it is easy to conflate an ostensive definition with an application of the definiendum (PR 57). But an ostensive definition cannot simultaneously be a description, just as the juxtaposition of a metre stick with the edge of a table cannot simultaneously constitute a measurement of the table edge and a calibration of the ruler.

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Ostensive definition 'is not an application of language, but. . .remains at the level of generality preparatory to any application'. It does not secure a connection between language and reality by giving an authoritative example of correct application (PG 88). Rather it correlates a word with a sample (PG 91). Then, provided samples are allocated to grammar, it is clear that ostensive definition, like verbal definition, is a movement within grammar, a rule for translating from word-language into gesture-language (and vice versa) (PG 88). So ostensive definitions are not the point of 'exit' from language—the point at which language is 'hooked' onto reality. In this sense, there is no exit from language. Rather, language remains self-contained and autonomous. Unless ostensive definitions are sharply distinguished from applications, their normativity can be salvaged only by some compensating fictions. Two are popular and often combined, as in logical empiricism. The first is to identify ostensive definitions as establishing general application-rules framed in terms of similarity to a paradigm. The second is to introduce mental images and to relate the application of the definiendum to mental acts of comparing images with perceived objects. Both fictions are rendered redundant if ostensive definitions are not counted among applications of words. How can an ostensive definition clearly be exhibited to be the explicit formulation of a rule? Wittgenstein's answer has the charm of extreme simplicity and transparency. An ostensive definition is a substitution-rule. It licenses the substitution of a demonstrative, together with a gesture indicating a sample, for the defined expression. What stands on the same level as the definendum is a complex symbol consisting of the demonstrative, the gesture, and the sample (BB 109). The ostensive definition thus authorizes the replacement of a word by a complex and partly concrete symbol (PG 88, 90-1, 202). Hence, for example, instead of saying 'The cushion is Brunswick green' one may point at a sample end p.260

of Brunswick green and say 'The cushion is this ☞ colour'. This idea has great power. By treating ostensive definitions as substitution-rules, it reveals an important point of resemblance between them and verbal definitions. Moreover, it accounts directly for the use of ostensively defined terms in any sentential context (even in non-declarative sentences and in direct statements or ascriptions of belief, and so on). Finally, it supports the disinclination towards accepting that ostensive definitions are incomplete expressions of word-meaning that always need supplementation by further explanations (for example, rules for the mutual of exclusion of parallel determinates under a determinable). For internal relations may sometimes be displayed by the use of samples simultaneously in the explanation of more than one expression (e.g. a sample of black and one for white may be used together in an ostensive definition of the relation-expression 'is darker than' (RFM 75-6f)). In this way, a host of insights sallies forth from the conception of ostensive definitions as substitution-rules. A major component in Wittgenstein's clarification of the concept of a rule is his investigation of the notion of following a rule. Three points bear on current concerns. First, following a rule must be distinguished from mere conformity with a rule. To follow a particular rule is to perform an act that intentionally accords with, and hence presupposes knowledge of, this rule. Unbeknownst to

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him, somebody may conform with a rule, but there is no such thing as his following a rule of which he is ignorant. Secondly, if somebody follows a particular rule, this rule must somehow 'enter into' his actions. Rules do not 'act at a distance', cannot exert normative fields of force independently of agents cleaving to them. In elementary cases of rule-following, a rule is literally involved in the act or activity of following it, as when a novice in chess actually refers to a diagram of the movement of a bishop before moving his bishop. But it is mistaken to generalize such cases into the thesis that some formulation of a rule must constitute an explicit element in an agent's deliberations if his action is to be described as an instance of following this rule. In the more typical case of normative behaviour, rules 'enter into actions' not by way of explicit citation or consultation, but by way of justification. The rule with which the agent conforms provides a reason, or part of a reason, for the agent's act. Hence, when asked to explain or justify his act, he will typically invoke the rule. For it is his cleaving to the rule that gives his act its meaning or character. Thirdly, a rule resembles an instrument. To take a sentence as the formulation of a rule and then to follow this rule is to react in a distinctive range of ways to the utterance of this sentence and to use it for a distinctive range of purposes (for example, in explaining, end p.261

justifying, or criticizing performances). The concept of a rule is internally related to the concept of rule-following. These remarks about rule-following have immediate application to the clarification of the normativity of ostensive definitions. An explanation such as 'This ☞ is red' is often used in the way characteristic of rule-formulations. One might use it to raise an objection: 'You said that your notebook is red, but this ☞ colour is red, and your notebook is not this ☞ colour.' Similarly, a speaker may cite an ostensive definition to justify his own statement and thereby manifest that he is following the rule that this explanation formulates. The idea that some intervening mental mechanism (a process of recognition) is necessary to allow an ostensive definition to enter into subsequent applications of a word rests in part on the mistaken belief that an ostensive definition is an application of the definiendum, and in part on the misconception that all cases of following a particular rule must have something (mental) in common. But the connection between explanation and application is to be found not in some hypothetical mental mechanism, but in the practice of explaining words and evaluating the correctness of their uses. A rule must enter into rule-following behaviour not as a cause, but as a reason, and consequently no interpolation of a hypothetical psychological process could eliminate the appearance that a rule affected behaviour by acting at a distance. The nexus between rules and rule-following behaviour is normative. This has important implications for considering whether an ostensive definition should be construed as an incomplete explanation of the meaning of a word. This issue cannot be settled by reference to intrinsic features of the rule (or its formulation), still less by whether a person who aped a computer would be able to settle every question of the application of the defined word solely by 'derivations' from the ostensive definition. Rather, the question depends on how speakers typically react to such an explanation, whether they are left in the lurch with regard to certain ranges of application of the word. No such issue can be decided a priori. Whether an ostensive definition is unequivocal

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or ambiguous, whether it is complete or incomplete, must be determined separately for each particular case, and the answer will turn on delineating patterns of normative behaviour among competent speakers of a language. The purpose of Wittgenstein's remarks about ostensive definition is to reorient the point of view of philosophers who conduct these reflections on language within the framework of the Augustinian picture. The misconceptions that he strove to expose were particularly conspicuous in the account of ostensive definition given by the logical empiricists. He stressed that ostensive definitions are rules; that these rules are actually end p.262

followed by speakers; that they are akin to verbal definitions; and that they correlate words with samples that belong to the method of representation. Most philosophers distort or neglect these matters. In particular they are under the spell of the notion that ostensive definitions are completely unlike verbal analyses because they alone connect language with reality. But, in the required sense, there is no such thing as a connection between language and reality. Ostensive definitions are not applications of words to objects, revealing points where we break out of symbolism into the world. Rather, they are rules incorporating objects into systems of signs by employing these things as samples. Ostensive definitions explain words within language. This prophylaxis against endemic philosophical confusion must not be misinterpreted. It is not a denial that expressions may refer to extralinguistic entities. Nor is it a defence of any form of idealism, an advocacy of some form of scepticism concerning knowledge of an objective domain. Rather it expresses a conception of meaning that Wittgenstein called the 'autonomy of grammar'. His analysis of ostensive definition was a decisive step in the emergence of this cluster of ideas. It helped him to see that there is no point at which explanations of a word must come to an end, although every chain of explanations terminates somewhere. Moreover, he came to realize that grammar is not accountable to reality, that there is no such thing as validating rules for the correct use of words, either effably or ineffably, by reference to the 'metaphysical forms' of objects correlated with them in ostensive definitions. The misconceptions of ostensive definition rife among logical empiricists were corollaries of their failure to grasp the autonomy of grammar. Wittgenstein's investigations support the verdict that the Vienna Circle expended great effort and ingenuity in cutting a sophisticated veneer and using it to cover a warped carcase.

4. Ignoratio Elenchi The bulk of Wittgenstein's reflections on ostensive definition were made known directly to Waismann and Schlick, and significant echoes can be detected in the work of other members of the Vienna Circle. Yet it is remarkable how little impact his ideas had on the basic semantic doctrines of logical empiricism. The picture of language as a calculus together with an interpretation provided by ostensive definitions correlating signs with items in the world soldiered on completely unscathed. Wittgenstein's central criticisms were ignored, or perhaps resisted, and certainly end p.263

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frequently misunderstood, while peripheral remarks were distorted in various ways and marshalled in support of the picture that he assailed. Here is an object lesson in failure to assimilate alien philosophical ideas. Misrepresentations of Wittgenstein's conception of ostensive definition are conspicuous and bizarre. One set of examples derives from his explanation of the mutual exclusion of parallel determinates. He modified the doctrine of the independence of atomic propositions in the Tractatus by introducing the idea of systems of propositions (Satzsysteme), and he characterized such a system by claiming that the truth of any one proposition is incompatible with the truth of any other (WWK 64). Logical empiricists generally accepted this idea as part of the modified legacy of the Tractatus. Their difficulty was to reconcile it with their presumption that an ostensive definition gives a complete account of the meaning of an indefinable, since the interrelations among the propositions within a particular system seem to rest on independent rules of grammar. Schlick relieved the pressure by embracing the doctrine of the incommunicability of content. Only the grammatical rules that express internal relations among colours, sounds, and so on fix the roles of unanalysable words in communication;3 7 ostensive definitions merely correlate indefinables with private experiences (contents), which cannot be communicated at all. In his dictations to Waismann, Wittgenstein exposed the misconceptions embodied in this by-product of his thoughts (PLP 311 ff.). The most blatant misrepresentation stemmed from the remark that ostensive definitions do not connect language with reality but rather constitute explanations within language. Schlick subscribed officially to Wittgenstein's suggestion that ostensive definitions be interpreted as rules for translating word-language into gesture-language,3 8 but he failed to reconcile this with his continued insistence that they involve the application of the defined expression to objects given in experience. Carnap seized differently on Wittgenstein's idea, employing it to confirm his earlier principle (formulated in Der Logische Aufbau der Welt) that ostensive definitions can be eliminated in favour of definite descriptions. He now argued that the ostensive definition of a sortal noun 'F' states the intralinguistic equivalence 'x is an F = def. x is an object of the same kind as the object in such-and-such a position in space-time'.3 9 Even Waismann eventually fell into this error,4 0 though he had earlier had a more accurate conception of Wittgenstein's intended meaning. 37

Schlick, 'Form and Content', 153 ff.

38

Ibid. 194; cf. 172 ff.

R. Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1937), 80.

39

40

F. Waismann, How I See Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1968), 151 ff.

end p.264

The distortion of peripheral ideas is a symptom of the deep-rooted antipathy of the logical empiricists to Wittgenstein's clarification of the normativity of ostensive definition. Without abandoning the whole framework of their thought about language, they could not acknowledge affinities between ostensive and verbal explanations, nor could they accept the suggestion that ostensive definitions are substitution-rules concerning partly non-verbal symbols. No

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wonder they would and could not discern the strengths of Wittgenstein's proposals. Two grounds of objection must have seemed especially decisive to them. First, a substitution-rule, being a double-edged tool, cannot provide a firm anchor for language in the world. Although an ostensive definition so conceived might be used to translate a wholly verbal language into a partly concrete one, it might be put into reverse gear and employed to eliminate gestures and samples, thereby apparently severing all direct connections between words and things. Secondly, Wittgenstein's conception seems impossible to dovetail with the preconception that language is akin to a calculus. Partly concrete rules—that is, rules in whose formulation concrete symbols occur—simply do not fit into a calculus of meaning-rules. Such a rule would stand aloof from anything that would be counted as a calculation or proof. Logical empiricists failed to recognize as correct Wittgenstein's description of the normative role of ostensive definitions. Their failure to attain a proper understanding is not merely of antiquarian interest. It is not a closed chapter in the history of ideas. Fundamental misconceptions about ostensive definition still abound. In part this is the outcome of the fact that the demise of logical empiricism as a major force in philosophy was brought about independently of carrying through a successful indictment of the doctrines about ostensive definition. In part, however, endemic errors are fed by fresh currents of thought, especially behaviourism and a fascination with computer models of intellectual abilities. The result is a contemporary acceptance of much the same picture of 'how language works' that held logical empiricists in thrall. Modern theorists of meaning consider language to be a calculus of hidden meaning-rules that, unbeknownst to themselves, speakers operate in using words for the purpose of communication. These rules are obviously conceived as having no direct relation to the actual practice of explaining word-meanings; the axioms that give the meanings of words in a theory of meaning typically transcend what is given in everyday explanations of meanings of words. Once again, philosophers take their goal to be analysis. A semantic theory must reveal the deep structure that must be shared by any sentences that can be used to effect the same communicative act. Analysis of meaning is widely claimed to yield an analysis of understanding and thereby to explain the mystery of how it is possible to understand new sentences. Once again understanding a sentence is regarded as a complex mental act or process whose articulations are to be meshed with the deep structure of the sentence understood. end p.265

At first sight, however, there is a striking novelty. The calculus of language seems to hang in the air, an empty network of interrelated symbols, until it is brought into contact with human behaviour and experience. Whereas logical empiricists claimed that content is bestowed solely in virtue of ostensive definitions linking signs with the given, contemporary philosophers attempt to dispense with ostensive definitions altogether. They consider themselves to have learned from Wittgenstein that such explanations are worthless—ostensive definitions are irremediably incomplete and equivocal, really leaving everything to guesswork. Of course, such explanations do occur, but they are merely an expedient for generating understanding of explained expressions and do not

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reveal anything about what this understanding 'consists in'. Logical empiricists located ostensive definition at stage centre in semantics, whereas modern fashion has pushed it off into the wings. This evolution has taken three equally misguided forms. The first, prominent in Davidson's semantic theory, is complete absence of any (non-homophonic) specification of the meaning of any unanalysable expression. Matters to which philosophers have addressed themselves and that are full of possibilities for radical confusions are simply left aside as if they would take care of themselves. The second, notable in Quine's writings, is the treatment of ostensive definition solely as an instrument for bringing about understanding of observation sentences.4 1 It is accorded merely a causal, genetic, or pedagogic role in an account of language acquisition. It is part of the training that establishes a speaker's disposition to respond appropriately to stimuli, both verbal and non-verbal—as if speaking a language could be divorced from following rules. The third form, most explicit in Dummett's discussions of semantic theory, is to short-circuit ostensive definition by relating understanding directly to a capacity for bare recognition of certain simple objects, properties, and relations.4 2 The content of an unanalysable expression is to be explained in terms of an ability to W. V. Quine, Philosophy of Logic (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1970), 6; Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York: Columbia, 1969), 121 ff.; The Roots of Reference (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1974), 44-5, 52-3. 4 2 Dummett, Truth and Other Enigmas, 129-30, 358 ff.; The Interpretation of Frege's Philosophy (London: Duckworth, 1981), 186-7, 449; Frege: Philosophy of Language, 590. 41

end p.266

recognize of any given thing whether or not this expression is correctly applicable to it. This account treats the meaning of such an expression as something ineffable. It fails to allow for the possibility of justifying or criticizing applications of 'indefinables' and therefore affords no criteria of correctness. Moreover, either it generates a mythology, viewing recognition as an activity of making comparisons with mental images, or it leaves a mystery about regarding applications of 'indefinables' as instances of rule-following behaviour. Appeal to recognitional capacities perpetuates many of the basic misconceptions of logical empiricism, even if associated doctrines about ostensive definition are pruned away. To the superficial observer, these modern accounts seem to be the diametrical opposites of the conception of ostensive definition in logical empiricism. What these apparently divergent positions have in common is an inability to appreciate the normative role of ostensive definition that Wittgenstein laboured to elucidate. Hence past errors are re-enacted and fundamental insights slip from view. end p.267

10 On Misunderstanding Wittgenstein: Kripke's PrivateLanguage Argument Abstract: Professor Saul Kripke argued that the 'real' private language

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argument terminates with section 202 of the Investigations and is concerned with the logical and epistemological character of following a rule. According to his interpretation, Wittgenstein is propounding a sceptical paradox concerning rule following, which he resolves by means of a Humean answer. Careful examination of Wittgenstein's text and of his preparatory notebooks shows this interpretation to be very far from anything Wittgenstein intended. Keywords: assertion conditions, following rules, Hume, meaning something by an expression, practice, private language argument, rule-scepticism, S. Kripke

P. M. S Hacker

1. 'Wittgenstein's Argument as it Struck Kripke' After a long period of neglect, Wittgenstein's discussions of rule-following have, in the last few years, received some serious attention. This has been stimulated partly by a growing interest in his philosophy of mathematics, and partly by the publication of the enlarged edition of his Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, which includes a new fifty-page section on rule-following. Perhaps the most important stimulus, however, is the conviction among many philosophers that the confrontation between realism and anti-realism, between truth-conditional semantics and semantic theories involving the notion of assertion-conditions, is the fundamental issue in contemporary philosophy. Accordingly, the early Wittgenstein is strapped to the truth-conditions bandwagon, and the later Wittgenstein, straitjacketed within the confines of anti-realism, is harnessed to the assertion-conditions one. Since his remarks on rules have a clear bearing on issues that interest participants in this confrontation, they have become the focus of extensive discussion. Saul Kripke's essay 'Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language' 1 applies this currently popular picture of Wittgenstein's early and later work to a reconsideration of the famous private-language argument in the Philosophical Investigations, § §243 ff. The discussion of rule-following that precedes the private-language argument (PI § §143-242) is the focal point of his examination, and from it he draws a variety of Co-authored with G. P. Baker. S. Kripke, 'Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language', in I. Block (ed.), Perspectives on the Philosophy of Wittgenstein (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982). Since we wrote this paper, Kripke's essay has been slightly modified, extended by a postscript on other minds, and published as Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984). All references here are to the original essay, with references to Kripke's book in parentheses. 1

end p.268

original and controversial conclusions. Rather disarmingly, he suggests at the outset that 'the present paper should be thought of as expounding neither "Wittgenstein's" argument nor "Kripke's": rather Wittgenstein's argument as it struck Kripke'.2 To use the writings of a philosopher as a Rorschach spot is perfectly legitimate. But there is an ever-present danger that one's ruminations

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will be taken as descriptions of the spot. Indeed, in the course of his reflections Kripke attributes to Wittgenstein a variety of views he never held, and imposes upon his writings a variety of interpretations for which there is no licence. In this paper we shall try to differentiate sharply between Wittgenstein's argument as it struck Kripke and Wittgenstein's argument, and to demonstrate that on some salient issues Wittgenstein's argument not only differs from, but actually confutes Kripke's picture. More than mere exegetical correctness is involved here. Kripke is surely right in thinking that § §134-242 of the Investigations contain some of the most original and significant philosophical reflections of the twentieth century. If the line of argument pursued in them is valid, their implications, both within philosophy and without, are considerable. Modern philosophical logic, theoretical linguistics, as well as branches of empirical psychology would stand in need of re-evaluation. So it is important to understand what Wittgenstein was arguing. Only then can we assess it, and see where we stand. Kripke's interpretation of the core of the Philosophical Investigations is as follows. The 'real private-language argument' is not in § §243 ff., but in § §143-242. Indeed the conclusion of the private-language argument is stated in §202: And hence also 'obeying a rule' is a practice. And to think one is obeying a rule is not to obey a rule. Hence it is not possible to obey a rule 'privately': otherwise thinking one was obeying a rule would be the same thing as obeying it. The problem Wittgenstein confronts in these hundred sections is, Kripke claims, a sceptical one. The discussion of the rule for forming the series of even integers is designed to raise the question of how I can know whether my current use of a word (for example, 'plus') coheres with what I previously meant by it, given that my current use is (or can always be made out to be) a novel application. Nothing in any instructions given to me (or that I give myself) forces me to go on '1002, 1004', rather than '1004, 1008'; the instructions I gave, the examples I produced, can be made out to be consistent with both ways of proceeding. Equally, nothing in my mind constituted the fact of my meaning 2

Ibid. 241 (5).

end p.269

myself to go on thus or otherwise. (I did not run through an infinite series in an instant and the formula I had in mind has no magical powers to generate the answer). Scepticism about being able to know whether I am using a word in accordance with what I meant by it leads to the paradox stated at §201: This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule, because every course of action can be made out to accord with the rule. The answer was: if everything can be made out to accord with the rule, then it can also be made out to conflict with it. And so there would be neither accord nor conflict here. So epistemological scepticism about applying a word in accordance with what one means by it leads to the conclusion that there can be no meaning at all, and

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language is impossible. This paradox is 'perhaps the central problem of Philosophical Investigations'.3 Wittgenstein, according to Kripke, gives a 'sceptical solution', of a Humean form, to his sceptical problem. This strategy consists in accepting the sceptic's premisses but denying that the sceptical conclusion follows from them. So Wittgenstein agrees that there is no fact-in-the-world that constitutes meaning something by one's words. But this annihilates the possibility of meaning only on the assumption that sense is given by truth-conditions (that is, correspondence to possible facts-in-the-world). He allegedly repudiates this theory, replacing it by the picture of sense as determined by conditions for assertion. The assertionconditions for my meaning W by 'W' are my being inclined to apply 'W' thus and so, given that the rest of the community is too. In these circumstances there is no reason to deny that my current ('novel') application of 'W' accords with what I (and others) previously meant by 'W'. Therefore, meaning something by a word requires a community to supply agreement and to prevent thinking one is following a rule and following a rule from collapsing into each other. Hence 'it is not possible to obey a rule "privately" ', and the conclusion of the privatelanguage argument is really stated before what goes by the name of 'the privatelanguage argument' has even begun. This does not, however, preclude our conceiving of Robinson Crusoe meaning something by his words as he talks to himself on his desert island. For in so conceiving of him 'we are taking him into our community and applying our criteria for rule following to him'.4 A physically isolated person can follow rules, but a person considered in isolation cannot. 3

Kripke, 'Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language', 242 (7).

4

Ibid. 296 (110).

end p.270

This sketch provides the bare outline of Kripke's colourful painting. We shall fill in more detail only where necessary.

2. Scepticism About Wittgenstein's 'Sceptical Problem' and 'Sceptical Solution' Although Wittgenstein found some of the problems of scepticism interesting, even revealing (as in On Certainty ), anyone familiar with Wittgenstein's work will feel sceptical about the suggestion that he made a sceptical problem the centrepiece of his chef d'œuvre. In his very first philosophical notes he wrote against Russell: Scepticism is not irrefutable, but obvious nonsense if it tries to doubt where no question can be asked. For doubt can only exist where a question exists; a question can only exist where an answer exists, and this can only exist where something can be said. (NB 44) In his last notes on certainty he wrote:

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The queer thing is that even though I find it quite correct for someone to say 'Rubbish!' and so brush aside the attempt to confuse him with doubts at bedrock,—nevertheless, I hold it to be incorrect if he seeks to defend himself (using, e.g. the words 'I know'). (C §498) It would be very surprising to discover that someone who throughout his life found philosophical scepticism nonsensical, a subtle violation of the bounds of sense, should actually make a sceptical problem the pivotal point of his work. It would be even more surprising to find him accepting the sceptic's premisses, the 'doubts at bedrock', rather than showing that they are 'rubbish'. Initial qualms may be strengthened by reflection on the oddity of the so-called scepticism. What is classically known as scepticism typically involves challenging an apparent evidential nexus. The sceptic agrees that we do know the truth of statements about subjective experience, but, since they do not entail statements about objects, he denies that we really know anything about the material world. In a more obliging frame of mind, he accepts the possibility of knowledge about the behaviour of others (or about memories and current evidence, or singular statements) but denies that it supports cognitive claims about other minds (the past, inductive generalizations). But Kripke's sceptic, unlike the classical sceptic, saws off the branch on which he is sitting. For he is not claiming that certain given knowledge fails to support other end p.271

commonly accepted cognitive claims. His conclusion is not that he certainly means either a or b by 'W', but cannot be sure which; nor is it that he knows what he now means, but cannot be certain whether it is the same as what he meant yesterday. Rather, he concludes with 'the paradox' that there is no such thing as meaning, so language cannot be possible. But this is not scepticism at all; it is conceptual nihilism, and, unlike classical scepticism, it is manifestly self-refuting. Why his argument is wrong may be worth investigating (as with any paradox), but that it is wrong is indubitable. It is not a sceptical problem but an absurdity. To defend common sense presumably means to find good reasons why what we ordinarily and more or less unreflectively believe is true, and is known to be true. Kripke's Wittgenstein5 is a common-sense philosopher, holding that philosophy states only what everyone admits. He resembles Hume, who wrote, 'We may well ask, what causes induce us to believe in the existence of body? but it is vain to ask, whether there be body or not? That is a point, which we must take for granted in all our reasonings.' 6 The similarity with Hume allegedly reaches deeper, since Kripke's Wittgenstein pursues a Humean strategy of giving a 'sceptical solution' to his sceptical problem—that is, he concedes that the sceptic's negative assertions are unanswerable, but contends that our ordinary belief is nevertheless justifiable, because it does not require the justification the sceptic has shown to be untenable. The switch from truth-conditional semantics to assertability conditions is argued to effect just this move. This analysis is wrong on several counts. First, Hume does not, in his analysis of the self, objectivity, and causation, defend common sense. He is not claiming that philosophy never casts doubt on the rational justification of ordinary beliefs, but that philosophy is impotent to change them. What Kripke quotes follows this

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passage: Nature, by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity has determin'd us to judge as well as to breathe and feel. . . Whoever has taken the pains to refute the cavils of this total scepticism, has really disputed without an antagonist, and endeavour'd by arguments to establish a faculty, which nature has antecedently implanted in the mind, and rendered unavoidable. . . . . . If belief, therefore, were a simple act of thought without any peculiar manner of conception, or the addition of a force and vivacity, it must infallibly destroy itself and in every case terminate in a total suspense of judgment. But as experience will sufficiently convince anyone who thinks it worthwhile to try, 5

Kripke, 'Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language', 268 (63).

6

David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, I. iv. 2.

end p.272

that though he can find no error in the foregoing arguments, yet he continues to believe and think and reason as usual, he may safely conclude, that his reasoning and belief is some sensation or peculiar manner of conception which 'tis impossible for mere ideas and reflections to destroy. Hume insists that we have no good reason to believe in the existence of objective particulars (no good reason to believe that our several perceptions belong to a unitary self; and so on). Far from defending 'common sense', he insists that all the arguments are on the side of the sceptic. Rational investigation proves that the fundamental beliefs of 'common sense' are fictions, generated by the workings of the imagination according to natural laws of mental association. Secondly, Hume's 'sceptical solution' does not consist in giving a justification for our ordinary beliefs—that is, rational grounds showing them to be well-founded. Rather, he defends a radical split between theory and practice, between Reason and Nature, in the following sense. Though every argument speaks against belief in objectivity, this cannot affect our beliefs. 'Philosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian were not nature too strong for it.' 7 He denied the Pyrrhonist thesis that sceptical arguments will lead to suspension of belief and ataraxia. Belief is determined not by Reason, but by Nature. Hume was indeed not trying to subvert our beliefs, but to show that they are determined, non-rationally, causally, by Nature against Reason.8 Thirdly, not only is Hume thus misrepresented, but so also is Wittgenstein. He insisted that he was not defending any opinions: 'On all questions we discuss I have no opinion; and if I had, and it disagreed with one of your opinions, I would at once give it up for the sake of argument, because it would be of no importance for our discussion' (AWL 97; LFM 103). Nor was he defending common sense, if that means giving reasons for believing that material objects exist independently of our perceptions of them, or that other people enjoy experiences, or that we mean things by our words, and so on. Rather the task, in this respect, consists in showing that the philosophical puzzle (of scepticism, idealism, or solipsism) rests

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on systematically transgressing the limits of sense. His purpose was the investigation of ordinary concepts that are used in the expression of common-sense beliefs. But he was not concerned to defend those beliefs, rather to clarify those concepts. For the problems of philosophy arise through the distortion David Hume, 'Abstract of Treatise of Human Nature'. Cf. Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, I. v. 1, I. xii. 2. 8 'Nature has not left this [belief] to his [the sceptic's] choice, and has doubtless esteem'd it an affair of too great importance to be trusted to our uncertain reasonings and speculations' (Treatise, I. iv. 2). 7

end p.273

and misuse of ordinary concepts, and the way back to sanity consists in obtaining an overview of the problematic expressions. Finally, Kripke contends that in the course of his 'sceptical solution' to his 'sceptical problem' Wittgenstein in effect denies some of our ordinary beliefs, contrary to his principle that 'If one tried to advance theses in philosophy it would never be possible to debate them, because everyone would agree to them' (PI §128). Wittgenstein is forced to do this because he accepts the apparent sceptical denials of our ordinary assertions, and he saves himself from blatant inconsistency only by 'cagily' refusing to state his conclusions in the form of definite theses or straightforward formulations. It is, in fact, this caginess that explains his inability to write a work with conventionally organized arguments, What 'thesis' is Wittgenstein supposed to be propounding here? According to Kripke, 'Wittgenstein holds, with the sceptic, that there is no fact as to whether I mean plus or quus.' 9 This is quite wrong. If Wittgenstein had claimed that when A told B to expand the series '+ 2', A did not mean B to go on '1002, 1004 . . . ', he would be denying what we all admit. But he does not claim this: 'Certainly; and you can also say you meant it then; only you should not let yourself be misled by the grammar of the words "know" and "mean" '(PI §187). And if A meant such-and-such, then, Wittgenstein might add, it is a fact that he meant such-and-such (infra). What Wittgenstein is denying is a philosophical claim—namely, that the 'act of meaning' effects miracles, such as traversing an infinite series in a flash, and a philosophical thesis—namely, that my meaning such-and-such is a fact-inthe-world (or more specifically, a fact-in-my-mind), and that my justification for saying that I meant addition by 'plus' is that I have observed this fact in my mind. To deny this is not to deny what we all admit, but to repudiate a nonsensical metaphysical theory. The considerations so far are merely intended to foster initial doubts about Kripke's interpretation. It is, we suggest, prima facie implausible (though not impossible) that Wittgenstein should find sceptical problems and Humean sceptical solutions the fountainhead of philosophical insight. But there is a far greater likelihood that he would concur with Dr Johnson's ironic remark about sceptics: 'Truth, sir, is a cow, which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.' Kripke, 'Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language', 273 (70-1); 'quus' is a function defined by: x y = x + y if x, y < 57, otherwise x y = 5. This is 9

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Kripke's operative example of the paradox involved in rule-following.

end p.274

3. The 'Paradox' The interpretation of Investigations, § §201-2, is crucial for Kripke's case. For the 'paradox' of §201 is 'perhaps the central problem' of the whole book, and the conclusion of §202 'it is not possible to obey a rule "privately" ' is not an anticipation of the private-language argument,1 0 but a statement of its conclusion, based on arguments already given. By §243 the impossibility of a private language has already been proved. The core problem is, according to Kripke, a normative version of Goodman's 'new riddle of induction'. No past fact about my mind or my behaviour constituted my meaning W by 'W', so nothing in my present use of 'W' can constitute accord (or conflict) with what I meant by 'W' (the meaning I assigned to 'W'). So I cannot know that in my current use I am still using 'W' with the same meaning. But not even God, were He to peer into my mind, could know this. So there is no such thing as using a word in accordance with a rule (with the meaning one gave it), no such thing as meaning something by a word, no such thing as a meaningful language. This is the 'paradox'. There are reasons for doubting whether § §201-2 are the pivotal remarks of the book. Also reasons for doubting that they are the culmination of a sceptical argument, or that they incorporate a refutation of the possibility of a private language. And there are alternative interpretations of the remarks that rest on better exegetical evidence. Finally, there are doubts whether Kripke's 'problem' is coherently statable. These considerations strengthen the doubts sown in the last section.

The history of § §201-2: The Philosophical Investigations, Part 1, went through four typescript stages, dated 1938 (TS 220 in von Wright's catalogue), 1942-3 (TS 239), January 1945 (the 'Intermediate Version'), and 1945-6 (the final version, TS 227).1 1 The Intermediate Version is almost identical with the final version in respect of argument from §1 to §217, but it does not contain § §201-3. So, although the Intermediate Version contains the whole of the argument prior to § §201-3, it does not incorporate the 'conclusion' of the argument, which, according to Kripke, is the pivotal point of the book. Moreover, the Intermediate Version contains the bulk of the private-language argument,1 2 and, if 10

Kripke, 'Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language', 239 (3).

1 1 For the detailed account of this complex bibliographical history, see G. H. von Wright, 'The Origin and Composition of the Philosophical Investigations', in his Wittgenstein (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), 111 ff.

The missing remarks, inserted only in the final draft, are: § §247-52, 257, 262-9, 292, 294, 297, 299-301. 12

end p.275

§ §201-3 already establish the conclusion of the private-language argument, and §243 ff. examine only a potential counter-example to the argument concerning sensations, it is odd, to say the least, that Wittgenstein omitted the punctum saliens in this draft. Further light is shed on the matter by the immediate MS source, MS 129, 119 ff.,

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which was written from 17 August 1944 onwards. Equally illuminating is the more remote MS source, the pocket notebook MS 180(a), which contains material transcribed into MS 129. In MS 129 the context of the occurrence of § §201-3 is a discussion of how I know that this is red—that is, what is now Philosophical Investigations § §377-81 (which does not occur in the Intermediate Version). The argument is concerned to establish that judgements such as 'These images are identical' or 'This is red' do not rest upon recognition. It runs as follows: How do I know that this is red? One is inclined to say: I look at it and see that it is red. But how does this wordless seeing-that-it-is-red help me if I do not know what to say, how to express this 'recognition' in words? And sooner or later I must make the transition to using an expression. And at this point rules leave me in the lurch. What does that mean? It means1 3 that rules are not self-applying. That sooner or later I have to apply a rule (by themselves as it were, they hang in the air). All good teaching, at the end of the day, will not help me in this respect, for it cannot relieve me of the task of applying the rule, of 'making a leap' and saying 'This is red', or acting in a certain manner, which comes to the same thing. It is of no avail to try to interpose, between looking at an object and saying that it is red, a bogus recognitional state of 'seeing that it is this', for now one would need a rule to effect the transition from this 'seeing that it is this' to saying it is red.1 4 But this transition would be a 'private' one and the only rule that could guide it would be a private ostensive definition determining what this is. Yet justification must be public (cf. PI §378). At this point in MS 129, 119, we have what is now §201 ('This was our paradox. . . '), which originally began1 5 'I found myself in the difficulty that it seemed. . . ', which clause Wittgenstein crossed out and replaced by 'This was our paradox'. This clearly refers back to what is now §198, which occurs earlier in the MS (p. 25). Why this allusion to these earlier difficulties at this point? Because the issue is similar, and the 13

This explanation derives from MS 180(a), 68-9.

Or indeed to effect the transition from seeing that it is this to seeing that it is red! And what is the this that this is?

14

1 5 In MS 180(a), 72, the passage began: 'I was (earlier) in the difficulty that a rule could not determine any action, since anything can be brought into accord with the rule.' There PI §198 occurs on p. 1.

end p.276

conclusion of §198 can be brought to bear on the present problem. §198 argued that the connection between the expression of a rule and the act that counts as accord with the rule is forged, inter alia, by training. We are taught that acting thus in response to such-and-such is correct, and anything else incorrect. We explain and justify this, but not another thing, by reference to the rule; and so on. To follow a rule is a custom; it involves a regular use of the expression of rules in training, teaching, explaining, and in giving reasons. Now Wittgenstein embroiders on these observations in the new context of a discussion of recognition and the unmediated application of 'red' and 'same' (as well as 'same image' and 'red image'). The 'earlier difficulty' that a rule could not determine what to do in accordance with it, the 'paradox', was evidently a misunderstanding. This is shown by the fact that no interpretation, no rule for the

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application of a rule, can satisfy us, can definitively fix, by itself , what counts as accord. For each interpretation generates the same problem—namely, how is it to be applied.1 6 Now Wittgenstein adds a new point to the argument of §198, deepening the implications of the claim that what counts as following a rule is fixed by a normative regularity. What the absurd paradox that rules cannot guide one shows is that how one understands a rule need not be an interpretation, but is manifest in acting, in what we call 'following the rule'. (The draft of §201 here is much the same as the final version.1 7 That we have 'understood a rule in the certain way', Wittgenstein continues ('Dass wir eine Regel "aufgefasst" haben'), is shown inter alia in the certainty, the absence of fumbling, in its application. Then follow Investigations, §§202-3—that is, that is why 'following the rule' is a practice. How does this observation bear on the discussion of colour recognition? It is simple: there can be no rule guiding the transition from a seeingthat-this-is-so to saying 'This is red' because there could be no technique of application for such a 'rule', no normative regularity in its employment, no custom of applying the word always in the same way, no practice (infra). The 'private' following of the (apparent) rule, a mental ostensive definition presupposed by the supposition that recognition This leads to a vicious infinite regress, as Wittgenstein repeatedly noted. No interpretation would be complete without a rider, i.e. there would be a need for explanations of the terms used in formulating the interpretation, a need for further explanations of the terms used in giving these explanations, etc. 16

It is, however, noteworthy that in MS 180(a), 72, an alternative drafting to 'And so there would be neither accord nor conflict here' was (translated) 'And so "accord" and "conflict" here lose their sense altogether', which does not imply a paradox leading to the conclusion that language is impossible, but implies a misunderstanding of what counts as acting in accordance with a rule and what as acting contrary to one. And what goes for MS 180(a) goes for the final version too! 17

end p.277

intervenes between seeing and saying, is a sham, in which following a rule and thinking one is following a rule collapse into each other. The sequel continues to probe what is wrong with talking about judging an object to be red on the grounds of recognition, and develops into a discussion of seeing aspects. MS 180(a) is the source underlying MS 129 on this theme. The longer discussion there begins with an examination of aspect-seeing (pp. 52 ff.): do I interpret the figure now thus, now otherwise? Do I see everything always as something? Do I need words for such 'visual interpretation' or are words necessary only to communicate what I see? This evolves into a discussion of my judgements about my visual images, and thence into a long investigation into how I know that this is red? The key theme here too is to repudiate the suggestion that any recognitional process mediates between looking, and saying that this is red. Here occur early drafts of Investigations, §§378-81 (in a different order). The draft of §201 (on p. 72) occurs after an examination of the following sequences of propositions: I see that it is red, but do not know what it is called! I see that it is this colour, and I know that this colour is called such-and-such. Which colour? I recognize that it is this. But now I must make the transition to words or deeds! After a draft of §201 Wittgenstein elaborates: the rules here leave us in the lurch because there is no

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(genuine) transition from seeing that this is this to seeing that it is red, there is no technique of going by a rule here. The 'rules' are free-floating. For this (pseudo-) transition is a private one. If the transition from looking at an object to applying the word 'red' cannot be made without mediation (by a recognitional process, or a private ostensive definition), then it cannot be made by means of a rule either. Consequently, 'to follow a rule' designates a practice, which cannot be replaced by the bogus appearance of a practice (cf. §202). This seems to abolish logic, he wrote in an early version of §242, but it does not. It is one thing to lay down methods of measurement, another to obtain results of measurement. But what we call 'measuring' is partly determined by a certain constancy in results of measurement. What tentative conclusions can we draw from these data? First, the history of §§201-3 suggests that these remarks are not the pivot of the whole book. They were not incorporated in the Intermediate Version, which contained in completed form both the argument preceding §§201-3, and the bulk of the private-language argument. Secondly, in their original context they quite explicitly build upon §198 and upon the senselessness of private ostensive definition, as established by the private-language argument. Thirdly, their original purpose was to deepen the insight of §198 and to bring it to bear on fallacies concerning recognition end p.278

as mediating between saying and seeing. It was not to defend a new paradox —namely, that there can be no such thing as following a rule. Fourthly, the MS context has nothing to do with scepticism in any shape or form, neither with sceptical problems nor with sceptical conclusions. (Nowhere is it suggested that I do not know that poppies are red!) There is no evidence to suggest that Wittgenstein was concerned with a normative version of Goodman's new problem of induction. Fifthly, in its original contexts in both MSS the remark that following a rule is a practice has nothing directly to do with social practices. Its exclusive concern is with the fact that rule-following is an activity , a normative regularity of conduct that exhibits one's Auffassung of a rule, manifests how one understands a rule. Do these sections incorporate the conclusion of the private-language argument? That depends upon what one takes this conclusion to be! If it is held to be the contention that it is not possible to obey a rule 'privately', then, of course, it does. But that is unsurprising. More interestingly, in context, these sections do incorporate at least some of the conclusions of the private-language argument, since they explicitly presuppose them as having already been established. And rightly so! For the moment we claim not that this information is decisive, only that it is suggestive. It is possible, but improbable, that the repositioning of these remarks betokens a total reorientation of their sense. Perhaps, after composing the Intermediate Version, Wittgenstein suddenly realized that these two MS remarks, embedded in a discussion of knowing that this is red, concerned with dissolving confusions about recognition, in fact continued in crystallized form the core of his book.

The interpretation of §§201-2: a closer look at these crucial remarks in their final, different, context may strengthen our doubts. §201 paragraph (a) is clearly

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concerned with the question raised in §§198(a)—namely, ' "But how can a rule show me what I have to do at this point. Whatever I do can, on some interpretation, be brought into accord with the rule." ' The problem here posed belongs to a series of closely interwoven questions running through §§139-242. If the first part of the book can be said to be concerned with uprooting the Bedeutungskörper (meaning-body) conception of meaning in all its forms, this part is concerned with the more subtle Regelskörper (rule-body) conception. It aims to break the hold of a misguided conception of rules as mysteriously, magically, determining or constituting the meanings of expressions, and of understanding as a grasping of rules that then guide us along predetermined rails. The problem-setting context is as follows. Earlier, Wittgenstein has argued that the meaning of an expression is its use. Equally the meaning of an expression is what is given by an explanation end p.279

of meaning (§75); and an explanation of meaning is a rule for the use of the expression. But how can such an explanation—for example, an ostensive definition or a series of examples or a general formula—determine the complex use of an expression? For any rule can be variously interpreted. The statement of a rule is not a repository from which the use unfolds, or a logical machine that generates applications of its own accord. With respect to understanding, which is the correlate of explanation, the problem presents itself thus. We typically understand an expression in an instant. We can say what we understand by giving an explanation. But how can what is understood, grasped in an instant, be something like the use, the pattern of application of an expression, that is spread out in time (cf. §138)? And if what is understood is expressed by an explanation, a rule, how does that explanation, which can be variously projected, guide one in how one uses an expression? The apparent tension within these claims is the concern of §§143-242. This discussion falls into two main parts. The first (§§143-84)1 8 explores the concept of understanding (with a long digression on reading)1 9 and establishes that understanding is not a mental event, state or process. Rather, to say of a person that he understands a word is to characterize him as having, at a particular time, a capacity, a mastery of a technique. Understanding is akin to an ability. The second part (§§185-242) clarifies the notions of an act's conforming (or conflicting) with a rule, and of an agent's following a rule. By particularization, this elucidates what it is for the use of a word to be correct (to conform to its explanation), and what it is to mean something and to understand an expression. After exploring two suggestions of how accord with a rule is determined, each of which was unsatisfactory for quite different reasons, Wittgenstein turns to face this issue head-on in §198. If whatever one does can be brought into accord with the rule on some interpretation,2 0 how on earth can a rule guide one? (Note that this is the identical problem of §201(a).) The answer is given immediately, with no suggestion of For detailed analysis of PI §§143-4, see G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker, vol. i of An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), 621 ff. 18

19

Given that Wittgenstein's discussion of reading intentionally runs parallel to

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his analysis of meaning and understanding, it should seem puzzling to Kripke that Wittgenstein did not introduce a 'new paradox of reading'—namely, that, since reading is not just mouthing words while looking at writing, nor is it any mental accompaniment, therefore there is no 'fact' that constitutes my reading. Therefore, paradoxically, dear reader, reading is logically impossible! Although not consistently with the meaning of the expression (e.g. 'plus') nor with what we understand by it. But that is just what is in question—what does determine meaning?

20

end p.280

an irresoluble paradox that needs to be sidestepped. We ought not to say that because whatever we do can be brought into accord with the rule on some interpretation, therefore the rule cannot guide us. That would be absurd. Rather 'any interpretation still hangs in the air along with what it interprets, and cannot give it any support. Interpretations by themselves do not determine meaning.' Only in a context in which there is an established technique of application of a rule, in which the rule is standardly involved in explanation and justification, in teaching and training, can questions of giving interpretations arise. For only then is the expression used, and an internal relation established between act and rule. Only if there are genuine rules, only if something does actually count as following (and everything else as going against), is there room for interpreting a rule correctly or incorrectly. But then what counts as accord with the rule is fixed independently of interpretations. §§199-200 emphasize that normative behaviour requires a multiplicity of occasions as a context, an evident regularity of point and purpose. §201, removed from its MS context, is stripped of any connection with the problem of colour judgement, image-identification, or interpreting double-aspect figures. Whereas it originally applied the resolution of the question of §198 to puzzles about recognition, in the course of which it deepened the argument of §198, now its sole role is just the latter, §§198-9 answered the question: 'How can a rule determine what counts as accord with it?' by reference to the existence of a normative regularity of conduct. (It is sometimes supposed that the query in PI §199, 'Is what we call "following a rule" something that it would be possible for only one man to do, and to do only once in his life?', implies that it needs a community of rule-followers for a person to follow a rule—that is, that a person can logically follow a rule only within the context of a community of rule-followers. But this is a misinterpretation. Wittgenstein also says 'if only one person had, once, made a bodily movement—could the question exist whether it was voluntary or involuntary?' (RPP I §897)—and this surely is not intended to imply that for an agent to be said to perform a voluntary or an involuntary action, the agent must be a member of a community.) §201 adds a crucial point about understanding a rule (an Auffassung of a rule): 'how one understands a rule need not be an interpretation, but may be exhibited in what we call "following the rule" and "going against it" from case to case of its application.' 2 1 Understanding is mastery of a technique, and how one understands a rule Our translation. The German reads: 'Dadurch zeigen wir nämlich, dass es eine Auffassung einer Regel gibt, die nicht eine Deutung ist'; there seems no licence for the translation 'there is a way of grasping [Erfassen] a rule'. And 'von Fall zu Fall der Anwendung' seems unhappily rendered by 'in actual cases'. 21

end p.281

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is manifest in the exercise of that technique in practice, in what one does in various cases. Far from §201 accepting a paradox and by-passing it by means of a 'sceptical solution', Wittgenstein shows that here, as else-where, a paradox is a paradox only in a defective surrounding. If this is remedied the appearance of paradox will vanish (RFM 410). For every paradox is disguised nonsense (and this one is barely even disguised!). Hence it may never be accepted and by-passed by other arguments. It must be dissolved by clarification of concepts. What has been rejected in §201 is not the truism that rules guide action (or that we know that our use of an expression conforms with its meaning, or that we are actually applying expressions in accordance with their explanations—that is, the rules for their use). Rather, what is repudiated is the suggestion that a rule determines an action as being in accordance with it only in virtue of an interpretation. The first sentence of §202 merely repeats the penultimate point of §201—namely, how I understand a rule (meine Auffassung) is ultimately exhibited not by an interpretation (the substitution of one expression of a rule for another), but in what we call 'following the rule'—that is, in what I do in applying the rule. Hence following a rule is an activity, a Praxis. It is a misinterpretation to take ' Praxis' here to signify a social practice. The contrast here is not between an aria and a chorus, but between looking at a score and signing. The term 'practice' is used here in a similar sense to that in the phrase 'in theory and in practice' (cf. PI §§51, 197; RFM 333, 432; MS 165, 33). The point is not to establish that language necessarily involves a community (infra), but that 'words are deeds'. But a practice is not mere action, it is regular action in accordance with a rule, 'not something that happens once, no matter of what kind' (RFM 335). Note that nothing in this discussion involves any commitment to a multiplicity of agents. All the emphasis is on the regularity, the multiple occasions, of action (cf. §199). What is crucial for the concept of following a rule is recurrent action in appropriate contexts, action that counts as following the rule.2 2 Whether others are involved It is important to note that Wittgenstein countenances the logical possibility of creatures being born with the ability to speak a language (cf. PG 188; BB 12). How one learnt or acquired a language is irrelevant to an account of what one has learnt. So, if one could (as Wittgenstein suggests) be born speaking German, would the absence of speakers of Etruscan be a logical barrier to being born speaking Etruscan? Since Robinson Crusoe could talk to himself, keep a diary, follow rules, would he cease to be able to do so if, unbeknownst to him, the rest of mankind were destroyed by a plague? Obviously not. Is his continuing to be able to do so dependent on the history of his acquisition of his linguistic skills? That seems inconsistent with the principle that 'Teaching as the hypothetical history of our subsequent actions . . . drops out of our considerations' (BB 14). In MS 165 Wittgenstein imagines a solitary caveman who uses a picturelanguage on the walls of his cave. Such a language, he says, would be readily intelligible. Later he imagines a solitary caveman who speaks only to himself, gives himself orders, etc. Provided he uses simple signs that we could interpret, we could come to understand him. A few pages further on Wittgenstein concludes that to describe the language of a people is to describe a regularity of their behaviour, and to describe a language that someone speaks only to himself is to describe a regularity of his behaviour, and not something that can happen 22

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only once (cf. MS 129, 89). Of course, we could not understand another's language unless we could grasp the rules of his language, follow them as he does, agree with him in the manner of applying them.

end p.282

is a further question. Of course, with us social creatures rule-following is generally a social practice. But the point of the argument was not to establish this (obvious) fact, but rather to show that rule-following, and hence a language, is a kind of customary behaviour, a form of action, not of thought. The 'foundations' of language are not in private experience, the 'given' indefinables, but in normative regularities of conduct. The remainder of §202, is, in this context, incongruous. For Wittgenstein has not yet explained what following a rule 'privately' means—that is, that it does not mean 'not in public' (since we can and do follow rules in privacy), but rather means 'follow rules that it is logically impossible that anyone else should follow'. The passage derives from MS 129, 121, where it occurs after the exposition of the private-language argument (fifty of the seventy-four remarks constituting the private-language argument in the Investigations occur in MS 129, only two of which come after p. 121). There the allusion to 'following a rule "privately' " is perspicuously a back-reference to the private-language argument. In transposing this remark it has become, perhaps inadvertently, an anticipation of §258 (cf. MS 129, 43) of the private-language argument.

4. The Private-Language Argument The foregoing 'archaeological' investigations provide reasons for doubting whether the discussion up till §§201-2 contains the whole of the private-language argument proper. We have not proved that the core question of the book is not a sceptical one, nor that the solution is not a 'sceptical solution'. But if it is, it does not lie in the passage of §§198-202. Before going on to provide further argument, however, we should look forward from §202 to what is normally conceived as the private-language argument in order to see whether Kripke's claims about it rest on firmer foundations. end p.283

Kripke contends that the 'real private-language argument' occurs prior to §243, and that the crucial considerations for that argument are contained in the discussion leading up to §202, which states its conclusions. What is commonly called 'the private-language argument' deals with the application of the general conclusions about language drawn in §§138-242 to the problem of sensations.2 3 Inner experience, like mathematics, allegedly seemed to Wittgenstein to be a counter-example to his view of rules, hence he treats it in detail. The connection between the discussion of sensations and the mathematical reflections is shown in Remarks on Foundations of Mathematics, I, §3: ' How do I know that in working out the series +2 I must write "20004, 20006", and not "20004, 20008"?—(The question: "How do I know that this colour is 'red'?" is similar.)' This passage, Kripke contends,2 4 illustrates that Wittgenstein regards the fundamental problems of the philosophy of mathematics and of the private-language argument

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(that is, the 'problem' of sensation language) as at root identical, stemming from his paradox. The impossibility of a private-language (of sensations) follows from the incorrectness of the private model for language and rules, which is established in §202. This interpretation of the concerns of §§243 ff. is perverse. The private-language argument is not about 'the problem of sensations', which constitutes a prima facie counter-example to a thesis about rules. It is concerned with establishing the non-primacy of the mental, the 'inner', the subjective. In this enterprise Wittgenstein is stalking a much larger quarry than a potential counter-example to one of his own 'theses' (what theses?)—namely, the conception of the mental underlying the mainstream of European philosophy since Descartes. It is noteworthy that in his 'Notes for Lectures on "Private Experience" and "Sense Data' " he worked with the examples of 'seeing red' and 'having a red visual impression' (that is, perception) no less than with that of toothache (a sensation). And his concern is explicitly with the refutation of idealism and solipsism: the original fly in the fly-bottle is the solipsist!2 5 The private-language argument is indeed built on the previous discussions, not only of rule-following but also of ostensive definitions, samples, meaning, understanding, and explanation. So too Kant's 'Dialectic' is built on the 'Analytic', but that does not mean that the 'real 23

Kripke, 'Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language', 277 (79).

24

Ibid. 248 (20).

LPE 300: 'The solipsist flutters and flutters in the flyglass, strikes against the walls, flutters further. How can he be brought to rest?' Note that in MS 165 Wittgenstein states explicitly that the discussion of a private language concerns the problems of idealism and solipsism. 25

end p.284

"Dialectic' " is the 'Analytic'. What is new in the private-language argument is the question of whether a 'private' sample can be employed to give meaning to a word, whether a mental paradigm can be employed, via a stipulation or explanation to oneself, to constitute a norm of correct use.2 6 Do the foundations of language lie in mental ostensive definitions of simple 'indefinable' perceptual predicates? Certainly a great tradition of European philosophy embraced such a conception, not only in the remote past, but in the writings of Russell, Carnap (at one stage) and other logical positivists, and indeed, for a brief time, in Wittgenstein's own work. Nor is it true that the question raised has implicitly been answered by the antecedent discussion of rule-following. After all, it may be argued (and, alas, often is) that, given biological nature,2 7 you must have just what I have when we both look at tomatoes, hit our shins, and so on. So you know what 'pain' or 'looks red' means from your exemplar, just as I know from my exemplar. And evolution, or a good angel, has so arranged matters that our exemplars are qualitatively identical. So our public language with its vast network of regularities of action is the confluence, or congruence, of our private languages. So thought and language rest firmly on the bedrock of the subjective. It is, of course, true that in MSS 129 and 180(a) this argument is ruled out on the

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grounds that there can be no possibility of establishing an internal relation between a private sample, or 'subjective interpretation', and an action determined in a practice as being in accordance with such a 'rule'. Moreover, if something can be a justification for me, it must also be capable of functioning as a justification for others. So my 'seeing that this is so' cannot function as a justification. There can be no technique of applying a 'private rule'. Such a rule really would 'hang in the air', and there would indeed be no distinction between thinking one is following a rule and actually following it. Here one would have only a 'Schein-Praxis' (paradigmatically exemplified by the illusory consulting of a private table in the imagination (MS 180(a), 59)).2 8 But the argument to establish these conclusions is the private-language argument! By LPE 314. 'The private experience is to serve as a paradigm, and at the same time admittedly it can't be a paradigm. The "private experience" is a degenerate construction of our grammar (comparable in a sense to tautology and contradiction). And this grammatical monster now fools us; when we wish to do away with it, it seems as though we denied the existence of an experience, say, toothache.' 26

Americans prefer the terminology of the computer age—so: given that we are all 'wired-up in the same way'! 27

Note that the 'Schein-Praxis' is patently not an illusory social practice, but an illusory practice—an illusory technique of application that seems to be exhibited in practice. 28

end p.285

transposing §202 from the vicinity of §§377-81 it has been deprived of its argumentative support. As it stands, the last sentence does indeed state a conclusion of the private-language argument, but now it 'hangs in the air'. Even if we follow Kripke's interpretation, nothing significant is altered. 'Any individual who claims to have mastered the concept of . . . will be judged by the community to have done so if his particular responses agree with those of the community in enough cases, especially the simple ones.' 2 9 So we may accept, for example, that we need community support to indulge in, say, colour predication (or any other concept-using game), but given that we agree in judgements, agreement in private definitions is ensured (by a good angel; or the 'argument to the best explanation'). Hence it is not the case that the conclusion of the privatelanguage argument has been proven before it is raised in §§243 ff. It is no less misleading to point at Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, I, §3 to establish a connection between considerations of rule-following and the private-language argument proper. Of course there are deep affinities between questions in philosophy of mathematics and questions in philosophy of mind. But this passage does not point to one. Here there is a connection between expanding the series '+2', and applying the predicate 'red'. But the concern of the privatelanguage argument is not with objective predications, but with subjective ones. Wittgenstein states that the question 'How do I know this colour is "red"?' is similar to the arithmetical question, not that the question 'How do I know that this experience is "seeing red"?' is similar. In fact the two pairs of questions are very different. In the first two cases we are concerned with the bedrock of rules. No further rule mediates between the rule 'Add 2' and saying '20004, 20006', or

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between an ostensive definition of 'red' and a judgement that this is red. But the private-language argument focuses on the case of 'I am in pain' or 'I am Kripke, 'Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language', 286 (91-2). In effect Kripke's interpretation of §202 assigns a meaning to the word 'privately' that is at odds with Wittgenstein's use of the term. Kripke holds that someone would follow a rule 'privately' if his actions are considered in isolation from the behaviour of his community in respect of responses to this rule. But on Wittgenstein's account it is essential that the putative rule allegedly being followed 'privately' is one to the expression of which only I have access, i.e. it is expressed by a private ostensive definition. Hence it is, for a quite different reason from Kripke's, impossible for another to ascertain whether or not my applications of this 'rule' are correct. Kripke's objection to private ostensive definitions must be that the attempt to apply any such rule must leave the agent stranded, as it were ex officio, on his own desert island. But this leaves open the possibility that all agents are stranded on the same island (that public language is a congruence of private languages built separately on private ostensive definitions). 29

end p.286

seeing red', where the issue is not bridging the gulf between a genuine rule (an ostensive definition) and its use or application, but whether there is any such thing as a bogus 'private' rule—namely, a private ostensive definition. The argument turns on such matters as the first/third person asymmetry of psychological predicates, criterionless self-ascription, and behavioural criteria for third-person ascription, the non-cognitive status of avowals, and so on. Finally, it is misleading to represent the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics as an examination of an apparent counter-example to the discussion of rules (as the private-language argument examines sensations)—on the contrary, the discussion of rules, of rule-following and of application of rules is used to shed light upon the central questions of the philosophy of mathematics —namely, the nature of mathematical necessity, the status of proof, and the relation of mathematics to logic.

5. Kripke's Sceptical Problem So far we have compared Kripke's discussion to Wittgenstein's, and found prima facie reasons for hesitating to embrace his interpretation. We now turn to an examination of the cogency of some of his arguments. Kripke casts the central problem of the Investigations in terms of a 'sceptical hypothesis about a change in my usage'.3 0 How can I know that my understanding of 'W', what I mean by 'W', determines the correctness of applying 'W', to this? The sceptic doubts whether any instruction I gave myself in the past compels or justifies this answer (rather than an absurd one). Kripke in effect shifts Wittgenstein's problem of how, in what sense, a rule determines its application, to a problem of the relation between my past and present intentions, my meaning addition by 'plus' (and not a different arithmetical operation christened 'quaddition'). This shift is one from an altogether natural belief to a bizarre one. For it is

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natural to think that given that, for example 'red' or 'plus' means what it does, it follows that this is red, or that 68 + 57 = 125. But it is not obviously plausible or intuitively evident that in answering the questions 'What colour is this?' or 'What is 68 + 57?' one conceives of oneself as following an instruction that one gave oneself in the past. A 30

Kripke, 'Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language', 245 (13).

end p.287

fortiori in remarking 'that is a splendid red' (looking at a field of poppies) one does not conceive oneself as obeying one's past instructions about the meaning of 'red', as opposed to using the word 'red' in accordance with its meaning.3 1 Why does Kripke's predicament lead first to scepticism and ultimately to conceptual nihilism? The reason offered is that we are naturally inclined to say that we 'know directly and with a fair degree of certainty' 3 2 that we mean W by 'W'. But Wittgenstein shows that no mental event, act, activity, or process that may occur when we mean or understand something constitutes the meaning or understanding. This leaves us, apparently, only one move—namely, to claim that meaning W by 'W' is an irreducible experience known directly by introspection. Against this Wittgenstein argues at length, and persuasively. We might try a last stand, contending that meaning is a primitive, sui generis, state: Such a move may in a sense be irrefutable, and taken in an appropriate way Wittgenstein may even accept it. But it seems desperate: it leaves the nature of this postulated primitive state . . . completely mysterious. It is not supposed to be an introspectible state, yet we supposedly are aware of it with some fair degree of certainty whenever it occurs. For how else can each of us be confident that he does, at present, mean addition by 'plus'? Even more important is the logical difficulty implicit in Wittgenstein's sceptical argument.. I think that Wittgenstein argues, not merely as we have said hitherto, that introspection shows that the alleged primitive state of understanding is a chimera but also that it is logically impossible (or at least that there is considerable logical difficulty) for there to be a state of 'meaning addition by "plus' " at all.3 3 This reasoning betokens misunderstandings of Wittgenstein's argument. Hence we will interrupt exposition of Kripke's sceptical problem to show where it went off Wittgenstein's rails. First, according to Wittgenstein, 'I know that I mean . . . ' is either an emphatic manner of saying that I mean such-and-such, or it is nonsense.3 4 There is no distinction between my meaning W by 'W' and my knowing that I mean W by 'W' (unlike, say, my knowing that A is dead and A's being dead). So there is no question here of 'knowing with The plausibility of this bizarre picture seems to turn on the now popular conception of language as quasi-contractual, as if the distinction between correct and incorrect use of an expression turned on 'keeping faith' with one's past undertakings. This seems as misguided as the now derided conviction that a social contract would provide the only possible foundation for political liberties, rights, and duties. 31

32

Kripke, 'Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language', 259 (40).

259

33

Ibid. 263 (51-2).

It could also be an oblique way of explaining that the expression of uncertainty here is senseless, as in 'Either I mean red by "red" or something else, I'm not sure'. Cf. PI §§246-7. 34

end p.288

a fair degree of certainty' or of 'knowing directly'. My (appropriately) confident assertion that I mean addition by 'plus' does not rest on evidence of any kind. Secondly, according to Wittgenstein, meaning and intending are not experiences at all, a fortiori not irreducible experiences known introspectively. But it does not follow at all, nor did Wittgenstein suggest that it followed, that I do not mean or intend the things I take myself to mean or intend, the things I sincerely say that I mean or intend.3 5 All that follows is that this philosophical picture of meaning and intending, of self-knowledge and privileged access, is wrong. What Wittgenstein is concerned with is not scepticism about our right to say that we mean this or that, that we intend such-and-such, but extirpation of philosophical confusion. Thirdly, Wittgenstein does not argue that introspection—that is, an 'experimental method'—reveals that as a matter of fact there is no 'primitive state of understanding'. He does indeed argue that it is logically impossible for there to be a state of meaning W by 'W', but not in the manner Kripke suggests. And this argument does not even suggest that I do not mean what I normally say that I mean. The argument is that understanding, meaning, and intending are not states of any kind.3 6 Mental states are such things as being nervous, excited, exhilarated. These obtain for a time and can be clocked, interrupted, and resumed. They run a course, are subject to degrees of intensity, and lapse during sleep. Not so are understanding, meaning, and intending. But it does not follow, according to Wittgenstein, that one does not mean addition by 'plus', or that one does not intend to play chess when one sincerely says 'Let's play chess'. Fourthly, even if, per impossible, meaning were a state, this would not solve the apparent problem. For how could any state bridge the gap, the logical gulf, between a rule and its application? What feature of a 'state of meaning' could make it right to apply the rule thus or otherwise? Is it not obvious that this hypothetical state of meaning would be tantamount to another interpretation of the rule? The jump to its application would still have to be made. Of course, according to Wittgenstein, I may confidently say that I There is, in certain contexts of 'mean' or 'intend', a problem about self-deception. The present context is not such a one. For detailed discussion of Wittgenstein's account of meaning something, see P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Mind and Will, vol. iv. of An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 679-702. 35

For detailed discussion, see Baker and Hacker, Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning, 595 ff. 36

end p.289

mean addition by 'plus', but not because I am introspectively aware of my inner state of meaning. Rather, as I am confident that I intend to play chess (and not some other game), or confident that what I now expect is John to come (and not,

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James to go or the pound sterling to fluctuate). If my confidence rested on an inner awareness, it would be inductive. I would have to reason what, whenever I have in the past had this inner state, then I have gone on to . . . But then I ought to say 'I think I intend to play chess. Let's see!', which is absurd. With these rectifications behind us, we may resume exposition of Kripke. The claim that there is no such thing as the 'state of meaning addition by "plus" ' leads directly to the culmination of Kripke's sceptical argument. The sceptic holds, according to Kripke's view, 'that no fact about my past history, nothing that was ever in my mind, or in my external behaviour—establishes that I meant plus rather than quus' 3 7 and, in view of the introspective argument, 'it appears to follow that there was no fact about me that constituted my having meant plus'.3 8 This argument, in particular its phrasing in terms of facts, is crucial for Kripke's interpretation. For, he claims, the target of Investigations, §§1-133, is the truthconditional theory of meaning as propounded in the Tractatus. According to that theory, what makes propositions true are corresponding facts-in-the-world (hence what would make 'I mean W by "W" ' true would be some fact-inmy-mind). And what gives sentences their meaning are their correlations with possible facts or conditions in the world—namely, their truth-conditions.3 9 The repudiation of this truth-conditional theory of meaning is the pivotal point of Wittgenstein's alleged 'Sceptical Solution' to his alleged sceptical problem. He is held to agree with the sceptic that there is no fact-in-the-world that constitutes my meaning W by 'W', but also to repudiate the truth-conditional theory of meaning that requires the obtaining of such facts to make true claims about meaning. This is off-target. It misinterprets the Tractatus conception of truth-conditions (infra). It distorts the structure of the argument of the Investigations. And, by Wittgenstein's lights, it is plainly wrong. First, no facts are in the world. It is a fact that Oxford is in England, but that fact is not in England, nor yet in France—for facts are not in space. Nor are they temporal entities: the fact that Hastings was fought in 1066 did not occur in 1066, since it is Hastings—the battle—that occurred then, not the fact. The fact that it occurred in 1066 did not cease to be a fact in 1067, nor was it a mere proto-fact in the womb of 37

Kripke, 'Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language', 245 (13).

38

Ibid. 249-50 (21).

39

Ibid. 273-4 (72).

end p.290

History in 1065. Hence the fact that I yesterday meant W by 'W' is not a fact-that-was-in-the-world-yesterday. And the fact that I now mean W by 'W' is not a fact-in-my-mind-now. But, if I did mean W by 'W', then it is a fact that I so meant, and, if I now mean W by 'W', then it is a fact that I so mean. Secondly, if Kripke wishes, one can say that the fact about me that constituted my having meant addition by 'plus' is the fact that I so meant. For if I did so mean, it is a fact that I so meant (and I will tell you if you ask me). Of course, the stick will not move. But that is because one has got hold of the wrong end of it. Thirdly, to be sure, when I tell you that I meant W by 'W', or that I meant you to

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go '1002, 1004' or that I intend to visit London tomorrow, I do not read these statements off the 'facts-in-the-world'. Kripke intimates that Wittgenstein's only alternative to the 'Sceptical Solution' is a picture according to which my confidently saying what I mean must result from my reading off what I mean from a fact-in-the-world (in my mind). This is precisely what Wittgenstein denies. The picture of facts-in-the-world is a muddle. Its solution does not consist in denying that there are any facts concerning my meaning things by words, but in sorting out the muddle. Fourthly, if the repudiation of his earlier truth-conditional theory of meaning (understood as involving correspondence with facts-in-the-world) is the key issue in Investigations, §§1-133, and is crucial to the solution of the sceptical paradox, it cannot but be surprising that Wittgenstein has no discussion of facts in the whole book. Nowhere does he examine the concept of a fact, nor suggest that it is not facts that make propositions true. Is this because he had nothing to say? Or because he was so cagy? As matter of fact, Wittgenstein had a very straightforward way with facts—and stated it clearly in what is now published as Philosophical Grammar (PG 161-2, 199 ff., 212 ff.). That he did not incorporate these remarks into the Investigations strongly suggests that he was not aiming at this target at all. His moves are simple. He does not deny that what makes the proposition that end p.291

p true is the fact that p. He does not repudiate the claim that the proposition determines in advance what will make it true (what fact must obtain to make it true). Rather he rejects the metaphysical picture that goes with these claims. For these are grammatical statements, not metaphysical profundities. They concern intralinguistic articulations, not the ultimate connections between language and reality. It is a convention of grammar that 'The proposition that p' = 'the proposition that the fact that p makes true'. And so too 'The fact that p' = 'The fact that makes the proposition that p true'. Like everything metaphysical, the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the languages (PG 161-2).4 0 Finally, it is noteworthy that the way Kripke sets up his sceptical paradox initially parallels traditional scepticism in assuming that only entailment will license a cognitive claim. Nothing in the past or in the present, in my mind or my behaviour, entails that I now mean by 'plus' what I previously meant by 'plus'. And so on. This observation parallels defences of scepticism about the past, about other minds or about induction. And, of course, we need not accept any such arguments. What shows that I meant green by 'green' is the way I explained 'green', and what shows that I meant grue is giving a quite different explanation. That I give such-and-such an explanation does not entail that in applying 'green' to this object I am using 'green' in accordance with what I meant by it hitherto, but it provides perfectly adequate grounds for that judgement (if anyone is interested in such a bizarre question). How I use an expression, how I explain an expression, how I use the explanation as a norm of correctness (in indefinitely many cases, new and old), what I count as applying the expression in accordance with its explanation (its meaning) shows what I understand by it. This sceptical problem can be sidestepped. But we may doubt whether this was ever

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Wittgenstein's problem!

6. Kripke's Sceptical Solution Initial scepticism, according to Kripke, leads us to doubt whether we are applying words in accordance with how we have in the past meant them. This led, by a quick route, to conceptual nihilism that denies that there is any such thing as meaning, and faces us with a paradox: language is impossible. Wittgenstein's solution, Kripke claims, consists in rejecting a truth-conditional theory of meaning in favour of assertion-conditions. Within this framework of thought, he can accept the sceptic's premisses that there is no fact-in-the-world constituting my meaning W by 'W', hence (sic !) that 'Jones means plus by "plus" ' has no truthconditions,4 1 yet deny the sceptic's paradox. What he does is to describe the assertion conditions of such statements, namely: For a more detailed analysis of Wittgenstein's resolution of the problem of the pictoriality of thought, see Hacker, Wittgenstein: Mind and Will, ch. 1. 40

41

Cf. Kripke, 'Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language', 281-2 (86).

end p.292

Jones is entitled, subject to correction by others, provisionally to say, 'I mean addition by "plus' " whenever he has the feeling of confidence—'now I can go on!'—that he can give 'correct' responses in new cases; and he is entitled, again provisionally and subject to correction by others, to judge a new response to be 'correct' simply because it is the response he is inclined to give. . . . Smith will judge Jones to mean addition by 'plus' only if he judges that Jones's answers to particular addition problems agree with those he is inclined to give . . . . . . Any individual who claims to have mastered the concept of addition will be judged by the community to have done so if his particular responses agree with those of the community in enough cases . . .4 2 It is difficult here to find any similitude to Wittgenstein's arguments. Indeed, it is difficult to see any plausibility in the argument, irrespective of whether it is Wittgenstein's. We are asked to accept as plausible the following exchange: we ask Jones 'Do you mean addition by "plus" (or red by "red", bachelor by "bachelor" etc.)?' And he is then supposed to answer: 'Yes, I do, and I know that I do because I feel confident I can answer such questions as "What is 68 + 57?" correctly (or "What colour is this?", or "Is John a bachelor?").' But this is bizarre. That one feels confident is not what entitles one to say that one means W by 'W'. And that one is inclined to answer thus and so is not what entitles one to judge one's answer to be correct.4 3 First, other things being equal, I will always claim to mean W by 'W'. The question is what I mean by 'W'—this is, whether I actually understand this word, whether I know what it means. The issue is not whether I am now using it in accordance with what I previously meant by it, but whether I am now using it in accordance with its meaning. The answer to these various questions is not to

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insist on my confidence, but to say what I mean—that is, to explain what 'W' means—for example, that, 'bachelor' means an unmarried man, 'red' means this colour (pointing at a ripe tomato), and 'plus' means that function which, when 2 and 3 are its arguments, yields 5 as its value, and which, when . . . Of course, these explanations do not bridge the gap between meaning and use, rule and application. But no explanation of any kind could do that, since the 'gap' is categorial. But giving these explanations does, ceteris paribus, provide adequate grounds for judging what a person means, 42

Ibid. 285-6 (90 ff.).

It is curious that Kripke carefully encloses 'correct' with scare quotes. Is it that there is no such thing as correctly using a sign on this account? The only option Kripke has explicitly left open is a Platonist one—namely, it is in the nature of such-and-such mathematical object to yield such-and-such a value for such-and-such arguments (cf. Kripke, 'Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language', 264-5 (53-4)). But this is certainly not Wittgenstein's view. And Kripke does not explain what he thinks Wittgenstein's view is. 43

end p.293

whether he knows what an expression means, and whether what he means by it is what it means. Secondly, the very idea that I could have an entitlement to say 'I mean W by "W' " is odd. For it suggests that there are grounds, assertability conditions, the obtaining of which I must establish before I may say that I mean such-and-such. But there are no more grounds for my saying 'I mean W by "W' " than there are grounds, assertability conditions, for saying 'I intend to go to London tomorrow' or 'I want a drink'. So too, it is misleading to suggest that there is here a question of my knowing that I mean W by 'W' (namely, if I have a title to assert, then, ceteris paribus, I know . . . ). But 'I know that I mean W by "W' " is just an emphatic insistence that I do mean W by 'W'. Kripke's description of the assertion-conditions for a third-person ascription is no less strange. We must imagine the following exchange: we ask Smith 'Does Jones mean addition by "plus"?' He replies, 'Yes, because whenever he is asked "What are a plus b" (for any a and b), he always gives the same answer as I give.' This is awry. First, whether Jones gives the same answer as Smith is beside the point. The question is whether he gives the correct answer 4 4 —that is, what counts, in such a case, as the correct answer. In some cases, even this procedure would be absurd. For example, does Jones mean bachelor by 'bachelor'? Are we to say: 'Yes, whenever he is asked whether Mr A is a bachelor he gives the same answer I am inclined to give'? But in most cases the answer I would be inclined to give would be 'I don't know'! Would this response satisfy the assertion-conditions for 'Jones means bachelor by "bachelor' "? Secondly, the analysis seems to suggest that Smith cannot judge that Jones understands 'W' (means W by 'W') unless (a) he knows how Jones applies 'W' to new instances, and (b) he takes a given application of 'W' to be correct simply because it is the one he himself is inclined to give. But it is a conceptual truth that I am entitled to judge someone to mean W by 'W' (to understand 'W') on the

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grounds of the explanations of 'W' he gives. If he says 'By "bachelor" I mean an unmarried man', is that not enough? Must he answer the question of whether Genghis Khan at the age of 22 was a bachelor? And must he answer it the way I am inclined to?4 5 Or at least, in the arithmetical case, that he goes through the correct procedure.

44

To this the reply might be that the requirement is not merely that he gives the same reply I am inclined to give, but rather that, given the same information, he gives the same reply. So, given that he knows that Genghis Khan was an unmarried man at the age of 22, he would answer the question of whether he was a bachelor in the same way as I am inclined to, given that information. This may be conceded; of course he will give the same answer—because he knows (as I do) what 'bachelor' means. It is not our agreement that is the ground for the judgement that he means bachelor by 'bachelor', but rather the explanation of its meaning that he gives and the applications of the word that he makes. The agreement is a framework condition for the language-game (see below, pp. 300-1), not part of the rules of the game. 45

end p.294

Putting together the first- and third-person assertion-conditions as a general account, two points still stand forth as baffling. First, truth-conditions were meant to provide an account of the meanings of sentences. Giving the truthconditions is generally supposed to be a way of giving or explaining the meaning of a sentence. Assertion-conditions are presumably to inherit this role from truthconditions in Kripke's account. So the meaning of 'A means addition (or whatever) by "plus" (or whatever)' is supposed to be given by Kripke's specification of its assertion conditions. But would anyone thus explain to someone who genuinely wanted to know what 'A means W by "W' " means? And would such an explanation provide a norm for the correct use of 'means'? Secondly, has the original sceptical question really been answered? The problem was set up by arguing that we can never have adequate grounds to judge that anyone now uses an expression in accordance with its previous meaning (with what he, or we, previously meant by it). The sceptical solution is that no fact about past or present can tell us that our current use coheres with our past use. But, if we all share common inclinations to apply the term thus and so, then we all now mean W by 'W', or, more carefully, as long as a speaker does not apply 'W' differently from the way the rest of the community is inclined to apply it, then he will be accepted as following the rule for 'W', as meaning by 'W' what everyone else means. But does this really resolve the sceptical question? Given that no one previously ever added 57 and 68, how do we know that our present community-wide inclination to answer '125' accords with what we previously meant by 'plus'—that is, with what we would have been inclined to say, had we previously been asked what 57 + 68 is? Like Kripke, we put the challenge 'in terms of a sceptical hypothesis about a change in [our] usage'.4 6 For there was yesterday no satisfied assertion condition for our meaning either plus or quus, since we had no inclination to answer '57 + 68' either way, as the question, ex hypothesi, had never occurred to anyone hitherto.

265

46

Parallel to Kripke, 'Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language', 245 (13).

end p.295

7. Robinson Crusoe Rides Again Kripke's assertion conditions account is part of his picture of Wittgenstein's argument, but not the whole. In addition, he contends, Wittgenstein describes the role and utility in our lives of assertions that someone means such-and-such by his words, or that his present use of a word accords with what he previously meant by it. It turns out, however, that this role and the conditions of assertion are inapplicable to a single person considered in isolation.4 7 If one person is considered in isolation, the notion of his following a rule can have no substantive content. For as long as we regard him as following a rule 'previously'—that is, merely following his inclinations (sic!)—then there is no difference between his thinking he is following a rule and his following one. It is this argument that, by §202, rules out as incoherent the private language that is introduced only in §§243 ff. What then of Robinson Crusoe on his desert island? It does not follow, Kripke claims, that he cannot be said to follow rules. 'What does follow is that if we think of Crusoe as following rules, we are taking him into our community and applying our criteria for rule-following to him. The falsity of the private model need not mean that a physically isolated individual cannot be said to follow rules; rather that an individual considered in isolation (whether or not he is physically isolated) cannot be said to do so.' 4 8 This is muddled. In the first place, it is quite wrong to suppose that distinctions between appearance and reality are inapplicable to an individual in isolation, and are ones that that individual cannot employ. In the particular case of rule-following, there is no reason why Crusoe should not follow a pattern or paradigm, making occasional mistakes perhaps, and occasionally (but maybe not always) noticing and correcting his mistakes. That he is following a rule will show itself in the manner in which he uses the formulation of the rule as a canon or norm of correctness. Hence, to take a simple example, he might use the 47

Kripke, 'Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language', 277, 284 (79, 89).

Ibid. 296 (110); a similar bizarre view is expressed by C. Peacocke in his defence of what he calls 'The community view' of rules: 'The community view can count such a person [as Crusoe] as a genuine rule-follower if he reacts to new examples in the same way as would members of our community, or of some other conceivable community.' See C. Peacocke, 'Reply: Rule-following: The Nature of Wittgenstein's Arguments', in S. Holtzman and C. Leich (eds.), Wittgenstein: to Follow a Rule (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), 93-4. Note that the subjunctive, together with the requirement of mere conceivability of a community, robs the qualification of any restrictive content whatever. 48

end p.296

pattern --- . . . --- . . . as a rule or pattern to follow in decorating the walls of his house; when he notices four dots in a sequence he manifests annoyance with himself. He carefully goes back and rubs one out, and perhaps checks carefully adjacent marks, comparing them with his 'master-pattern'. And so on. Of course,

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he is not merely following his 'inclinations',4 9 but rather following the rule. And it is his behaviour, including his corrective behaviour, that shows both that he is following the rule, and what he counts as following the rule . It might be asked how an unseen observer of such solitary rule-following could distinguish Crusoe's making a mistake from his following a more complex pattern, and his following a more complex pattern from his non-normative behaviour. How could one justify the claim that the solitary man is either following or breaking a rule at all? The answer is that, if one must, ex hypothesi, remain unseen, it will be very difficult to understand him. If the rules are simple, we might guess aright. If they are complex, we might not. Reflect that, if we observed the self-addressed speech of a shipwrecked monolingual Tibetan, our chances of coming to understand him are remote. But he surely could talk to himself, keep a diary, give orders to himself, play Tibetan solitaire. Once the restriction of unseen observation is lifted, however, matters change altogether. Gestures ('the natural language of mankind' as Augustine says), common human nature, and interaction with the castaway provide the necessary leverage. Of course, to understand him we must grasp his rules. Whether we are succeeding in doing so is something we shall see from the extent to which our attempts to follow his rules are in agreement with his behaviour. But whether he is following a rule is independent of whether anyone else is actually doing so too. Secondly, Kripke rightly concedes that Crusoe may follow rules, but insists that, in saying of him that he does, we 'are taking him into our community and applying our criteria for rule-following to him'. This seems confused. This 'taking him into our community' will do little to alleviate Crusoe's solitude. What is it supposed to mean? Does it mean that in saying that he is following a rule we are applying our criteria for rule-following to him? Well—are there other criteria? This, presumably, is what 'rule-following' means. When we say of the cat that it is hunting the mouse, we are applying our criteria of hunting to it. Do we There is something very wrong about recent talk of 'following one's inclinations' when applying rules. We do not teach children arithmetic by teaching them to follow their inclinations. We do not even teach them to have the same inclinations as we have. We teach them to follow arithmetical rules; we teach them that getting such-and-such results is what counts as following this or that rule. When we hit bedrock, we do indeed follow the rule blindly, but that is not to say that we follow our inclinations blindly! 49

end p.297

thereby take the cat into our community? This, it might be replied, is beside the point. Our 'taking Crusoe into our community' consists in the fact that we judge that he is following a rule only if he satisfies the assertion conditions of following a rule, and these, Kripke contends, stipulate that A can be said to mean W by 'W', to follow such-and-such a rule, if he applies the rule (uses 'W') as other members of the community do, if his responses and inclinations agree with theirs. Since Crusoe is not a member of any community, in judging him to be following a rule, we must be 'taking him into our community', judging his responses to agree with ours. Must we? Must Crusoe's rules be the same as ours? Must his colour vocabulary be isomorphic with ours? Could he not invent new rules, play new games? To be

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sure, in order to grasp them, we must understand what counts, in Crusoe's practice, as following the rules. And that must be evident in Crusoe's activities. But that is not the same as checking to see whether his responses agree with ours, let alone a matter of 'taking him into our community'. And our judgement that he is following his rules is quite independent of any judgement about how most members of the English-Speaking Peoples would react. Indeed, given Kripke's rule-scepticism, how are we supposed to know how our community would react, given that the rule is novel, or is being applied to a novel circumstance? Interestingly, Wittgenstein did explicitly discuss Robinson Crusoe in his notebooks. In MS 124, 213, we find an early version of Investigations, §243(a), a discussion of the imaginary monologists, whose language is translatable by the explorer. Could we not imagine people who speak only to themselves? In that case, Wittgenstein responds, each person could have his own language. There could be men who know only language-games that one plays by oneself—namely, ordering oneself, telling oneself, asking and answering oneself, and so on. How they learnt their language is here irrelevant, he adds. An explorer who observed the behaviour of such monologists could translate their languages. On p. 221 Wittgenstein remarks that the private language that he has described above is one that Robinson could have spoken to himself on his island. If anyone had observed him, he could have learnt this language. For the meanings of the words of this (contingently) private language are shown in Robinson's behaviour .5 0 5 0 A similar discussion of the language of Robinson Crusoe 'considered in isolation' occurs in MS 116, 117, where Wittgenstein examines a distinction between subjective and objective understanding. Crusoe could certainly play language-games by himself, Wittgenstein remarks. If one secretly observed his sign-using activities, and if one discerned in them certain kinds of complex regularities, one would rightly judge him to be using a language of his own.

end p.298

There is no hint here that, in attributing rule-following to Crusoe, in judging him to mean such-and-such by what he says, we are 'taking him into our community'. There is no suggestion that our concept of rule-following or of meaning is limited to our rules, or to what we mean by signs. There is no claim that his responses must agree with ours (he may have invented a new branch of mathematics; he may employ a different colour geometry from ours; or he may apply names of notes immediately, given that he has perfect pitch). The claim does not involve insistence on community aid for solitary rule-followers, but on regularities of action of sufficient complexity to yield normativity. The criteria for whether Crusoe is following a rule do indeed lie in his behaviour, but not in his behaviour agreeing with independent hypothetical or counterfactual behaviour of ours. It is noteworthy that, immediately following the remark about Crusoe on p. 221 of MS 124, Wittgenstein introduces the real private-language argument—that is, a draft of Investigations, §243(b). There is no hint that he considers such a language to have been ruled out by his antecedent reflections on rule-following in general or on Crusoe's solitary rule-following in particular.

8. Further Diagnosis 268

The discussion thus far suggests that Kripke has misinterpreted Wittgenstein's argument 'in the Large and in the Small'. Three substantial misunderstandings or distortions ramify throughout his essay. These are likely to mislead readers and to lead to futile debates about Wittgenstein's intentions. The following observations may forestall this. (i) Kripke sets up his sceptical problem (the 'real private-language argument') in terms of what a speaker means by an expression, of whether he is now using an expression in accordance with what he previously meant by it. This is a highly misleading way of broaching the core problem Wittgenstein is concerned with—namely, what is involved in a speaker understanding an expression, knowing what it means, using it in accordance with a correct explanation of its meaning. Kripke's strategy is misleading, because it runs together the internally related, but distinct, notions of what an expression means and understanding an expression. Focusing on the issue of conformity of current use with a pattern of past use conflates the question of the persistence of understanding (an ability) with the question of the correctness of the present use (conformity with a norm). Kripke vainly attempts to extricate himself from the consequent end p.299

muddle by invoking community aid. Wittgenstein's strategy is entirely different. He is careful to keep these questions distinct. He correlates understanding both with the use of an expression and with explaining its meaning, and he stresses that these correlations must not be conflated. Since meaning is a correlate of understanding, the meaning of a word is also linked both with its use and with explanations of its meaning. The meaning of a word is what is explained by an explanation of its meaning. And it is also the manner in which the word is used in speech. Understanding the meaning of a word is akin to an ability; it is the mastery of a technique of using the symbol according to rules. The criteria of understanding lie in behaviour, in the use of the expression in accordance with (in what counts as accordance with) its explanation, the rules for its use, and in the giving of correct explanations of its meaning (which may be by example, paraphrase, contextual paraphrase, ostension, Merkmal-definition, and so on). Not only agreement in judgements, as Kripke suggests, but also agreement in definitions is essential to meaning and understanding—and the notions must be described with sufficient subtlety that logic is not thereby abolished. It is unclear whether Kripke satisfies this obvious requirement. On p. 297 (p. 111) he claims, following Wittgenstein, that truth is not to be equated with what most people hold to be true. He insists that Wittgenstein has no theory of truth-conditions, necessary and sufficient conditions for the correctness of one response rather than another to a new addition problem (and, presumably, to a new colour predication). Wittgenstein's assertability-conditions story, according to Kripke, does not say that the correct answer to an addition problem is the one everyone gives, but only the platitude that, if everyone agrees upon a certain answer, then no one will feel justified in calling that answer wrong. But is the answer right? What does it mean, according to this story, for an answer to be right as opposed to wrong? Unless an answer is forthcoming, Kripke's Wittgenstein, unlike the author of the Philosophical Investigations, will have abolished logic! (ii) The role of agreement is certainly paramount in Wittgenstein's argument. My use of an expression must agree, accord, with my correct explanation of what it

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means. If I explain 'red' by pointing at a sample, saying 'This is red', then when I judge an object A to be red, A must be this (pointing at the sample) colour. Moreover, ceteris paribus, my current use of an expression must agree with my previous use. I must lay down the yardstick alongside reality in the same way —that is, in what is called 'the same way' from occasion to occasion. And reality must be sufficiently stable so that the yardstick typically gives the same result when the same object is measured on successive occasions. end p.300

Otherwise measurement in particular and the application of concepts to reality in general become pointless. Finally, the 'language-games' I engage in with others can be played only if we agree in explanations (definitions) and also, by and large, agree in applications (judgements). Kripke appreciates the centrality of the notion of agreement for Wittgenstein, but distorts its function. We noted that he allots no significant role to agreement in definitions (explanations) and has nothing to say on the relationship between agreement in judgements and agreement in definitions. However, it also seems to be the case that Kripke's Wittgenstein conceives of agreement as constitutive of my meaning W by 'W'. Someone is judged by the community to have mastered such-and-such a concept 'if the particular responses agree with those of the community in enough cases'.5 1 Someone in a community is said to follow a rule 'as long as he agrees in his responses with the . . . responses produced by members of that community'.5 2 On this account, agreement with a community is part of the assertion-conditions of 'meaning W by "W" ' and hence part of its meaning. Is this Wittgenstein's view? For Wittgenstein, agreement is a framework condition for the existence of language-games, but is not constitutive of any game. Hence it is not part of the criteria for whether A understands 'plus' or 'red'. These are, rather, that A explains correctly what the expressions mean, and typically uses them correctly. That A understands what 'red' means is shown by his giving a correct explanation (ostensive definition) of 'red', as well as by his saying of my red rose 'That is red'. That others would also characterize my rose as red is not part of the criteria for A's understanding, knowing the meaning of 'red'. But the framework for these concept-exercising activities is general agreement.5 3 Similarly, Wittgenstein contends that proofs in mathematics stand in need of ratification, and in the absence of a consensus in ratifications, mathematicians would not come to any understanding, and the concept of calculation would have no application (RFM 365). But this is not to say that it is agreement in ratification that makes such and such operations calculation. Far from it, 'the agreement of ratification is the precondition of our language-game, it is not affirmed in it'. The subject of agreement in judgements and definitions is treated by Wittgenstein with great subtlety. We shall not try here to unravel its complexities. But it is clear that he does not conceive of agreement in judgements as a constitutive element of a language-game. 51

Kripke, 'Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language', 286 (92).

52

Ibid. 289 (96).

RFM 323: 'peaceful agreement . . . belongs to the framework out of which our language works'. Cf. PI §240.

53

end p.301

270

Kripke does not take sufficiently seriously Wittgenstein's insistence that 'Following according to the rule is FUNDAMENTAL to our language-game. It characterizes what we call description' (RFM 330). He apparently wants to go behind rule-following to agreement. But there is nothing behind: 'It is not use, for example, going back to the concept of agreement, because it is not more certain that one proceeding is in agreement with another, than that it has happened in accordance with a rule. Admittedly, going according to a rule is also founded on agreement' (RFM 392). It is not surprising that if one tries to go beyond rule-following into the framework that makes it possible, one will, in the process, lose the very concept of normativity one is trying to clarify; and with it too the distinction between correct and incorrect. What a teacher teaches a child is not to have the same inclinations others have, but to follow a rule correctly. The learner must learn to use the rule, the explanation of meaning, as a standard of correct use. He must learn to see such-and-such results as criteria for following the rule correctly. And all this takes place within the background context of a practice of using the rule in this way. If the learner is to master shared concepts he must learn what counts as following the rule. And 'what the correct following of a rule consists in cannot be described more closely than by describing the learning of "proceeding according to the rule". And this description is an everyday one, like that of cooking and sewing, for example' (RFM 392). What counts as correct is not the response we are inclined to give. The learner is not entitled to 'judge a new response to be "correct" simply because it is the response he is inclined to give' (and others agree). It is correct if it accords with the rule. But we can speak of accord with a rule only in the context of a regular use of a rule as a measure of correctness. (iii) It became fashionable in the late 1970s and early 1980s, under the influence of Michael Dummett, to view the evolution of Wittgenstein's philosophies as a transformation of a realist into an anti-realist theory, a truth-conditional theory into an assertability-conditions one. This was an unfortunate influence, forcing Wittgenstein into a Procrustean bed, rather than looking carefully to see what he says. Kripke, like others,5 4 falls victim to this distorted way of looking at Wittgenstein. Distortions occur at two levels: (a) the representation of Wittgenstein's truth-conditional Ourselves (in the past) included. Kripke's position differs substantially from Dummett's in respect of the issue of anti-realism, for nothing in his remarks about assertion-conditions commits him to Dummett's anti-realist doctrines. While Dummett's interests lie, as it were, in the geometry of proof, Kripke's lie in the sociology of meaning. 54

end p.302

theory in the Tractatus; (b) the picture of Wittgenstein's later views on meaning. We shall limit ourselves to some schematic observations.5 5 Kripke characterize the Tractatus with the following thumb-nail sketch: The simplest, most basic idea of the Tractatus can hardly be dismissed: a declarative sentence gets its meaning by virtue of its truth-conditions, by virtue of its correspondence to facts that must obtain if it is true. For example, 'the cat is on the mat' is understood by those speakers who realize that it is true if and only if a certain cat is on a certain mat; it is

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false otherwise. The presence of the cat on the mat is a fact or conditionin-the-world that would make the sentence true (express a truth) if it obtained.5 6 Even allowing for the vagaries of sketches, this conflates two distinct doctrines of the Tractatus. First, there is a pictorial theory of the atomic proposition. The sense of such a proposition is a function of the meanings of its constituent unanalysable names, and it consists in its agreement and disagreement with the obtaining and non-obtaining of an atomic state of affairs. Secondly, there is a truth-conditional account of the sense of molecular propositions—that is, an account of the conditions a molecular proposition must satisfy —in terms of truth-value assignments to its constituent propositions—if it is to be true. Kripke treats the Tractatus truth-conditional theory as if it were part of the pictorial theory of the atomic proposition. But according to the Tractatus it literally makes no sense to talk of the truth-conditions of an atomic proposition, that is, of the conditions that the proposition must satisfy in order to be true. The truthconditions of a proposition are the conditions under which 'T' occurs in the final column of its truth-table. But there is no such thing as a truth-table for the atomic proposition ' p'. Similarly, Kripke apparently reads Tarski's T -sentences into the Tractatus (namely, ' F(a)' is true if and only if F(a)). But this is not part of the Tractatus theory of meaning. If T -sentences such as ' "The cat is on the mat" is true if and only if a certain cat is on a certain mat' are what spell out truthconditions, then the truth-conditional theory parts company with the picture theory of the proposition, the thesis of isomorphism, and the bipolarity of the proposition. Does this matter? Is it not, after all, just so much history? It does indeed. For, by thus misrepresenting history we facilitate the fit of the distorting spectacles that allow us to delude ourselves into viewing the For a detailed analysis of the different concepts of truth-conditions, from the Tractatus, through Tarski, Carnap, and onwards, see G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker, Language, Sense and Nonsense (Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1984), ch. 3. 55

56

Kripke, 'Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language', 273-4 (72).

end p.303

evolution of twentieth-century philosophy of language (philosophical logic) as a progressive confrontation between truth-conditional semantics and assertionconditions semantics. Kripke contends that the later Wittgenstein 'proposes a picture of language based, not on truth-conditions, but on assertability conditions or justification conditions'.5 7 It is very doubtful whether this picture of Wittgenstein's later views on language does anything but distort the reality it is meant to represent. It is true that for some kinds of sentences, in particular third-person sentences concerning psychological characteristics and sentences about abilities, we explain their meaning in part by specifying the kinds of circumstances that justify their assertion. But it would be absurd, as well as groundless, to foist on Wittgenstein the view that the meaning of every sentence is given thus, let alone that the meaning of 'He is in pain' is the behavioural conditions that justify asserting it (that would transform Wittgenstein into a behaviourist, which he

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patently was not). Kripke, to be sure, acknowledges that non-declaratives do not fit into this picture, and avowals of sensation do not either. But the 'exceptions' are not just these. It is not merely avowals of aches and pains that do not fit this mould, but saying that I intend to do such-and-such, remember this or that, want such-and-such. It is not merely psychological predications in the first person that mar the alleged pattern, but hosts of ordinary utterances, such as 'The rose is red', 'The table is round', 'It is warm today', 'My name is N.N.', 'It is time to go'—in short, most sentences. Wittgenstein does not claim, with respect to sentences in general, that we explain their meaning by giving their assertion conditions. The injunction to look at how sentences are used is not an implicit claim that all sentences have assertion-conditions. What explanations would we give that would justify asserting such sentences as those cited, and also constitute explanations of their meaning? (But there is no difficulty in explaining what 'My name is N.N.' or 'It is time to go' or 'The rose is red' mean!) Forcing Wittgenstein into the invented position of constructivism, intuitionistsemantics, assertion-conditions theories, is altogether misguided. It is a mistake stemming from a hankering after sweeping generalizations, global confrontations of semantic theories, large-scale theory-building. But Wittgenstein builds no such theories. He does not contend that a language is a monolithic structure run through with truth-conditions or assertion-conditions that give meanings to sentences and words. It is not a calculus of rules, either in the form of classical logic or in the form of intuitionist logic. It is a motley of language-games, an 57

Kripke, 'Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language', 274 (74).

end p.304

endlessly variegated form of human activity, interwoven with our lives at every level.

9. A Concluding Sketch We have tried to show that Wittgenstein's argument as it struck Kripke is very far removed from Wittgenstein's argument. We have denied that Wittgenstein is concerned with a sceptical problem, and denied that he gives a Humean solution to the problems he was concerned with. To give a proper account of Wittgenstein's discussion of rule-following and its relation to the private-language argument would be a large task, which we confront in another forum.5 8 But perhaps the following sketch may be helpful to a reader who, weary of the flow of denials, hankers for some positive suggestions about Wittgenstein's discussion of rule-following prior to §243. The conception of meaning that Wittgenstein delineated in the Tractatus involved a commitment to various metaphysical doctrines. In particular, fully analysed names were conceived as standing for simple entities in reality that were their meanings. These 'objects' were metaphysical simples, the indestructible substance of reality. The combinatorial possibilities of simple names in a language must mirror the metaphysical combinatorial possibilities of objects in reality. Wittgenstein later referred to this conception as the 'Bedeutungskörper' (meaning-body) picture. When he returned to philosophy in 1929, the first element of his old way of thinking that he jettisoned was precisely the

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Bedeutungskörper picture. What he argued initially was that, instead of conceiving of language as a system of (analysable) signs, connected by means of lines of projection with metaphysical simples that provide the signs with meanings, we should conceive of language simply as a calculus of rules. The meaning of an expression is not a sempiternal simple object,5 9 but the rules for its use, the totality of which fix its place in a calculus of meaning rules. Under pressure, this picture too gave way. It gave way, not because a language is not rule governed, nor because speaking is not a normative activity, but because it involved a mystification of rules no less distorting than the original metaphysics of objects. Rules for the use of expressions 5 8 See G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker, Rules, Grammar and Necessity , vol. ii of An Analytic Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985).

The metaphysical object, he now thought, was an illusion. What was legitimate about its role was satisfied by samples, conceived as belonging to the calculus itself.

59

end p.305

are not bits of normative machinery. They are not Platonic entities whirring away in Fregean third realms, nor are they psychological entities determining in a causal manner how we are constrained to think. Two deep and ramifying confusions must be extirpated. It is very tempting to conceive of a sign as standing in a projective relation to what is represents. This conception may be variously realized. Frege conceived the senses associated with words as determining a reference. The Tractatus conceived of the proposition as a logical picture representing a state of affairs. The representing picture, the proposition, was held to include the pictorial relationship, 'the correlations of the picture's elements with things' (TLP 2.1514). In a like manner , if one conceives of the meaning of an expression as constituted by the rules for its use, one may think that the rule must, in some sense, contain a 'picture' or 'representation' of what complies with it. For understanding an expression must constitute knowing, grasping, the rules that constitute its meaning. Those rules stipulate how the expression is to be used. So by grasping the rules one must grasp how to use, how to apply the expression. But that would be possible, it seems, only if the rule determines independently of us what accords with it. Otherwise how could I, by grasping the rule, know what to do with the expression the meaning of which is given by the rule. (Precisely analogous is the thought that an intention, expectation, or order must contain a 'picture' of its fulfilment.) One of Wittgenstein's central concerns is to combat this conception. We must sharply distinguish the lines of projection from the technique or method of projection. The method of projection is not part of the symbol. Of course, one can describe the method of projection (the application of a symbol). But such a description is itself just another symbol (an interpretation). If the method of application is a bridge between a symbol and what it symbolizes, it is at any rate not built until the application is made. It is not the interpretation that builds the bridge between the sign and what is signified or meant, only the practice does that (MS 165, 82). It is built by our practices of using the rule (the explanation of

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meaning) to constitute a norm of correctness, our practices of teaching and explaining, of criticizing and correcting, of justifying our applications of an expression by reference to the rule. A second great confusion is closely connected with the first. We are inclined to think that it is the mind that infuses symbols with their meaning. And when we realize that there is indeed a gap between an explanation of the meaning of an expression and the use of the expression, it is altogether natural to think that it is the mind that bridges that gap, that effects the connection between a rule and its application. This end p.306

can be variously conceived. Frege thought of a sense as an abstract entity which determines a referent, or presents a referent in a certain way. Grasping a sense, he thought of as an altogether mysterious6 0 mental act of coming into contact with such entities. Indeed, it would not be unlike imagining a sign together with its lines of projection (cf. PI §141) save that a sense, being an abstract object, is not imaginable. In the Tractatus meaning is conferred on signs by the will, by meaning or intending by such-and-such a name such-and-such an object, and by meaning by a sentence such-and-such a state of affairs. The wayward antagonist in Investigations §§184-243, conceives of the mind as 'drawing the projection lines' from the symbol, or from the rule that explains its use, to its application. This is held to be done by mental acts or processes of understanding, or by acts of meaning (for example, addition by 'plus') or by intuitive insight, or by feelings of intimation which arise from contemplating the rule. Pricking the bubble of these philosophical flights of fancy is one of the tasks Wittgenstein undertakes in the Investigations' discussion of rule-following. One by one he examines these false pictures of understanding and of rules, and shows that they constitute a mythology of symbolism. He does not deny that we can and often do 'grasp the whole use of a word at a stroke', nor that when we order someone to expand the series '+ 2' we mean him to go on '20004, 20006'. We can and do explain how a given rule is to be followed, and we can and do learn how to follow rules correctly (independently of intuitions, intimations, and causal necessitations). But these mundane phenomena must be seen aright, not allowed to evolve into mysteries about mental acts of understanding and logical machinery of rules. It is acting according to a rule, a practice of normative behaviour, that lies at the bottom of our language-games. Language, far from being a reflection of thought, is a form of behaviour. It is no coincidence that Wittgenstein often quoted the line from Goethe: Im Anfang war die Tat. Kripke contends that Wittgenstein has invented a new form of scepticism ('the most radical and original sceptical problem that philosophy has seen to date'), that 'it is important to see that his achievement in posing this problem stands on its own, independently of the value of his own solution of it and the resultant argument against private language'.6 1 This observation not only misrepresents the character of Wittgenstein's preoccupations and achievements, but also fails to appreciate the diminishing significance of scepticism in philosophy. 60

Gottlob Frege, Posthumous Writings (Oxford: Blackwells, 1979), 145.

61

Kripke, 'Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language', 267 (60).

275

end p.307

Philosophical scepticism played a significant role in seventeenth-century culture, stimulated in part by the deep need for a criterion of truth within religion (given the schism within Christianity), for a criterion of truth for scientific theories (given the number of competing scientific theories, for example, of the solar system, all equally reliable within acceptable margins of error), and for a criterion of truth between science and religion. But perhaps the most important impetus was the manifest conflict between the new scientific picture of reality (as consisting of material objects possessing only geometric and mechanical properties, and powers to affect our sensibility in such-and-such ways) and our ordinary conception of the world as colourful, noisy, sweet-smelling or malodorous, warm or cold. No one could gainsay the colossal achievements of the new science, but it opened a gulf between appearance and reality that required explanation and justification. For, if the world as it is in itself is so different from the world as it appears to be, how can we be certain that we can ever know anything about it as it really is? In this cultural context it was altogether natural that philosophy should become preoccupied with justifying the ways of God (and His world) in the face of sceptical doubts. Those days are long past. Scepticism, in the twenty-first century, is no longer a serious issue in our culture (save perhaps in the domains of ethics and aesthetics). One may use scepticism as a colourful device to present a genuine problem. But this manœuvre is no more than heuristic. Achievement in philosophy today could not consist in inventing new forms of scepticism. The deepest cultural preoccupations of the last century turn on issues concerning language and communication. These ramify through literature and art (from von Hoffmannsthal and Joyce to Orwell, Borges, Beckett, or Pinter as well as such artists as Picasso, de Chirico and Magritte, Steinberg and Escher), through the 'humane studies', psychology, linguistics, and sociology. It is not surprising that philosophy has followed suit, not like the owl of Minerva, but in fruitful symbiotic relationship with the rest of our culture. Wittgenstein's central concerns,6 2 in both his philosophies, were with the nature of language, its function and structure (cf. PI §92), and the myriad philosophical illusions propensity to which is the unavoidable condition of every language-user. It is here, and not in the invention of new forms of scepticism, that his achievements lie. His reflections on rule-following not only undermine a conception of language rampant in philosophy, theoretical linguistics, and psychology, but also yield a novel and more profound conception of logical and mathematical necessity than any yet achieved by philosophers. His private-language arguments, the real privatelanguage arguments, not only undermine a tradition of philosophical thought running from Descartes to the present day, but yield novel and more profound conceptions of self-consciousness, of the relation of mind to body, and of the will than any available hitherto. What exactly his conception was needs exposition, which we have not offered save en passant. Whether his conception was right needs argument, which we have not given, save per accidens. What we have done is to show that it does not lie in the arid area of sceptical questions, let alone of Humean sceptical solutions. This is not to say that his discussions of scepticism in On Certainty are unimportant, merely that it would be misconceived to represent these themes as lying at the heart of the Philosophical Investigations. 62

end p.308

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end p.309

11 #11 Malcolm On Language and Rules Abstract: Wittgenstein held that speaking a language is a rule-governed activity. He argued that following a rule presupposes the existence of a practice. It is unclear whether the concept of a practice that is invoked is that of a social practice—in which case, as Norman Malcolm argued, language is essentially social, or whether the concept of a practice allows for the practices of a solitary individual—in which case, as is argued here, language is essentially shareable, but need not actually be shared. Keywords: agreement, following rules, language, N. Malcolm, practice, solitary language users

P. M. S Hacker In 'Wittgenstein on Language and Rules',1 Professor N. Malcolm took us to task for misinterpreting Wittgenstein's arguments on the relationship between the concept of following a rule and the concept of community agreement on what counts as following a given rule. Not that we denied that there are any grammatical connections between these concepts. On the contrary, we emphasized that a rule and an act in accordance with it make contact in language. Moreover, we argued that agreement in judgements and in definitions is indeed necessary for a shared language. But we denied that the concept of a language is so tightly interwoven with the concept of a community of speakers (and hence with actual agreement) as to preclude its applicability to someone whose use of signs is not shared by others. Malcolm holds that 'This is an unwitting reduction of Wittgenstein's originality. That human agreement is necessary for "shared" language is not so striking a thought as that it is essential for language simpliciter '.2 Though less striking, we believe that it has the merit of being a true thought. We shall once more try to show both that it is correct, and that it is a correct account of Wittgenstein's arguments. The disagreements between Malcolm and us on these exegetical and philosophical matters should not be allowed to mask our extensive agreements. This provides a framework within which our disagreements can be fruitfully displayed. We all agree on the following ten points: (1) Wittgenstein, in Investigations §§189-242, is not elaborating a sceptical paradox concerning following rules. Hence, (2) his elucidation of the concept of following a rule does not consist in providing a Humean 'sceptical solution' to any such paradox. (3) A rule, as Wittgenstein argues, does not 'contain' its own applications, as it were locked up within it. This is, rather, a misleading metaphor, akin to that of a meaning-body (Bedeutungskörper ) determining the combinatorial possibilities Co-authored with G. P. Baker. 1

N. Malcolm, 'Wittgenstein on Language and Rules', Philosophy 64 (1989), 5-28.

2

Ibid. 27.

end p.310

of a word. (4) A rule and what accords with it are internally related. The rule '+2' for forming the series of even integers would not be the rule it is if '1002'

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were not the correct answer to the question 'What is the result of applying the rule +2 to the integer 1000?' It is this grammatical insight that rules out both the supposed 'sceptical paradox' and its putative 'sceptical solution'. For these strategies presuppose that understanding a rule can be separated from knowing what would count as a correct application of it. The denial of this presupposition is a truism parallel to the claim that to know what a description means is to know what would be the case if it were true. (But Malcolm denies, whereas we affirm, that the rule, and nothing but the rule, determines what is correct. We shall comment on this below.) (5) Community agreement does not mediate between a rule and what accords with it, any more than a feeling of pleasure mediates between a desire and what satisfies it. Of course, this claim is compatible with the truisms that when in doubt one may turn to another person and ask 'Is this what I should do?', and that, when people are learning common rules, teachers continually prompt and guide their pupils, thus instructing them about what counts as following a given rule. (6) Agreement is part of the framework, background, or presuppositions of our (shared) language-games. (Malcolm, however, would insist on the stronger thesis that agreement is a presupposition of all language-games, not merely of shared ones.) (7) It is intelligible that a solitary person like Robinson Crusoe should follow rules, and that a member of our society should invent and follow rules of which nobody else has any knowledge. (8) The concept of a rule applies only if there is room for a distinction between someone's following a rule and his thinking (wrongly) that he is following a rule. (9) The concept of a rule is logically connected with the concept of a regularity. (10) The concept of a rule is logically connected with the concepts of justifying and evaluating action by reference to the rule, of correcting mistakes, or explaining what is done within a practice, and also of teaching someone what is to be done. Disagreement breaks out, however, over the character of the logical nexus between rule and agreement. We argued for the simplest of connections between these concepts. To concede that the concept of a rule is tied to the concepts of justification and evaluation, teaching, correcting mistakes, and so on certainly demands that it make sense to say that someone is following a given rule only if it makes sense also to say that another should be taught this rule, that another should justify or criticize an agent's performance by reference to the rule, and so on. Hence it must make sense for the rule-follower to come to agreement with others about what accords with or contravenes the given rule. We end p.311

summarized this reasoning in the claim that the concept of a rule is tied to the possibility of agreement (not to actual agreement). Malcolm disagrees. He holds that Wittgenstein argued for a stronger thesis. He attempts to expound and defend an argument purporting to prove that in some sense following a rule is an essentially social activity. Indeed, Malcolm seems to connect the concept of a rule with that of actual agreement, in so far as he contends that it makes sense to say that a person is following a rule only if there is a community of people who follow that rule and agree that that is what counts as following it. His reasoning turns to denying the intelligibility of drawing a distinction between following a rule and thinking one is following a rule save in the context of community agreement. Thus he writes:

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To follow the rules for the use of an expression is nothing other than to use the expression as it is ordinarily used—which is to say, as it is used by those many people who take part in the activities in which the expression is embedded. Thus the meaning of the expression is independent of me, or of any particular person; and this is why I can use an expression correctly or incorrectly. It has a meaning independent of my use of it. And this is why there is no sense in the supposition that a forever solitary person could know a language, any more than he could buy and sell.3 Malcolm contends that this is indeed Wittgenstein's view, and that our interpretation of Wittgenstein flies flagrantly in the face of his 'plain words'. Malcolm's diagnosis of our alleged errors locates their source in two related points upon which we insisted. The first was that 'The rule and nothing but the rule determines what is correct'. Malcolm contends that this is seriously misleading, for in so saying Baker and Hacker do not seem to give sufficient recognition to Wittgenstein's insight that a rule does not determine anything except within a setting of quiet agreement. If you imagine that no longer existing, you become aware of the nakedness of the rule. The words that express the rule would be without weight, without life. A signpost would not be a signpost. A rule by itself , determines nothing.4 In seeing any conflict between his view and what we said on this point, Malcolm misconstrues our (and Wittgenstein's) use of the term 'rule'. He assumes that the phrase 'a rule by itself' must be understood to mean a sign (or rule-formulation) independently of how it is understood and used, as if the expression (formula) ' x !2' must always be held to express the same rule even though in one system of calculation it means x 2 , and in another 2x (cf. PI §190). Whereas we follow Wittgenstein's practice 3

Ibid. 22.

4

Ibid. 9.

end p.312

and tie the identity and difference of rules to expressions with particular uses in the practice of speaking and making use of a language. Going by the above quotation, Malcolm would presumably conceive of ' x !2' as one rule with different methods of projection, whereas we, following what we take to be Wittgenstein's practice, conceive of ' x !2' as the expression of two quite distinct rules, depending on how the formula is used. Only within this framework can our claim that the rule and nothing but the rule determines what is correct be understood. This claim explicitly amplified the correlative claim that a rule and what accords with it are internally related. Given that there is a certain rule, then nothing other than the rule constitutes the standard of correctness. In particular, it is misconceived to argue that this act does not accord with this rule because most people would not act in this way when given this rule. This, as Malcolm would agree, would be as misguided as arguing that the desire to distribute income equally to everybody would not be satisfied by an equal distribution of income because most people who express this desire would not be gratified by an equal distribution of income to all. Contra Russell, nothing mediates between a desire

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and what counts as its satisfaction, or between an order and what counts as fulfilling it. So too, community agreement does not mediate between a rule and what counts as accord with it. In particular, it is, as we stressed (and as Malcolm agreed), mistaken to define 'correct' in terms of agreement. It is rules (charts, signposts, and so on) that are called 'standards of correctness', and it is they, and not some other thing, that are used as such. But it is true that, unless there is a practice of using a sign (chart, signpost) as a standard of correctness, unless there is a technique of projection from the sign (chart, or signpost) that is manifest in a practice, then there are no rules (or charts or signposts). Given this understanding of what counts as a rule, the disagreement between Malcolm and us turns not on whether the rule and nothing but the rule determines what is correct, but on whether the practice that constitutes the framework or presupposition of the existence of the rule must be a shared, community practice, or whether it may be an unshared (but shareable) one. The second point that Malcolm claims to be a source of error is our contention that if a rule is given then so is its extension. (In fact, this is a corollary of the first point.) Of course, a rule is not its extension. Nor does it miraculously 'contain' its extension, which ineluctably unfolds as if from a 'logical machine'. But, Malcolm argues, 'If a rule neither is, nor contains, its extension, there is no sense left for the assertion that if a rule is given then so is its extension.' 5 This is mistaken. To deny this 5

Ibid. 11.

end p.313

platitude is akin to denying the claim that if a function is given then so is its course-of-values. The rule '+2' would not be what it is—namely, the rule for the series of even integers—if '1002' did not follow '1000' in its application. (If the intension of 'even integer' is given, then so is its extension, even though the intension neither is nor 'contains' the extension!) To understand a rule is (ceteris paribus) to understand what counts as accord with it, just as to understand an order is to understand what counts as obeying it. And it is precisely this that we meant by the perhaps opaque dictum 'If a rule is given, then so too is its extension'. No symbol can be identified independently of its use or application. The same marks used in different ways constitute different symbols. ' x !2', if applied differently from ' x 2 ', would formulate a different rule, not the same one. A sign is the expression of a rule only if it is taken together with its method of projection. For it is only an expression of a rule if it is used as a standard of correctness against which to measure performance. That is manifest only in a practice of application. The claim that if a rule is given then so is its extension is tantamount to the claim that the identity of a rule (as opposed to the identity of a sign or formula) is logically dependent upon the identity of its extension. The deeper disagreement between Malcolm and us, again, is over whether the practice in question must be shared or only shareable. (The term 'social practice', we argued, is not pleonastic.) We contended that Wittgenstein argued, and argued correctly, that agreement in judgements and in definitions, community consensus on what counts as doing the same and as applying a rule correctly, is presupposed by a shared language, common concepts, and community rules. But concept-possession, following a rule, mastery of a language presuppose, not that these are shared with other

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people, but end p.314

rather that they can be shared, that it must make sense for others to understand, agree on what counts as doing the same relative to a rule, follow the rule in the same way. A practice is indeed presupposed, a normative practice involving recognition of mistakes, and the use of a standard of correctness by reference to which action is evaluated as correct or incorrect. But we denied that a social practice is logically requisite. Malcolm holds this to be both mistaken and an incorrect interpretation of Wittgenstein. He cites a wide range of quotations from Wittgenstein (which we had given) and stresses that in none of them does Wittgenstein say that agreement, community consensus, and so on are presuppositions of a shared language, but says that they are presuppositions of language as such. However, Malcolm disregards the contexts of Wittgenstein's remarks, which are never to demonstrate that concepts, rules, and language presuppose community agreement, but rather that our concepts and our language does so. A few examples will make this clear. Malcolm cites the remark 'If there was not agreement in what we call "red", etc., etc., language would come to an end' (RFM 196),6 stressing that Wittgenstein did not write 'shared language'. But Malcolm does not note that this elaborates on the previous remark—namely, 'In what we accept we all work the same way, but we do not make use of this identity merely to predict what people will accept'. It is therefore perspicuously a comment on a shared language. Similarly, Malcolm emphasizes that quiet agreement 'belongs to the framework in which our language works' (RFM 323)—'our' language, Malcolm stresses, not 'shared language'. But this is an amplification of the claim that 'It is of the greatest importance that a dispute hardly ever arises between people about whether the colour of this object is the same as the colour of that', and that 'No dispute breaks out over the question whether a proceeding was according to the rule or not'. Here it is evident that our language is (obviously) a shared language. Again, he quotes the remark 'The phenomenon of language rests on regularity, on agreement in action' (RFM 342), but fails to note the sequel: 'Here it is of the greatest importance that all of the enormous majority of us agree in certain things. I can, e.g., be quite sure that the colour of this object will be called "green" by far the most of the human beings who see it.' Here too it is evident that Wittgenstein is speaking of common human languages, shared languages of human communities. Indeed, one may concede that the phenomenon of language is a phenomenon of shared practices. For no one is arguing that as a matter of fact there are language-using wolf-children, or that some beings are actually born with an innate mastery of a language. The question is whether the concept of a language presupposes a community of speakers and shared practices. To see what Wittgenstein thought on this issue one must turn to his overt discussion of the matter. Malcolm agrees that the question of whether solitary people, alone or shipwrecked on desert islands, can follow rules is trivial. For we all follow rules not only in company but also in private, and desert islanders can keep diaries in solitude. The moot questions are whether (a) a forever-solitary individual might use a language, and (b) whether it is intelligible that non-solitary individuals might each use only unshared languages, and be acquainted only with language-games

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one plays by oneself (for example, self-addressed questions, orders, monologues). Wittgenstein, as we showed, discussed both questions and 6

Ibid. 12.

end p.315

answered them affirmatively. Malcolm was aghast at this: 'It is astonishing to find Baker and Hacker declaring that Wittgenstein claimed that it is conceivable that "each person spoke only to himself" . . . Where do Baker and Hacker think they find such an extraordinary assertion by Wittgenstein? . . . [They] refer here to a passage in MS 124, which is an early version of the first paragraph of PI §243.' 7 Malcolm then quotes, not MS 124, 213 ff. to which we explicitly alluded, but PI §243 (written within months of the earlier and longer draft), and concludes 'Where in this passage is there any ground for attributing to Wittgenstein the declaration that it is conceivable that "each person spoke only to himself"?' This fails to address our argument. We did not say that Wittgenstein claimed this in PI §243, but rather that he did so in MS 124. In §243 Wittgenstein imagines an explorer coming across people who spoke only in monologue, and Malcolm remarks that Wittgenstein does not stop to fill in a possible background for those imagined people who speak only in monologue . . . It is easy to supply a background which does not imply that those people had spoken only in monologue for their entire lives. For example, after a normal upbringing, they might have become members of a monastic order that forbade its members to speak to one another.8 This is ingenious, but not Wittgenstein. In MS 124 he did fill in the background he had in mind:9 Is it not imaginable, that each human being should think only for himself, speak only to himself? (In this case each person could even have his own language.) There are cases in which we say, someone has admonished himself; ordered, obeyed, punished, blamed, asked and answered himself. So then there can be human beings who are acquainted only with language-games which one plays by oneself . Indeed, it is imaginable that these human beings should have a rich vocabulary. We could imagine that an explorer came to this country and observed how each one of them accompanied his activities with articulate sounds, but did not address others. Somehow the explorer gets the idea that these people are talking to themselves, listens to them in the course of their activities, and succeeds in producing a probable translation of their talk into our language. By learning their language, he reaches the position in which he can predict actions which the people subsequently perform, for some of their utterances are expressions of decisions or plans. (How these people were able to learn their language is here irrelevant.) 7

Ibid. 18.

8

Ibid. 18-19.

9

We quote from the translation in P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein: Meaning and

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Mind vol. iii of An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990). We paraphrased it but did not quote it verbatim in vol. ii, since it belongs to the Exegesis of §243.

end p.316

But now, when such a person orders himself to climb up this tree and when, on the other hand, I—who can give this order not only to myself but also to others—order myself to climb up the tree, is the thought of this order the same in both cases? You may answer as you please. Only don't imagine that the thought is an accompaniment of the speaking.1 0 Note here the following points: (1) The genesis of a linguistic ability is irrelevant to its identification. What a person can do is manifest in what he does. The criteria for mastery of a technique lie in its exercise in appropriate circumstances. (2) The imagined people are not conceived of as having previously spoken a common language. On the contrary: (a) they are acquainted only with language-games one plays alone, and (b) one could even imagine each of them speaking a different language. (3) The question of whether their self-addressed orders mean the same as ours would not even arise if their language were being conceived to be a degenerate fragment of a shared language (as, for example, in the monastic case Malcolm imagines). Malcolm may insist on pursuing the question of how such people might have learnt their languages. The correct answer is that this really is irrelevant to the issue at hand, for identifying their activity as self-addressed speech does not involve determining how this pattern of activity was acquired. (Reflect that if we were to encounter a ship-wrecked monolingual Tibetan, we would first have to learn what his words and utterances mean—without demanding from him a certificate of education from Lhasa—and only later discover that he learnt his language in Tibet.) But it is noteworthy that in the Philosophical Grammar (p. 188), in the Blue and Brown Books (pp. 12, 97) and in the Philosophical Investigations (§495) Wittgenstein finds nothing logically objectionable in the idea of innate mastery of a language. We noted that Wittgenstein often discussed Robinson Crusoe's linguistic activities. Malcolm castigated us for not realizing that 'this would be noteworthy only if Wittgenstein had conceived of a "Robinson Crusoe" who (unlike Defoe's invention) had never encountered other people, yet in his lifelong isolation had created a language. But of course Wittgenstein did not conceive of such a Crusoe.' 1 1 This is mistaken—as is evident from MS 124, 221, where Wittgenstein refers back to the above quoted passage: The Private Language which I have described above is like the one Robinson had on his desert island in which he was able to talk to himself. Had someone 10

With the exception of the penultimate paragraph, all emphases are ours.

11

Malcolm, 'Wittgenstein on Language and Rules', 24.

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end p.317

heard and observed him, he would have been able to learn Robinson's language. For the meaning of the words are apparent in Robinson's behaviour. But couldn't we imagine a language in which a person could voice or write down his private sensations, his inner experiences, for his own use? Of course, this language would then be intelligible only to himself, for no one else could ever know to what the words, signs, of the language refer. Note here that (4) the monologuists' languages are not, in respect of Wittgenstein's concern, essentially different from Crusoe's. Hence, (a) the fact that Crusoe learnt English in London is as irrelevant as the mode of acquisition of the monologuists' languages. For obviously the criteria for whether it is a language and for what the words of the language mean make no reference to what people did in London twenty years earlier. (b) The fact the Crusoe was acquainted with language-games with others, whereas the monologuists are not, is likewise unimportant here. What is crucial is: (5) the fact that a language is being spoken is manifest in current behaviour in the current context (which may include immediately prior and subsequent action, but not the goings-on of a distant childhood). And (6) the contrast Wittgenstein is concerned with is not between a shared language that can also be employed in solitude and an unshared language, but between a shareable language and a putative language that cannot in principle be understood by any other person. Of course, Malcolm could argue that between writing the passage in MS 124, 213 ff. (written sometime after 19 April 1944) and writing the final draft of PI §243(a) (in MS 129, 36 ff., written after 17 August 1944) Wittgenstein did not merely slim down and polish the remark, but actually decided that it was mistaken. This is possible, but there is no evidence in the Nachlass for a change of mind. Moreover, one would surely expect that if he had come to think that the earlier remark was wrong, he would have specified a different context in which the quite different tale made sense. It is further noteworthy that MS 180(a) mediates between MS 124 and MS 129. On p. 13 it contains a version of PI §243(a) that is very close indeed to the final draft, but it retains in parentheses the remark '(Each of them could therefore possess a different // his own // language. How he could have learnt it is irrelevant.)' One could argue that the final excising of his parenthetical observation betokens recognition of error. But, again, there is no independent evidence for this—no remark in which Wittgenstein denies the intelligibility of this supposition. Since the matter is of some importance, and the alleged change of mind anything but trivial, it is surprising, to say the least, that no remark registers it. Wittgenstein asks 'Could a person calculate alone? Could a person end p.318

follow a rule alone? Are these questions perhaps like this one: "Can a person engage in trade alone?" ' (RFM 349, our translation). We insisted that the questions are not similar. Malcolm disagrees.1 2 To be sure, Wittgenstein did not give an answer to his question. But it is surely obvious that the questions are dissimilar (even though they may have negative answers). One can no more

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engage in commerce alone on a desert island than one can get married or fight a duel in solitude. But one can certainly follow rules, play patience, or keep a diary in solitude. Is this difference open to serious dispute? So our disagreement again reverts to the question of whether a description of someone as following a rule makes sense only in so far as (a) a community of rule-followers is presupposed and/or (b) the individual in question acquired his mastery of the technique of following these rules in a social group. We argued, and Malcolm agreed, that following a rule in general presupposes a regularity. We further held that a regularity is not enough—following a rule is manifest in a regularity that presupposes recognition of a uniformity (RFM 348). This too is not enough, for what is needed is an array of circumambient normative practices or activities—for example, of correcting mistakes, of checking what one has done for correctness against a standard, and—if asked—of explaining what one has done, justifying what one has done by reference to this rule, and teaching the rule and what counts as accord with it to others. Malcolm agrees that it is these circumstances surrounding the particular act that make the difference between following a rule and not following a rule, but, he argues, 'If you conceive of an individual who has been in solitude his whole life long, then you have cut away the whole background of instruction, correction, acceptance—in short the Since we published this paper, others have followed Malcolm in viewing this remark as confirming the communitarian interpretation (see A. O'Hear, 'Wittgenstein and the Transmission of Tradition', in O'Hear (ed.), Wittgenstein: Centenary Essays, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 28 (1991), 44-5, and R. Gaita, 'Language and Conversation: Wittgenstein's Builders', in ibid. 105). They might also have quoted RFM 193, in which Wittgenstein remarks: 'This consensus belongs to the essence of calculation, so much is certain. i.e.: this consensus is part of the phenomenon of our calculating' (NB ' our calculating'). He goes on to raise the question: 'But what about this consensus—doesn't it mean that one human being by himself could not calculate?' And he answers this question strikingly: 'Well, one human being could at any rate not calculate just once in his life'—thus emphasizing not a community of calculators, but a recurrent regularity of calculating. It is noteworthy that in RPP I §897, where he is investigating the concept of voluntary action, Wittgenstein queries, in a manner exactly parallel to PI §199, 'if only one person had, once, made a bodily movement—could the question exist whether it was voluntary or involuntary?' But surely no one would wish to claim that one can perform voluntary actions (which mere animals too can perform) only if there exists a community of agents performing voluntary actions! 12

end p.319

circumstances in which a rule is given, enforced and followed.' 1 3 This, however, is misleading. Ex hypothesi, it cuts away everything pertaining to the social genesis of the relevant normative capacity. But since that is irrelevant to the criteria for the possession of such a capacity, it does not matter. It also cuts away, perforce, the actuality of explanations and justifications—but that is true of the uncontentious Robinson Crusoe case—for example, until others turn up, there is no opportunity to explain, teach, or justify one's activities to others. But, of course, if they do turn up, then these normative activities are part of the

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criteria for whether someone is following a rule, speaking a language, and so on. Malcolm concedes that Defoe's Crusoe can follow rules. He also quotes Wittgenstein's remark 'Certainly, I can give myself a rule and then follow it. But isn't it only a rule because it is analogous to that, which in the dealings of human beings is called "a rule" ' (RFM 344). So presumably a person, in solitude or in privacy, can follow unshared rules. Such rules are de facto unknown to others. The person following them does not (and in the Crusoe case, cannot, that is, has no opportunity to) consult others to check on whether he is correctly following the rule or not. Yet he may make mistakes, and correct them. And if he were asked by others what he is up to, he could explain his practice. This much Malcolm must surely concede. But if he concedes this, he severs the connection between following a rule and actual agreement. For in such cases all that is required is possible agreement—that is, if others were to ask the secret rule-follower, and he were to tell them what he is up to, then they would agree that acting thus-and-so is what counts as following this rule. And with this moderate position we fully agree. How can Malcolm defend his weakened case? He argues that 'To follow the rules for the use of an expression is nothing other than to use the expression as it is ordinarily used—which is to say, as it is used by those many people who take part in the activities in which the expression is embedded. Thus the meaning of an expression is independent of me or of any particular person; and that is why I can use the expression correctly or incorrectly. It has a meaning independently of my use of it. And this is why there is no sense in the supposition that a foreversolitary person could know a language, any more than he could buy and sell.' 1 4 The first sentence of this remark obviously does not apply to new rules that a person (or a Robinson Crusoe) gives himself and does not divulge to others. To argue that this possibility presupposes having first learnt shared rules is the only defence left. It can rest on a genetic principle—but as we have seen that contravenes the grammatical proposition 13

Malcolm, 'Wittgenstein on Language and Rules', 20.

14

Ibid. 22.

end p.320

that the criteria for having an ability lie in present performance not in the original mode of acquisition. Alternatively it can rest on the claim that the concept of following a rule has application only if there is room for a distinction between following a rule and thinking one is following a rule. Of course, this is something we happily concede. But Malcolm must further claim, as he does above, that this distinction has application only where rules are actually shared. For then the social practice determines what counts as correct application. But this is mistaken. First, if it is conceded that people can follow private (unshared) rules (in private or in solitude) then it is conceded that there is a distinction between following a rule and thinking one is following a rule that is independent of any social practice of following that rule. Secondly, it is not the social practice (understood as what most people do when they follow the rule) that determines what counts as following this rule. Rather, it is the rule that determines that—in the context of a practice. But, Malcolm will insist, the practice must be social! Not so. Robinson Crusoe

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will continue speaking English whether or not there are still English-speakers elsewhere. If the English-speaking peoples are wiped out by a catastrophe, Crusoe's utterances do not thereby become gibberish. Chingachgook did not cease to know Mohican simply in virtue of the fact that no one else could speak or understand it. But, Malcolm will reply, these were social practices, and were learnt from others. That is true, but it constitutes an objection only in so far as it presupposes the dubious principle that the genesis of an ability is relevant to the determination or identification of the current ability. To follow a rule does indeed presuppose a background of practices. As Wittgenstein remarked: 'It is not possible that there should have been only one occasion on which someone followed a rule' (PI §199). Roughly speaking, a multiplicity of occasions is required as a context for this act's being an act of following this rule. To follow rules is to engage in practices involving a circumambient array of actual (and possible) normative activities. But, as we have argued, 'social practice' is no pleonasm. What Wittgenstein demands is a behavioural context rich enough to provide adequate grounds for ascription of the mastery of the technique. This may (logically) be found in the behaviour of a solitary person, whether or not he had ever been part of a community. Does it make sense to claim that a technique that can be displayed by a solitary individual could not (as a matter of grammar ) be displayed by him had he not had a particular upbringing? A final fallback position (though not one that would appeal to Malcolm) would be to argue that, without a community practice, a end p.321

person could not know that he is following a certain rule correctly. Taken as an epistemological gambit, this is obviously futile. A person who has mastered a rule and who follows it on appropriate occasions does not know that what he is doing conforms to the rule by reference to anything other than the rule he has mastered. He does not, as Malcolm concedes, consult others save when he does not know what the rule is or is in doubt how to apply it in a particular case. To understand the rule is to know what counts as following it. Alternatively, this final objection could be taken as a logical gambit. Taken thus it amounts to the claim that the essential distinction between following a rule and thinking one is following a rule can be drawn only in a social context. Otherwise the rule would not be 'independent of me, or of any particular person'. But so to argue is as misguided as holding that the essential distinction between believing truly and merely thinking one is believing truly can be applied only in a social context. It makes sense, as Wittgenstein notes, for me to invent a secret rule and follow it without telling anyone about it. It makes sense for Crusoe to invent a new card game and play it, even though he cannot tell anyone about it. In both cases mistakes in following these unshared rules may be made and subsequently noticed and corrected. The only truth in the objection is that there is no use, in social and solitary asocial contexts, for the phrase 'This seems to me to be correct, but it is actually incorrect' or 'I think I am following rule R, but actually. I am not'. It does not follow that the follower of an unshared rule may not make mistakes and subsequently realize that he has done so, just as the follower of a shared rule, who follows the rule in private, may do so. One might wonder how Malcolm, who is deeply committed to the fundamental

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insights Wittgenstein elaborated, could have so seriously misinterpreted him. Perhaps the reason is that he not only thinks that the claim that human agreement is necessary for shared language, rules, and concepts is less striking a thought than that it is essential for language simpliciter , but that is too weak a thought for other philosophical arguments that lie at the heart of Wittgenstein's Investigations. In particular, it might seem that the remarkable battery of arguments and insights into the structure of psychological concepts that go by the name of 'the Private Language Argument' presuppose that actual agreement, as opposed to the mere possibility of agreement, is necessary to rule out the intelligibility of a so-called private language. But that would be quite wrong. A logically private language of the kind that is presupposed by the Cartesian and empiricist traditions alike (and that is rampant in current cognitive science and theoretical linguistics) is a putative language that it is logically impossible that another person end p.322

could understand. It is a 'language' the rules of which cannot in principle be explained to or be followed by anyone other than the speaker. §242 of the Investigations concludes the discussion of following rules with the observation that for communication by means of language there must be agreement not only in definitions, but also in judgements. §§243 ff. raise a fresh problem: could there not be a language that is not used as a means of communication, not merely in the sense that it is used only in monologue (which, Wittgenstein points out, is perfectly possible) but in the sense that 'the individual words of this language are to refer to what can only be known to the person speaking; to his immediate private sensations. So another person cannot understand the language' (PI §243). This idea has not been undermined by the arguments that show that actual agreement is presupposed by a common language. Nor, in the sequel, is it undermined by showing that actual agreement is presupposed by the very concept of a language (even if this language is not used as a means of interpersonal communication). Rather, what Wittgenstein does is to show that, if the signs of a language could not be explained to another, then its putative rules could not be followed by the speaker either. That there is no such thing as understanding a symbol that could not (logically) be understood by anyone else is a point of grammar; that there is no such thing as understanding a symbol that is not understood by anyone else is neither a point of grammar nor even empirically true. The concept of a language is grammatically bound up with the possibility of shared understanding and agreements, but not with its actuality. end p.323

12 On Carnap's Elimination of Metaphysics Abstract: Carnap's 1931-2 paper 'The Elimination of Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language' is surveyed, and Carnap's criticisms of metaphysics are elucidated. The relationship between Carnap's views and the critique of metaphysics of the Tractatus is described. Carnap's criticisms of metaphysics are compared with Wittgenstein's later critique of metaphysics. Keywords: grammatical propositions, metaphysics, necessary truth, norms of representation, R. Carnap, Tractatus, Vienna Circle

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P. M. S Hacker

1. Background: The Manifesto of the Vienna Circle Carnap's 'The Elimination of Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language' was published in 1931/2 in Erkenntnis. It was a revised version of a lecture Carnap had given in November 1930 at the University of Warsaw. Over the years, this iconoclastic article attracted considerable attention. It was translated into French (1934), Portuguese (1945), Italian (1950), English (1959), and Spanish (1959). In Schilpp's volume The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap (1963) in The Library of Living Philosophers series, Carnap's erstwhile colleague in the Vienna Circle Philipp Frank remarked that 'Among the numerous writings of Carnap probably none has had so great and wide an effect as th[is] paper'. It was undoubtedly an important contribution to the doctrines of that most influential of twentieth-century schools of philosophy—logical positivism or, less misleadingly, 'logical empiricism'. Indeed, it greatly influenced the primary English statement of the doctrines of the Vienna Circle—namely A. J. Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic (1936), the first chapter of which was entitled 'The Elimination of Metaphysics' and drew heavily upon Carnap's paper. It is noteworthy that the fundamental ideas developed in the paper had already been incorporated into the 1929 Manifesto The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle written for the conference of the Ernst Mach Society and the Berlin Society for Empirical Philosophy in September 1929, and dedicated to Moritz Schlick. The Manifesto was signed by Hahn, Neurath, and Carnap (although apparently Feigl and Waismann wrote parts of it, and Hahn had little to do with the drafting). The opening page of the Manifesto already nails the colours of the Circle to the mast of an anti-metaphysical crusade: the spirit of the scientific conception of the world is an heir to the Enlightenment and dedicated to the eradication of metaphysics. The principled rejection of metaphysics is traced to such Enlightenment end p.324

figures as Hume and Voltaire,1 and to their successors such as Bentham, Mill, and Comte, as well as more recent figures in Vienna, including Mach and Boltzmann. The section of the Manifesto entitled 'The Scientific World Conception', which contains the main anti-metaphysical declaration of principles, bears Carnap's hallmark. The goal of the Scientific World Conception is said to be unified science: to link and harmonize the achievements of individual investigators in the various fields of science. Hence it strives for a neutral system of symbolism and a total system of concepts. Traditional problems of philosophy are either pseudoproblems or in effect empirical problems to be solved by science. The task of philosophy is not to propound philosophical doctrines, but to clarify problems and assertions. This non-cognitive conception of philosophy, which denies that there are any philosophical propositions or theses, and which confines philosophy to the elucidation of propositions and exposure of pseudo-propositions, displays the influence of Wittgenstein's Tractatus and of conversations with Wittgenstein in the late 1920s.

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The method of clarification, the Manifesto continued, is logical analysis. It is this that distinguishes the new empiricism and positivism from their eighteenth- and nineteenth-century predecessors. All knowledge is derived from experience, which rests on what is immediately given. The meaning of every statement of 'science'—that is, every genuine cognitively significant statement—must be reducible to a statement about the given. Similarly, every concept must be statable by stepwise reduction to other concepts down to concepts that refer directly to the given. The completion of such analysis will yield an ordered 'constitutive system'. The 'constitutive theory', which consists in the endeavour to produce such a system, forms the framework for the application of logical analysis by means of modern logistic. Constitutive theory shows that at the foundations of the constitutive system are concepts of the experience and qualities of the individual psyche. At the next level are concepts of physical objects; from these are constituted concepts of other minds; and at a still higher level are concepts of the objects of the social sciences. The picture thus sketched, the conception of unified science, of the constitutive system and of reductive analysis, is evidently derived from Carnap's Der Logische Aufbau der Welt (1928). Voltaire nicely observed that metaphysicians 'are like minuet dancers, who, being dressed to the greatest advantage, make a couple of bows, move through the room in the finest attitudes, display all their graces, are in perpetual motion without advancing a step, and finish at the identical point from which they set out.' For Hume, see below, p. 330. 1

end p.325

This positive programme of logical analysis is the backcloth against which to view the destructive anti-metaphysical crusade. All cognitively significant statements are 'scientific' whose meaning can be determined by logical analysis through reduction to the simplest statements about the given. But so called metaphysical statements, such as 'There is a God', 'The primary basis of the world is the unconscious', or 'There is an entelechy that is the leading principle in the living organism', are meaningless—if one takes them as the metaphysician intends them to be taken. They say nothing, but express a certain mood or attitude towards life—an attitude more properly expressed by poetry or music. Given the ubiquity of metaphysical doctrines, the metaphysical urge and delusion demand explanation. According to the Manifesto, three different kinds of explanation can be explored: psychological, sociological, and logical. The former two have been essayed by psycho-analysis and the Marxist theory of ideological superstructure. The third has been taken to a more advanced stage by the clarification of the logical origins of the metaphysical aberration in the works of Russell and Wittgenstein. Two basic logical mistakes are evident. The first consists of excessive reliance upon the logically misleading forms of ordinary language, which, for example, uses the same part of speech, the substantive, for things, qualities ('hardness'), relations ('friendship'), and processes ('sleep'), leading one into misconceived reification or hypostatization. The second consists in the idea that pure thought alone can yield genuine knowledge about the world. But logical investigation shows that all thought and inference consist of nothing other than tautological transformation of propositions. The idea that there are any Kantian synthetic a priori propositions is mistaken—pure reason alone can

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achieve no knowledge of the world. Hence, too, claims of realism and idealism about the nature of the reality or ideality of the external world are meaningless. They are meaningless because they are unverifiable. Rather, 'something is "real" through being incorporated into the total structure of experience'. The Manifesto anticipates Carnap's 'The Elimination of Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language'. It also paints its principles upon a much broader canvas. For only a small part of the programme it so boldly proclaims was executed in that paper. Some parts had already been executed in Carnap's 1928 paper 'Pseudo-Problems in Philosophy: The Heteropsychological and the Realism Controversy', others were essayed after Carnap had embraced his 'Principle of Tolerance in Logic' in The Logical Syntax of Language (1934), and yet others, again with something of a shift in perspective, in the later, and arguably deeper, paper 'Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology' (1950). end p.326

2. The Argument of 'The Elimination of Metaphysics' Throughout the history of philosophy, Carnap observed, there have been numerous critics of metaphysics. Some have declared metaphysics to be false, since it contradicts empirical knowledge; others have held it to be uncertain, since it transcends the limits of possible knowledge; and yet others have held it to be sterile, irrelevant to the problems of human life. But the development of modern logic has made it possible to give a sharper answer to the question of the validity of metaphysics. For logical analysis shows that metaphysical utterances are meaningless—they are pseudo-statements. Pseudo-statements are sequences of words that appear to express a statement but actually fail to do so, either because they contain a word that appears meaningful but is not, or because, although they constitute a sequence of meaningful words, they are ill formed—that is, they fail to accord with the logical syntax of language. A word ' a' is meaningful if and only if, first, its syntax has been determined—that is, its mode of occurrence in an elementary sentence 'S(a)' (the simplest sentence form in which it can occur) has been fixed. And, secondly, the empirical criteria for a are known—that is, it is stipulated from what protocol sentences 'S(a)' is deducible, or: the truth-conditions for 'S(a)' are fixed, or: the method of verification of 'S(a)' is known. These various formulations of the second condition, Carnap emphasized, ultimately say the same thing. (It is noteworthy that Carnap, like other members of the Circle, did not distinguish between specifying truth-conditions and specifying the method of verification.) Having laid down this criterion of meaningfulness for a word, Carnap next turned to demonstrate that characteristic words occurring in metaphysics are meaningless. He took as his examples the metaphysical use of the word 'principle' as it occurs in such sentences as 'the highest principle of being (existence, the world) is . . . ' and the word 'God'. In the former case, we must ask for the criterion of application for the word 'principle'. The answer will typically be that x is the principle of y if and only if y arises out of x . But, whereas we can give a straight-forward causal (nomological) interpretation to 'arises out of', the metaphysician denies that this empirically observable relation is what he means. But he offers no alternative account. So the word has been

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deprived of its ordinary meaning without being given a new meaning. And it remains meaningless as long as no method of verification for ' x is the principle for y ' is laid down. In the case of the word 'God', Carnap (following Neurath) distinguishes a mythological, metaphysical, and end p.327

theological use of the word. The mythological use assigns the word a clear meaning—it signifies superhuman, immortal beings dwelling, for example, on Mount Olympus. The metaphysical use strips the word of any empirical conditions of application—that is, fails to specify the truth-conditions or verification conditions of sentences in which it occurs. It does not even specify its syntax—that is, its mode of occurrence in the elementary sentence ' x is a God'—for the syntactical category of the variable is not specified. The theological use of the word equivocates between the mythological use (which makes theological statements empirically verifiable or falsifiable) and the metaphysical use (which makes them meaningless). Other phrases that occur in metaphysics, such as 'the Absolute', 'the Unconditioned', 'the Infinite', 'the being of being', 'thing in itself', 'absolute spirit', 'objective spirit', 'being-in-andfor-itself', and so on are equally devoid of meaning. Pseudo-statements formed from meaningful words are possible in natural languages because grammatical syntax is logically defective—for the purposes of well-formedness it draws too few syntactic category distinctions to exclude nonsense. In a correctly constructed language pseudo-statements could not even be constructed—for it would immediately be evident that symbols were being conjoined in illicit ways. So metaphysics could not even be expressed in a logically constructed language. An example of how metaphysical nonsense can be generated, and why it is nonsense, is given by Heidegger's notorious passage about 'nothing' in his essay Was ist Metaphysik, which culminates in the pronouncement that 'the Nothing itself nothings'. Carnap proceeded to anatomize this passage, focusing with devastating effect on the misuse of the negative quantifier. Carnap emphasized the difference between his criticisms of metaphysics and those of earlier philosophers. Metaphysics is not mere speculation, fairy tales, superstition, or working hypotheses, nor is it unverifiable by us but perhaps verifiable by a superior being. Rather, it consists of nothing more than pseudostatements—that is, meaningless combinations of words. Most of the confusions of metaphysics stem from logical faults infecting the use of the verb 'to be', which Carnap illustrated with regard to the cogito. What follows from 'I think' is not 'I exist' or 'I am', which are ill formed, but only 'there exists something that thinks'. Another primary source of meaninglessness is type-confusion of concepts. Meaningful statements are either tautologies (analytic judgements), which are true by virtue of their form, and say nothing about reality—these are formulae of logic and mathematics—and their negations, which are contradictions, or true or false empirical statements, which end p.328

belong to the domain of science. Cognitively meaningful propositions are

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therefore restricted to empirical propositions. There can be no knowledge of reality derivable from pure thinking or pure intuition alone, independently of experience. Nor can there be any knowledge derived from, but transcending, experience, such as the neo-vitalist hypotheses of the directive presence of an 'entelechy' in organic processes. Finally, realism, idealism, solipsism, and phenomenalism are equally meaningless metaphysical doctrines. (Carnap does not argue for this thesis in the paper, having already done so in his 'PseudoProblems of Philosophy'. His argument there was that there is no empirically ascertainable difference between the doctrines.) The true task of philosophy is not the construction of metaphysical or ontological these concerning the nature of the world and what exists in it—that is the province of science, and it is expressed by empirical propositions that satisfy the criteria of meaningfulness. Rather, the task of philosophy is to eliminate pseudopropositions, to clarify meaningful concepts and propositions, and thereby to lay the foundations for factual science and mathematics. The method of philosophy is the logical analysis of language. If this damning verdict on metaphysics is justified, it seems a mystery that so many distinguished thinkers have dedicated their lives to metaphysics, and equally mysterious, if they were actually saying nothing at all, that they should have had such an influence. But, Carnap concluded, their writings did not lack all content. They lacked empirical and theoretical content, for the pseudostatements of metaphysics do not describe states of affairs. Nevertheless, they do have a role. They serve to express a general attitude towards life, a Lebenseinstellung or Lebensgefühl. The metaphysician believes that he is concerned with a domain in which true or false statements are made describing how things are. But, in fact, he asserts nothing. Instead, he expresses something, like an artist. Metaphysicians are akin to musicians, but without musical ability.

3. The Tractatus Background In 'The Elimination of Metaphysics', Carnap noted: 'For the logical and epistemological conception which underlies our exposition . . . cf. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1922, and Carnap, Der Logische Aufbau der Welt, 1928.' Writing some thirty years later, in his 'Intellectual Autobiography' published in the Schilpp volume, he wrote: end p.329

The most decisive development in my view of metaphysics occurred later, in the Vienna period, chiefly under the influence of Wittgenstein. I came to hold the view that many theses of traditional metaphysics are not only useless, but even devoid of cognitive content. They are pseudo-sentences, that is to say, they seem to make assertions because they have the grammatical form of declarative sentences, and the words occurring in them have many strong and emotionally loaded associations, while in fact they do not make any assertions, do not express any propositions, and are therefore neither true nor false. Even the apparent questions to which these sentences allegedly give either an affirmative or a negative answer, e.g., the question 'is the external world real?' are not genuine questions

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but pseudo-questions. The view that these sentences and questions are non-cognitive was based on Wittgenstein's principle of verifiability. This principle says first, that the meaning of a sentence is given by the conditions of its verification and, second, that a sentence is meaningful if and only if it is in principle verifiable, that is, if there are possible, not necessarily actual, circumstances which, if they did occur, would definitely establish the truth of the sentence. This principle of verifiability was later replaced by the more liberal principle of confirmability.2 It is striking that, when Wittgenstein was shown the Manifesto, he remarked scornfully that there was nothing new about 'abolishing metaphysics'. Carnap admitted that there had always been critics of metaphysics, but thought that they had all criticized metaphysics as factually false, or as uncertain, or as irrelevant to any practical concern. What seemed to him to be new about his and the Circle's criticism (and presumably about Wittgenstein's criticism in the Tractatus from which it was derived) was the argument that purported to show that metaphysical utterances are meaningless. But this was no novelty. Hume had already argued: 'If we take into our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.' 3 This is indeed an eighteenth-century version of much the same argument as Carnap himself was propounding, although it lacked the apparatus of the logical calculus and the conception of logical syntax upon which Carnap laid much emphasis. Similarly, Kant's critique of transcendent metaphysics argued that the attempt to apply concepts beyond R. Carnap, 'Intellectual Autobiography', in P. A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1963), 44. 3 Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, sect. XII, pt. III, concluding paragraph. 2

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the domain of possible experience results in nonsense. The categories, Kant argued, 'allow only of empirical employment and have no meaning whatsoever when not applied to objects of possible experience, that is, to the world of sense'.4 So there was indeed nothing new in condemning metaphysics or transcendent metaphysics as nonsense. And, to be sure, Wittgenstein too had done so in the Tractatus. But the novelty of his criticism of metaphysics was not condemning metaphysical utterances as nonsense. Nor was his criticism based upon the Principle of Verification, which does not occur in the book. The Tractatus had argued that purportedly metaphysical propositions were attempts to describe non-logical necessities about the world, logic, and language. But the only expressible necessity is logical necessity, which is expressed by means of tautologies. Tautologies are molecular propositions that are so combined by means of truth-functional operators as to be unconditionally true—that is, true for every possible assignment of truth-values to the constituent elementary propositions. By the same token, tautologies say nothing, for they

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exclude no possibility. They are therefore senseless (but not nonsense), and to know a tautology is to know nothing about how things are in reality. But purported metaphysical propositions are not tautologies. They are not senseless, but nonsense. And they are nonsense because they fail to conform to the rules of logical grammar —that is, to the logical syntax of language (TLP 3.325). Logical syntax excludes the fundamental logical confusions that characterize past philosophy, in particular the confusions of metaphysics. It excludes them by not using the same sign for different symbols (for example, by using different signs for identity, copulation, and existence—unlike the 'is' of natural language), and by not using in a superficially similar way signs that have different modes of signification. Conformity to the rules of logical grammar will ensure the exclusion of pseudo-propositions that appear to have a sense, but actually are nonsense. In particular, putatively metaphysical propositions are actually nonsensical combinations of words. They characteristically combine words that have a meaning when they occur in well-formed (that is, genuine) propositions—that is, propositions that conform with the logical syntax of language, but have none in the metaphysician's typical pronouncements. For these use words incorrectly and so generate pseudo-propositions (TLP 4.1272). First, the pseudo-propositions of metaphysics employ formal or categorial concepts, such as 'fact', 'object', 'relation', 'colour', and so on, as if Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 724. It is, of course, true that Kant proceeded to violate his own principles in his discussions of noumena and their relation to phenomena. 4

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they were genuine concepts. But formal concepts are in effect variables, which cannot occur in a fully analysed proposition with a sense ( TLP 4.1271-2). They represent the common form of all their values (hence the concept of colour is a formal concept represented by the variable of which the various colours or shades of colour are values). Hence an apparently metaphysical proposition, which purports to state a necessary truth—for example, 'Red is a colour'—is actually a pseudo-proposition without sense. For here 'colour' is evidently not being used as a (bound) variable—that is, as a formal concept—and no other meaning has been assigned to the word as a genuine (material) concept-word. What the pseudo-propositions of metaphysics try to describe—namely, the necessary features of the world—cannot be said in language, but is something that is shown by language—by the logico-syntactical forms of legitimate concepts occurring in genuine propositions. So, that such-and-such a shade of red is a colour is shown by the well-formed bipolar propositions ascribing to a certain spatio-temporal point that shade of red—it is shown by the form of the colour predicate (for example, 'scarlet')—that is, by the features (in particular the logico-syntactical combinatorial possibilities) it shares with all other colour predicates, which are in effect represented by the variable of which the colour predicates are substitution instances. Hence, according to the Tractatus, metaphysical utterances are indeed nonsense, but not because there are no metaphysical necessities. Rather, the necessary forms of reality are ineffably shown by language. Secondly, the pseudo-propositions of metaphysics purport to state necessary truths. So, if, per impossibile , they were propositions, they would not be

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bipolar—that is, would not be both capable of being true and capable of being false—which is a mark of a proposition with a sense (by contrast with the senseless propositions of logic). Metaphysical assertions, including those of the author of the Tractatus, seemingly assert non-logical necessary truths, such as 'The world consists of facts not of things', or 'Facts are concatenations of objects', or 'Objects are the substance of the world'. But this cannot be done. What the clear-headed metaphysician, like the author of the Tractatus, will realize is that the essential, formal, features of the world are shown by the well-formed sentences of language, by propositions with a sense and by the senseless (but not nonsensical) propositions of logic. Hence the dramatic and paradoxical conclusion of the Tractatus that the sentences of the book are nonsensical attempts to say what cannot be said but is shown.5 They are nonsense, and no better logically than any other nonsense, for there are no logically different kinds or degrees of nonsense. But they are, nevertheless, different from mere gibberish such as 'Ab sur ah' in the intention with which they are uttered, in the expressions that occur in them, and in the role they play. They are uttered in the attempt to say something that cannot be said but can only be shown. They contain expressions that elsewhere are used as formal concepts. And they are essential rungs on the ladder up which one may climb to attain a correct logical point of view. 5

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What then, in respect of his elimination of metaphysics, did Carnap take from the Tractatus, what did he reject, and what did he misinterpret? He accepted Wittgenstein's claim that the only necessity is logical necessity, but, contrary to Wittgenstein's intentions, took it au pied de la lettre , for he denied that there are any ineffable necessities. He accepted Wittgenstein's claim that the propositions of logic are tautologies, that tautologies say nothing (are senseless), and hence that logic is not an expression of knowledge. But he rejected the view that the propositions of logic represent or show the scaffolding of the world (TLP 6.124), that logic is a mirror image of the world, and that it is 'transcendental' (TLP 6.13). And he thought that Wittgenstein had shown that the propositions of logic are truths that follow from arbitrary definitions of the logical operators—that is, consequences of conventions. But this was not Wittgenstein's view, which was rather that the propositions of logic flow from the essential nature of the elementary proposition as such—that is, from its essential bipolarity.6 He rejected Wittgenstein's metaphysics of symbolism according to which only simple names can represent simple things, only relations can represent relations, and only facts can represent facts.7 Hence, by implication, he rejected Wittgenstein's peculiar rationale for cleaving to Frege's context principle that a word has a meaning only in the context of a sentence—namely, that it is only in a sentence—that is, a symbolizing fact—that a word (name) goes proxy for an object—that is, has a meaning.8 He wrongly supposed that Wittgenstein held the propositions of mathematics to be or to be reducible to tautologies of logic. He also Wittgenstein argued that every proposition with a sense is capable of being true and capable of being false. But 'It is true that p' = ' p', and 'It is false that p' = 'not-p'. So negation is given with the mere idea of the proposition as such. And conjunction is given by the mere possibility of successive assertion. And, if negation and conjunction are given, then so too are all the logical operators. For 6

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they are all reducible to the operation of joint negation. If all elementary propositions are given, then all propositions are given, since all possible propositions, including all the propositions of logic, can be generated by the operation of joint negation upon sets of elementary propositions. According to the Tractatus a sentence that expresses a sense does so in virtue of being a fact, i.e. it is the fact that the signs of which the sentence consists are arranged as they are that says that things are thus and so. 7

8 It is important to realize how different Wittgenstein's rationale for the context principle was from Frege's, both in the Tractatus and in the Investigations. In the Tractatus, the context principle is an aspect of the metaphysical harmony between language and reality. It reflects the metaphysical truth that it is essential to objects that they should be possible constituents of states of affairs. If an object can occur in a state of affairs, its possible occurrence must be written into it as one of its formal properties (TLP 2.012-3). This is mirrored by the logico-syntactical form of its name.

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supposed that the Tractatus propounded the Principle of Verification, which he had heard Wittgenstein (or Waismann, recounting Wittgenstein's views) defend in conversation. As noted above, the Principle is not stated in the Tractatus, although it is not far-fetched to view the principle that verifiability is a criterion of meaningfulness for elementary propositions as implicit in the book. He accepted the thesis of extensionality, and the conception, also arguably implicit in the book, that the meanings of simple names are given in experience. Hence too, that all propositions are reducible to propositions describing what is thus given.9 And he accepted the view that there are no philosophical propositions, but only philosophical elucidations of non-philosophical propositions and exposures of metaphysical nonsense. As he was later to put it: 'the logic of science takes the place of the inextricable tangle of problems which is known as philosophy.' 1 0 The logic of science consists of the logical syntax of the sentences, terms, concepts, theories, and so on of science—'science' being construed, as in the Tractatus, as the totality of empirical propositions. What Carnap did not accept was the suggestion that metaphysics is ineffable. Indeed, the idea that there are metaphysical 'truths' that are shown by language but cannot be stated was a claim that he vigorously rejected. Hence the rationale Carnap gave for the elimination of metaphysics was not that the pseudopropositions of metaphysics employ formal concepts as if they were genuine concepts, whereas they are in effect variables, which cannot occur in a fully analysed proposition with a sense. Nor did he claim that such putative propositions would not be bipolar and hence would lack sense. Rather, his contention was that the key expressions occurring in putatively metaphysical propositions are meaningless either because they have been assigned no meaning that is analysable into the given or because they are derived from words that do have a meaning but are not employed with that meaning and have been given no other meaning. Alternatively, the pseudo-propositions of metaphysics contain meaningful words illicitly combined—that is, combined in a manner that fails to conform with the rules of logical Of course, given Wittgenstein's reticence concerning objects in the Tractatus, this is not a claim that is evident on the surface of the book. Nevertheless, there 9

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is much evidence to support it, both in the book and in Wittgenstein's subsequent writings, such as 'Some Remarks on Logical Form' and Philosophical Remarks, as well as the curious letter to Schlick dated 8 Aug. 1932 in which Wittgenstein insisted that Carnap's 'physicalism' was already stated in the Tractatus. For further elaboration, see P. M. S. Hacker, Insight and Illusion: Themes in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein, rev. edn. (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1997), ch. IV. R. Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1937), 279.

10

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syntax and so, for example, involves confusions of logical type. In these respects, Carnap's argument does indeed converge on, although is not the same as, Wittgenstein's. It is curious that, in his paper, Carnap did not discuss the propositions of the Tractatus—for example, that the world consists of facts and not of things, that one is a number, or that red is a colour, as examples of metaphysical propositions. His attention was focused primarily upon assertions concerning the Absolute, God, 'things-in-themselves', the alleged properties and activities of Nothing, and so on. It was only in The Logical Syntax of Language that Carnap addressed Wittgenstein's ineffability theses. There he claimed that the apparently necessary propositions that are propounded and then condemned as nonsensical attempts to say what can only be shown are pseudo-object sentences in the material mode, which can be licitly recast as genuine syntactical sentences in the formal mode. They are sentences that appear to be about things, but are actually about syntax, a feature that is revealed by 'translating' them from the material to the formal mode. Hence ' a is an object' amounts to no more than the licit proposition ' " a" is a thing-word'; 'one is a number' can be rephrased as ' "one" is a number word'; 'the world is the totality of facts, not of things' is translatable into 'science is a system of sentences [Sätze, propositions] not of names'; 'a fact is a combination of objects' into 'a sentence [proposition] is a series of symbols', and so on. From Wittgenstein's perspective in the Tractatus this would not do at all. For, first, all these 'paraphrases' from the material into the formal mode themselves employ formal concepts, such as 'word', 'symbol', or 'sentence [proposition]'. Secondly, the resultant sentences do not express bipolar propositions. This is patent in the case of such sentences as 'science is a system of sentences not of names' and 'a sentence is a series of symbols'. Such putative propositions are no less essentialist than 'a fact is a concatenation of objects', for they purport to specify essential, not contingent, features of science and of sentences. It is latent in the case of ' " a" is a thing-word', which is either an empirical statement about a sign—in which case it does not capture what was meant by ' a is an object', or it is a non-contingent (hence non-bipolar) statement about the symbol ' a'. Thirdly, the proposed paraphrases into the formal mode do not actually capture what is intended. The illegitimate pseudo-proposition of the Tractatus—'a fact is a combination [concatenation] of objects'—is intended to indicate part of the essential nature of facts, —that is, features of a fact without which it would not be a fact at all, and not to state anything about the essential nature of sentences or propositions. end p.335

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4. Flaws in the Argument of 'The Elimination of Metaphysics' Carnap did not give a satisfactory characterization of what a metaphysical assertion is. After all, not every unverifiable sentence can be characterized thus. Ethical and aesthetic sentences, according to Carnap, are equally unverifiable, but are surely not to be classified as 'metaphysical'. 'The number three is married' is, to be sure, nonsense, as is 'Green ideas sleep furiously'—but they do not purport to be metaphysical assertions. Similarly, Carnap did not circumscribe what kinds of expressions he deemed to be 'metaphysical'. All he did was to point out that some legitimate expressions, such as 'principle' and 'god' (in its mythological use), are given illegitimate uses by metaphysicians, and he gave a list of further expressions that are metaphysical terms without any meaning. But not every misuse of a legitimate expression is 'metaphysical', and not every ill-defined or undefined term of art is a putatively metaphysical one. Secondly, the brunt of Carnap's attack depends upon the claim that metaphysical utterances fail the test of verifiability. I shall not repeat the qualms that have arisen concerning the Principle of Verification and its modifications since Carnap's day. Irrespective of the justifiability or unjustifiability of the Principle, an obvious point stands out. Philosophers who are deemed to be engaged in metaphysics did not hold their claims to be validated by experience. On the contrary, they typically held them to be validated by a priori argument. Plato argued that Forms do and indeed must exist, since only if there are Forms can predication, possession of common properties, and knowledge of eternal truths be rendered intelligible. Locke held that there must be material substances in which qualities inhere, because only thus can the character of our experience be rendered intelligible. Such metaphysicians would have been unimpressed with the argument that their claims—for example, about the existence of Forms, of material substance, of a res cogitans or of God, or about the necessity that every event should have a cause, or that substances must exist since qualities necessarily inhere in something or because there must be a permanent in perception—cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed by any empirical evidence. If these claims are to be refuted, they would have insisted, then only by demonstrating, a priori, that there are flaws in the arguments supporting them. The Platonic conception of a Form, the Cartesian conception of a res cogitans, or the Lockean or Kantian conception of substance may well be incoherent—but the existence of such items was supported by arguments, and it is these that must be examined and refuted by the anti-metaphysician. To be sure, Carnap would agree that end p.336

these metaphysical claims are held to be a priori, but would argue that, if they are, then they lack all content. For all well-formed propositions are either empirical, and have content, or analytic, and lack content. But this would be a dogmatic invocation of his verificationism, not a refutation of the arguments of the metaphysicians. The Principle of Verification was called into question (not least by Carnap

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himself in later years). So too was his claim that all concepts must be reducible by analysis to concepts that refer directly to the given. The picture Carnap adumbrated was a direct heir to the classical empiricists' notion that all words (other than syncategorematic expressions) signify either simple or complex ideas, and that the latter are definable in terms of the former, which must be given in experience. Carnap's conception was just as mistaken as the older doctrine. That concept-words 'stand for' or 'refer to' anything, in the sense in which proper names might be said to, is eminently disputable. The fact that many words are explained ostensively does not imply that they stand for the sample by reference to which their use is explained. And that a vast range of words and kinds of words are not explained ostensively does not imply that they are reducible by explicit definitions to such words as are so defined. Hence Carnap's sweeping condemnation of the metaphysicians' characteristic terms as failing to meet the requisite standards of significance, since they are not reducible to terms that refer to the given, is unconvincing and far too general. Maybe nothing can be made of 'Forms', 'the Absolute', 'noumena', and so on—but that has to be shown from case to case. Moreover, it is far from obvious that similar strictures apply to the terms occurring in such metaphysical claims as 'Every event has a cause' or 'The world is everything that is the case', which are intended not as empirical claims about the contingencies of the world, but as non-empirical claims about the necessities of the world. It is even less obvious in the case of such non-empirical, but also non-analytic, necessary propositions as 'Nothing can be red and green all over simultaneously' or 'Red is more like orange than it is like yellow'. Similarly, Carnap may be right that the controversies between realism, idealism, transcendental idealism, and solipsism make no difference to any possible experience. He is surely right to say that these are not theories that can be confirmed or disconfirmed by experience. They are not intended to be theories on the same level as scientific theories. They purport to be metaphysical theories about necessary features of reality. Perhaps there is, and can be, no such theory and no such thing. But merely pointing out that they are neither confirmable nor falsifiable by experience and make no difference to any possible experience goes little way to explaining why what metaphysicians were trying to do is not end p.337

impossibly difficult, but impossible—because there is no such thing to do. Blanket condemnation on these grounds sheds little light on the enterprise that leads to such doctrines. These metaphysical doctrines may well be, as Carnap held, profoundly confused—but then we need to understand the confusion and its sources. For these doctrines were not haphazardly propounded. They were responses to conceptual questions, and, if they are misguided responses, we surely need to locate the difficulties in the character of the questions. And that is not achieved by their quick dismissal as empirically vacuous. Whether or not Carnap was right that what he called 'metaphysical pseudosentences' are nonsense, it is implausible to claim that they merely serve to express an attitude towards life. When Plato argued for the existence of Forms, when Locke argued that there must exist material substances, when Berkeley argued that God must exist as cause of our ideas and as perceiver of ideas unperceived by us, when Leibniz argued for the existence of monads, they were

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surely not engaged in the expression of poetic attitudes towards life. Rather, they were trying to solve deeply puzzling philosophical, conceptual, questions. Their questions may well be misguided, already incorporating conceptual confusions, which in turn infect their answers. Their proposed solutions may well be nonsensical rather than false—but at any rate not misplaced poetry. It cannot be doubted that Carnap and other members of the Circle succeeded in raising suspicions about what were conceived to be metaphysical claims. Carnap's critical remarks signal the shift in analytic philosophy from putative investigations into questions of truth to investigations into questions of meaning—a shift that was heralded by Wittgenstein's Tractatus and later became known by Gustav Bergmann's description 'the linguistic turn'. This led to a salutary critical investigation into the meanings, if any, of characteristic claims made by the metaphysicians of the past. These investigations provided a model, although perhaps an excessively polemical one, for analytical philosophers to expose the nonsense that often masquerades for sense in the wilder writings of some contemporary non-analytic philosophers (vide the criticisms of Heidegger). But Carnap's own arguments against the intelligibility of metaphysical claims were too sweeping and rested on too shaky grounds to justify the critical condemnation that he advocated.

5. Wittgenstein's Volte-Face Pivotal to Carnap's argument was the idea that the only significant sentences are either propositions of logic (tautologies or contradictions) end p.338

that say nothing, or empirical propositions that are verifiable or falsifiable in experience. All other sentences are nonsense, or—less offensively—lack cognitive meaning. This includes sentences of ethics, aesthetics, and religion, as well as the pseudo-sentences of metaphysics. The irony of the matter was that at the very time Carnap was propounding his Tractatus-inspired anti-metaphysical views, Wittgenstein was changing his mind about the claims made in the Tractatus and evolving a very different critique of metaphysics. The upshot of his reconsiderations was as follows.1 1 The concept of a proposition, contrary to what he had argued in the Tractatus, is a family resemblance concept. Many different kinds of linguistic structures are called 'propositions', and they are united not by a common essence but by overlapping similarities. Bipolarity is an important feature of some members of the family, but not of all. It was dogmatism to deny to the equations of arithmetic (or the theorems of geometry) the status of propositions. What was true was that they are very different kinds of structures from empirical propositions (themselves far more diverse in kind than he had allowed for), with a fundamentally different kind of role. For true mathematical propositions are expressions of norms of representation, not descriptions of states of affairs or tautologies. Similarly, those propositions of the Tractatus that are defensible, but that were condemned as attempts to say what cannot be said but is shown, are not pseudo-propositions. Rather, they are grammatical propositions—that is, expressions of rules for the use of the constituent concepts expressed by the words of the very proposition

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itself. It is perfectly licit to assert that red is a colour or that one is a number. Such sentences are not ill-formed pseudo-propositions. As conceived in the Tractatus, they were attempts to state aspects of the essence of their subject (red, or one). This was partly confused, and partly right. What was confused was the idea that essences of things are language-independent features (forms) of things, which are reflected in the logico-syntactical forms of language. But it is grammar that determines what we are misleadingly inclined to call 'the essence' of things—that is, their defining properties and relations. It is not the property of an object that is ever 'essential', but the mark of a concept. The appearance of de re necessities (essential properties) is merely the shadow cast by grammar on the world. The 'metaphysical' proposition that red is a colour is normative. It entitles us to infer from the proposition that A is red the For a more detailed survey of Wittgenstein's later criticisms of metaphysics, see P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein's Place in Twentieth Century Analytic Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 117-23, from which the following discussion is derived. 11

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proposition that A has a colour (or is coloured). Such propositions are expressions of rules in the misleading guise of super-empirical descriptions of the language-independent nature of things. Similarly, pace the Tractatus, there is nothing awry with saying that the proposition (p & (p q)) q is tautology. It is, to be sure, not a bipolar proposition. It apparently states an essential, internal property of the proposition in question. But, again, it is in effect the expression of a rule. That is, the tautological proposition says nothing, but to say of that proposition that it is a tautology is to express a rule—namely, that ' q' may be inferred from ' p' and ' p q'.1 2 For every tautology is correlative to an inference rule. To recognize a proposition as a tautology is ipso facto to acknowledge the inference rule, and to recognize the inference rule is to acknowledge the proposition as a tautology. Of course, not all the propositions of the Tractatus were like this. The claim that the world consists of facts and not of things, for example, was a misguided statement of the correct grammatical proposition that a description of the world consists of a statement of facts and not of a list of things. And that proposition is no more than a rule determining the concept of a description. Others claims were indeed nonsense, in as much as they are not norms of representation 'seen through a glass darkly' at all. The (allegedly ineffable) claim that facts are concatenations of objects, or that facts consist of objects, is not an attempt to say something that is shown by factual statements. It is not a 'true' grammatical proposition. Nor is it a true or false empirical proposition. It is mere nonsense. What can be said is that facts consist of nothing, do not have objects as their constituents—and that is a correct grammatical proposition. It says that there is no such thing as a fact that has constituents—that is, that the form of words 'The fact that p has a and F as its constituents' has no use, that it is meaningless. The latter grammatical proposition might be expressed by a modal proposition—for example, facts cannot have objects as constituents. What are traditionally deemed to be metaphysical propositions are often cast in modal form, characterizing what is necessarily so, what is essentially possible or impossible. So we say such things as 'What is coloured must be extended', 'What

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is colourless can have a colour', or 'An object cannot be red and green all over simultaneously'. These sentences appear to be describing features of the world, only necessary rather than contingent features—the essential form of the world rather Cf. C. Diamond (ed.), Wittgenstein: Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, Cambridge 1939 (Hassocks: Harvester, 1976), 277 ff., and A. Ambrose (ed.), Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1932-1935 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979), 137-8. 12

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than its contingent content. So we think of metaphysics as the science of non-logical necessity and of supra-causal possibility . Consequently, the distinction between factual and conceptual investigation is obliterated. The illusion of de re necessity associated with putative metaphysical propositions is generated by two features. First, these modal terms have a use in causal contexts. We say 'If you move this cogwheel thus, the other must move so' (forgetting that this statement is conditional on the assumed truth of the descriptive laws of mechanics and on contingencies such as the strength of metals). We are prone to construe the 'metaphysical' statements as superempirical, specifying connections in nature that are harder than the hardest of the causal connections we discover. So we fail to apprehend that the metaphysical 'must' expresses a commitment to a form of representation. Secondly, we take such statements to be descriptions of objective features of the world. We fail to see that their role is normative, not descriptive. If A is red and B is pink, then, we say, A must be darker in colour than B. But that merely means that, unless we were willing to describe A as darker than B, we would not describe A as red and B as pink. We say that nothing can be red and green all over, and fail to see that this proposition is a grammatical one—the expression of a rule. For we lay it down that this ☞ is red and that an object is red all over if it is this colour all over; and that that ☞ is green and that an object is green all over if it is that colour all over; and since this ☞ is not called 'the same colour' as that ☞, nothing counts as being both red and green all over. The only import of the metaphysical proposition is to license the inference, in advance of experience, that if something is red all over, then it is not also green all over. The legitimacy of the inference is partly constitutive of the meanings of the colour words. So too the apparently synthetic a priori proposition that red is more like orange than it is like yellow is the expression of a rule of inference entitling us to infer from the fact that A is red, B orange, and C yellow that A is more like B in colour than it is like C. 'Cannot' in metaphysics—as in 'You cannot travel backwards in time' or 'You cannot count through all the cardinal numbers'—betokens not an ultraphysical necessity that it is beyond the power of man to overcome, but a convention for the use of words. It does not really say that there is something that we cannot do, but rather that there is no such thing to do, that there is no such thing as 'travelling backwards in time' or 'counting through all the cardinals'—that these are nonsensical forms of words with no use in the language. It is noteworthy that Carnap too rejected essentialism—that is, the view that there are objective, language-independent necessities, which it is the task of philosophy to disclose. And, like Wittgenstein, he too

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thought that apparently metaphysical, necessitarian sentences, which appear to be about the necessary features of the world, are, au fond, about language. As noted above, he thought them to be pseudo-object sentences that can be recast as syntactical sentences in the formal mode. But this not only failed, as we have seen, to account adequately for the allegedly ineffable necessities of the Tractatus; it also failed to apprehend the normative role of such sentences. One prominent flaw in Carnap's criticisms of metaphysics is his failure to realize that apparently anankastic propositions such as 'Nothing can be red and green all over' or 'One cannot count through all the cardinal numbers' are normative, or that what look like synthetic a priori truths are expressions of rules. They are not true descriptions consequent upon rules (definitions), but are themselves rules in the misleading guise of descriptions. Carnap did not discuss the metaphysical 'must' and 'cannot', and failed to see that these are typically misleading expressions of commitments to a form of description. Indeed, he failed to see that what he called 'analytic truths', such as 'All bachelors are unmarried', are likewise the expressions of rules—for example, that, if A can be said to be a bachelor, then he can be said to be unmarried. This is misconstrued as a truth that follows from meanings (conventions, definitions). Rather, it is the expression of a convention, and, moreover, one that is partly constitutive of (and does not follow from) the concepts expressed by the constituent terms of the proposition. For it is not as if one can first grasp the meaning of 'bachelor' and then discover that if someone is a bachelor then he is unmarried, or understand the meaning of negation and then examine what follows from this meaning—for example, that p = p. For this does not follow from the meaning; it is constitutive of the meaning. Someone who failed to acknowledge that p = p would be judged not to have understood, or not to have fully understood, the meaning of negation, just as someone who asserted that A is a bachelor and insisted that A is married, would be held not to know what the word 'bachelor' means. One proposition may follow from another, but nothing follows from the meaning of a word. Carnap was right to say that realism, idealism, and solipsism are misconceived philosophical theories that make no difference to any possible experience. But here too Wittgenstein delved deeper. Such doctrines defend a form of representation as if they were defending a factual claim, and multiply confusion by conflating different forms of representation. Idealists insist that, instead of saying 'I perceive an X' we should say 'I have an idea (or sense datum) of an X', since this is all one is epistemically entitled to assert. But this is, in effect, to attack the end p.342

normal form of an expression as if the form of an expression could be true or false, whereas it is what is asserted by an expression with a given form that can be true or false. It is confused of the methodological solipsist to insist that 'There is pain' is more appropriate than 'I have a pain', and that 'A behaves as this (the solipsist's) body behaves when there is a pain' is a more correct representation of the facts than 'A is in pain'. For the solipsist has an unclear insight into the logico-grammatical differences between first- and third-person psychological propositions. He is, in effect, merely recommending a new notation, but a new

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notation cannot change the facts—only the manner of stating them. But he then proceeds to argue that only his (the solipsist's) pain is real. That is confused, since 'my pain' belongs to the same grammatical system as 'his pain', and neither belongs to the notation with 'there is pain'. Metaphysics, Wittgenstein argued, confuses conceptual and factual investigations. One might elaborate his insight further. The claims that there must be Platonic Forms, or Lockian substances, or Leibnizian monads are severally confused. For their arguments appear to be analogous to scientific inferences from the observed to the unobservable—for example, scientific hypotheses concerning the existence of subatomic particles, or genes. But genuine scientific hypotheses are attempts to explain an empirical phenomenon. Explanations of this kind have further empirical consequences, many of which may not have been predictable in advance (one cannot see subatomic particles, but one may discover their electrical charge, weigh them, measure their velocity, and so on). The metaphysician apes the procedures of the scientist. But what he seeks to explain are not empirical phenomena at all, but conceptual puzzles masquerading as such (for example, how is predication possible, or how can there be instances of a common property; or how can a thing retain its identity through change; or to what entity do experiences belong), puzzles that already incorporate conceptual confusions. Moreover, the entities he insists must exist and the theories he propounds in support of his existential claims have no further, empirically confirmable consequences. For they are not genuine theories at all, but merely confused conceptual claims. 'The Elimination of Metaphysics', together with Carnap's other antimetaphysical writings, supported by the writings of other members of the Circle (including Ayer) and also by Wittgenstein's teachings in Cambridge, put the very word 'metaphysics' on the Index for most analytic philosophers for the next thirty years or more. That metaphysics is philosophically disreputable was a widely accepted thesis among the younger generation. Despite attempts to rehabilitate or reinterpret the metaphysical endeavours of the past by such philosophers as end p.343

Collingwood, Wisdom, and Lazerowitz, there were few analytic philosophers prepared to characterize their activities and investigations as metaphysical until after Strawson's Individuals (1959). But Strawson rehabilitated the letter, not the spirit, of metaphysics. His descriptive metaphysical investigations are investigations into the most general features of our conceptual scheme, not into the most general or necessary features of reality. Moreover, he gave no account of the nature of the conceptual necessities he disclosed, seeing 'no reason why any high doctrine at all should be necessary here'.1 3 Finally, his conception of revisionary metaphysics was as far removed from the intentions and practice of past metaphysicians as was Collingwood's historical conception of metaphysics. It was not until Kripke's Naming and Necessity (1972) that philosophers in the English-speaking world felt unabashed in pursuing metaphysics as traditionally understood—that is, as investigating de re necessities. Whether there are any such things, and whether this revival of the metaphysical idiom and endeavour is licit, are debatable. The final verdict on Carnap's attempted elimination of metaphysics, and on Wittgenstein's reduction of putative metaphysics to either

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grammar or nonsense, depends upon the results of that debate. 13

P. F. Strawson, The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen, 1966), 44.

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13 On Strawson's Rehabilitation of Metaphysics Abstract: The logical positivists' critical attitude towards metaphysics is sketched. Strawson's conception of descriptive and revisionary metaphysics is described. Revisionary metaphysics is argued to be chimerical, and descriptive metaphysics is argued not to be a form of metaphysics at all. Strawson's failure to account for the status of propositions of descriptive metaphysics is held to be remediable by reference to Wittgenstein's conception of grammatical propositions that express norms of representation. Keywords: A.J. Ayer, descriptive metaphysics, grammatical propositions, H.H. Price, metaphysical propositions, P. F. Strawson, R. Carnap, revisionary metaphysics, Vienna Circle

P. M. S Hacker

1. The Elimination Of Metaphysics There appears to be a rhythm in the history of philosophy. Periods of great metaphysical system building are followed by brief periods of antimetaphysical reaction. The great constructive systems of seventeenth-and early eighteenthcentury metaphysics were followed by Hume's damnation and Kant's drastic restriction of metaphysics (even though we rightly deem both to have elaborated metaphysical systems). The early nineteenth century saw the revival of grand systematic metaphysics among the post-Kantian German Idealists, only to be followed by the destructive reaction of nineteenth-century positivism. But this too was a passing phase, followed by such metaphysical system builders as Bergson, Bradley, McTaggart, Alexander, and Heidegger. And this again bred a reaction in the inter-war years. The Manifesto of the Vienna Circle, a pamphlet entitled 'The Scientific World Conception', published in 1929, declared that metaphysical assertions are not false propositions, but nonsensical pseudo-propositions. All true or false propositions are either analytic or empirical. The former yield no knowledge of matters of fact. The latter are the totality of cognitively significant propositions. These have a meaning in as much as they are verifiable in experience. Metaphysical assertions are not analytic, for they are not true in virtue of the meanings of their constituent terms, are not derivable from the laws of logic and explicit definitions alone, and do not express conventions for the use of terms (these alternative formulations surprisingly being taken to be roughly equivalent). But they are not empirical propositions either, for they are not verifiable in experience, they have no determinable truth-conditions, and make no difference to any possible experience (these formulations being similarly taken to be equivalent). The argument was essentially a rerun of Hume's condemnation of

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I am grateful to Dr H.-J. Glock, Dr J. Hyman, and Sir Anthony Kenny for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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divinity and school metaphysics as sophistry and illusion. The logical positivists' elimination of what they called 'metaphysics' differed from Hume's primarily in the manner in which they harnessed the new logic and the techniques of logical analysis derived from Russell and Wittgenstein to their rationale for the condemnation of metaphysics, and secondarily in their perfunctory willingness to assimilate metaphysical utterances to works of poetry or music. For they were willing to concede that metaphysical utterances might be taken to express an attitude towards life, a Lebensgefühl.1 Their criticisms of metaphysics differed from Kant's in as much as they rejected the intelligibility of Kant's category of synthetic a priori propositions and hence of his conception of transcendental metaphysics as a description of synthetic a priori conditions of possible experience, and repudiated his claim that certain propositions of transcendent metaphysics, though not knowable, are nevertheless intelligible as ideas of reason. It is noteworthy that their primary inspiration was Wittgenstein's Tractatus. For they took the Tractatus to have established that logical propositions in general, and analytic propositions in particular (including propositions of mathematics), are vacuous tautologies that say nothing about reality.2 All cognitively significant propositions are empirical. All empirical propositions—that is, all propositions with a sense, are reducible to truth-functional combinations of elementary propositions. Elementary propositions were equated, by members of the Vienna Circle, with descriptions of the given—that is, of immediate experience, which they called 'protocol sentences'. Partly as a consequence of conversations with Wittgenstein in 1929, they took verifiability to be the criterion of significance for empirical propositions, and took the meaning of any empirical proposition to be given by its method of verification. Without warrant, they read this principle of significance and the principle of verification back into the Tractatus.3 Interestingly, they 1 R. Carnap, 'The Elimination of Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language', Erkenntnis, 2 (1931-2), 219-41, repr. and trans. by A. Pap in A. J. Ayer (ed.), Logical Positivism (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1959), 78-80.

They were quite mistaken in ascribing to Wittgenstein the view that propositions of arithmetic are tautologies. 2

There was reason to interpret Wittgenstein's elementary propositions as what they called 'protocol sentences', immediately verifiable in experience. So there was some warrant for reading the verificationist criterion of meaningfulness into the Tractatus account of elementary propositions, although none for the principle of verification as giving the meaning of even elementary propositions. For the sense of an elementary proposition was conceived to be its agreement and disagreement with the existence and non-existence of states of affairs, and not its method of verification. Moreover, there was no ground for giving a verificationist interpretation to the account of the meaning of open generalizations. It was only in 1929 that Wittgenstein, perhaps under the influence of Weyl's 'Über die Neue Grundlagenkrise der Mathematik' (Mathematische Zeitschrift, 10 (1921), 39-79), came to view such sentences as 3

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expressions of 'hypotheses', which are not genuine propositions but rather rules for the construction of propositions. He then extended this conception of hypotheses to material object statements and statements about other minds.

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disregarded the fact that Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus, had committed himself to the ineffability of metaphysical truths. For, although he had argued that metaphysical truths cannot coherently be stated in language, he claimed that they are shown (but cannot be said) by wellformed propositions of natural language. So his Weltanschauung was profoundly different from theirs. He drew the bounds of sense not in order to eliminate metaphysics tout court, but rather in order to make room for ineffable metaphysics. The main proponent of the anti-metaphysical doctrines of the Circle was Carnap. Already in his 1928 paper 'Pseudo-Problems in Philosophy: The Heteropsychological and the Realism Controversy' he argued that disputes between realism and idealism regarding the external world or between realism and solipsism regarding other minds are bogus, since no possible experience can decide between the respective alternatives. In 'The Elimination of Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language' published in 1931/2, Carnap argued that metaphysical utterances are mere pseudo-propositions that fail to meet the requirement of verifiability that is a condition for possession of cognitive significance. And in The Logical Syntax of Language, published in 1934, he tried to show that the Tractatus constraints upon what can be said do not, pace Wittgenstein, make room for ineffable metaphysics and that the pseudopropositions of the Tractatus metaphysics are not attempts to say what can only be shown. Rather, what can be salvaged from such pseudo-propositions are syntactical statements about words. The pseudo-propositions of the Tractatus are pseudo-object sentences in the material mode that can be recast as genuine syntactical sentences in the formal mode.4 Although Carnap was among the most fervent anti-metaphysicians in the Vienna Circle, others, especially Schlick and Neurath, participated eagerly in the crusade. These doctrines of the Circle were eloquently transmitted to the English speaking world by A. J. Ayer's pugnacious Language, Truth and Logic , published in 1936, which became the classic English statement of the central tenets of logical positivism. Like Carnap, Ayer argued that putatively metaphysical propositions are neither tautologies nor empirical propositions. No possible sense-experience is For a detailed examination of Carnap's views, see Chapter 12, 'On Carnap's Elimination of Metaphysics'. 4

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relevant to determining their truth or falsehood. Consequently, they are neither true nor false but rather are literally senseless. Transcendent metaphysics is nonsense, for no statement that refers to a putative reality that transcends any possible sense-experience can have cognitive meaning. In short, metaphysicians produce sentences that fail to conform to the conditions under which alone a sentence can be literally significant. The primary respect in which Ayer differed from Carnap was over the relatively trivial concession Carnap made in holding that the utterances of metaphysicians should be treated as on a par with the

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writings of poets. Ayer observed that the sentences of poetry are not normally forms of tacit nonsense—they may be false, but they typically have a (cognitive) meaning. By contrast, the sentences of the metaphysician are, inadvertently, sheer nonsense. Apart from the logical positivists, there was in the 1930s another powerful source of animus towards traditional metaphysics. While the positivists assailed metaphysics with the blunt tool of the principle of verification, Wittgenstein himself was lecturing at Cambridge. By 1932 he had altogether abandoned his Tractatus doctrines concerning the ineffability of metaphysics and the impossibility of making metaphysical statements with any sense, rejected verifiability as a criterion of meaningfulness, and repudiated the principle of verification. Nevertheless, he launched a new onslaught on metaphysics. He now claimed that what appear to be metaphysical statements are at best expressions of rules for the use of the constituent terms of the putative statement in the misleading guise of descriptions of reality, and that traditional metaphysical doctrines, such as solipsism, idealism, and realism, are nonsense. His views were not published until after his death, and were known only to the select circle of his pupils and friends. Nevertheless, they undoubtedly contributed to the general animosity of analytic philosophers towards metaphysics in the 1930s and even more markedly in the post-war years.

2. The Rehabilitation of Metaphysics Throughout the 1930s in Britain analytic philosophy, originating in the pre-war work of Moore and Russell, made progress. The earlier style of logical atomist analysis gave way in Cambridge to a new form of analytic philosophy, inspired largely by Wittgenstein's teachings, which spread from Cambridge to other philosophy departments. Logical positivism made inroads among the young Turks of academic philosophy, and Oxford awoke from its slumbers, guided by Ryle and his circle. The end p.348

metaphysical systems of the previous generation of Bradley, Alexander, and McTaggart were out of fashion. Surveying the scene in 1933, the young Braithwaite, influenced by Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein, held that the new style of analytic philosophy showed the futility of supposing that it is possible to construct a deductive metaphysical system to which experience must conform. Hence, he wrote, 'we can be certain beforehand that a system professing to derive by logically necessary implications from logically necessary premisses interesting empirical propositions is wrong somewhere. We in Cambridge have been fortunate in having The Nature of Existence of J. E. McTaggart as an awful example.' 5 Similarly, in Oxford, as Ryle later wrote, 'In the 1930s the Vienna Circle made a big impact on my generation and the next generation of philosophers. Most of us took fairly untragically its demolition of Metaphysics. After all we never met anyone engaged in committing any metaphysics; our copies of Appearance and Reality were dusty; and most of us had never seen a copy of Sein und Zeit.' 6 Collingwood accepted the positivists' contention that metaphysical utterances,

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such as 'Every event has a cause' or 'There is a God', are neither true nor false. In An Essay on Metaphysics, published in 1940, he argued that such assertions are indeed not genuine propositions, but expressions of the absolute presuppositions of the thought of a given historical epoch. On his view, a proposition is essentially an answer to a question, and every question rests on a presupposition from which it arises. Presuppositions may be relative or absolute. Relative presuppositions are both presuppositions of one question and answers to another. Absolute presuppositions are presuppositions of questions but never answers to one. So they do not express propositions, can be neither verifiable nor falsifiable, and are neither true nor false. The study of metaphysics, however, is not the argumentative defence of absolute presuppositions. It is a historical discipline that articulates the absolute presuppositions of the science or history of an epoch, and it results in true or false historical statements, which are indeed metaphysical propositions, characterizing the absolute presuppositions of, for example, Greek science or history, Newtonian mechanics, or modern physics. R. B. Braithwaite, 'Philosophy', in H. Wright (ed.), University Studies (Cambridge: Nicholson & Watson, 1933), 23. 5

G. Ryle, 'Autobiographical', in O. P. Wood and G. Pitcher (eds.), Ryle: A Collection of Critical Essays (New York: Doubleday, 1970), 10. Heidegger's remarks about 'the Nothing' in Sein und Zeit had been a major target of Carnap's criticism of metaphysical nonsense in 'The Elimination of Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language'. 6

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The idea of identifying something that can be called 'the presuppositions of thought' and that can be said to characterize the science or history of an epoch is appealing to the historian of ideas. But Collingwood's conception of a proposition, and hence too of truth and falsehood, was idiosyncratic, open to numerous objections, and won no adherents. His conception of absolute presuppositions, which are not propositions, are not supportable by argument, and which lack truth values, provided no explanation of the fact that traditional metaphysicians supported their assertions by extensive argument, and endeavoured to prove the falsity of their denials. His account of metaphysics does not correctly represent either the intentions or the productions of traditional metaphysicians, who conceived of their claims as true or false descriptions of how things necessarily are, and not of how things are transiently presupposed to be. A different defence of metaphysics, which likewise accepted the positivist claim that metaphysical utterances are neither true nor false, but denied that they are nonsense, was given by H. H. Price. In his Presidential address to the Mind Association in 1945, in which he surveyed the current state of philosophy in Britain, he argued against the trend of analytic philosophy of the previous decade, insisting that 'clarity is not enough'. Under the influence of Wittgenstein and of the logical positivists, analytic philosophers had argued that clarification is the fundamental task of philosophy, that philosophy can yield no new knowledge but only make clear what we already know. The sole task of philosophy is analysis of the statements of science, history, common sense, and ethics—the clarification of the meanings of statements that generate philosophical puzzlement. A corollary of the analytic task, it was argued, is the therapeutic

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task of eliminating perplexity and conceptual confusion and of disclosing the latent nonsense in much philosophical thought. Price defended the new style philosophy against many of the accusations that were being directed at it. He was willing to concede that analysis, in some generous sense of the term—that is, conceptual clarification—is the large part of philosophy of logic, epistemology, and even moral philosophy. But, he demurred, it had been a mistake to condemn metaphysics as nonsense and to consign the venerable subject to the rubbish heaps of intellectual history. Echoing Braithwaite, he agreed that it is illegitimate to argue to a conclusion concerning matters of fact if there are no matters of fact among one's premisses. But, he claimed, the only metaphysical argument that would be eliminated by this principle is the ontological argument for the existence of God. And it would be parochial to accept the verdict that all the great systematic speculative metaphysical systems of past philosophers are nothing but nonsense. end p.350

How then should we view such systems? Price, like Ayer, rejected the Carnapian suggestion that they are akin to works of art and poetry, expressing attitudes towards the world. Rather we should think of them as 'alternative modes of conceptual arrangement by which the body of empirical data is systematically ordered', like alternative maps of the same territory with different methods of projection.7 In this sense they are no more true or false, right or wrong, than Mercator's projection is true or false, right or wrong. They are possible or not possible, adequate or inadequate to the task of representing what we wish to represent by their use, illuminating or unilluminating in highlighting relationships that are important to us for the purposes we have. Hence the choice between different metaphysical systems is not between the true and the false but between the less good and the better, or between the good in such-and-such respects and the good in such-and-such different respects. The task of the speculative metaphysician is indeed not to add to our knowledge of facts. But it is not analysis either. It is rather 'to produce a unified conceptual scheme under which all known types of empirical fact may be systematically arranged'.8 Price's plea for such metaphysics went unheeded. As far as I know, there was no debate over whether this conception of what he had called 'speculative metaphysics' was correct.9 From 1945 until the end of the 1950s analytic philosophy evolved in Britain and elsewhere without any metaphysical pretensions, and, on the whole, without much attempt to aspire to the degree of generality characteristic of the ontological and metaphysical pronouncements of the great system-builders of the past. In 1959, however, Strawson published his rightly renowned book Individuals. It operated at dizzying heights of generality hitherto unknown among postwar British analytic philosophers, and it professed unashamedly to be an exercise in metaphysics—it was, as its subtitle announced, 'an essay in descriptive metaphysics'. In the elegant but all too brief introduction to the book, Strawson distinguished between revisionary and descriptive metaphysics. Descriptive metaphysics, he explained, 'is content to describe the actual structure of our thought about the world', while revisionary metaphysics 'is concerned to produce a better structure.' 1 0 7

H. H. Price, 'Clarity is not Enough', repr. in H. D. Lewis (ed.), Clarity is Not

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Enough (London: Allen & Unwin, 1963), 37. 8 Ibid. 39. 9 It is, however, interesting, that Waismann in 'How I See Philosophy', in H. D. Lewis (ed.), Contemporary British Philosophy , 3rd ser. (London: Allen & Unwin, 1956)), argued, primarily against Wittgenstein but also against the view of the Vienna Circle, that to say that metaphysics is nonsense is nonsense. For the great systems of philosophy of the past apprehend and articulate new ways of looking at the facts. Metaphysicians experience something akin to a shift in aspect perception, enjoy and advocate a new vision, a different way of conceiving of experience and its objects. 1 0 P.F. Strawson, Individuals (London: Methuen, 1959), 9. Subsequent page references in the text are to this volume.

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Descriptive metaphysics does not differ from conceptual analysis in intent. Like conceptual analysis or, as Strawson was later to characterize it, 'connective analysis', it is concerned with describing and clarifying the concepts we employ in discourse about ourselves and about the world, and in elucidating their relationships—their forms of relative priority, dependency, and interdependency. Descriptive metaphysics differs from connective analysis in general primarily in that the concepts that it investigates are characteristically highly general, irreducible, basic, and, in a special sense, non-contingent. The generality of the concepts it studies is manifest in any list of concepts that have attracted the attention of metaphysicians—concepts of material object, of property and relation, of causation, and of space and time. Some of these, such as material object or property , are quasi-technical—regimentations of concepts available in ordinary speech. They are general in being categorial, or at least in subsuming numerous more specific concepts under them, in the sense in which the concepts of a material object subsumes numerous material object concepts such as the concept of a chair, of a lump of sugar, or of a mountain.1 1 They are irreducible, not in being simple and unanalysable, but rather in not being eliminable without circularity in favour of other concepts that wholly define them. They are basic in as much as they are members of a set of general, pervasive, and irreducible concepts or concept-types that together form a structure that constitutes the framework of our ordinary thought.1 2 And they are non-contingent in the sense that they are necessary constituents of any conception of experience that we can make intelligible to ourselves—essential to our conception of the experience of self-conscious beings. Descriptive metaphysics, Strawson declared, also differs from conceptual analysis in general in its method. Although examination of the use of words is the only sure way in philosophy (p. 9), the discriminations Here it is evident that the term 'material object' is a quasi-technical one. One would not, I fancy, ordinarily say that a mountain is a material object. For that term is ordinarily reserved for movable, moderate-sized dry goods. Whether generalization of this notion is illuminating or merely the source of further unclarity is debatable. Certainly the boundaries of the technical term are even vaguer than of the ordinary, untechnical one. If a mountain is to be counted as a material object, what of a valley? Or a continent? Is a puddle a material object? A river or an ocean? A cloud? 11

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P.F. Strawson, Analysis and Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 24. 12

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we can make and the connections we can thus establish are neither sufficiently general nor far reaching enough to meet 'the full metaphysical demand for understanding'. For the uses of expressions of natural language 'are apt to assume, and not to expose, those general elements of structure which the metaphysician wants revealed. The structure he seeks does not readily display itself on the surface of language, but lies submerged. He must abandon his only sure guide when that guide cannot take him as far as he wishes to go' (p. 10). Strawson took pains to distinguish the kind of investigation he was advocating from Collingwood's conception of metaphysics as a historical science. Descriptive metaphysics is not the description of the changing absolute presuppositions of thought. Nor is it an instrument of conceptual change. For 'there is a massive central core of human thinking which has no history—or none recorded in histories of thought; there are categories and concepts which, in their most fundamental character, change not at all' (p. 10). These form the indispensable core of the conceptual equipment of all human thought. Strawson took as his point of departure the correlative pair of linguistic functions of reference and predication. Picking out some individual item and saying or thinking something about it are fundamental functions of thought and speech. The categories of expressions that are employed in order to fulfil these basic functions are singular referring expressions—names, singular definite descriptions, or indexicals—and predicates. The question he addressed is what are the most general conditions for identifying reference to and reidentification of particulars, and, in the light of the requirements of identifying reference and reidentification, what are and must be the most fundamental, primitive, or basic objects of reference and subjects of predication. He argued that the basic particulars in any conceptual scheme capable of describing experience and its objects are necessarily of two general types of individuals of a relatively substantial and enduring sort located in a unified spatio-temporal framework —material objects and persons (pp. 11, 246). Material objects are the subjects of a class of predicates that he denominated 'M-predicates', and persons are the subjects of both M-predicates and P-predicates—that is, predicates that presuppose their subject's possession of states of consciousness. Given that these are the basic particulars of any such conceptual scheme, he proceeded to investigate various forms of non-basic or dependent particulars, identifying reference to which depends upon the more fundamental reference to and identification of independent, basic particulars. Among these are such items as individual experiences, which he claimed to be identifiability-dependent upon the subject whose experiences they are, and individual end p.353

events that are identifiability-dependent upon the particular undergoing change. Furthermore, although the basic particulars are and must be material objects and persons, universals, abstract, and intensional objects can likewise be objects of reference and subjects of predication. With a characteristically relaxed attitude to ontological commitments, Strawson pleaded that we should abandon whatever

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natural but ill-founded nominalist qualms we might suffer from and recognize the existence of such objects of thought. Descriptive metaphysics is to be contrasted with revisionary metaphysics. Revisionary metaphysics is concerned not with describing the actual structure of our thought about the world, but with producing a better structure. The productions of revisionary metaphysics, at its best, are 'both intrinsically admirable and of enduring philosophical utility' (p. 9). But they are so only in so far as revisionary metaphysics is 'at the service of descriptive metaphysics' (ibid.). Strawson conceded in Individuals that perhaps no philosopher has ever been, both in intention and in effect, wholly a descriptive or wholly a revisionary metaphysician. But one can allocate Descartes, Leibniz, and Berkeley to the class of revisionists, and Aristotle and Kant to the descriptivists. In Individuals Strawson did not elaborate further on what he meant by 'revisionary metaphysics', and did not explain in what sense revisionary metaphysics is 'at the service of descriptive metaphysics' or what enduring philosophical utility it has. But he elaborated somewhat further in his paper 'Analysis, Science and Metaphysics'.1 3 Some metaphysics, he there wrote cautiously, 'is best, or most charitably' seen as consisting in imagining how things might be viewed through the medium of a different conceptual scheme. And he conceded that, even when such metaphysics can be so interpreted, it is not presented thus, but rather as a picture of how things really are, as opposed to how they delusively seem to us to be. This presentation, Strawson admitted, with its contrast between esoteric reality and our daily delusion, involves and is a consequence of the unconscious distortion of ordinary concepts—that is, of the ordinary use of linguistic expressions. So revisionary metaphysics, 'though it can sometimes be charitably interpreted [thus], in fact always involves paradox and perplexities . . . and sometimes involves no rudimentary vision, but merely rudimentary mistakes'.1 4 P. F. Strawson, 'Analysis, Science and Metaphysics', repr. in R. Rorty (ed.), The Linguistic Turn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 312-20. 13

14

Ibid. 318.

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3. Is Descriptive Metaphysics a Form of Metaphysics? It is clear enough, and should have been evident at the time, that the positivists' characterization of what are to be deemed 'metaphysical concepts' was unsatisfactory. If it is deemed a requirement of any genuine concept that it have determinate criteria of application, and if metaphysical concepts are characterized exclusively by reference to the fact that they lack such criteria, then it is hardly an astounding discovery that they are pseudo-concepts. Strawson's proposal that we should view as metaphysical only such concepts as are, in the manner described, very general, basic, irreducible, and non-contingent gives us at least a rough and ready criterion. Moreover, it is a criterion the application of which produces a set of concepts or types of concept that partially coincides with the preoccupations of metaphysics as traditionally conceived. There can be no licit positivist objection to the task of providing connective analyses of such concepts and categorial concepts as space, time, material object, property, relation, cause, person, and so forth. Nor indeed can there be

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any objection to delineating the complex forms of dependency and interdependency among these concepts or types of concept, which conjunctively form the framework of our thought about the world and ourselves in it. It is not wholly clear whether very general concepts of ethics and aesthetics, such as moral goodness and beauty, or very general concepts of the philosophy of action, such as act and omission, ability, intention, reason for action and purpose, should be counted as metaphysical or not. Perhaps they should count as concepts of the metaphysics of morals, of aesthetics and of agency. Or perhaps they should be excluded, on the ground that only concepts presupposed by any language in which a distinction can be drawn between experience and its objects are to be deemed metaphysical.1 5 On the other hand, if concepts of experience, and with them the concept of a person or subject of experience, presuppose concepts of active agency, as they arguably do, then such concepts or categories as act and omission, ability, voluntariness and intention, reason for action, and purpose must presumably count as metaphysical. 15

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Either way, descriptive metaphysics—in so far as it is concerned merely with the analysis of such concepts—is just more conceptual analysis, albeit at a very high level of generality. What might make it distinctive in a further and deeper sense would be the arguments that purport to show that these concepts are, in some deep sense, necessary concepts. If, in addition, such arguments were to result in propositions that purport to describe necessary features of reality, descriptive metaphysics would make contact with one salient feature of traditional metaphysics. For it was the hallmark of traditional metaphysics that, like physics, it investigated the nature of reality, but, unlike physics, it did not investigate the contingent features of the world but its allegedly necessary features. Physics tells us how things are in reality, what contingent laws of nature describe the behaviour of things in space and time. Metaphysics aspires to tell us how things must (unconditionally) be. Metaphysical truths, if there are any, will be non-logical, necessary truths. So the principle that every event has a cause was held to be a truth of metaphysics, for it is allegedly inconceivable that there be uncaused events in nature. The principle that every attribute inheres in some substance was a truth of metaphysics in as much as it was held to be unthinkable that there be attributes that are not essential or accidental properties of some thing. And, descending to a much lower level of generality, it was held to be a metaphysical truth that nothing is simultaneously red and green all over, for it is unimaginable that there be any such thing. Propositions of metaphysics, so conceived, are quite different from the propositions of physics. They must be truths that can be discovered by the use of pure reason alone, independently of experience. But they are neither logical or analytic truths, nor empirical truths. Kant famously characterized some of them as a subclass of synthetic a priori propositions. Are the concepts to be analysed by the descriptive metaphysician necessary concepts in any deep sense? Perhaps not in the sense in which seventeenth century metaphysicians thought that we are born equipped with either actually or virtually innate ideas, or in the sense in which Kant thought of the categories as a priori concepts, unifying a manifold of intuition in judgement to yield

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experience. The general, basic, and irreducible concepts that concern the descriptive metaphysician are necessary in the sense that they are an essential structural element in any conception of experience that we can render intelligible to ourselves. Since the salient concepts that Strawson discusses are formal or categorial concepts, such as substance, property, cause, experience , and so on, it seems evident that it is not necessary that any language in which we can distinguish between experience and its objects must contain these formal concepts—rather, it is necessary that any such language contain concepts that belong to these types—that is, substance concepts, concepts of properties of substances, causal concepts, and so on. Moreover, the necessity for such concepts is relative—relative to the possibility, in such a language, of distinguishing in general between experience and its objects. It seems evident that we can entertain the end p.356

idea of a language without a word equivalent to 'substance'. But, more importantly, we can surely also entertain the idea of a language without substance names. For there could be a language consisting only of orders 'Come!', 'Go!', 'Eat!', 'Drink!', and so on, together with words expressing willingness or unwillingness, approval and disapproval. It would be an impoverished affair, to be sure, but I doubt whether we would have qualms in characterizing it as a rudimentary language. And it is at least arguable that we can imagine a language without any causal expressions, which consists only of substance names, colour and number words—as Wittgenstein suggested in the evolved second language-game in the Investigations. The necessity of the select concepts or concept types that are of concern to the descriptive metaphysician is relative to the concepts of experience and its objects, or, more precisely, relative to any language and thought in which a distinction can be drawn between experience and what it is experience of . What that means is that such concepts are partly constitutive of what we call 'experience' and 'objects of experience'. We would not denominate anything 'an experience' unless it could be ascribed to a sentient being, and would not characterize anything as 'conceptualized experience' (that is, 'experience' in the weighty sense that is Strawson's concern) unless it were ascribable to a person. And we cannot intelligibly characterize anything as a person unless it is a space-occupying sentient being tracing an autobiographical route through a unified spatiotemporal world consisting of relatively enduring material objects. In short, the weighty concept of experience is located at the centre of a vast web of concepts of space and time, of substance and causation, of cognition and volition. The investigation of these conceptual involvements and commitments is of great philosophical interest, in part because so much philosophical reflection failed lamentably to grasp precisely how weighty and how extensive are these involvements and commitments, and how they are interwoven. But it is not obvious that the elucidation of this web of connections, dependencies, and interdependencies is anything more than connective analysis of a select range of general concepts partly constitutive of what we call 'a description of an objective world'. It may indeed be called 'metaphysics'—but only in this attenuated sense. Are the propositions of descriptive metaphysics as presented by Strawson a kind

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of metaphysical proposition as traditionally understood? One difference is evident. Where traditional metaphysicians conceived of themselves as limning the ultimate structure of the world, the descriptive metaphysician will conceive of himself as sketching the basic structure of our conceptual scheme—of the language we use to end p.357

describe the world and our experience of it. Or, more ambitiously, of delineating the structure of any conceptual scheme that can be employed to describe a world and a subject's experience of it. Hence it does not aim to describe the necessary, super-physical, structure of reality—about which it may well remain altogether sceptical. Rather, as Strawson writes, it aspires 'to establish the connections between the major structural features or elements of our conceptual scheme—to exhibit it, not as a rigorous deductive system, but as a coherent whole whose parts are mutually supportive and mutually dependent, interlocking in an intelligible way'.1 6 So conceived, descriptive metaphysics breaks with the metaphysical tradition, which purported to give us insights into the necessary structure of reality. So far, so—soberly—good. The conception of a form of necessity that is not logical, but no less adamantine than logical necessity, that is an objective, language-independent form of necessity that can nevertheless be apprehended a priori by reason alone is, surely rightly, dismissed as a fiction.1 7 Nevertheless, descriptive metaphysics results in an array of propositions that are held to be necessary truths constitutive of our conceptual scheme. So, for example, it is argued that it is a conceptual truth that places are defined by the relations of material bodies, that material bodies provide the framework for spatial location in general, that they are basic from the point of view of referential identification and reidentification of all other particulars of different categories, that persons have bodies, that the experiences of a person are identifiability-dependent on the identity of the person whose experiences they are, that a condition for the intelligibility of self-ascription of experience is the legitimacy of other-ascription of experience on the basis of logically adequate behavioural criteria, and so on. Again, the interest of such propositions is not in dispute. They endeavour to articulate fundamental structural features of our conceptual scheme and arguably of any conceptual scheme in which the distinction between experience and its objects can be drawn. But the moot question is: what is the status of such propositions? Obviously, they are not and are not intended to be empirical propositions. They purport to be necessary truths. They are not obviously analytic propositions, assuming that we have a tolerably clear grasp of that problematic category. Are they then synthetic a priori? Strawson did not address the P. F. Strawson, Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties (London: Methuen, 1985), 23. 16

To be sure, in the wake of Kripke and Putnam, there has been a revival of conceptions of essentialism and de re necessity, allegedly knowable only a posteriori. This regression cannot be discussed here. 17

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question in Individuals. But in his later book The Bounds of Sense, he repudiated

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the idea of the synthetic a priori. He argued that 'Kant really has no clear and general conception of the synthetic a priori at all'.1 8 For once the apparatus of transcendental idealism is abandoned, as Strawson argued it should be, the category of synthetic a priori propositions is, he claimed, merely a residuum of propositions that are neither analytic nor empirical. The kinds of proposition that Kant deemed to be metaphysical are such propositions as: experience essentially exhibits temporal succession; there must be such unity among the members of a diachronic series of experiences as is required for the possibility of self-consciousness or self-ascription of experience; experience must include awareness of objects that are distinguishable from the experiences of them; there must be one unified spatio-temporal framework embracing all experience and its objects; and the Principles of the Analogies of Experience—that is, of the permanence of substance, of causality, and of causal reciprocity. Strawson saw no explanatory value in characterizing such propositions as 'synthetic a priori'. What then are they? And what is the nature of the apparent necessity that is associated with them? At this point, it seems to me, Strawson's account falters. The Kantian propositions do, he concedes, 'have a distinctive character or status'. Nevertheless, he sees 'no reason why any high doctrine at all should be necessary here'. The conceptual scheme we employ reflects our nature, our needs, and our situation. It is subject to change as our needs and situation change. But such changes are conceivable only as variations within a fundamental general framework of ideas. With regard to some of the propositions of descriptive metaphysics that he elicits in Individuals, he observes that 'it does not seem to be a contingent matter about empirical reality that it forms a single spatio-temporal system'. For, if someone told of a kind of thing and of events that occurred to it, but insisted that that object was not located at any distance from here, and that those events stood in no temporal relation to now, since they did not belong to our spatio-temporal system, we should take him to be saying that the events had not really occurred and that the thing in question did not really exist. In so saying, we show how we operate with the concept of reality. 'We are dealing here', he concludes, 'with something that conditions our whole way of talking and thinking, and it is for this reason that we feel it to be non-contingent' (p. 29). This does not seem to me to be altogether satisfactory. The fact that something conditions our whole way of talking does not obviously 18

P. F. Strawson, The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen, 1966), 43.

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suffice to explain why we should think of it as non-contingent. Our size conditions at least much of our way of talking and thinking too, but there is nothing non-contingent about it. The fact that we are sexual beings with a determinate gender conditions our social existence and relations and our thought about it, but it is easy enough to imagine the very different lives of asexual beings otherwise akin to us. Although we may feel certain features of the world to be non-contingent, such as the pervasiveness in it of causal regularities, the relative permanence in it of three-dimensional material objects, it does not follow from our so feeling that there is anything non-contingent about such features. On the other hand, non-contingency is surely rightly associated with the thoughts that

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any event is either earlier, later, or simultaneous with any other event, that every material object is spatio-temporally related to every other material object, that every experience is the experience of some sentient being, and that subjects of experience have bodies. Even if no 'high doctrine' is necessary here, some modestly low doctrine is surely needed to satisfy the requirements not of metaphysical understanding but of philosophical understanding. For, if the necessity of such propositions is not merely a misguided projection of our feelings of necessity (as Hume thought that our ascription of necessary connection to any causal relation was), then we crave some explanation of the nature of such non-logical, yet non-empirical necessity that is not evidently analytic. 'In order to set limits to coherent thinking', Strawson concluded his discussion of Kant's synthetic a priori propositions, 'it is not necessary, as Kant, in spite of his disclaimers, attempted to do, to think both sides of those limits. It is enough to think up to them.' 1 9 This nicely echoes Wittgenstein's similar observations in the Preface to the Tractatus. But it is noteworthy that the propositions of the Tractatus were themselves ultimately condemned as nonsense, since they did not meet the criteria of significance of that book. That was, as Wittgenstein later realized, an unhappy solution to the problem of the status of propositions delineating the bounds of sense. It is evident that Strawson would not wish to venture down that cul de sac . But then some explanation of their status is required. The thought that any event must be earlier, later than, or simultaneous with any other event does not look like a statement about our conceptual scheme. Nor does the proposition that space and time form a unity. They look like insights into the essential nature of reality. So do such propositions vindicate the project of traditional meta-physics? Or are appearances misleading? Surely more needs to be said. 19

Strawson, The Bounds of Sense, 44.

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The way out of the quandary was signposted by Wittgenstein in his later reflections on the same kinds of proposition as those he had condemned as nonsensical attempts to describe the bounds of sense in the Tractatus. We should treat such propositions, which overtly or covertly describe the conceptual connections between the major structural features of our conceptual scheme, as expressions of norms of representation. The proposition that every event is spatio-temporally related to every other event is in effect a rule for the use of the word 'event'. And we manifest our adherence to this rule precisely in our agreeing with Strawson's verdict that a description of an object and of the changes that it underwent, which were not spatio-temporally related to whatever is here and now, would and should be taken to be a description of a non-existent object and a non-occurrent event. The proposition that every event has a cause, if taken to be a metaphysical proposition rather than an empirical hypothesis, and hence licensing us to claim of any observed event that it must have a cause even if none can be discerned, is in effect a norm of representation that entitles us to infer from any event-identification that there is a cause of that event, which may or may not be known (and may or may not be discovered). The proposition that every experience is necessarily someone's experience, that every thought is necessarily someone's thought, is an expression of one's commitment to a norm

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of representation—namely, that, pace Hume and James,2 0 no sense is attached to such forms of words as 'There is a pain in the room, although no one has it' or 'There is a thought in the quad, although no one is thinking it'. The necessity we associate with such propositions is fully explained by their normative status. For they are what Wittgenstein, a little provocatively, called 'grammatical propositions'—expressions of rules of representation in the misleading guise of statements about reality. Any putative reference to the occurrence of a pain that denied its ascribability to some sentient being is not to be counted as a genuine reference to the occurrence of a pain. For, in so far as we accept these propositions, we rule out, a priori, any use for the relevant terms—for example, 'uncaused event', 'subjectless pain'—as we rule out any use for the term 'checkmate' in draughts—there is no such thing in this game. It is important to realize that, in ruling out the intelligibility of Hume thought it made sense for perceptions or ideas to exist unperceived, although there are empirical reasons for thinking that as a matter of fact they do not (see A Treatise on Human Nature, bk. I, part IV, sect. II). Similarly, James remarks that 'Whether anywhere in the room there be a mere thought, which is nobody's thought, we have no means of ascertaining, for we have no experience of its like' (The Principles of Psychology , i (New York: Dover, 1950), 226). 20

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uncaused events, of events spatio-temporally unrelated to other events, of actual experiences unascribable to subjects of experience, of colour coinstantiation, we are not delimiting nature. We are not laying down possibilities that nature cannot realize. We are laying down the limits of description, not describing possibilities that are impossible. We are characterizing the bounds of sense. For we have given no use to the forms of words 'simultaneously red and green all over', 'an occurrence of a pain that no one felt', 'an event that was neither earlier than, later than, nor simultaneous with such and such present event'. We are not expressing insights of pure reason into what nature can or cannot do, but reminding ourselves that we attach no significance to such expressions. To be sure, we could attach significance to them—after all, nothing is stopping us. All we have to do is lay down additional rules for the use of the relevant terms. But, if we do, we are thereby changing their meanings and speaking of something different. It was a confusion of traditional metaphysics to project insights into the structure of our conceptual scheme onto the objects described by our employment of it. In so doing, it confused rules determining the correct use of words and the licit inferences that their application licenses, which conjunctively define the essences of things, with objective, language-independent necessities and necessary connections in the world. The putative necessities in reality are merely the shadows cast by rules for the use of words in our language that are partly constitutive of their meanings. The question of whether the propositions in question are analytic or synthetic (with all the unclarities associated with these categories) can be sidestepped. For the status of such propositions is clarified in recognizing that they are rules of representation, not descriptions of reality. They can be said to be true only in the sense in which it is true that the chess king moves one square at a time. The possibility of knowledge of such propositions is relatively unproblematic, since it

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is knowledge of, or recognition of, the rules we follow in using the relevant words of our language correctly. Why then is it not trivially easy to attain? Largely because of the generality at which we operate in this domain and because of the ramifications and interrelations of the rules, which are anything but easy to survey. Hence, to the extent to which we wish to speak of attaining knowledge here (as opposed to attaining understanding), it takes the form of realization rather than discovery . Metaphysics thus construed yields no insight into reality, but only into our forms of description of reality. So it is just more grammar, in Wittgenstein's extended sense of the term. The generality at which we operate in the domain of Strawsonian descriptive metaphysics is manifest not only in the generality of the end p.362

concepts and concept types that are the focal point of the investigation but also in the fact that they constitute, as he surely rightly points out, structural elements of our conceptual scheme. Precisely because such concepts as space and time, substance and property, cause and effect are, roughly speaking, categorial, their rule-governed connectedness ramifies throughout our conceptual scheme. The formal or categorial concepts of substance and attribute, or of cause and effect, subsume thousands of material concepts that are in constant employment in our daily discourse. And their forms of connectedness determine our thinking and inferring in all our description, reflection, and action. Small wonder that at least some of these categories seem non-contingent, for without them we would not engage in the thought and intentional action of the kind that characterizes our form of life. We could no more decide to abandon these categories of concepts than we could decide to cease to be human beings. What then of ontology, which Strawson, in a moment of exuberance, dignifies by the name of 'the general theory of being'?2 1 It seems to me that ontology is no more than an investigation of what is meant by saying of items belonging to a certain general category that they exist, obtain, occur, or go on. We say that material things come into existence and pass away, we refer, unashamedly, to general characteristics of things or to the occurrence of events and the obtaining of states of affairs; some philosophers insist—perfectly reasonably under some interpretation—that there are objective values, and we assert without qualms that there are such-and-such many primes between m and n. Ontology, if it is anything, is surely the elucidation of what is meant, from case to case, by such existence claims. Its task is not to draw up inventories of the contents of the universe, nor can it be illuminatingly described as the study of being qua being. So it is not so much a general theory of being, but rather a matter of connective analysis, concerned in particular with existence claims and with the elucidation of conceptual dependencies involved in such claims. It might be thought, although I do not think that Strawson ever suggested as much, that Strawson's descriptive metaphysics yields transcendental arguments that prove the existence of the external world or of other minds. But that is, I think, mistaken. It would be absurd to argue from conceptual connections in thought to existential truths about the world, or, in Wittgensteinian idiom, from grammatical propositions to empirical ones. Strawson argued that a condition for

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the intelligibility of criterionless self-ascription of experience is the 21

Strawson, Analysis and Metaphysics, 35.

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adequacy of the behavioural grounds for other-ascription of experience. This conceptual connection does not prove that there are other experience-enjoying beings—what it proves is the incoherence of scepticism about other minds that admits self-ascription of experience and simultaneously denies the adequacy of the criteria for other-ascription. And, it can be argued, although I shall not attempt to argue it here, both that the demand for a proof of the existence of the 'external world' or of other minds is itself incoherent and that we have a vast hoard of genuine knowledge about objects in the world around us and about our fellow human beings and the experiences they enjoy, without per impossibile possessing any such proof. It should be noted that, although some of Strawson's conclusions echo Kantian synthetic a priori propositions—for example, concerning causal regularities and the existence of substance—these are not transcendental deductions of the necessity that every event have a cause or of the existence of an external world. They are rather observations upon the background conditions for the exercise of such concepts that enable a subject of experience to ascribe experience to himself. For, Strawson argues persuasively, the concept of subjective experience gets a grip only to the extent that the concepts of independently existing objects of experience get a grip, and both obtain a purchase only to the extent that such objects of experience are generally connected by causal regularities. But this is no proof of the existence of an external world or of the principle of sufficient reason. Scepticism is to be refuted by showing that it makes no sense—not by producing a proof of the existence of objects. We do indeed know of the existence of multitudinous objects around us, as we know of innumerable causal connections between substances and the events they make happen—but not on the grounds that the existence of substances and of widespread causal regularity is a condition for the employment of concepts of experience and its objects, nor on the grounds that we do enjoy subjective experiences. Does descriptive metaphysics differ in its method from connective analysis in general? The examination of the use of words, Strawson averred, is the only sure way in philosophy, but the structures that the descriptive metaphysician wishes to reveal are not displayed on the surface of language and the connections he wishes to establish are too far-reaching to be discernible by scrutiny of the use of words. So he must abandon his only sure guide when that guide cannot take him to the peaks of abstraction that he aims to scale. What method should he then use? Strawson offers us disappointingly little: 'I know of no procedure or recipe for getting at the answers except to think about those end p.364

ideas and questions as hard as you can.' 2 2 It is true that there is a sense in which ordinary usage offers few hints or clues to philosophical insight when it comes to such concepts as space and time, substance and accident, subject and object of experience. The terms do not offer that variegated field of subtle distinctions that are to be found, as Austin noted, in such domains of discourse as excuses. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the connections Strawson seeks—and

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finds—are not in any sense submerged beneath the surface of ordinary usage. The use of the term of art 'substance concept' is not likely to offer the philosopher much help. The use of the term 'cause' may be positively misleading, since 'cause' and 'reason' are, over a range of contexts, interchangeable, while the insightful philosopher interested in causation will wish to differentiate causes from reasons—and will indeed find ample reason to do so from a more careful examination of the use of these two terms. The clues the descriptive metaphysician seeks and the only tribunal before which his claims can be adjudicated is the general pattern or patterns of use of the multitudinous substance concepts and causal concepts that abound in natural language. Those patterns are in full view, even if it takes uncommon skill to discern them. Strawson, it therefore seems to me, saved the letter of traditional metaphysics, but abandoned its spirit. Descriptive metaphysics is distinctive, and unlike other philosophical endeavours, in so far as it strives to disclose the most general forms of connectedness that permeate our conceptual scheme and to reveal the conceptual involvements of the most general kinds of speech functions that characterize our use of language—indeed, not only of our language and our conceptual scheme, but of any language and any conceptual scheme in which certain kinds of distinctions are drawn and certain fundamental kinds of speech acts performed. But it is also like other philosophical endeavours within the field of connective analysis and unlike the aspirations of traditional metaphysics. It yields no knowledge of reality, let alone insight into the necessary structure of reality—but only insight into the forms and structures of our thought about reality. It might indeed be said to be the legitimate heir to what used to be conceived of as metaphysics, but a dethroned heir, deprived of the ancestral crown and orb. It is metaphysics without its nimbus. P. F. Strawson, 'My Philosophy', in P. K. Sen and R. R. Verma (eds.), The Philosophy of P. F. Strawson (New Delhi: Indian Council of Philosophical Research, 1995), 17. 22

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4. Is there Any Such Thing as Revisionary Metaphysics? Price pleaded for the preservation of metaphysics understood as 'alternative modes of conceptual arrangement', and recommended that philosophers should continue to be engaged upon devising different unified conceptual schemes. And he suggested that the works of the great metaphysicians of the past should be viewed as directed at such a goal. This seems akin to Strawson's conception of revisionary metaphysics in Individuals. The first question to address is: was this the project of the great system-building philosophers of the past? Were Descartes, Leibniz, and Berkeley—to mention only those whom Strawson characterized as revisionary metaphysicians—trying to construct a different language, with a fundamentally different grammar, from the natural languages of mankind? I can see no trace of such an intent in their works. Descartes, for example, was not recommending that we adopt a new form of language. He was trying to describe the world and the fundamental kinds of substance that exist in it, to characterize their essential natures and their modes of interaction. Leibniz's monadology did not advocate a change in notation, but elaborated a

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putative insight into the constitution of reality. Berkeley was not recommending that we adopt a language without names of material substances, which would merely be better for certain needs we have than our existing language. He too was trying to specify the nature of the world and of what exists in it. And he thought that any talk of material substance, understood as he took Locke to understand the term, was not an inoffensive part of our ordinary conceptual scheme, but incoherent nonsense lying at the heart of Locke's mistaken metaphysics of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. Indeed, the putative proof that it was nonsense, and not just 'an alternative conceptual scheme', was a crucial step in Berkeley's endeavour to confound sceptics and atheists. If that was not what traditional metaphysicians were trying to do, was that in effect what they actually did? Did Descartes or Berkeley or Leibniz construct a language, different from our natural languages but equally fitted for describing the world and our experience of it? Surely not. Cartesian, Leibnizian, or Berkeleian metaphysics does not provide a novel grammar, constitutive of a novel conceptual scheme. Rather, these metaphysical systems, thus interpreted, would result in an incoherent grammar that, at crucial points, specifies kinds of particular without any associated criteria of identity, introduces psychological predicates that would have a sense only if they were, per impossibile , end p.366

definable by private ostensive definition, and retains many of our concepts while simultaneously severing them from the web of connections to other concepts that alone makes them intelligible. Of course, it does not follow that the attempt to reconstruct these grand systems in this fashion may not be instructive. If one cannot reasonably interpret the metaphysical systems of the past as recommendations to adopt a new conceptual scheme, can it be argued, as Price suggested and Strawson, in Individuals, intimated, that devising alternative conceptual schemes is a task that metaphysics might reasonably undertake? Is there any sense in which such an endeavour might, as Strawson suggested, be at the service of descriptive metaphysics? It is noteworthy that the only philosopher who comes to mind in association with the idea of a philosophical programme of constructing alternative languages that could be deemed to constitute alternative conceptual schemes was the most fervent anti-metaphysical crusader of the twentieth-century, namely, Rudolf Carnap. He would rightly have been surprised to learn that doing so was a form of metaphysics.2 3 It is difficult to see the point of such endeavours within philosophy, unless they are aimed at constructing fragments of a conceptual scheme, which can then be held up as a useful object of comparison highlighting features, uses, and forms of contextual dependencies, of the corresponding fragment of our own. It is only in this sense that something akin to revisionary metaphysics could be thought to be part of the task of philosophy and indeed at the service of descriptive metaphysics—that is, general connective analysis. But part of the usefulness of revisionary metaphysics, thus conceived, runs counter to the Strawsonian vision, at least to a degree. For part of the point of devising an alternative grammar for, say, colour description (for example, adoption of colour adverbs rather than adjectives), or ascription of experience

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(elimination of the first-person pronoun, as in 'There is pain' instead of 'I have a pain'), is precisely to show that our concepts and their articulations in these domains are not the only possible ones. For we are prone to think that our modes of conceptualization are uniquely correct or true to the facts, or that our concepts are necessary ones in as much as they uniquely match the logicometaphysical forms of reality. But over a wide range of concepts, we can envisage different grammars to fulfil analogous tasks. And we can readily imagine such It is also noteworthy that his idea that we have a choice between a sense-datum language and a material object language is wholly incoherent. His endeavour to construct a sense-datum language necessarily fails in as much as the concept of a sense-datum is parasitic on our general concepts of objects of which the sense-data are data. 23

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changes in us or in the world as would render such-and-such concepts useless, and such-and-such other novel concepts more useful for our purposes in the novel contexts envisaged. The necessity we imagine associated with our conceptual scheme is a necessity internal to our conceptual apparatus—not a form of objective, language-independent necessity. In this manner, the invention of fragments of a different conceptual scheme, which fulfil roles akin to fragments of our own, can be useful in disabusing us of some of the illusions of traditional metaphysics that incline us to think that our conceptual scheme pays homage to the objective metaphysical nature of the world. Nevertheless, it does not follow that, for us, with the kinds of conceptually moulded interests and purposes we have, there are serious alternatives to those major structural features of our conceptual scheme that lie at the heart of Strawson's investigations. For they constitute, as he says, 'the massive central core of human thinking' (p. 10). It is not merely that they are 'the indispensable core of the conceptual equipment' (ibid.) we deploy. Rather they are partly constitutive of our nature as self-conscious human beings, involving concepts and categories that we could not abandon without ceasing to be human. Philosophy is in general a matter not of concept formation, but of concept description. Hence there is little role in it for the invention of (fragments of) conceptual schemes. Mathematics is concept formation, and the mathematician does indeed invent new forms of description that may be put to use by physicists in describing spatial relations and in the description and transformation of propositions about magnitudes, quantities, velocities, and so on, and their relations—as Riemannian geometry proved fruitful for relativity theory, and as the calculus proved indispensable for Newtonian physics. However, the task of philosophy is not to devise alternative conceptual schemes, but to describe and elucidate our own. Part of that task is to elucidate the most general forms of connectedness that permeate our conceptual scheme and that are partly constitutive of our very general conceptions of substance, causation, person and personal experience, space and time, reference and predication, and so on—which Strawson has pursued with his characteristic elegance, economy, and profundity. With regard to revisionary metaphysics, Strawson's second thoughts were, I think, more accurate than the view so briefly sketched in Individuals. Traditional

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metaphysics, though it can sometimes be charitably interpreted as involving a recommendation to adopt a new conceptual scheme, 'in fact always involves paradox and perplexities . . . and sometimes involves no rudimentary vision, but merely end p.368

rudimentary mistakes'.2 4 So there is not really any such subject as revisionary metaphysics—although scientists are free to devise fragments of alternative conceptual schemes for their purposes, if the new scheme is more fruitful in the generation of explanatory and predictive theories than the existing one. Nevertheless, there is a connection between the idea of devising a fragment of a novel conceptual scheme and the products of the metaphysical tradition. For traditional metaphysics—for example, representational realism, idealism, or solipsism—present their doctrines as if they were correct descriptions of reality, as if it were truer to the facts to say 'There is pain' rather than 'I am in pain', since the self is not a constituent of the experience of pain, or to say 'Grass looks green (presents an idea or representation of green) to normal observers in normal conditions' rather than 'Grass is green', since objects are not in themselves coloured, but only have a power to produce a representation of colour in human observers. But, as Wittgenstein pointed out, this is to suppose that a form of representation could say something false even when the proposition expressed says something true. The only way in which 'I am in pain' can be false is by 'I am not in pain' being true, and the only way in which 'Grass is green' can be false is by grass not being green but some other colour. So 'the one party attack the normal form of expression as if they were attacking a statement; the others defend it as if they were stating facts recognized by every reasonable human being.' 2 5 In this sense, one might interpret some of the writings of metaphysicians as recommendations to adopt a different conceptual scheme. But then it is noteworthy that these metaphysicians fail to carry through the idea, and conflate elements of the new notation with elements of the existing one, and conclude that other people do not really have pain, or that the objects around us are not really coloured.2 6 The conception of metaphysics characteristic of modern (post-Cartesian) philosophy, the idea of attaining a priori insights into the objective languageindependent essences of things, was deeply rooted in the culture of seventeenthand eighteenth-century Europe. The uprooting of this fiction required the labour of many thinkers, and took many decades. It is Strawson's signal achievement to have salvaged from the wreck of the traditional enterprise a form of general connective analysis, which he has called 'descriptive metaphysics'. What it aspires to is not knowledge of the essential nature of the world, but understanding 24

Strawson, 'Analysis, Science and Metaphysics', 318.

25

Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §402.

2 6 For more detailed discussion, see P. M. S. Hacker, Wittgenstein's Place in Twentieth Century Analytic Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 117-23.

end p.369

of the general structure of our thought about the world. And that can be achieved. Since Strawson wrote Individuals, however, a new form of the old

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disease has broken out, and the mythology of metaphysics has been revived. Its roots lie deep in our contemporary culture—in the science and scientism of the late twentieth century. To eradicate it will, I fear, be as difficult as it was to eradicate its more august ancestor. end p.370

Index absolute presuppositions349 f. abstraction253 , 254 accord with a rule280 f. action28 explanation of38 , 64-5 expressive/instrumental77 , 97 voluntary28 , 64 , 320 acts of will28 aesthetics100 , 150 f. 167 f. agreement in definitions and judgements300 f. 302 , 311 f. , 314 f. , 323 analysis7 , 12 , 13 , 23 , 32 , 137 n. , 159 analytic philosophy1 , 13 , 32 f. , 54 f. , 243 analytic truths342 animal behaviour60 , 69 animals61-3 Anscombe, G. E. M.108 , 133 anthropology, comparative methodin 74 , 83 , 87 f. , 95 anti-psychologism6 , 19 , 202 f. , 204 , 227-31 , 237 f. Aristotle46 aroma of coffee160-2 assertion-conditions270 , 294 f. , 300 , 302 , 304 assumption (Annahme)200 , 208-12 Augustine20 , 238 , Augustinian picture of language20 f. , 25 , 238-41 , 245 , 262 f. Ayer, A. J.347 f. Bacon, F.43 f. , 49 basic particulars353 f.

327

behaviour27 f. , 67 behaviour, explanation of67 , 68-70 behaviourism28 , 38 , 49 , 51 , 55 , 60 belief79 f. 81 f. , 90 , 91 , 96 f. , 150 , 157 n. , 182 , 207 f. Bentham, J.204 Bergmann, G.338 bipolarity9 f. , 11 , 14 n. , 17 , 143 f. , 171 , 212 , 222 , 224 Black, M.102 f. Boole, G.194 , 195 brain61 Braithwaite, R.B.349 Bruner, Jerome49 n. Carnap, R.7 , 14 , 32 , 55 , 243 , 245 , 264 f. , 324-44 , 347 , 367 Carnap's elimination of metaphysics327-9 , 336-8 Cioffi, F.74-97 Collingwood, R. G.54 , 167 , 349 f. colour148 , 153 , 158 , 162 , 175 , 190 , 224 , 341 common sense272 f. community view of rule following270 , 281 , 286 , 293-5 , 310-23 complex137 f. Comte, A.38 , 49 f. Conant, J.103 , 105 n. , 107 f. , 109 , 117 , 120 , 121 , 122 , 124 , 125 , 127 , 134 Confucianism44 connection between language and reality7 , 17 , 22 , 59 f. , 135 , 155 f. , 158 , 159 , 171 , 176 , 186 , 247 , 250 , 260 connective analysis23 , 37 , 352 , 364 , 369 consistent empiricism13 f. constitutive theory325 context principle8 , 202 f. , 204 , 333 contract118 , 120 f. , 189 conventionalism342 criteria26 f.

328

Davidson, D.266 de Saussure, F.20 deconstruction118 n. definition230 , 249 Descartes, R.44 , 45 , 46 f. , 56 description24 , 160-2 , 241 description, norm of, see norm of representation determinacy of sense6 , 22 , 230 determinate exclusion15 , 132 , 153 , 224 , 341 Diamond, C.103-40 , 184-6 Dilthey, W.53 f. , 67 Dreben, B.103 , 105 n. Dummett, M. A. E.194 , 266 , 302 end p.371

Dupré, J.66 n. Durkheim, E.50

Einfühlung53 , 54 , 67 elementary propositions7 , 135 , 137 n. , 144 independence of15 , 132 , 135 , 153 , 224 f. elucidations of simple names (TLP 3.263)125 n. , 175 f. , 247 elucidations of the Tractatus12 , 101 , 125 f. Engelman, P.128 f. , 151 Enlightenment45 , 52 f. epiphenomenalism48 epistemic privacy25 f. essence136 , 152 , 166 ethics100 , 150 f. , 152 explanation/description in anthropology75 f. , 91 , 92 explanation/understanding (Erklärung/Verstehen)53 f. , 67 external properties190 facts9 , 16 , 109 n. , 157 , 290-2 , 340 family resemblance22

329

fantasia51 , 67 first-person pronoun27 , 35 , 150 , 167 Floyd, J.103 , 106 n. , 118 n. , 137 n. Fogelin, R. J.114 n. following a rule59 , 61 , 261 f. , 277 , 278 , 302 , 310-23 following a rule privately283 form of representation342 f. formal (categorial) concepts11 f. , 99 , 109 f. , 112-14 , 116 , 124 , 144 f. , 148 , 154 , 162 , 175 , 331 f. , 356 f. framework conditions of language-games301 Frank, P.324 Frazer, J. G.74-97 Frege, G.2 , 4-7 , 10 n. , 11 , 19 , 110 , 120 , 123 f. , 127 , 137 f. , 143 , 144 , 148 , 157 , 191-218 , 219-41 on assertion200 , 209-12 , 222 , on 'assumptions'200 , 208-12 and the Augustinian picture238-41 his conception of a concept197-9 , 232-4 his conception of language220 f. his conception of logic102 , 200 f. , 219-21 , 237 f. his conception of an object196 f. , 232-4 his conception of sense199 f. , 205-12 , 221 f. , 307 his function theoretic logic195-9 on logical connectives197 , 213-15 , 222 f. on truth-conditions209 f. on truth-values196 f. , 209-11 , 212 f. Fregean 'thought' (Gedanke)8 Geach, P. T.127 n. , 191 , 239 f. general propositional form15 , 144 , 154 , 235 f. gesturing117 n. Glock, H.-J.127 n. Goethe, W. von89 Goldfarb, W.103 , 104 , 109 , 117 n. , 118 n.

330

Goodstein, R.192 grammar, arbitrariness of152 f. , 156 grammar, autonomy of263 grammar, justification of163 f. grammar, surface/depth231 f. grammatical propositions115 f. , 159 f. , 236 , 339-41 , 361 f. Griffin, J.127 n. harmony between thought, language and reality9 , 98 f. , 136 , 146 , 152 , 156-8 Herder, J. G.52 , 54 hermeneutics53 f. , 67 , 74-97 Hertz, H.2 , 167 Hinduism44 history66 f. , 71 , humanism40-6 humanistic understanding34-73 humanistic studies (Geisteswissenschaften)37 f. , 57 , 66-73 Hume, D.20 , 38 , 47 f. , 272 f. , 330 , 361 ideal language6 , 231 identity158 f. identity, numerical/qualitative26 illness81 , 82 indefinables252 , 259 indescribability, see ineffability ineffability125 f. , 128-30 , 136 , 143-52 , 161 f. , 164 f. , 171 , 334 ineffability theses98-102 , 146-51 afterlife of156-69 inference, rules of5 , 148 , 237 instinct76 intention63 f. , 68 end p.372

intentionality8 f. , 16 f. , 180 f. , 208 internal properties and relations7 , 16 , 60 , 99 , 113 f. , 122 , 145 f. , 147 f. , 152 ,

331

190 interpretation67 , 277 , 278 , 281 f. introspection27 James, W.2 n. , 64 , 160 , 361 Johnson, S.274 Johnson, W. E.245 Kant, I.8 , 20 , 34 , 35 , 52 , 167 , 198 , 216 , 330 f. , 359 , 360 Kierkegaard, S.107 knowledge, limits of61 f. Kripke, S.268-309 , 344 ladder, metaphor of104 f. , 107 , 117 , 124 , 134 , 140 , 143 language: as calculus21 , 23 , 246 , 247 , 250 , 263 f. , 305 f. autonomy of155 foundations of251 , 255 f. , 283 , 285 learning of58 limits of136 possession of56 f. , 62 f. laws of the mind47 f. , 51 , 71 f. linguistic turn12 f. , 338 logic5 , 131 , 194 , 201-4 , 213-18 , 219-26 application of118 n. , 131 axiomatization of11 , 123 , 200 f. , 216 f. , 223 f. and function theory195-99 and language202 , 220 f. limits of100 , 149 as normative science215 f. , 223 propositions of5 , 10 f. , 103 , 123 , 127 f. , 144 , 201 , 215-18 , 220 , 223 , 225 f. , 228 n. , 237 f. , 333 takes care of itself120 , 187 in TLP187-9 logical connectives5 , 10 , 213-15 , 222 f.

332

logical constants5 , 123 , 145 logical experience6 , 123 , 131 logical form17 , 99 , 158 logical grammar118 , 202 , 331 logical necessity11 , 13 , 120 logical possibility/impossibility100 , 120 , 164-6 , 189 , 238 logical positivism, see Vienna Circle logical syntax7 , 17 , 103 , 106 , 116 f. , 118-22 , 164 , 173-5 , 331 , 334 violation of117 f. logicism17 f. Macmillan, G.88 magic78-85 Malcolm, N. A.170 f. , 176 f. , 178 , 310-23 mankind, unique properties of56 f. mathematical propositions18 f. , 111 , 236 meaning, autonomy of56-61 meaning (Bedeutung)21-4 , 58 f. , 146 , 155 , 158 , 228 f. , 240 f. , 257 , 258 f. , 300 , 320 meaning body (Bedeutungskörper )231 , 252 , 258 , 279 , 305 , 310 meaning, explanation of22 , 58 f. , 158 , 228 f. , 252 , 258 f. , 293 f. , 300 , 306 f. meaning, intransitive168 meaning (meinen)8 , 155 , 171 , 177 , 179 , 180 , 184 , 186 , 274 , 288-90 , 293 metaphysical impossibility106 , 109 f. , 149 , 189 metaphysical principles of science100 , 149 , 166 f. metaphysical propositions164 , 326 , 336 , 339 f. , 341 , 345 metaphysics12 , 29 f. , 114 f. , 120 , 158 , 327-44 , 345-70 descriptive351-3 , 355-8 , 361-5 , 369 f. of experience100 , 149 , 167 revisionary354 , 366-70 of symbolism9 , 17 Mill, J.S.38 , 50 Morrell, Lady Ottoline130

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mystical/mysticism129 , 130 , 141 Nagel, E.55 names6 , 17 , 146 f. , 155 , 158 , 171-6 necessity11 , 114 f. , 144 , 332 f. , 341 , 356 , 358 , 361 f. , 368 Neurath, O.14 , 55 , 101 , 103 , 105 neurophysiology60 neuroscience48 nonsense23 , 101 , 103 , 104 , 105 , 106 f. , 111-13 , 117 , 121 , 163 f. , 182 f. , 183 n. , 189 , 332 n. norms of representation167 , 361 f. object, see simple objects (in TLP) obscurantism, limits76 f. , 78-85 end p.373

obscurantism, method76 f. , 85-93 ontology363 ostensive definition17 , 21 , 22 , 59 f. , 155 , 159 , 176 , 230 , 245-67 normativity of253 f. , 259-63 Pascal, B.45 paradox of PI §201275-83 Parak, F.192 Peacocke, C.296 n. Pears, D. F.100 perspicuous representation31 , 37 , 89-91 , 92

Philosophical Investigations19-31 philosophy of languagein 21-4 philosophy of mindin 24-8 conception of philosophyin 28-32 critique of metaphysicsin 29 f. philosophy12 , 13 , 19 f. , 28-32 , 124 f. , 141 , 226 n. , 325 , 329 , 368 pictorial relationship177 picture theory9 f. , 16 , 144 , 176-84 practice59 , 60 , 278 , 282 f. , 285 , 306 , 313 , 314 , 321 f.

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Price, H. H.350 f. primal-plant89 Prior, A. N.208 private experience285 n. private language317 f. private language argument25 , 269 , 283-7 , 322 f. private ostensive definition25 , 276 , 277 f. , 285-7 private ownership of experience25 f. projection, method of8 , 149 , 157 , 177-82 , 306 f. , 313 proof in mathematics18 proposition99 , 147 , 180 , 212 f. concept of116 , 235 f. propositional sign114 n. , 178 f. protoscience78-85 , 90 pseudo-propositions103 , 111 , 115 , 116 , 117 , 119 n. , 142 , 144 , 328 , 330 , 335 , 338 psychology, empirical48 f. , 55 , 71 f. quantifiers153 f. , 197 , 233 f. Quine, W. V. O.266 Quinton, A.44 n. Ramsey, F. P.101 , 105 , 115 , 117 n. , 122 , 123 , 126 , 130 f. , 142 , 143 reading280 n. reality, limits of149 , 165 reasons28 , 62-6 , 91 recognition248 , 255 , 276 , 278 f. reduction23 , 60 regularity, normative281 , 319 Renaissance humanism40-2 Renan, E.93 Ricketts, T.103 , 109 , 123 n. Robinson Crusoe270 , 282 n. , 296-9 , 311 , 317-23 Rousseau, J. J.57 n.

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rules118 , 312-14 rules, community view of, see community view of rule-following Rundle, B.208 n. Russell, B.2 , 4-7 , 10 n. , 11 , 101 , 102 , 105 , 116 , 118 , 120 , 122 , 123 f. , 125 n. , 129 f. , 142 , 143 n. , 144 , 148 , 157 , 163 , 164 , 174 , 175 , 182 f. , 188 , 201 f. , 247 samples17 , 29 , 60 , 155 , 159 saying/showing distinction12 , 98-103 , 105 , 112 , 114 f. , 116 f. , 122 f. , 124-6 , 127-30 , 133 , 136 , 141-51 , 169 , 171 , 249 , 255 , 334 scepticism271-4 , 307-9 scepticism about rule following270 , 287 f. , 290-2 Schiller, F.89 Schleiermacher, F.53 Schlick, M.14 , 36 , 134 , 152 , 243-5 , 249 , 264 Schopenhauer, A.2 , 140 n. , science42-5 , 66 f. limits of72 f. and religion44 f. , 45 Scientific Revolution42-5 scientism38 , 46-51 , 73 Searle, J. R.185 n. self-evidence11 , 217 self-knowledge27 sense, bounds of164 f. sense/force distinction24 sense/meaning (reference, Bedeutung) distinction199 f. , 205-8 , 222 , 240 f. sense/nonsense distinction, see nonsense sense of a sentence22 f. , 111 , 147 , 159 , 206-8 senselessness11 , 103 , 111 , 307 simple names (in TLP)7 , 9 , 146 f. , 170-6 simple objects (in TLP)7 , 16 , 17 , 99 , 109 n. , 113 , 137 f. , 145 , 147 , 155 , 159 f. , 171 f. , 175 , 190 end p.374

336

simple/complex distinction21 social Darwinism50 social science49 f. sociology49 f. , 55 , 67 solipsism149 f. , 167 , 284 , 343 sortal nouns233 Spengler, O.90 states of affairs6 f. , 7 f. , 109 n. Strawson, P. F.37 n. , 344 , 351-70 synthetic apriori162 , 341 f. , 346 , 356 , 358 f. , 360 , 364 T/F notation11 , 123 , 216 , 217 , 223 tautology10 , 99 , 148 , 162 f. , 217 , 223 , 237 , 331 , 340 theory of types163 f. , 174 , 188 f. thought8 f. , 101 f. , 180 f. , 182 f. , 204 limits of61 f. , 99 f. , 104 , 148 f. , 164 psychic constituents of177 , 184 topic neutrality6 , 15 , 153 f. , 203 , 234 f.

Tractatus4-19 , 98-140 and the Vienna Circle13-15 , 243 f. transcendental argument363 f. truth7 , 123 f. , 144 , 236 , 300 truth-conditional semantics290 , 302-4 truth conditions209 f. , 270 , 300 , 327 Tylor, E.88 , 94 understanding24 , 58 , 65 f. , 67 , 72 , 228 f. , 230 f. , 248 , 255 , 258 f. , 280 , 281 f. , 300 , 314 uniformity, recognition of319 Unity of Science, doctrine of38 , 46-51 , 55 , 66 use58 f. , 229 , 236 , 257 , 306 f. , 320 vagueness22 Verification Principle14 , 244 , 248 , 330 , 334 , 336 f. , 346 Vico, G.51 f. , 53 , 54 , 66 Vienna Circle1 , 33 , 54-6 , 129 , 243-7

337

conventionalism of14 f. , 243 influence of TLP on13-15 , 243 f. Manifesto of244 , 324-6 , 330 , 45-8 their conception of ostensive definition246-56 , 263-6 Voltaire325 von Wright, G.H.39 n. , 66 n. Waismann, F.3 n. , 134 , 135 , 152 , 243 f. , 247 , 351 n. Weber, M.54 , 67 Winch, P.103 , 170-84 Windelband, W.53 , 66 , Wittgenstein: on antipsychologism227-31 his criticism of Frege191-4 , 201-18 , 221-41 as critical philosopher34 f. as destructive philosopher36 on assertion209-12 , 222 on his conceptions of object and concept232-4 later criticisms of Frege219-41 later criticism of function-theoretic logic231-4 , 236 , on logic215-18 , 223 f. , 225 f. , 237 f. on logical connectives213-15 , 225 on logical truth215-18 , 223 on sense205-8 , 209-10 , 222 , 225 f. on truth212 f. , 222 on Frazer's Golden Bough74-97 influences on2 , 193 on language57-63 on metaphysics331 f. , 338-44 on ostensive definition256-67 on philosophy of mind24-8 his place in post-war analytic philosophy32 f. posthumous publications of3

338

and TLP4-19 , 98-140 , 141-56 Wittgenstein, Hermine193 wonder, sense of92 , 93

339