Wittgenstein at Work: Method in the Philosophical Investigations

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The later Wittgenstein is notoriously hard to understand. His novel philosophical approach is the key to understanding his perplexing work. This volume assembles leading Wittgenstein scholars to come to grips with its least well understood aspect: the unfamiliar aims and method that shape Wittgenstein’s approach. Wittgenstein at Work investigates Wittgenstein’s aims, rationale, and method in two steps. The first seven chapters analyse how he proceeds in core parts of the Philosophical Investigations: the discussion of the Augustinian picture of language, ostensive definition, philosophical method, understanding, rulefollowing, and private language. The final five chapters examine his most striking methodological remarks: his repudiation of theory and non-trivial theses, and some core notions of his methodology: his notions of clarification, synoptic representation, nonsense, and philosophical pictures. The volume considerably advances discussion of the therapeutic aspects of his approach that are currently a focus of debate. This volume is an indispensable methodological companion to the Philosophical Investigations, useful to both specialists and students alike. Contributors: Peter Hacker, Joachim Schulte, Eike von Savigny, Stephen Mulhall, Eugen Fischer, Erich Ammereller, Severin Schroeder, Anthony Kenny, Oswald Hanfling, Cora Diamond, Hans-Johann Glock, Stuart G. Shanker. Erich Ammereller and Eugen Fischer are both Assistant Professors of Philosophy at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. Eugen Fischer is the author of Linguistic Creativity (2000) and Philosophical Delusion and its Therapy (Routledge, 2005).

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WITTGENSTEIN AT WO RK Method in the Philosophical Investigations

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Erich Ammereller and Eugen Fischer

First published 2004 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. © 2004 Erich Ammereller and Eugen Fischer All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Wittgenstein at work: method in the Philosophical investigations / edited by Erich Ammereller and Eugen Fischer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1889–1951. Philosophische Untersuchungen. 2. Methodology. 3. Philosophy. I. Ammereller, Erich. II. Fischer, Eugen, 1970– B3376.W563 P53278 2004 192–dc22 2003023891 ISBN 0-203-56944-X Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-33833-2 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–31605–7 (Print Edition)

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TO THE MEMORY OF GORDON PARK BAKER

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CONTENTS

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Introduction: aims and method in the Investigations

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EUGEN FISCHER AND ERICH AMMERELLER

Analytical table of contents: authors’ abstracts Notes on contributors List of abbreviations

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PA RT 1

1 Turning the examination around: the recantation of a metaphysician

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2 The builders’ language – the opening sections

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3 Diagnosis and therapy: christening simple objects – PI 38–64

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4 Philosophy’s hidden essence – PI 89–133

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5 A cognitive self-therapy – PI 138–97

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6 Puzzles about rule-following – PI 185–242

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7 The demand for synoptic representations and the private language discussion – PI 243–315 S E V E R I N S C H RO E D E R

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8 ‘Philosophy states only what everyone admits’

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ANTHONY KENNY

9 The use of ‘theory’ in philosophy

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O S WA L D H A N F L I N G

10 Criss-cross philosophy

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CORA DIAMOND

11 All kinds of nonsense

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HANS-JOHANN GLOCK

12 A picture held me captive

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S T UA RT G . S H A N K E R

Index

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Wittgenstein’s later philosophical approach is rather unconventional. The remarks that state his conception of philosophical problems and method belong to the most striking sections of the Philosophical Investigations: even a cursory reading of his remarks on the nature of philosophy suffices to make the reader realize that Wittgenstein’s thoughts on this matter are strikingly at odds with traditional conceptions of what philosophy is about. Remarkably enough, these remarks also belong to the most neglected – and this even though, as various scholars have emphasized, they highlight the most revolutionary aspects of his later work and clearly hold the key to its proper understanding. While a vast amount of literature deals with Wittgenstein’s contributions to the discussion of various philosophical topics, comparatively little attention was explicitly devoted to the, in some ways, prior question of what kind of contribution he sought to make, and how he wanted to make it. This is the guiding question of the present book: which specific aims does Wittgenstein pursue in the Investigations? What is their rationale? And which methods does he employ to attain them? In brief: what is Wittgenstein trying to achieve in the Investigations? Why? And how? In this introduction, we shall develop these questions, explain this book’s approach to them, and present the papers that put it to work.

1 Wittgenstein himself provides quite explicit answers to all three parts of our guiding question. But his remarks on this topic have added to rather than reduced perplexity. Thus, for instance, Wittgenstein is notorious for making the claim that in philosophy ‘we may not advance any kind of theory. There must not be anything hypothetical in our considerations. We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place’ (109). Or consider PI 126–8: ix

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Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything. – Since everything lies open to view, there is nothing to explain. For what is perhaps hidden is of no interest to us . . . The work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose. If one tried to advance theses in philosophy, it would never be possible to debate them, because everyone would agree to them. Quite obviously, Wittgenstein’s view of how philosophy ought to be practised, and is being practised by himself, diverges radically from how philosophers traditionally conceived of their own work. For, whether or not they actually managed to explain anything, philosophers through the ages certainly thought there was something for them to explain, and frequently tried to meet this felt need. In doing so, they were regularly most interested in what is not ‘open to view’ and hardly ever contented themselves with ‘simply putting everything before us’ or ‘assembling reminders’. Rather, they saw themselves as advancing, if not establishing, theses that gave rise to the liveliest debates. But if Wittgenstein was not trying to advance any non-trivial claim of the sort philosophers traditionally have been seeking to argue for, if he did not want to explain any fact or formulate any theory, what was his aim, instead? What did he seek to achieve by ‘putting everything before us’ and ‘assembling reminders’? At a very abstract level, the aim sounds perfectly familiar: ‘problems are solved (difficulties eliminated)’ (133). But what Wittgenstein understands by a ‘solution’ to a philosophical problem seems to be rather less familiar: ‘Philosophical problems’, he tells us, ‘should completely disappear’ (133). And this appears to be a predominantly negative or critical aim: so far from consisting in the discovery of new or the explanation of familiar facts, ‘the results of’ such ‘philosophy are the uncovering of one or the other piece of plain nonsense’ (119). Apparently by attaining such results, ‘problems are solved (difficulties eliminated)’ (133). Wittgenstein’s rationale for seeking such apparently negative ‘results’ is provided by the conception of the nature and genesis of – at any rate some – philosophical problems that emerges from the same remarks: thus, e.g. ‘logical investigation’ is said to take its rise ‘not from an interest in the facts of nature, nor from a need to grasp causal connections: but from an urge to understand the basis, or essence, of everything empirical’. And it is ‘of the essence of [such] investigation that we do not seek to learn anything new by it. We want to understand something that is already in plain view. For this is what we seem in some sense not to understand’ (89). The failure to understand that thus motivates this investigation consists in ‘misunderstandings x

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concerning the use of words, caused, among other things, by certain analogies between the forms of expression in different regions of language’ (90). Whether we realize it or not, ‘our investigation’, namely, of questions about essence, like Augustine’s question, ‘What is time?’ (89–90), ‘is . . . a grammatical one’ (90). The ‘misinterpretation of our forms of language’ (111) that has philosophers raise such problems is facilitated by an ‘urge to misunderstand the workings of our language’ (109). Yielding to their urge to misunderstand, they are left with ‘deep disquietudes’; indeed, the problems arising through such misinterpretation are such disquietudes (111). They have the character of depth, but what that means is that they are deep disquietudes; and they are deep disquietudes, since ‘their roots are as deep in us as the forms of language’ (ibid.). What ‘makes us see the value of the discovery’ of nonsense, then, are the ‘bumps that the intellect has got by running its head up against the limits of language’ (119) – and, presumably, the deep disquietudes driving these futile efforts. In other words, philosophers’ problems are entirely of their own making, articulate their failure to understand (123) and result from ‘confusions’ that ‘arise when language is like an engine idling, not when it is doing any work’ (132). Those problems arise when people held captive (115), and disquieted (112), by similes and pictures lying in our language, absorbed into its forms, avert their attention from specific goals and concerns and yield to their urges to misunderstand (109). In response, nothing is to be done except to ‘battle against the bewitchment of our intellect by means of language’ (109): to uncover nonsense and ease urges to misunderstand, so as to allay the disquiet that is constitutive of philosophical problems. When a philosopher tries to do this, Wittgenstein remarked more than a decade later, his treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness (254–5). There is no doubt that these remarks on the nature and genesis of (some) philosophical problems call for a radical transformation of our familiar view of what philosophy is about and how it ought to be practised. There is also no doubt that the majority of philosophers have not been persuaded by Wittgenstein that any such transformation is necessary. Indeed, many scholars manifestly felt puzzled why Wittgenstein himself should have thought it necessary, as they tended to feel more perplexed than enlightened by his pertinent remarks. Two reasons are obvious: these remarks go completely against the grain of philosophical tradition. And even though there would seem to be much in need of detailed explanation, Wittgenstein, on the whole, offers rather little help in the way of clarification and defence of his manifestly novel aims and their rationale, to enable the reader to critically engage with them. As a consequence, it has not been uncommon to ignore these remarks and assume from the start that, whatever Wittgenstein himself might say, he must have been trying to advance and establish substantive philosophical claims. From this perspective, however, Wittgenstein’s text looks – and ought to have felt – downright puzzling. Indeed, the puzzling features presently indicated are xi

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most evident in precisely the most polished and most carefully arranged part of the text, its first 315 sections (up to the end of the private language discussion). For a start, the text contains remarkably few sentences grammatically suited to express a claim of any kind, premise or conclusion: on a rough estimate, a little less than half of the sentences in the first part of the Investigations are in the indicative mood at all. The others are questions or commands or enclosed in quotes. Second, most of the sentences in the indicative mood are used to set up examples for discussion, to spell out ‘what one thinks of’ in saying this-or-that about them, to draw comparisons, to comment on the proceeding, or to make some fairly trivial observations, in brief: to make many things other than stating a substantive philosophical claim. Third, many of the rather few candidates that remain seem to fall short of their point when read as expressions of such claims. Consider, e.g. a sentence frequently read as advancing a ‘use theory of meaning’, the claim that an expression’s meaning consists in its use: ‘For a large class of cases of the use of the word “meaning” – though not for all cases of its use – one can explain the word thus: the meaning of a word is its use in language’ (43, our translation). This formulation is not only remarkably cautious (the italics are Wittgenstein’s), but also stops noticeably short of advancing any claim about ‘what the meaning of a word is’. It is not ‘about word meaning’ but about one of the different actual uses of the word ‘meaning’: it contents itself with the claim that in many (though not all) cases in which we speak of a word’s ‘meaning’, one can explain what we are saying by paraphrasing it as a statement about the word’s use in language. When the idea that ‘the meaning of a word is its use’ does crop up, it does so not as an assertion but in the antecedent of a conditional employed in setting up an objection Wittgenstein proceeds to attack (in 138, taken up again in 197). If that idea was one that Wittgenstein wished to advance as a philosophical claim, then it would seem rather puzzling why he should have done this in so offhand a manner. Indeed, as the general philosophical claim would certainly be far from uncontroversial (even if anyone thought it should be), it would seem downright startling that Wittgenstein did not bother to explicitly defend it. Finally, there is something odd even about some of the few sentences that do read like straightforward expressions of exemplary philosophical claims. As an example, take (154d): ‘In the sense in which there are processes (including mental processes) which are characteristic of understanding, understanding is not a mental process’. Not unnaturally, this might be taken to state the conclusion of the preceding discussion, the claim this discussion was meant to establish. But then it seems strange that this sentence was included neither in the original manuscript nor in the first or second typescript version of this discussion, but was only later inserted in handwriting into the latter typescript (TS 239). Or, consider a remark whose phrasing itself suggests that it expresses a conclusion to be established by the previous discussion: ‘And hence [!] also “obeying a rule” is a practice’ (202). Curiously enough, it was xii

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not included in the first version that contained the preceding discussion (the so-called ‘Intermediary Version’). These and related observations on the genesis of the text do not establish that Wittgenstein did not want to advance the pertinent claims, or that he did not regard them as supported by discussion that precedes them. But those observations do strongly suggest that, even in some of the rather few cases in which it would seem straightforward to interpret Wittgenstein as establishing a substantive philosophical truth, this was not one of his foremost aims. The moment we turn from familiar positive to familiar negative aims, from the pursuit of truth to philosophical criticism, the text presents us with no less difficulty. Such criticism clearly is an important aim in the Investigations. But it seems to be criticism of a rather unfamiliar kind, which does not focus on claims or arguments explicitly advanced, to prove them false or invalid. Thus, for instance, already the starting-point of the whole work is the critical examination of a ‘picture of language’ Wittgenstein finds in the work of another philosopher, namely, Augustine. But such a philosophical ‘picture’ is not an explicit theory or set of claims. Thus, the ‘picture of the essence of human language’ Augustine’s account of language learning conveys ‘is this: the individual words in language name objects – sentences are combinations of such names’ (1). And these are not claims explicitly advanced by Augustine, who says nothing of the sort in the passage Wittgenstein quoted, and never claimed that, say, prepositions name objects. Rather, those assumptions are implicit in inadvertent leaps of thought and the thoughtless concentration on certain paradigms. Thus, Wittgenstein finds in Augustine’s picture the ‘root’ of this drift of thought: ‘Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands’ (1). Neither Augustine nor any other philosopher alluded to by Wittgenstein ever explicitly rehearsed this line of thought. Rather, it exemplifies the sort of biased interpretation that many philosophers thoughtlessly mete out to truisms (‘Every meaningful word has a meaning’) without noticing the leap from triviality into nonsense. (Here, a tendentious interpretation is placed on the phrase ‘has a meaning’: it is to ‘have’ some thing that is to be ‘correlated with the word’. What is this thing? The Augustinian picture suggests an answer: ‘The object for which the word stands.’) Second, adherence to the picture manifests itself in concentration on a remarkably small range of examples. Thus, philosophers in its grip are ‘thinking primarily of nouns like “table”, “chair”, “bread”, and of people’s names, and only secondarily of the names of certain actions and properties; and of the remaining kinds of word [a truly vast group] as something that will take care of itself’ (1). Augustine’s ‘picture’, thus, is a set not of explicit claims but of implicit assumptions, assumptions that bias philosophical reflection in various ways that philosophers hardly, if ever, notice. The first critical effort in the Investigations is, thus, directed against a rather unfamiliar kind of target. xiii

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Also, in the remainder of the book, Wittgenstein does not seem to be much concerned with the critical examination of claims and arguments explicitly advanced by other philosophers. At any rate, if such examination had been his aim, his proceeding would have been remarkably cavalier in manner: apart from rather summary references to ‘Nominalists’ (383), ‘Idealists, Solipsists, and Realists’ (402), and an acknowledgement of F.P. Ramsey (81), only twentyone sections (of 693) contain references to other philosophers. Of these, only eleven contain a text reference. Of these, three (342, 413, 436) contain brief quotes without any indication of their source, five (23, 46, 48, 89, 518) refer to nothing more specific than an entire philosophical work (Wittgenstein’s own Tractatus, Plato’s Theaetetus, and Augustine’s Confessions), while only three (1, 97, 114) contain a precise reference (to specific passages of Augustine’s and sentences of the Tractatus, respectively). Indeed, when we look at the rather few cases in which Wittgenstein did deal with specific claims he takes up from other philosophers, we see that he does not try to show them to be false. Consider, for example, his response to the Socratic statement quoted from the Theaetetus in PI 46, which he refers to for the purpose of clarifying ‘the idea that names really signify simples’ (46). He does not attempt to refute what Socrates reports other philosophers as saying about the ‘primary elements’, i.e. about the alleged ‘simple parts of which reality is composed’ that supposedly provide names with referents, in which Wittgenstein recognizes the ‘objects’ of the Tractatus. Rather, what he does is to observe that it ‘makes no sense at all to speak absolutely’ of ‘the simple parts of which reality is composed’; to show that the question of whether something is composite or simple, cannot be meaningfully answered ‘outside a particular language-game’ which determines what we mean by, how we use, the word ‘composite’ or ‘simple’ (46). It thus seems that the refutation of philosophical claims was no more Wittgenstein’s aim than the demonstration of their truth. To sum up, Wittgenstein’s explicit statements of his aims and their rationale have been found perplexing. The pursuit of non-trivial truth imputed to him in disregard of his own statements render his actual proceeding in the text positively puzzling. So, far from reducing this puzzle, examination of the genesis of the text, otherwise frequently helpful, merely exacerbates it. And as an exercise in philosophical criticism, Wittgenstein’s work clearly has unfamiliar kinds of target, addressed with uncommon aims in mind. All of which suggests that his own remarks on his aims and their rationale should not be brushed aside in favour of more familiar notions, but taken perfectly seriously – even if they go completely against the grain of philosophical tradition and are in much need of further explanation. Whence the first two parts of our tripartite question: what are Wittgenstein’s manifestly unfamiliar aims, and what is their rationale?

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2 This bipartite question can be approached in two ways: by trying to become more clear on the nature of the problems Wittgenstein manifestly addressed, and by trying to clarify the methods he employed to cope with these problems, to attain those aims. By and large, the chapters assembled in this volume pursue the latter strategy; expecting the results to shed light also on the first, they focus on the final part of our guiding question: what methods does Wittgenstein employ? At first sight, this does not really seem to improve things. For Wittgenstein’s explicit answers to this question are not significantly clearer than those remarks in which he states his aims and their rationale. To remove philosophical ‘prejudices’, he writes, we need to ‘turn our whole investigation around’, namely, about the ‘pivot’ of ‘our real need’ (108). In line with this reorientation, we should refrain from all explanation and content ourselves with description alone (109), namely, with descriptions that merely arrange what we have always known (ibid.), that state only what lies open to view (126) and merely add up to assemblies of reminders (127). Such descriptions serve the purpose of the ‘perspicuous representation’ of ‘the use of our words’, which is of ‘fundamental significance’ for Wittgenstein, since on his view ‘[a] main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view of the use of our words’ (122). They are to be employed in a number of philosophically pertinent activities. Among other things, ‘we . . . bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use’ (116), and lay bare the foundations of language on which philosophers built their houses of cards (118). This activity is facilitated by the construction of ‘clear and simple language-games’ (130) and the finding and invention of ‘intermediary links’ (122). Thus, we are to liberate ourselves from ‘pictures’ holding us captive (115) and to uncover nonsense (119). More generally, we thus are to acquire that understanding which consists in ‘seeing connections’ (122) and such insight into the workings of our language as solves the problems of philosophy (109), to dry up the sources of that failure to understand (122) whose articulation takes the form of a philosophical problem (123), and to attain such clarity as makes philosophical problems disappear completely (133). The different methods employed for these purposes are like different therapies (ibid.). These remarks are far from self-explanatory. What is the ‘metaphysical use’ from which Wittgenstein wants to ‘bring words back’ (and how)? What kinds of ‘houses of cards’ are built on what sort of ‘foundations’? What sort of things does he have in mind when speaking of ‘simple language-games’, asking for ‘perspicuous representations’, and setting out to ‘find and invent intermediary links’? From what kind of ‘picture’ does he want to liberate himself, what sorts of ‘nonsense’ does he want to uncover, what kind of ‘understanding’ and ‘clarity’ does he seek to achieve? And what does any of this have to xv

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do with ‘therapy’? To these questions, however, there is an obviously helpful approach: we can relate the methodological remarks in question to Wittgenstein’s actual proceeding in his various specific investigations, and vice versa: to identify, e.g. potential ‘perspicuous representations’ and to examine how, and to what ends, they are being employed. This is the approach pursued in this volume. Though it may seem quite obvious, this approach is anything but wellworn. This is, perhaps, ultimately due to a second puzzling feature of the Philosophical Investigations, which, together with its approach, gives the book its unique character: the form in which it is written. In his preface, Wittgenstein compares his book to an ‘album’ arranging ‘sketches of landscapes’ in which ‘[t]he same or almost the same points were always being approached afresh from different directions’. What makes this comparison apt is the ‘criss-cross’ character in which Wittgenstein often jumps from one topic to another, in quick succession. Some of the topics he leaps to have never been thought worth discussing by any other philosopher and, on the face of it, look like philosophically irrelevant digressions. And many topics keep recurring, again and again. The criss-cross and repetitive character of his Investigations Wittgenstein puts down, at least in part, to ‘the nature of the investigation itself’. But in the light of familiar expectations of how a philosophical work ought to be structured to clearly present its argument, this may well be taken as an excuse for failing to impose a lucid structure on the material. And, in fact, many readers of the Philosophical Investigations have been led to despair of discerning any system or method at all in the text, thus making it seem advisable to examine and appreciate its undoubtedly profound insights outside the labyrinth of the surrounding text. Confronted by the unfamiliar and less than perspicuous form of the book, other readers resorted to the familiar, and tried to make sense of Wittgenstein’s proceeding by relating it to familiar models of philosophical activity – rather than to his own explanations. The first response is a possibly premature act of desperation. The second has led to only limited success. Thus, e.g. Wittgenstein has sometimes been supposed to engage in forms of conceptual analysis familiar from the works of J.L. Austin or P.F. Strawson, respectively. However, the conceptual analyses identified in the Investigations clearly do not aim for the generality characteristic of the latter and fall far short of the standards of rigour set by the former. Consider, e.g. how Wittgenstein proceeds from the – highly specific – claim that for us it is the circumstances under which someone has an experience (such as that a formula suddenly occurs to him) that justify him in saying he knows how to continue a number-series (155). Instead of enumerating various pertinent circumstances, he names only one (in 179); and this he does after a long digression into reading. This discussion, in turn, concerns not our established concept of reading but rather an unorthodox notion of Wittgenstein’s own definition (which is liberal enough to cover such activities xvi

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as writing upon dictation and writing out something printed). If this is, or involves, conceptual analysis, it is a rather unfamiliar form of it, one that is presumably best understood on its own terms, by relating it to similar moves Wittgenstein makes elsewhere, and to his explicit remarks on method. Which holds all the more for the host of moves that fit even less well into any philosophically familiar mould. Just like his aims, Wittgenstein’s methods, also, are best understood not by invoking familiar models but by relating his actual proceeding in the text to his own explanations, and vice versa. The present volume employs this approach in two ways: Part 1 assembles contributions that start out from Wittgenstein’s actual proceeding in a specific philosophical investigation, and interpret it in the light of pertinent methodological remarks, to reconstruct (some of) the methods employed and the aims pursued in it. Part 2 of the volume assembles contributions that proceed the other way around: that start out from a specific methodological remark or notion, and clarify it by relating it to relevant applications. The first 315 sections of the Investigations, clearly, are carefully integrated into sustained stretches of argument. At any rate at first sight, the remaining 378 sections, by contrast, appear to resemble more a structured collection of material, grouped into thematic blocks, than the sort of sustained campaign that the investigations up to, and including, the discussion of a private language represent. Therefore, the first 315 sections lend themselves most readily to the project of extracting methods and aims from a reconstruction of Wittgenstein’s proceeding. The contributions assembled in the first half of the present volume jointly cover the whole of this first part of the Investigations (with the exception of sections 65–88 that were to be covered solely by Gordon Baker whose premature death prevented the completion of the paper on sections 65–108 that he intended to contribute). Part 1 of the present volume, thus, provides a methodological commentary on the apparently most polished part of the Investigations. Part 2 then explains further core notions of Wittgenstein’s methodology. In this way, the present volume is to provide a methodological companion to his later main work.

3 The opening chapter introduces the issue of Wittgenstein’s reorientation of philosophical work and provides some background on the ideas from the Tractatus that are the immediate concern of at least the first 138 sections of the Investigations: Peter Hacker elucidates how Wittgenstein ‘turned his investigation around’, by showing how the metaphysical vision of the Tractatus gave way to the descriptive-therapeutic conception of the Investigations. Joachim Schulte’s contribution on their opening sections then examines the use of simple ‘language-games’. Eike von Savigny’s chapter on the discussion of ostensive definition in sections 38–64 elucidates the ‘non-explanatory’ character of both metaphysical theory and Wittgenstein’s xvii

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response to it. Stephen Mulhall covers the explicitly methodological sections 89–133 and clarifies the image of the ‘pivot’ of ‘our real need’ around which ‘the whole investigation’ is to be ‘turned’. Eugen Fischer analyses the investigation of understanding in sections 138–97, so as to give proper content to the notion of philosophical ‘therapy’. Erich Ammereller examines the discussion of rule-following in sections 185–242 with a view to clarifying Wittgenstein’s technique of ‘bringing words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use’. Severin Schroeder, finally, analyses the private-language discussion of sections 243–315, so as to explain the notion of ‘perspicuous (or synoptic) representation’. Part 2 of the volume assembles contributions that start out from particular remarks Wittgenstein made on method. Anthony Kenny’s essay opens the discussion by summing up the problem presented by Wittgenstein’s most notorious remarks, his repudiation of controversial theses. The following chapters discuss the related repudiation of theory in philosophy (Oswald Hanfling), Wittgenstein’s notions of clarity and clarification (Cora Diamond), of nonsense (Hans-Johann Glock), and of ‘pictures’ holding (not only) philosophers captive (Stuart G. Shanker). The analytical table of contents contains authors’ abstracts of all twelve essays. Most contributions are about ten thousand words in length. We feel justified in tolerating three exceptions to this rule: Anthony Kenny magisterially sums up how the most salient problem about Wittgenstein’s methods presents itself from a widely shared and important perspective. Stuart Shanker presents a concise case-study of how a ‘picture’ held philosophers and scientists captive, which makes this Wittgensteinian notion significantly clearer. Both get by with half the average length. Eugen Fischer presents a therapeutic interpretation of Wittgenstein’s proceeding, which the editors believe to be both genuinely novel and potentially controversial, and was therefore allowed the space necessary for accessible presentation of new concepts and detailed argument, not quite double the standard length. Finally, we wish to acknowledge our debt to the Fritz Thyssen Foundation and the University Society of Munich, who generously funded the conference preparing this volume. Georgios Karageorgoudis assisted us greatly in the preparation of the final manuscript. Wilhelm Vossenkuhl, as our head of section at the philosophy department of Munich University, did his successful best to ensure exceptionally good working conditions. Our greatest debt is to Gordon Baker and Peter Hacker, who taught us and continued to encourage and stimulate our work over the years. This volume, dedicated to the memory of Gordon Baker, is what tribute we are able to pay to a scholar of exceptional brilliance and integrity with that characteristically Wittgensteinian ability to always ‘see things in a new light’.

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PART 1 1 Turning the examination around: the recantation of a metaphysician P E T E R H AC K E R

The chapter examines what Wittgenstein meant by ‘turning the examination around’ (PI 108), his reasons for thinking that his original conception of philosophy needed to be thus reoriented, and the nature of the new orientation. It shows how the ‘sublime’ metaphysical vision of the Tractatus gives way to the descriptive analytic and therapeutic conception of the Investigations. And it compares and contrasts the old conceptions of logic and of the a priori with the later one. 2 The builders’ language – the opening sections J OA C H I M S C H U LT E

The first section of the Investigations can be read as paving the way for an ironical understanding of section 2 as well as the language-game described in this and extended in some of the following remarks. This kind of reading draws its inspiration from Wittgenstein’s remarkable use of the word ‘primitive’. The irony serves to indicate that describing language-games for the purpose of grasping the point, or part of the point, of our notion of a language (in the full sense of this word) will, at best, lead to modest results: the ‘language-game method’ clearly has its uses, but Wittgenstein’s irony suggests that it does not hold the key to solving all the problems connected with our concept ‘language’ in a straightforward way. 3 Diagnosis and therapy: christening simple objects – PI 38–64 E I K E VO N S AV I G N Y

In PI 38–64, Wittgenstein seems to be busy refuting a metaphysical theory of ‘real names’ and ‘simple objects’, a view very similar to the one he xix

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had defended in his Tractatus. This appearance, however, is misleading. True, the sequence is all reason and argument. But this is precisely what we have to expect from Wittgensteinian philosophical therapy, which is a completely rational, intellectual enterprise. By way of detailed analysis of PI 40–5 and a brief summary of the remaining sections, the author argues that the text is restricted to philosophical therapy. Wittgenstein is not making a case for or against anything (in particular, he is not proclaiming a ‘use theory of meaning’ in PI 43). The basic diagnosis is argued to be that the metaphysical theory consists in a fake explanation of the invented ‘fact’ that a solitary speaker can create a language by helping himself to ostensive definitions. 4 Philosophy’s hidden essence – PI 89–133 STEPHEN MULHALL

This chapter considers the possible significance of the fact that Wittgenstein’s discussion of philosophy and philosophical method in sections 89–133 is composed of two sub-sequences written in 1937 and 1931 respectively. A number of stylistic and thematic differences between the two sub-sequences are identified, and it is argued that the 1937 sequence not only avoids a number of internal weaknesses present in the 1931 sequence, but also provides us with the tools needed to identify and avoid those weaknesses ourselves. The chapter, finally, considers why Wittgenstein might, despite this, have chosen to preserve the 1931 remarks, but only preceded by the 1937 remarks. Issues discussed along the way include: the notion of subliming the ordinary; the relation between the form and the content of Wittgenstein’s writing; and the sense in which his discussion of philosophy can be seen as itself resulting from an application of the philosophical methods it advocates. 5 A cognitive self-therapy – PI 138–97 EUGEN FISCHER

Wittgenstein compared his treatment of philosophical questions to the cure of an illness, his philosophical methods to different therapies. This chapter seeks to spell out the point of these comparisons. To this end, it analyses Wittgenstein’s problems and proceeding in sections 138–97 with the help of some new concepts, in part adapted from clinical psychology, namely, A. Beck’s cognitive therapy. They are used to conceptualize the problems at issue in such a way as to bring out why anything worth calling a ‘therapy’ is required, in the first place. Then, the chapter employs the model of cognitive therapy to clarify what Wittgenstein is doing in response. The chapter thus identifies a little noted but highly important kind of philosophical predicament, and explains a straightforward approach to it that is, in many ways, revolutionary. xx

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6 Puzzles about rule-following – PI 185–242 ERICH AMMERELLER

The chapter aims to show that neglecting the methodological aspect of Wittgenstein’s remarks on rule-following leads to a misconstrual of Wittgenstein’s intentions. In particular, the chapter analyses some problems addressed in the course of the investigation of rule-following and shows that in coping with these problems Wittgenstein does not argue for a social conception of rule-following or any other substantive philosophical claim. 7 The demand for synoptic representations and the private language discussion – PI 243–315 S E V E R I N S C H RO E D E R

Wittgenstein claims that the concept of a synoptic representation (übersichtliche Darstellung) is of fundamental significance for him (PI 122). In the first two sections of this chapter it is argued that what he had in mind as synoptic representations are simplified language-games, like the one of the builders in PI 2. Section 3 turns to the Private Language Discussion: the lack of a synoptic view of Wittgenstein’s strategy in these passages makes them notoriously difficult to understand. Section 4 attempts to provide such a synoptic view by clarifying the target of Wittgenstein’s attack, and its corollaries, and by characterizing the kinds of moves he makes against it. The famous private diary language-game (PI 258ff.) is interpreted as an instance of a synoptic representation (of the kind mentioned in PI 122). Finally, some reasons are suggested why in the Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein did not present his views in a more perspicuous manner.

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PART 2 8 ‘Philosophy states only what everyone admits’ ANTHONY KENNY

Wittgenstein believes that there are no arguments in philosophy. One of philosophy’s tasks is the negative one of turning latent nonsense into patent nonsense; and one cannot draw conclusions from a nonsensical proposition, only expose it as a delusion. The positive task of achieving a philosophical overview is achieved by assembling reminders of the obvious truths that we are tempted to overlook. These reminders take many forms ( jokes, exhortations, etc.) but when they take the form of statements they are statements of non-philosophical truisms. Such, at least, is Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophical claim. His actual practice is rather different. Many of the most famous statements in his works appear xxi

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to be substantive philosophical theses (e.g. ‘Essence is expressed by grammar’). It is not easy to see how to reconcile his theory with his practice, nor to decide, if the two are irreconcilable, which we should privilege. 9 The use of ‘theory’ in philosophy O S WA L D H A N F L I N G

Wittgenstein’s rejection of theories from philosophy (PI 109) was directed against the assimilation of philosophy to science. But many well-known philosophical theories (the theory of description, the correspondence theory of truth, and many others) have nothing to do with science. It is argued that in many of these cases ‘theory’ is used in a ‘diluted’ sense, while in others it may mean deductive argument, etc. Wittgenstein’s sense of ‘theory’ can best be understood in terms of his rejection of ‘what is hidden’ in favour of what ‘lies open to view’ (PI 126). The chapter then considers in what sense the truth of philosophical statements, including his own, lies open to view. A final section deals with Wittgenstein’s diagnostic remarks (theories?), and his description of what he was doing as a kind of ‘therapy’. 10 Criss-cross philosophy CORA DIAMOND

This chapter is about the difference between Wittgenstein’s earlier and his later approaches to philosophy. The difference cannot be put this way: that in his earlier philosophy he thought he could deal with all philosophical problems at once, while in the latter he accepted a piecemeal approach; for the earlier philosophy is itself committed to a kind of piecemeal approach. There is something right in introducing the notion of the piecemeal in making the contrast, but the difficulty is to see exactly how it works. The chapter argues that the Tractatus, despite its critique of the big problems of the nature of language, thought and world, provides a conception of philosophical method that is not genuinely free of the grip of those problems. The essay explores Wittgenstein’s metaphor of philosophy in ‘cross-wise strips’ (from Zettel and the Big Typescript) to arrive at an account of the contrast between the Tractatus understanding of philosophical clarification and that of the Investigations. 11 All kinds of nonsense HANS-JOHANN GLOCK

This chapter explores Wittgenstein’s conception of nonsense with particular emphasis on the later work. Some scholars have attributed to him an ‘austere’ conception, according to which there is only one kind of xxii

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nonsense (monism), and nonsense can only result from our not having assigned a meaning to expressions in a certain context (privation view). Two points provide succour for this interpretation, namely the strong contextualism of the Tractatus and several monistic passages from the later work. Yet Wittgenstein never used contextualism to support the privation view. Furthermore, the monistic streak is offset and superseded by a pluralistic one, especially in the Investigations. Finally, both these points are incompatible with some central insights of the later work. Strong contextualism is ruled out by Wittgenstein’s insistence that the meaning of a word is determined by its use in the language. Monism is incompatible with reductio ad absurdum arguments, including Wittgenstein’s own, but also with his recognition that there are different degrees of linguistic understanding. There are many kinds of nonsense, and one of them results from the illicit combination of meaningful words. 12 A picture held me captive S T UA RT G . S H A N K E R

This chapter presents an example of how a determinist picture of the mind held the author captive and prevented him from grasping the analogy that Wittgenstein develops at section 903 of RPP1. It was only on the basis of recent developments in dynamic systems theory that the author came to appreciate the import of this analogy and, thence, Wittgenstein’s message at PI 570, that concepts are not simply a form of spectacle through which we view reality, but are fundamentally bound up with effects, often in ways that inhibit philosophical reflection.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Erich Ammereller obtained the D.Phil. at Oxford and is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Munich. He is the author of several articles on the earlier and later Wittgenstein. He is currently working on a book on practical reason. Cora Diamond has a B.Phil. from Oxford. She is University Professor and Kenan Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia, and is the author of The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind, and of a forthcoming book, Ethics: Shifting Perspectives. She is the editor of Wittgenstein’s Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, Cambridge, 1939, and has also written articles on Wittgenstein, Frege, the philosophy of language, moral philosophy, philosophy in relation to literature, and philosophy of religion. Eugen Fischer, born 1970, obtained the B.Phil. and D.Phil. at Oxford, and is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Munich. He has written Linguistic Creativity (Kluwer 2000) and Philosophical Delusion and its Therapy (Routledge 2005), edited an introduction to philosophy (with W. Vossenkuhl), and published articles on Wittgenstein, J.L. Austin, philosophy of language, philosophy of perception, and philosophy of (cognitive and clinical) psychology. His current main project is to develop and test methods of diagnosis and intervention in philosophical therapy. Hans-Johann Glock is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading. He is the author of A Wittgenstein Dictionary (Blackwell 1996) and of Quine and Davidson on Language, Thought and Reality (Cambridge University Press 2003), and the editor of The Rise of Analytic Philosophy (Blackwell 1997), Wittgenstein: a Critical Reader (Blackwell 2001), and Strawson and Kant (Oxford University Press 2003). He is currently working on a book What is Analytic Philosophy? Peter Hacker is a Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford. He has written numerous books and articles on Wittgenstein, Frege, philosophy of logic and language, and philosophy of psychology. He is author of the renowned fourxxiv

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volume Analytic Commentary on the ‘Philosophical Investigations’ (first two volumes with G.P. Baker) and its epilogue Wittgenstein’s Place in Twentieth Century Analytic Philosophy. His most recent books are Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies (Oxford University Press 2001) and Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (Blackwell 2003), co-authored with M.R. Bennett. Oswald Hanfling is a former Professor of Philosophy at the Open University. His books include The Quest for Meaning (Blackwell 1987), Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy (Macmillan 1989), Philosophical Aesthetics (ed.) (Blackwell 1992), Philosophy and Ordinary Language (Routledge 2000), and Wittgenstein and the Human Form of Life (Routledge 2002). His present research interest is in the roots of moral concepts. Anthony Kenny was Tutor in Philosophy and later Master at Balliol College, Oxford. He is the author of many books, including Wittgenstein and The Legacy of Wittgenstein, and recently A Brief History of Western Philosophy. Stephen Mulhall is Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at New College, Oxford. His main research interests are in Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Kierkegaard, and in issues arising therefrom in moral philosophy, political philosophy, the philosophy of religion, aesthetics, phenomenology and existentialism. His most recent books are Inheritance and Originality (Oxford University Press 2001) and On Film (Routledge 2002). Eike von Savigny received his Ph.D. from Munich University and is presently holding a Chair for Philosophy at the University of Bielefeld. He is the author or co-author of thirteen books and numerous articles in philosophy of law, aesthetics, on Ordinary Language Philosophy, and in philosophy of language. In recent years, he has mainly published on the later work of Wittgenstein, including a two-volume commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Klostermann, 2nd edn 1994–6) and Der Mensch als Mitmensch (dtv 1996). Severin Schroeder teaches philosophy at Lady Margaret Hall and Christ Church, Oxford. He is the author of a monograph on Kripke’s Naming and Necessity (Hänsel-Hohenhausen 1992) and a book on Wittgenstein’s private language argument (Schöningh 1998). He has edited Wittgenstein and Contemporary Philosophy of Mind (Palgrave 2001). Joachim Schulte teaches philosophy at the University of Bielefeld. He has published a number of articles and three books on the philosophy of Wittgenstein: Experience and Expression (Oxford University Press 1993), Wittgenstein: An Introduction (SUNY Press 1992), and Chor und Gesetz: Wittgenstein im Kontext (Suhrkamp 1990). He is co-editor of critical editions of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations. He is currently working on Wittgenstein’s middle period (1929–36). xxv

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Stuart G. Shanker is Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at Atkinson College, York University. His recent books are Apes, Language and the Human Mind (with S. Savage-Rumbaugh and T. Taylor, 1998), Wittgenstein’s Remarks on the Foundations of AI (1998), Toward a Psychology of Global Interdependency: A Framework for International Collaboration (with S. Greenspan, 2002), and The First Idea (with S. Greenspan, 2004).

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Wittgenstein’s Lectures: Cambridge 1932–1935, ed. A. Ambrose (Blackwell, Oxford, 1979) The Blue and Brown Books (Blackwell, Oxford, 1958) Bearbeitete Frühfassung, revised early version of the Investigations, TS 239, published in: Philosophische Untersuchungen. Kritischgenetische Edition, ed. J. Schulte (Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 2001) ‘The Big Typescript’ Wiener Ausgabe, Volume 11, ed. M. Nedo (Springer-Verlag, Wien, 2000) Cambridge Letters, eds B. McGuinness and G.H. von Wright (Blackwell, Oxford, 1995) Culture and Value, ed. G.H. von Wright in collaboration with H. Nyman, trans. P. Winch (Blackwell, Oxford, 1980) Denkbewegungen: Tagebücher 1930–2 1936–7 (MS 183), ed. Ilse Somavilla (Haymon-Verlag, Innsbruck, 1997) Frühfassung, early version of the Investigations, TSS 220–1, published in: Philosophische Untersuchungen. Kritisch-genetische Edition, ed. J. Schulte (Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 2001) Wittgenstein’s Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, Cambridge 1939, ed. C. Diamond (Harvester Press, Sussex, 1976) Wittgenstein’s Lectures on Philosophical Psychology 1946–7, notes by P.T. Geach, K.J. Shah, A.C. Jackson, ed. P.T. Geach (Harvester Wheatsheaf, Hemel Hempstead, 1988) ‘Wittgenstein’s Lectures in 1930–32’, in G.E. Moore, Philosophical Papers (Allen & Unwin, London, 1959) Notebooks 1914–16, eds G.H. von Wright and G.E.M. Anscombe, tr. G.E.M. Anscombe (Blackwell, Oxford, 1961) On Certainty, eds G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright, trans. D. Paul and G.E.M. Anscombe (Blackwell, Oxford, 1969) xxvii

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PG

Philosophical Grammar, ed. R. Rhees, trans. A.J.P. Kenny (Blackwell, Oxford, 1974) PI Philosophical Investigations, eds G.E.M. Anscombe and R. Rhees, tr. G.E.M. Anscombe (Blackwell, Oxford, 1958) PLP The Principles of Linguistic Philosophy, by Friedrich Waismann, ed. R. Harre (Macmillan and St Martin’s Press, London and New York, 1965) PO Philosophical Occasions 1912–51, eds J. Klagge and A. Nordmann (Hackett, Indianapolis, 1993) PR Philosophical Remarks, eds R. Rhees, trans. R. Hargreaves and R. White (Blackwell, Oxford, 1975) PT Prototractatus—An Early Version of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, eds B.F. McGuinness, T. Nyberg, G.H. von Wright, trans. D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuinness (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1961) RFM Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, eds G.H. von Wright, R. Rhees, G.E.M. Anscombe, revised edition (Blackwell, Oxford, 1978) RLF ‘Some Remarks on Logical Form’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. 9 (1929), pp. 162–71 RPPI Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Volume I, eds G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright, tr. G.E.M. Anscombe (Blackwell, Oxford, 1980) RPPII Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Volume II, eds G.H. von Wright and H. Nyman, trans. C.V. Luckhardt and M.A.E. Aue (Blackwell, Oxford, 1980) RW Recollections of Wittgenstein, ed. R. Rhees (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1981) TLP Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuinness (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1961) UF Urfassung, first manuscript version of the Investigations, MS 142, published in: Philosophische Untersuchungen. Kritisch-genetische Edition, ed. J. Schulte (Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 2001) VW The Voices of Wittgenstein, by Ludwig Wittgenstein and Friedrich Waismann, ed. G. Baker (Routledge, London, 2003) WC Wittgenstein: Conversations 1949–1951, eds J.L. Craft and R.E. Hustwit (Hackett, Indianapolis, 1986) Z Zettel, eds G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Blackwell, Oxford, 1967) ZF Zwischenfassung, intermediate version of the Investigations, reconstruction of a lost typescript from 1945, published in: Philosophische Untersuchungen. Kritisch-genetische Edition, ed. J. Schulte (Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 2001)

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Unpublished writings by Wittgenstein All references to unpublished material cited in the von Wright catalogue (G.H. von Wright, Wittgenstein (Blackwell, Oxford, 1982), pp. 35ff.) are by MS or TS number followed by page number.

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1 TURNING THE EXAMINATION AROUND The recantation of a metaphysician

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Re-orienting the investigation Augustine’s picture of language constitutes the mise-en-scène for the Investigations. Its ramifications are sketched in §§1–27. The confusions of atomism, with its misconceptions of logically proper names, simple objects and complexes, of a ‘connection between language and reality’, and of analysis, are anatomized in §§27b–64. Sections 65–88 investigate misunderstandings about vagueness and determinacy of sense. In §§89–133, Wittgenstein turns to philosophical methodology. This sequence of remarks constitutes the bulk of his definitive later reflections on philosophy and its nature, its pitfalls and proper path. The remarks fall into two groups, §§89–108a and §§108b–133. Although the Tractatus is barely mentioned (only in §§97 and 114), its presence is everywhere felt, and its misconceptions are under constant scrutiny in §§89–108a. By contrast with the sequel (§§108b–133), which was written for the most part1 in the early 1930s and cannibalized from The Big Typescript, these remarks were written in 1937 specifically for incorporation into the Early Version. So they constitute Wittgenstein’s final reflections on the methodological sins of the Tractatus. They diagnose what had been awry with his conception of the task of philosophy, and with his philosophical method. Wittgenstein held those misconceptions to be not personal idiosyncrasies, but characteristic philosophical temptations and tendencies. When he completed the Tractatus, he believed that he had solved the fundamental problems of philosophy (TLP, Preface). Now, ‘forced to recognize grave mistakes in what I wrote in that first book’ (PI, Preface), he thought of its misconceptions as exemplary. Small wonder that he wanted to publish his old thoughts and the new ones together, and held that the latter could be seen aright only by contrast with, and against the background of, his old way of thinking (ibid.). 3

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Reflecting afresh on his earlier conception, it became clear to him that the whole examination needed to be turned around,2 but about the pivotal point of our real need (PI §108). This is a dark remark. What counts as turning our examination around? And what is ‘our real need’? This rotation will, Wittgenstein writes, rid us of our misguided preconception of the ‘crystalline purity’ of logic – but what precisely he means by ‘logic’ here needs to be clarified. Exactly what preconception of crystalline purity he had in mind must be pinned down. Ridding us of this preconception, he avers, will enable us to see that the rigour of logic is not in any way compromised by the realization that the concepts of language and of proposition are familyresemblance concepts. But to understand this observation we must be clear why the family-resemblance character of these concepts might appear to compromise logic. For this we must apprehend what role Wittgenstein allocated to logic in the Tractatus, and why that was misconceived. Interestingly, in his notes (MS 157a, 48v), he observed that even if the concept of language were not a family-resemblance concept, his present conception would still be different from that of the Tractatus. So, although acknowledging the family character of language is important, it is still not the crucial matter vis-à-vis this radical transformation in our way of thinking that is being advocated. So what is? This essay will attempt to answer these questions. It will show that rotating the investigation involves abandoning the ‘sublime’ conception of logic that characterized the Tractatus. That, in turn, implies desisting from ‘sublimating’ concepts such as ‘name’, ‘proposition’, ‘language’ (as well as their correlates, ‘object’, ‘fact’ and ‘world’), and bringing such words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use. Above all, it involves abandoning the metaphysical aspirations of investigating an objective essence3 of the world by means of a logical investigation, and relinquishing the very conception of such an a priori order of things mirrored in logic and discoverable by depth-analysis.

The sublime version Wittgenstein’s discussion of philosophy in the Investigations opens with the question: to what extent is logic something sublime? There seemed to pertain to logic a special depth, a universal significance. It appeared to lie at the foundation of all sciences, and logical investigation seemed to explore the essence of all things (PI §89). This was the vision (strictly speaking, the ineffable vision) of the young Wittgenstein. In the ‘Dictation to Moore’ he claimed that ‘Logical so-called propositions show [the] logical properties of language and therefore of [the] universe’ (but, ‘it is impossible to say what these properties are’).4 Furthermore, ‘Every real proposition shows something . . . about the Universe’, he added, ‘if it has a sense, it mirrors some logical property of the Universe’ (NB 108). In the Notebooks he wrote, 4

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‘My whole task consists in explaining the nature of the proposition . . . in giving the nature of all being’ (emphasis added), a task that was to be executed by investigating logic, since ‘the all-embracing world-mirroring logic . . . form[s] one infinitely fine network, . . . the great mirror’ in which the essence of the world is reflected (NB 39). Six months later, he noted that ‘the great problem round which everything I write turns is: Is there an order in the world a priori, and if so what does it consist in?’ (NB 53), and he subsequently concluded that there cannot be either an orderly or disorderly world, rather, ‘In every possible world there is an order even if it is a complicated one’ (NB 83). His work, he wrote in 1916, ‘has extended from the foundations of logic to the essence of the world’ (NB 79). These aspirations are evident in the Tractatus itself – not only in the metaphysical or ontological remarks with which the book opens but, even more importantly for our present investigation, also in the remarks on logic towards the end of the book. That the propositions of logic are tautologies, he concluded, shows the formal – logical – properties of language and the world (TLP 6.12). The propositions of logic represent the scaffolding of the world (TLP 6.124), and logic itself is a mirror image of the world (TLP 6.13). This was a metaphysical vision par excellence: the world had an essential nature, which could be uncovered only by logical analysis; logic, that is the logical forms of thought and language, represented the a priori order of the world, the order of possibilities common to both thought and the world, the forms of all things. What was unique about this vision were the claims that logic – the logic of language – mirrors the metaphysical properties of the world and, hence, that logical (or logico-linguistic) investigation explores the essence of all things, and that what is thus inevitably shown in language cannot be said by means of language. So conceived, logical investigation was, indeed, sublime. But this sublimity was purchased with illusion and distortion. For, as Wittgenstein realized in his 1937 criticisms, the crystalline quality of logic, understood as the mirror image of the world, was premised on the supposition that a proposition must do something remarkable (PI §93). It must represent a state of affairs (even if it does not exist), it must describe a possibility available to the world (even if it does not obtain). It must not fall short of the fact that makes it true and yet it must be distinct from the fact that makes it true. For it must describe what is the case if it is true, and what is not the case if it is false (PI §§428f.). The essence of language was hidden. It was buried beneath the surface grammar of natural language, and it was no good ‘simply to look and see’ how language functions (cf. PI §93). For the way it functions was not open to view. Only logical analysis, which had barely been begun (RLF 163), could reveal what was thus concealed. What logic demanded (TLP 6.124) was that names (‘real names’) have meaning and elementary propositions have sense. But the real names and their logical forms were unknown and awaited analysis (‘in a certain sense a posteriori’ (RLF 163)). Their meanings were 5

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held to be simple objects that constitute the substance of the world. Elementary propositions were not the familiar sentences of daily discourse, but rather were the end product of analysis into logically independent propositions each consisting of simple names concatenated in a fact. These propositions had a determinate sense. The sense of a proposition is its agreement and disagreement with the obtaining and non-obtaining of states of affairs. Every elementary proposition is a picture in the following sense: it depicts a possible arrangement of things, and, if asserted, says that this is how things are. Hence the general propositional form, shared by all propositions with a sense, is: ‘Things are thus-and-so’ (or: ‘This is how things stand’). Indeed, all propositions are pictures. Molecular propositions, being composed of elementary propositions, depict possible (truth-functional) combinations of elementary states of affairs. With this apparatus (and this abstract vision of what the world consists of), Wittgenstein had been able to give an account of the essence of language, of propositions, of names, also of the essence of thinking, of the intentionality of thought and language, and of the essence of the propositions of logic and of logical relations. For propositions to do the remarkable thing they do, they must share a common form with what they depict (otherwise logic would not be ‘the great mirror’) – and they can do so because they are composed of, and are truth-functions of, logically independent elementary propositions. These, in turn, are facts that represent states of affairs, and are composed of names that share a common form with their meanings. Propositions must reach right up to reality, no matter whether they are true or false. Otherwise the false proposition could not, so to speak, depict how things are not, while still having the same sense it would have if it were true (cf. NB 30; PI §429). And this is ensured by the simple names of which the proposition consists having simple objects as their meanings, given that the names and the objects have common forms. Propositions must have a determinate sense, thereby excluding vagueness and reference failure,5 otherwise they would not be subject to the laws of logic. And this, too, is ensured by the constitution of elementary propositions. For each elementary proposition divides logical space precisely into two, and is bipolar. So any vagueness in propositions of surface grammar is merely apparent and disappears on analysis into disjunctions of determinate possibilities, while any apparent reference failure in surface grammar disappears by modified Russellian analysis (theory of descriptions without identity). All propositions must be truth-functions of elementary propositions, otherwise one could not display all logical relations as consequences of the inner complexity of non-elementary propositions, or claim that the limits of language coincide with the limits of the world. There was an array of hidden presuppositions seemingly required by this sublime conception in order to explain how the proposition can do the remarkable thing it does. These presuppositions concerned the apparent 6

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processes of understanding and thinking. These go virtually unmentioned in the Tractatus because they seemed to be of no concern to logic (TLP 4.1121). For the Tractatus – the Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung – is, above all, a treatise on logic. It answered the age-old question of the nature of logical truth and investigated the formal properties of the proposition. But there is a psychological hinterland (a mythology of psychology, as he later called it) implicit in the account of the intentionality of the proposition, in particular in the explanation of how the proposition can be false yet meaningful.6 It is explicit in the Notebooks and in the manuscript writings of the early 1930s. The intentionality of language was dependent upon the intentionality of thought (of meaning, intending), for the method of projection of a proposition was conceived to be thinking its sense, i.e. meaning by the proposition the state of affairs the obtaining of which makes it true.7 Names ‘reach right up to reality’ in as much as in any use of a name in a sentence with a sense, the speaker means by the name ‘N’ the object N that is its meaning. This is of the greatest importance, not only because it is integral to Wittgenstein’s struggles with intentionality (i.e. the picture theory) and explains his later obsessive preoccupation with misconceptions about meaning something,8 but also because given that depth-grammar is hidden and altogether different from what appears on the surface of language, it must have some ‘psychological reality’. The young Wittgenstein, unlike philosophers fifty years later, was not engaged in constructing a theory of meaning that will deliver the truth-conditions of any well-formed sentence from axioms, formation- and transformation-rules of a natural language independently of any psychological assumptions about speakers. He was accounting for the inner nature and essence of representation by means of language, and language, he held, represents only in as much as it is understood and meant. He thought that what gives an array of signs the status of a representation of how things are is using (or interpreting) the array to mean what is represented, namely, a possible situation. The processes of understanding a sentence, thinking its sense, interpreting it, must, it seemed, somehow contain the complete analysis of the proposition. With hindsight, of course, this was not so much a psychological presupposition as a metapsychological one – a profound confusion concerning the concepts of thinking (meaning) the sense of a sentence, and understanding (interpreting) it, which it was to take Wittgenstein years to destroy. As he was later to write: All this, however, can only appear in the right light when one has attained greater clarity about the concepts of understanding, meaning and thinking. For then it will become clear what can lead us (and did lead me) to think that if anyone utters a sentence and means or understands it he is operating a calculus according to definite rules. (PI §81) 7

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Diagnosis: projecting the mode of representation onto what is represented In 1929 the Tractatus vision disintegrated. There is no reason to suppose that when Wittgenstein returned to philosophy, he envisaged destroying his first philosophy. He went to Cambridge, he wrote to Schlick, in order to work on perceptual space and other things.9 There is every reason to suppose that his idea was to turn from the problems of logic, that he had settled in the Tractatus to his satisfaction, to problems of the application of logic, i.e. to the analysis of the internal forms and contents of elementary propositions, that had deliberately been excluded from the Tractatus (TLP 5.557). He had barely begun to work on this task when he ran into difficulties, which took the form of determinate exclusion (e.g. colour incompatibility), superficially brushed aside in the Tractatus, and now clearly problematic (RLF; PR chap. VIII). From this seemingly insignificant little thread left dangling in the book, the whole tapestry of the Tractatus unravelled. The beginnings of a fundamental reorientation of his conception of philosophy, its forms and limits, took place remarkably quickly. By January 1932 he was writing, ‘Meine Hauptdenkbewegung ist heute eine ganz andere als vor 15–20 Jahren. Und das ist ähnlich, wie wenn ein Maler von einer Richtung zu einer andern übergeht.’ (‘My primary movement of thought is currently completely different from 15–20 years ago. And that is similar to a painter’s making the transition from one manner of painting to another’(MS 183, 141). One might perhaps compare the change in Wittgenstein’s mode of thought to the transformation in the painting of Kandinsky or van Gogh from their early to their mature styles. The fruits of his early reconsiderations concerning the nature of philosophy were incorporated into The Big Typescript (sections 86–93). But, as noted, he used relatively little of this material in the Investigations. Evidently, in 1937 his main concern in this part of the Early Version was to give a final and definitive diagnosis of what was awry with the methodology and conception of philosophy in his early work, and to ‘turn the examination around’. One root error, he realized in 1937, had been ‘predicat[ing] of the thing what lies in the method [mode, or way] of representing it (Darstellungsweise)’ (PI §104).10 Wittgenstein had, in effect, chosen a particular way of representing language – in particular propositions (as pictures) and their constituents (as points of contact between language and reality) – and had projected properties of the mode of representation onto the linguistic entities thereby represented. He then thought to find simple names and elementary propositions with such-and-such a form in our actual language. And when he could not find them in the surface appearances of language, he thought that they must lie beneath the surface. Why must they? Because otherwise the proposition (and the names that compose it) would not be able to do the remarkable things that they evidently do. 8

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What are the ‘forms of representation (Darstellungsformen)’ that Wittgenstein has in mind? Whence were they derived? And why did they have such compelling attraction? In 1915 Wittgenstein had written in his notebook, ‘What seems to be given us a priori is the concept: This. – Identical with the concept of the object’ (NB 61).11 ‘By “N” I mean this
’ is one of the most common ways of introducing a name or explaining a name one has used – no matter whether it is a proper name (‘By “Jack” I meant him
’) or the name of a property (‘By “indigo” I meant this
’). It is from this humble prototype that the Ideal Name was derived. ‘The ideal name should function thus:’, Wittgenstein wrote in 1937, recollecting what he had thought in his youth (MS 157a, 58v), ‘“To this name corresponds this”. And the “this” should be simple, completely simple’. In this way the ‘general form of a name’ was evolved and elevated into an ‘ideal’ that must characterize all real names. The real name, like ‘this’, must be logically unanalysable and be correlated with an object. But that object, like its name, must be simple. What was the appeal of ‘the simple’? What was its prototype? Clearly it was what has captivated philosophers for centuries, including, as Wittgenstein wrote, what is signified by ‘words like “red”, “dark”, “sweet”’ (PI §87; BB 31) – i.e. such things as the classical empiricists had subsumed under the misleading heading of ‘simple ideas’. Its appeal was manifold. The only feature Wittgenstein mentions in his 1937 reflections was the desire to represent all change and destruction as forms of decomposition (MS 183, 162f.). This was, indeed, true of the Cartesian quest for simple natures (hence the Cartesian proof of the immortality of the soul). But it is evident that other considerations were also at work in the Tractatus (where change and destruction get short shrift at best). To the ideal name corresponded the simple object that is beyond existence or inexistence, part of the substance of all possible worlds. The ‘logically proper name’ was meant to eliminate any possibility of reference failure, to guarantee determinacy of sense, and so to ensure that all surface vagueness would disappear on analysis. It was also the mechanism whereby the proposition, no matter whether it is true or false, could ‘reach right up to reality’ and ensure the preestablished harmony (MS 108 (Vol. IV), 186) between thought and world. Parallel to the way of representing names, and the associated idealization, was the corresponding choice of a way of representing (or, indeed, of presenting) propositions, and its associated idealization. How did the Tractatus present propositions? – As pictures or models (Bild does service for both). What does this amount to? The Tractatus presented the essence of the proposition as being the depiction of a state of affairs. Hence the associated general propositional form: ‘Es verhält sich so-und-so’ (‘Things are thusand-so’), which (in the case of the elementary proposition) signifies a distribution of ‘objects’ or ‘things’ in a concatenation constituting a state of affairs such that to each name in the proposition there corresponds an object in reality (irrespective of whether the proposition is true or false). Again, we must ask whence this conception. 9

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Instead of saying ‘The bottle is blue’ we can say ‘The bottle has the property of being blue’, just as instead of saying ‘The bottle is on the table’ we can say ‘The bottle stands to the table in the relation of being on’. In this perfectly licit rephrasal, it looks as if the essential parts of a sentence form a concatenation of names. For all the words with, as it were, a ‘material meaning’, as Wittgenstein called it, appear to be names distributed in a net of purely logical relations. Moreover, it seems that to each name in the sentence there is a corresponding entity in reality. For ‘the bottle’ signifies this
, ‘the table’ signifies this
, and ‘the relation of being on’ signifies this
(UF §124). So a proposition is akin to a picture or model that depicts a state of affairs – describes how things stand. Indeed, this appeared to be what is essential to any genuine proposition whatsoever – that it be a logical picture. That, in turn, seemed to give the essence of language, since language just was the totality of propositions that can be generated by the operation N ( joint negation) on the set of elementary propositions. And that mirrored the essence of the world – the totality of all possibilities. Furthermore, this enabled (or appeared to enable) Wittgenstein to explain all logical relations as consequences of truth-functional combinations of elementary propositions, and to display all logical truths as limiting cases of truth-functionally combined propositions, i.e. as tautologies.

Idealizing the prototype What Wittgenstein had done was to select a prototype which can be found in natural language, and to purify it. He had sublimated the humdrum concepts of name and proposition, giving the word ‘name’, for example, a metaphysical use12 (MS 157b, 14v). And he had generalized a simile, taken a comparison that holds between some types of propositions and depictions of states of affairs for an insight into the essence of the proposition. ‘Tom’, ‘Dick’ and ‘Harry’ are not names of simple objects that lie beyond existence and inexistence. Nor are ‘War and Peace’, ‘The Gardeners’ Arms’ and ‘Eine kleine Nachtmusik’. But precisely because Wittgenstein was, in effect, projecting a way of presenting names onto the reality of names, it seemed that there must be such names. So these humdrum names are not the real names. They are adulterated, raw and impure. The real names, of which elementary propositions are constituted, link language to reality. They constitute, must constitute, the foundations of language. Why must they? Because otherwise names could not fulfil the functions they must fulfil. But, as Wittgenstein now realized, this was a requirement, not a result of experience and investigation. (This realization is, he noted, comparable to Schiller’s response to Goethe’s idea of the primal plant: ‘That is an idea, not an experience’). One cannot, in the present day, say ‘To “Nothung” corresponds this
’ or ‘To “Moses” corresponds this
’. But ‘Nothung’ really is a name, even if the sword has been shattered (or, indeed, 10

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is mythical); ‘Moses’ is a name, even if no one was fished out of the Nile by Pharaoh’s daughter. ‘This
’ (pointing at an ‘indefinable’) is not the general form of a name. Indeed, names do not have a general form. They constitute a family, linked by a variety of overlapping resemblances. Corresponding to the ideal name, Wittgenstein had similarly sublimated the concept of a proposition. There is, indeed, an analogy between certain kinds of proposition and a model (or a history painting) of a state of affairs. But it is only an analogy, and while it holds (like all analogies, up to a point) for certain kinds of proposition, such as ‘This carpet is red’ or ‘The book is to the left of the bottle’, it limps for other kinds of propositions and does not hold at all for yet others. But in the Tractatus Wittgenstein had not seen that he was dealing with a simile. For, as he later confessed, because of the grammatical illusion of the unity of concepts, it did not seem like a simile (MS 157b, 6r). For it appeared as if to each name there corresponded a unique object. It seemed as if every concept-word corresponded to one thing, to that which is common to all things falling under it (MS 142, §104). And he had thought that ‘If one proposition is a picture then every proposition must be a picture, since they must all be of the same nature’ (MS 157a, 56r; Z §444). Wittgenstein had, in effect, transformed an analogy or simile into a way of presenting propositions. The elementary proposition of the Tractatus was presented as a logical picture, i.e. a model of how things stand in reality. The form in which it was presented was as a concatenation of simple names. To each simple name in an elementary proposition there was supposed to correspond a unique and determinate simple object in reality. The elementary proposition was bipolar, dividing logical space precisely into two. It had to be logically independent, so that it could be true or false while everything else remained the same. Its logical independence was a condition for displaying all logical relations as a consequence of truth-functional combinations of propositions by means of the N-operator (joint negation). But, again, these were requirements driven by a theory, not the result of examining what we ordinarily call ‘propositions’. When we actually look at the phenomena of language, we do not see such propositions. We see a medley of different structures with many different roles. In the Tractatus Wittgenstein had already excluded an important part of what we ordinarily call ‘propositions’, e.g. propositions of ethics, aesthetics and religion (but there seemed very special and deep reasons for doing so), as well as propositions of mathematics. Similarly excluded were such propositions as ‘Red is a colour’ or ‘1 is a number’ (later to be dubbed ‘grammatical propositions’), again, for seemingly deep reasons that chimed with what appeared to be the most important insight in the whole book, namely the distinction between what can be said and what cannot be said but only shown. But, on reconsideration (in 1937), is it really true that every proposition has, must have, the general form ‘This is how things stand’? Does even as humble a proposition as ‘It is raining’ have this form (MS 142, §127; 11

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Z §447)? Does it describe a concatenation of things? Is it, in the requisite sense, a picture or model? Is it, on analysis, a concatenation of names? Indeed, one can go further – do propositions of the form ‘If it had been the case that such-and-such, then it would have been the case that so-and-so’, constitute models of how things stand? Do avowals of experience such as ‘I have a pain’, describe concatenations of objects or arrangements of things? (Am I a constituent of the fact that I am in pain?) Are expressions of intention, such as ‘I’m going to go’, pictures of a state of affairs? Accompanying the idealization of the proposition there had been a comparable idealization of the concepts of sense and determinacy of sense. It had seemed that an indefinite sense is no better than no sense at all (PI §99). For how could an indefinite sense be part of the pure crystalline structure of logic? How can an indefinite sense divide logical space precisely into two? And surely experience cannot be indefinite; even if one sees an indeterminate colour (e.g. a ‘dirty’ colour) – what one sees is nevertheless determinate, a quite particular, specific colour (MS 157a, 64r). Nevertheless, its description may be vague! – Of course, what one says may be vague, but surely what one means is perfectly sharp. After all, ‘if you understand – mean – a sentence, then you must mean something!’ (MS 157b, 4v).13 As Wittgenstein had viewed matters, all surface indeterminacy is, on analysis, determinately indeterminate. For it will be analysable into a disjunction of determinate possibilities (e.g. ‘A is on the table’ is, on analysis, a disjunction: ‘A is there
or A is there
or A is there
or . . . ’). This is how it seemed. But it was no more than a commitment to a certain form for presenting vague propositions. And against it Wittgenstein now mustered four objections. First, if one chooses to present vague propositions in the form of disjunctions of determinate possibilities, there can be no guarantee that the constituent conjuncts are determinate (cf. MS 157a, 64r-65r; Z §441). It only appeared to be so on the assumption that to each constituent name in a fully analysed proposition there corresponded one unique thing. Second, it is an illusion that what one means by what one says must be determinate. For one does not necessarily mean some thing (some ‘simple object’), even if one always means something. Furthermore, of course, what one means is normally precisely what one says – which may well be vague. Third, one misunderstands the use of ‘quite particular’ or ‘specific’ here, confusing its intransitive with its transitive use. If every colour one sees, no matter how ‘impure’, is nevertheless ‘quite particular’, that just means that it is what it is and not another thing. By contrast, the transitive use of ‘quite particular’ demands a ‘namely’ rider in which the determinacy can be cashed by a description (BB 174–7). Fourth, one has opted for a form in which to present propositions with indeterminate sense. According to this form, nothing, on analysis, counts as indeterminate (since indeterminacy is represented by a disjunction of determinate possibilities). But if nothing counts as indeterminate, then nothing 12

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counts as determinate either. So the cost of thus ‘sublimating’ or ‘idealizing’ sense is to render vacuous the claim that all sense on analysis is determinate. And the insistence that sense must be determinate, that an indeterminate sense is no better than none, was tantamount to the imposition of a form of representation for vague propositions, driven by a misconception of the role of logic (see below), which appeared to the young Wittgenstein, no less than to Frege, to impose an irresistible demand for determinacy of sense. In a similar fashion, Wittgenstein had sublimated the concept of a language. A language is not the totality of elementary propositions and the molecular propositions that can be generated from them by the N-operator. For there are no simple names whose meanings are sempiternal simple objects, a fortiori no logically independent elementary propositions composed of simple names. Rather, the propositions of a language form a family of heterogeneous structures united by overlapping similarities, not by common properties (a shared essence, the common propositional form). Speaking a language is not tacitly operating a calculus everywhere governed by rules, but engaging in language-games loosely, and not everywhere, governed by rules. The boundaries of language are indeterminate, and they include much that is far removed from the sharp structures he had once envisaged. For samples are best considered part of the symbolism of language. Gestures too are not word-language – but was Sraffa’s gesture not a sign, a form of expression (MS 157b, 5v)? What was the logical form of the Neapolitan gesture of contempt? Corresponding to the sublimation of the concepts of name, proposition and language in order to make them conform to the ‘ideal’ which must be in the depth-grammar, he had distorted the concepts of object, fact and world. Wittgenstein did not dwell on this in his 1937 reflections, having written on the matter in The Big Typescript, and he discussed it in the Investigations only in the context of the criticisms of atomism (with reference to the concept of a simple object). But it is clear that he thought that it was misleading of Frege to call the simultaneous occurrence of a court case and an eclipse of the moon ‘an object’ (PR 137), and that it was a misuse, of which he himself had been guilty, to call a location ‘an object’ (UF §110). So too, he noted that it is a muddle to think that the fact that the glass is to the left of the bottle consists of three objects. When one says that there are three objects on the table one does not mean the glass, the bottle and their spatial relation. Indeed, it is confused to suppose that facts consist of objects at all (UF §108; MS 127, 75–9; PG 199–201). It is misconceived to claim that the world consists of facts (although it might be said that a true description of (some part of) the world consists of a statement of facts) or that the world is everything that is the case. As he noted in 1937, he had taken for granted the uniqueness (Einzigheit) or determinacy of meaning of the word ‘world’ without having a grasp of any use of this word (MS 157a, 71r to MS 157b, 1r).14 13

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Misunderstanding the role of the ideal The Tractatus vision had been sublime. To investigate logic, it seemed, was to investigate the a priori order of things, i.e. of the world. But with the realization that what he had actually done was to project features of a chosen way of representing things onto reality, it became clear that this ‘order of things’ was a myth. He thought that he was investigating the order of the world, whereas, in fact, he was presupposing an order. What he had presupposed was the idea of essence – of the world, of the proposition, etc. (MS 157a, 70r).15 The words ‘proposition’, ‘world’, etc., and their exceptional importance, lead us to presuppose the existence of transcendent entities with an all-encompassing order (MS 157a, 70v).16 The sublimation of the concept of language to meet the requirements of an ideal had led to the presupposition of the a priori order of the world. What, then, had driven him to the sublimation of language? He had constructed an ideal (the ‘real’ name, the general propositional form, determinacy of sense) out of what he saw in ordinary language. The ideal was part of the form of representation which he had adopted – a form of representation which is not satisfied by the surface appearance of the names and propositions of our language. Why did it seem so compelling? Precisely because it was akin to the spectacles on our nose through which everything is viewed (PI §103). The illusion involved a misunderstanding of the ideal. It seemed as if it must be found in reality, and would be revealed by analysis. This ‘must’ is a mark of the dogmatism that flows from failure to grasp the role of the ideal. Dogmatism, here, is the thought that things in reality must conform to the mode of representing them. Whereas there are two possibilities, neither of which involve any such objective de re necessity. First, it may be fruitful, in certain domains of investigation, to represent one thing in terms of another. So, for example, it may be illuminating to represent the history of cultures in the form of the life of an organism, with a childhood, youth, maturity and decline – as Spengler did (cf. MS 157b, 16r–v). This may well be a fruitful simile. It is illuminating to look thus upon the rise and fall of Greece or of Rome. But it is mistaken to infer that a culture (e.g. the West) must decline as it ages. It is not as if it could have arteriosclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, or Alzheimer’s disease. For cultures are merely being compared to organisms – and one cannot argue that because a culture has lasted a long time, has already enjoyed a period of greater power and vitality, therefore it is now in old age and must decline and die. In the case of the forms of representation adopted in the Tractatus, it may be illuminating, in certain respects, to compare propositions with models or pictures of how things are, and to present propositions in the form ‘Thus-and-so is how things stand’. But it does not follow that every proposition must be akin to, let alone be, a model or picture of a possible state of affairs, or that every 14

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name must have the form of the indexical ‘this’ (which form seemed to be the general concept of an object), or that every vague proposition must be determinately indeterminate on analysis. The ideal loses none of its dignity, Wittgenstein points out to Spengler (MS 157b, 16v), by being recognized for what it is, namely a form of representation. Second, there are indeed conventions regarding what is to be called ‘such-and-such’. So, for example, a figure is called ‘a circle’ only if its circumference is ␲d, ‘a triangle’ (in a plane) only if the sum of its interior angles is 180°; and something is to be called ‘red’ only if it is darker than something pink and more similar to something orange than to something yellow.17 But we are prone to project our conventions onto reality, and to interpret what is thus projected as a priori necessities in the world. Then we think that it is of the essence of red to be darker than pink (and that is right, if read rightly), that it is part of the essence of a triangle to have three sides. If A is red and B is pink, we think, then A must be darker than B – which is correct, but misleads us. For we think we have noted a natural necessity. It is, we say, of the nature of red things to be darker than pink. It is an a priori truth about the world, part of the a priori order of the world. But, in fact, all we have done is to note a convention (RFM 65). For the proposition ‘Red is darker than pink’ is no more than a grammatical proposition. It is not a description of an ‘objective necessity’, but a rule of grammar. The idea of ‘the order of things’, of the forms of phenomena, in short of the a priori thus conceived, is a grammatical illusion (MS 157b, 1r–v). The a priori must have its nimbus removed, for it is no more than a form of representation (MS 157b, 3v). That red is darker than pink is a grammatical proposition, a rule for the use of the words ‘red’, ‘pink’ and ‘darker than’ – a rule that allows us to infer without more ado that if A is red and B is pink then A is darker than B.18 But when we present a rule for the use of words, a norm of representation, in the guise of a proposition about what is represented, we produce an a priori proposition that appears to be a description of the objective nature or essence of things. For its opposite is excluded – it is impossible, we are inclined to say, that something red be lighter than something pink; and, of course, the opposite is excluded – not by a mythical de re necessity, but because a form of words is excluded (Z §442). Here, unlike the previous case of representing something in the form of another thing, it is not dogmatic to say that if this is such-and-such it must be thusand-so. On the contrary, it is perfectly correct. What is mistaken is to think that this ‘must’ does anything more than register a convention, in particular to think that it describes a necessity in nature (‘the logical structure of the world’). We are systematically misled by such grammatical propositions.19 ‘Red is more like orange than like yellow’, we say, and then we investigate this as something given a priori – whereas all that is given is a norm of representation. In an atypical historical remark written in 1937, Wittgenstein observed 15

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that it was characteristic of thinkers of the previous cultural period to want to find the a priori where there is none, or indeed to have produced the concept of the a priori.20 They would never have done so, Wittgenstein wrote, had they seen things the way we do;21 but then the world would have lost a great and significant error. But actually, he concludes, one cannot reason thus, for this concept was grounded in the whole culture of the times (MS 183, 81). Presumably he meant the culture informing eighteenth-century science and enlightenment, which presupposed a divine order and inner necessity of things. These misconceptions concerning the a priori order of things in the world were one aspect of misunderstandings concerning the role of the ideal. They were presuppositions consequent upon misunderstandings about language and logic. The sublimation of names, propositions, determinacy of sense, etc. in the Tractatus involved, as we have seen, projecting a form of representation onto language. Failing to apprehend that that was in effect what he was doing, and failing to find such idealized names and propositions instantiated in surface grammar, Wittgenstein had insisted that they must be present in language, if not on the surface then beneath the surface (to be revealed by future analysis); if not in the conscious mind, then buried beneath the level of consciousness, in the form of tacit conventions of which even the speakers themselves are ignorant (cf. TLP 4.002). However, there is another, equally pernicious misconception of ‘the ideal’. This is the idea that it is a paradigm towards which to strive – as it were, an ideal of perfection. In the context of the reflections in 1937, Wittgenstein gives only one example (MS 157a, 66r–v and 68r–v). ␲ is, in the relevant sense, ‘an ideal’, that is, it is a form of representation. It is a venerable Platonist misconception to suppose that all actual circles are defective in comparison with ‘the Ideal Circle’, which is imagined to subsist sempiternally in a domain of ideal objects. But it is not enough to grasp that the supposition that ‘the ideal’ exists is a Platonist misconception. It can be equally misconceived to suppose that ‘the ideal’ is something towards which we must strive. Then we might say: ‘The circumference of this wheel really is D × ␲’ (so exactly has it been wrought). But this is misleading. The ideal is the form of expression – not a goal to which all circles approximate, but a form of representation. For a circle is a plane figure the circumference of which is D × ␲ – these are alternative modes of description. In constructing a circle, we do not strive to construct a circle the circumference of which is D × ␲ – we strive to construct a circle, i.e. a figure the circumference of which is D × ␲. The form of representation provides us with an ideal of exactitude.

Turning the examination around Wittgenstein’s conclusion, namely that the examination must be rotated, first occurs in this context. The re-orientation of our viewpoint is a consequence 16

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of realizing that the role of the ideal had been misconstrued. It had seemed as if the ideal was the reflection in logic of the ‘a priori order of things’. But the ideal of an objective a priori order of the world is, itself, merely a part of the mode of representation (MS 157b, 3r). The very idea that logic must reflect the logical form of the world must disappear (MS 157b, 3v). We have to relocate the role of logic. It is not a mirror image of the world, but a form of representation. In what sense is the viewpoint re-oriented? Far from examining the logic of our language in order to discern the a priori order of things in the world, we should examine the logic of our language in order to disclose the illusion of there being any such a priori order of things. Rotating the investigation replaces the sublimity of logical investigation with the pathos of the exposure of logico-metaphysical illusion (PI §110). The investigation has to be rotated, but about the pivotal point of our real need. What is ‘our real need’? Wittgenstein does not say (the earlier wording (immediately altered) was: ‘our real interests’). It is evidently not a need to ‘understand the basis or essence of everything empirical’, for that was characterized as a misguided urge (PI §89). It is most plausible to suppose that the real need in question is for conceptual clarity, clarity that is attained when one has an overview of the grammatical facts that will dispel the metaphysical illusions that have been under scrutiny. The effect of turning the examination around is to rid us of the preconception of the crystalline purity of logic (PI §108). What was this crystalline purity? If logic is to give us the essence of language (of thought), it must, it seemed, concern itself with pure form – there must be nothing amorphous about it. It must have a transparency, a crystalline clarity that is not to be found in the sciences (MS 157a, 51r). If logic is to present the a priori order of the world, it must surely be utterly simple (UF §95) – ‘simplex sigillum veri’ (TLP 5.4541). For it is prior to all experience and must run through all experience; it can contain no unclarity or cloudiness, it must be pure crystal – and, indeed, it seemed not an abstraction, of the kind one finds in the sciences (MS 157b, 10v), but something completely concrete, as it were the hardest of the hard (UF p. 83; cf. TLP 5.5563, cited in PI §97).22 We cannot rid ourselves of this impression, Wittgenstein wrote; it sits like glasses on our nose, and it never occurs to us to take them off (UF §102). But, if we turn our gaze to actual language and carefully observe it, we shall slowly but surely recognize the extraordinary illusion. It will become apparent that the crystalline structure we seemed to see beneath the surface of language was a kind of optical illusion. And only when the causes of this illusion are removed, shall we see language as it really is (UF p. 89). What were the causes of the illusion? One was the failure to realize that what he had been doing was no more than using a simile or analogy, which he had then projected onto the facts (of language). The crystalline purity of logic was not given, it was a requirement (UF §108). The clearer this became, 17

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the clearer it also became that this apparently concrete, crystalline structure was an abstraction – a form of representation. The ideal was no more than that; if we pretend otherwise (i.e. if we project these structures onto language and pretend that these strict rules are everywhere), our statements will be empty and senseless, for we are engaged in mere logical trickery (MS 157b, 6r–v). The hidden determinacy of sense was vacuous; the general propositional form was senseless, since nothing was allowed to count as a proposition if it could not be squeezed into this form; the deep, pre-established harmony between language (thought) and reality was empty, since it was tantamount to no more than the intersubstitutability of ‘the proposition that p’ and ‘the proposition that is made true by the fact that p’ (PG 161f.). A further cause of the illusion, as noted, was the misconception that to every name or concept-word there corresponds one thing. The realization that the concepts of a language and a proposition are family-resemblance concepts gives two fatal blows to the conception of the crystalline character of logic. It shows, Wittgenstein averred, that he had not had a general conception of language and proposition. And it dispenses with the ethereal (pneumatic) conception of mental processes (MS 157b, 5v), namely, of understanding as interpreting and of meaning as thinking the sense of a sentence. The idea that the understanding projects simple names onto simple objects in reality by means of acts of meaning can be jettisoned; furthermore (as also became clear) the whole conception of meaning something as a mental act was confused. So, the crystalline clarity becomes no more than a feature of a form of representation, a form of representation by means of the calculus of logic (MS 157b, 5r). What happens to logic? Does not admission of the family character of propositions compromise its rigour? It may seem to do so. For it may appear to call for the disclosure of a logic of vagueness buried beneath the surface grammar of our language. But that is just further illusion, illusion that stems from misunderstanding the role of logic. Logic is not buried beneath the surface of language. Language, from a logical point of view, one might say, is all surface. Logic cannot lose its rigour, and we cannot bargain its rigour out of it (PI §108). We cannot plead for the relaxation of the Law of Excluded Middle, or make arrangements to lift the Law of Non-contradiction, for the laws of logic define what is to be counted as a logically valid argument. Logic is a form for the presentation of, and a canon of correctness for, arguments. It is no more affected by recognition of familyresemblance concepts than a system of measurement is affected by the discovery that not all lengths are expressible in complete units. Logic is not what we see beneath the surface of language when we try to penetrate it (PI §90), it is the grid through which we look at arguments when we wish to measure their cogency or to display, with a formal perspicuity, their logical structure. We noted that Wittgenstein remarked that even if the concept of language were not a family, his new conception would still be different from that of 18

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the Tractatus. He did not embroider further. But it seems evident what he meant. For the deepest transformation in his conception of logic, language and, indeed, of philosophy and its method, stemmed from the realization that the conception of an a priori order of the world that is to be disclosed by logical investigation into the deep structure of language, was an illusion. This insight is independent of the question of the existence of family-resemblance concepts, no matter how important their recognition was for Wittgenstein himself. If anything deserves to be called ‘turning our examination around’ it is the transformation of ‘the a priori’ from being the metaphysical ‘order of things’ into being a mere form of representation, and hence the dissolution of the sublime conception of logical investigation and its replacement by the investigation of the pathos of philosophical illusion. Kant’s Copernican revolution in metaphysics rotated the way of thinking in metaphysics by making the phenomenal world dependent upon our cognitive apparatus, since only thus, he argued, can a priori knowledge of objects be guaranteed.23 Wittgenstein pushed the Copernican revolution much further. He rotated our way of thinking so as to show us that what appeared to be a priori knowledge of the objective order of things was no more than misapprehension of a shadow cast by our forms of representation.24

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Notes 1 But not PI §§112–5. 2 The translation of ‘Die Betrachtung muss gedreht werden’ is difficult. ‘Betrachten’ is ‘to consider’, ‘Betrachtungsweise’ is ‘way of looking’ or ‘way of thinking’ – none of which lend themselves to rotation. I shall follow Anscombe’s ‘turning the examination around’ or, occasionally, ‘turning the investigation around’. 3 By contrast with the de dicto conception of essence endorsed in Investigations §§92, 371, 373. 4 ‘In order that you should have a language which can express or say everything that can be said, this language must have certain properties; and when this is the case, that it has them can no longer be said in that language or any language’ (NB 108). 5 That the substance of the world consists of simple sempiternal objects ensured both. Logic, he held, presupposes that much (TLP 6.124). 6 Only in the 1930s did Wittgenstein discuss the very same problems of intentionality in terms of the intentionality of thought, belief and expectation rather than in terms of the problem of negation and the false proposition. For an excellent examination of his discussions of these themes, see E. Ammereller (2000). 7 See TLP 3.11, PT 3.1–3.15. Note that both are mistranslated: ‘das Denken des Satz-Sinnes’ is ‘thinking the sense of the proposition’, not ‘thinking of the sense of the proposition’. In the Notebooks, see the discussion of meaning something by a sentence or word (‘meinen’) on p. 67f. and p. 70. In the early 1930s, see especially MS 108 (Vol. III), 218f., ‘One could say, 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

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where the object of the picture is.’ See also MS 145, 49, quoted in Baker and Hacker (2004), Exg. §95 fn., and PR 65. For detailed discussion, see ‘The mythology of meaning something’ in P.M.S. Hacker (1996). The ‘other things’ presumably were problems in the philosophy of mathematics. I shall translate ‘Darstellungsweise’ and ‘Darstellungsform’ as ‘way (or mode) of representation (or representing)’ and ‘form of representation’ respectively, except in those cases in which what is presented is not distinct from the presentation of it, e.g. names or propositions, in which case I shall sometimes speak of modes and forms of presentation. It seems that what he had in mind is that the general form of a name (presumably its simplicity) is given by the indexical, and it is identical with the general form of objects, given by the formal concept of an object. For discussion of what counts as ‘a metaphysical use’ see Baker and Hacker, 2nd revised edn (2005), Exg. §116, 2(ii). This should be compared with NB 68: ‘It seems clear that what we MEAN must always be “sharp” ’, and NB 70: ‘It is clear that I know what I mean by the vague proposition.’ If someone were to challenge me by arguing that I didn’t know what I meant by a given word in general, I should, with regard to the particular application in question, ‘say: “I know what I mean; I mean just THIS”, pointing to the appropriate complex with my finger’. His wording is rather curious ‘Ich nahm als gegeben an die Einzigheit der Bedeutung der Wörter “Welt” & “Sprache” ohne dass ich einem Begriff von einem Gebrauch des Wortes “Welt” hatte’. The next remark intimates that the mistake was not to look at examples of the use of the word. ‘In der Meinung die Ordnung der Dinge zu untersuchen, habe ich die // eine // Ordnung der Dinge vorausgesetzt. Vorausgesetzt war die Idee des Wesens (der Welt, des Satzes, u.s.w.). (Der Satz, dieses merkwürdige Wesen.) ‘Die Wörter “Satz”, “Welt”, u. andere, & ihre ausserordentliche Bedeutung (d.h. Wichtigkeit in unserer Sprache) verführen uns zu der Fiktion einer Anwendung, dazu, die Existenz transcendenter Wesen anzunehmen mit einer allumfassenden Ordnung’. These are indeed conventions, but they are partly constitutive of the concepts concerned, hence interwoven with a mass of further rules for the use of the terms in question to make up a dense network of internal relations. Hence the abandonment of one ramifies through the whole network. Of course, it is no more about the English words than it is about the corresponding words in any other language ( just as the rules of chess are no more about wooden pieces than they are about plastic ones). One might say that it is a rule concerning the concepts of red, pink and darker than – although that too can be misleading. One might say, and Wittgenstein once did (UF, p. 86), that the a priori (as exhibited by grammatical propositions) is a form of representation of a form of representation. It is a (highly misleading) way of presenting grammatical rules (these rules themselves determining forms for representing empirical facts), namely as descriptions. (Similarly, some legal constitutions present norms in the form of descriptions in the habitual present, e.g. ‘The prime minister introduces his cabinet to the President on the third Monday after the election’.) Similarly, the colour octahedron is an expression of the rules for the use of colour words (and so a form of representation of colour). The form of presentation of this form of representation is not a sentence of a given form, but a geometrical solid.

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20 Initially he wrote ‘or non-concept’ (‘oder Unbegriff’), but crossed this out. 21 It is unclear whether this is a reference to the way he, Wittgenstein, conceives of the a priori, or to the way the moderns do. If the latter, it is even more unclear whom he has in mind, since there was no general consensus on the concept of the a priori in 1931. 22 A similar thought was nicely captured by Lukasiewicz: ‘Whenever I am occupied even with the tiniest logistical problem, e.g. trying to find the shortest axiom of the implicational calculus, I have the impression that I am confronted with a mighty construction, of indescribable complexity and immeasurable rigidity. The construction has the effect on me of a concrete tangible object, fashioned from the hardest of materials, a hundred times stronger than concrete and steel. I cannot change anything in it; by intense labour I merely find in it ever new details, and attain unshakable and eternal truths. Where and what is this ideal construction? A Catholic philosopher would say: it is in God, it is God’s thought’. (Quoted and tr. by P.T. Geach in Cooper et al. (1970: 22)). 23 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B xvii. 24 I am grateful to Erich Ammereller, Hans-Johann Glock, John Hyman, Edward Kanterian, Anthony Kenny, Oskari Kuusela, Eike von Savigny and Joachim Schulte for their comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

Bibliography Ammereller, E. (2000) ‘Intentionality’, in H.-J. Glock (ed.) A Wittgenstein Reader, Oxford: Blackwell. Cooper, C., Geach, P., Potts, T. and White, R. (1970) A Wittgenstein Workbook, Oxford: Blackwell. Baker, G.P. and Hacker, P.M.S. (2005) Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning, 2nd edn, extensively revised by P.M.S. Hacker, Oxford: Blackwell. Hacker, P.M.S. (1996) Wittgenstein: Mind and Will, Oxford: Blackwell.

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2 THE BUILDERS’ LANGUAGE – THE OPENING SECTIONS Joachim Schulte

The structure of §1 of Philosophical Investigations is composite. It opens with a lengthy quotation from Augustine’s Confessions. It concludes with a shopping scene which reads as if it reproduced a skit written by Beckett or Ionesco (plus two or three brief comments). The opening quotation contains part of Augustine’s description of how he learned the first rudiments of his mother tongue. The two paragraphs between the quotation and the shopping scene say something about the general idea behind the quotation from Augustine. This general idea, often referred to as the ‘Augustinian picture’,1 has, by a number of commentators, been held to constitute the main target of Wittgenstein’s remarks on meaning and language. I think that to a certain extent this view is uncontroversial: it is quite clear that the passage from Augustine is intended to serve as a foil for what follows. But there are at least two respects in which interpretations of Wittgenstein’s view of the general idea behind the quotation tend to differ greatly. One concerns the question whether it is legitimate to see Wittgenstein as suggesting that the general idea is largely the same as certain views held by Frege, Russell and the early Wittgenstein. The other concerns the question to what extent the picture to be gleaned from the Augustinian quotation is really meant to serve as a target – as the focus of Wittgenstein’s criticisms. In other words, the second question asks whether it is correct to read Wittgenstein, or perhaps the Wittgenstein of the first third of the Investigations, as basically a polemical author, while the first question is whether he is mostly criticizing identifiable views held by the protagonists of early analytic philosophy. Here, I shall leave the first of these questions undiscussed but some of my remarks will have a bearing on the second question: to what extent is the general idea behind the quotation meant as a target of criticism? As a first step we should look at the exact words Wittgenstein uses to introduce the so-called ‘Augustinian picture’. In Miss Anscombe’s translation he says: 22

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These words, it seems to me, give us a particular picture of the essence of human language. It is this: the individual words in language name objects – sentences are combinations of such names. – In this picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands.2 If you read carefully what Wittgenstein is saying here, you will soon notice that he is talking, not about one picture but about two things – a ‘particular picture’ of the essence of human language, on the one hand, and an idea which has its roots in that picture, on the other. The picture is a general one, but at the same time it is vague and sketchy. This is emphasized by Wittgenstein’s formulations in the third paragraph, the paragraph preceding the shopping scene. Here, he speaks of the picture, not of the idea engendered by it, and spells out what may be at the forefront of the mind of a person drawing a picture of the Augustinian kind. The sketchiness of the picture is underlined by Wittgenstein’s pointing out that such a person is likely to think that dealing with certain kinds of words (e.g. prepositions and connectives) may unproblematically be left for another occasion. The painter of the picture may primarily think of nouns and secondarily of verbs and adjectives, but Wittgenstein does not claim that our painter treats other kinds of words the same way; he simply does not treat them at all. This is different from someone who holds the idea whose roots can be located in the picture: it is the defender of this idea who speaks, not sketchily, but with full and explicit generality. And if we construe this idea, not so much as consisting of three separable parts, but as one unitary thought to the effect that the meaning of every word is the object for which it stands, then it will certainly be right to regard this idea as a target of Wittgenstein’s criticism. On the other hand, I should not be so sure that this idea in itself is interesting or substantial enough to deserve extended criticism: if you want it to form the central target of Wittgenstein’s critical considerations you will have to enrich it, e.g. by undergirding it with a certain view of mental activities. The picture drawn by Augustine or someone like him, however, may, precisely because of its sketchiness, be the seedbed of further questionable ideas at which criticism might be aimed. At any rate, as a first conclusion it seems worth noting that Wittgenstein’s remarks in §1 contain a distinction between a sketchy picture conveyed by the quotation from Augustine and an idea rooted in that picture. And I think we can, without reading too much into Wittgenstein’s text, say that the picture illustrates a fairly natural and pre-theoretical or pre-philosophical notion, whereas the idea rooted in it is an example of various possible theoretical or philosophical ones that can, but need not be, engendered by the picture. It is, no doubt, this theoretical idea which is referred to in the opening sentence of §2. At first blush, this paragraph may appear quite straightforward 23

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and plain. I do not think it is. On the contrary, in my view it is tricky and by no means straightforward. Let’s have a look at the first part of §2 and try to read it in a completely open-minded way, as if we had never seen or heard it before: That philosophical concept of meaning has its place in a primitive idea of the way language functions. But one can also say that it is the idea of a language more primitive than ours.3 The first stumbling-block, I suppose, is the word ‘primitive’. And I think it is a rather big stumbling-block. I am not sure about native speakers of English, but as a native speaker of German you will feel that this use of the word ‘primitiv’ is just rude. If someone tells me that a certain idea of mine is primitive, I shall be inclined to take offence. Usually, that sort of observation is taken to mean that my idea was too simple in a way which might warrant the inference that I am not particularly bright. Surely we are meant to perceive this pejorative shade of the meaning of ‘primitive’; and perceiving it will motivate us to have a closer look at the sentence. This way we shall notice that the advocate of that philosophical concept of meaning is not directly said to hold a primitive idea. What the sentence explicitly states is that that concept is at home, or has its home, in a primitive idea of the functioning of language. So, up to a point this is a reformulation of the quoted claim stated in §1, where the philosophical notion was said to originate in a certain picture conveyed by the quotation from Augustine. All the opening sentence of §2 seems to add to this is the qualification of that picture or conception as primitive. Comparison of the two passages, however, shows that §2 contains another modification: it does not mention a picture of the essence of language but speaks of the ‘way language functions’. This substitution of ‘the way language functions’ for ‘the essence of language’ seems to be a move in the direction of a more down-to-earth view – in the direction of Wittgenstein’s own way of looking at things. In a certain sense it introduces the move indicated by the second sentence of §2 which suggests, in place of a primitive conception of language-functioning, looking at a more primitive language than our own. If nothing else has already done so, this second occurrence of the word ‘primitive’ within the space of three lines will alert the reader that Wittgenstein wants to slant this expression in a special way – an expression which anyway is quite unusual in German philosophical prose. It is obvious that the second occurrence of ‘primitive’ does not carry the same connotation that the first occurrence can, at least at first glance, be seen to have, namely, the more or less pejorative meaning of ‘too simple for the purpose at hand’. In its second occurrence the expression ‘more primitive’ merely suggests in an entirely neutral fashion that we are dealing with a simpler, 24

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i.e. less complex or complicated, language than our own. The word ‘primitive’ is, here, used with two slightly different meanings, and this fact means that these two meanings come to interact – the attentive reader can hardly help looking to and fro and wondering if there is something behind this playing with words. And of course there is. Once you are alerted by the presence of those two meanings of ‘primitive’ you will notice that the two sentences forming the quoted passage are strangely related. The formulations suggest that parts of the contents of the two sentences can be substituted for each other. At least, that is what one expects if a sentence begins with a phrase like ‘But one might as well say that . . .’. At the same time, however, it is quite clear that a primitive conception of the way language functions is something utterly different from a conception of a comparatively primitive language. Accordingly, there is no legitimate way of simply substituting the corresponding phrases for each other. Of course you may move from a primitive conception of something to a conception of something primitive, but the second step is neither included in, nor entailed by, the first one: it is another step, full stop. To be sure, Wittgenstein means what he says – the second step does not take back what the first one involved, nor does the first step preclude acceptance of the second. Still, the whole move suggested by the quoted passage is shrouded in deep irony and complicated by intricate wordplay. This much is clear. What is not clear yet is the real point of the irony and the wordplay. I believe that the point can be elucidated. But elucidating it requires looking at further portions of the text. Before proceeding to do so I shall briefly consider a possible objection to my reading. Someone might want to say that I am laying too much stress on nuances of meaning and perhaps even on the likely feelings aroused by certain choices of words. Of course, no one will want to deny that Wittgenstein’s writing aims at, and often achieves, literary qualities. But still, one may wish to protest that I am overstressing this side by underlining irony and wordplay. To this I want to reply in two ways. First, I think that by paying attention to the irony one will be helped in arriving at a fruitful reading of Wittgenstein’s text. This is a promissory note which I beg to present only after I have concluded my sketch. Second, to appreciate the irony involved it is instructive to look at earlier formulations of the passage (or passages) we are concerned with, from the manuscript versions in volume VII4 to the Big Typescript 5 and later rephrasings printed in Philosophische Grammatik and Eine philosophische Betrachtung.6 In these earlier versions of the quoted remark Wittgenstein does not use the word ‘primitiv’ but the much more straightforward word ‘einfach’ (‘simple’) which in this context does not easily lend itself to ironical uses. And it is true: those earlier formulations do not suggest irony or wordplay even if you are looking for them. 25

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All this changes with Wittgenstein’s revision of those formulations in the Urfassung7 of what became the first third of Philosophical Investigations, which for the first time introduces yet another occurrence of the word ‘primitive’. It does so in the last sentence of §2, where the reader is asked to regard the language described in this section as a ‘complete primitive language’. To replace ‘simple’ with ‘primitive’ in the passage quoted above serves no purpose whatever except for injecting new shades of meaning which, by interacting in certain ways, can serve to bring in irony as well as other preponderantly stylistic nuances. But what really clinches the case is the added third occurrence of the word ‘primitive’ because that introduces yet another connotation which through a complicated interplay echoes the two earlier ones while asserting itself and thus making the other two resonate with the new one. Let’s look at the way Wittgenstein continues and see if our considerations are any help. The second part of §2 reads as follows: Let us imagine a language for which the description given by Augustine is right. The language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B. A is building with building-stones: there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass the stones, and that in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose they use a language consisting of the words ‘block’, ‘pillar’, ‘slab’, ‘beam’. A calls them out; – B brings the stone which he has learnt to bring at such-and-such a call. – Conceive this as a complete primitive language.8 The beginning of this passage is absolutely outrageous: in the most casual tone conceivable we are asked to think up a language, a language of which the description implicit in the picture conveyed by Augustine is true. But what does it mean to imagine or think up a language? Remember what we are not asked to do! For instance, we are not invited to think of how negation works in French, nor to reflect on certain constructions in Latin. We are asked to imagine a language, an entire language, a language with a structure different from those we may be familiar with. And that does not mean that we should construct a code of some kind, i.e. a sign-system entirely parasitic on one or several existing languages. In a way Wittgenstein is deliberately asking us to do the impossible – to imagine or think up a completely unfamiliar language. But then he himself complies with this request in a surprising manner: he briefly describes a common activity, namely, building, and says that four words used imperatively will suffice for the people busy on the building-site to do their jobs. Surely we understand this description, and thus we may for a moment feel that the impossible can be done. But probably we shall soon protest and point out that we are not really presented with a description of an unknown form 26

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of language. At best what we are given might be called a fragment of our own language. The impression of unfamiliarity arises because of the extreme restrictedness of the vocabulary and its use as well as because of the fact that the users of that language seem to pursue only one activity. This brings about a certain Verfremdungseffekt but it does not prevent us from seeing that whatever understanding we may have of that language derives from understanding our own. Only by perceiving the language use of the builders as a fragment of a life similar to our own can we imagine grasping what they are doing. What lends yet more strangeness to the situation described is the last sentence of §2 with its request to regard the language characterized as a complete primitive language. Some commentators have taken this in the sense of a request, compliance with which is claimed to be quite possible in §6, where Wittgenstein says that we ‘could imagine that the language of §2 was the whole language of A and B; even the whole language of a tribe’. In my view it is a mistake to read this alleged possibility back into the last sentence of §2. It would prevent us from appreciating another shade of the meaning of ‘primitive’. The word ‘primitive’, taken in one of the two meanings mentioned above, does not radically alter the status of what the phrase modified by it signifies: thus a primitive conception in the pejorative sense is still a conception of something, e.g. of life, language or love. And a cuisine more primitive than the French kind is still a form of cuisine. But with the third occurrence of ‘primitive’ things change. Here the word functions like ‘counterfeit’ in ‘counterfeit money’ (which is not money at all) or ‘cupboard’ in ‘cupboard love’ (which is not a special kind of love). Perhaps the best parallel is with the word ‘model’ as in ‘model trains’ or ‘model car’. These are not really trains or cars but they are what they are only (a) if there are sufficiently many specifiable similarities of a certain kind between them and real things of the relevant kind and (b) if they are useful, i.e. fulfil certain purposes that can be indicated by reference to the context in which they are employed. Roughly speaking, in this sense a primitive language is a model language. It is not a full real language spoken by real people but a constructed object of comparison.9 This use of the word is reminiscent of expressions like ‘primitive sign’ or ‘primitive proposition’,10 which suggest basicness and undefinability in addition to the use as models already mentioned. Here, we are in the realm of Urbilder and Urphänomene which, according to Wittgenstein, are not only the last links in chains of explanation or justification but also fulfil peculiar explanatory functions: they make it possible to develop, step by step, a sequence of forms, the last of which is the form we are interested in.11 This is not the place to say more about Urbilder and their ilk. But bearing in mind this aspect facilitates understanding the significance of Wittgenstein’s request to regard language (2) as a complete primitive language. In the case of models, whose use is at least partly defined by the two conditions of 27

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similarity and usefulness mentioned above, it is not particularly difficult to make sense of the idea of completeness: such models are complete if there are sufficiently many similarities of the right kind between them and what they are models of, and if they fulfil the purpose or purposes for which they have been constructed. While we should be at a loss to say what a ‘complete’ battle, for instance, or a ‘complete’ religion might consist in, we should have little difficulty in explaining why we regard a certain model of a battle or a form of worship as complete. Similarly with language: it is not reasonable to ask under which conditions a language like French or German would be complete; but it is quite possible to claim, and justify the claim, that a certain model of this or that (type of) language-use is complete. In other words, a complete primitive language is a complete languagegame. In these sections of the Investigations Wittgenstein does not use this expression when talking about the builders and their utterances. Even though the term ‘Sprachspiel’ is introduced as early as in §7 he does not speak of language-game (2) and its extension (8) when referring to them: he calls them ‘language (2)’ and ‘language (8)’. I am not sure if this is deliberate, but I suspect it is. Calling these primitive activities ‘languages’ is an obvious exaggeration. And it is via our perception of this exaggeration that we are supposed to grasp how far removed from a real language these primitive languages are. But here I am rushing ahead. To equate ‘primitive language’ with ‘language-game’ is clearly justified by Wittgenstein’s own statement in §7, where he says that he will ‘sometimes speak of a primitive language as a language-game’. But his announcement that he will only sometimes do so suggests that on other occasions other appellations may be more useful or more fitting, such as, e.g. the expression ‘primitive language’ with its own connotations and implicit allusions to other meanings of ‘primitive’. Often primitive languages, or language-games, like those of the builders in §§2 and 8 are simply called ‘languages’. In many of these cases it is fairly clear that ‘language’ means ‘primitive language’ or ‘language-game’. But in other cases it is easy to forget that ‘language’ may be used in this more specific sense. Again, I suppose that this is quite deliberate on Wittgenstein’s part: he wants us to be puzzled and to think through such puzzles for ourselves (but, of course, he indicates the direction in which we should do our own thinking). There are a number of places in the early parts of the Investigations where remembering that specific use of the word ‘language’ is particularly helpful. For example, think of the famous sentence in §7 where Wittgenstein says that he will ‘call the whole, consisting of language and the actions into which it is woven, the “language-game”’. This is Miss Anscombe’s rendering, which certainly captures the gist of Wittgenstein’s remark; but I think there are further aspects of Wittgenstein’s formulation that would require a different translation. Here, I want to point out that Wittgenstein’s remark will suggest 28

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very different readings according to whether ‘Sprache’ is read in the restricted sense of ‘primitive language’ or in the much wider sense of ‘French, German, etc.’ or even ‘Sprache überhaupt’. I must admit that I have no reasoned reply to the question which alternative Wittgenstein had in mind in §7, but my feeling at the time of writing this is that in this passage his use of ‘language’ is doubly restricted. I think that, first, he speaks only of primitive or model languages and, second, of utterances (in contrast with an alleged ‘potential system of propositions that can be generated in a language’12 or other versions of langue as opposed to parole). Thus my preferred reading of this sentence is, roughly, that Wittgenstein will call ‘the whole compound consisting of speech and the activities into which it is woven [in the context of primitive languages] a “language-game” ’. My main reason for favouring this reading is negative: I do not think that Wittgenstein can countenance a ‘whole’ consisting of languages like French or of ‘Sprache überhaupt’ and something else – not even in our imagination could such a ‘whole’ be specified or delimited, so why should we speak of such a ‘whole’? Another context in which the question I have asked is particularly relevant is that of Wittgenstein’s repeated requests to imagine or think up languages. That it may be difficult to comply with this sort of request was pointed out in connection with the primitive language of §2. Another relevant passage is the beginning of §19, where Wittgenstein claims that it ‘is easy to imagine a language consisting only of orders and reports in battle. – Or a language consisting only of questions and expressions for answering yes and no’. Now, if I were told to imagine a language in the sense of French etc. which consisted only of orders and reports in battle, I should not find it ‘easy’ to obey this command. Actually, I should not know where to begin. But if I were invited to think up a primitive language or a model fragment of a language satisfying the requirements stated, I might be able to come up with something. The ambiguity mentioned (between ‘language’ = ‘French, German, etc.’ and ‘language’ = ‘a primitive language’) naturally affects Wittgenstein’s famous statement that ‘to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life’ (§19). I am sure that Wittgenstein does not intend it in the sense of ‘to imagine a language like French means to imagine a form of life in the sense of the French way of life’. What I take Wittgenstein to mean is that ‘to imagine a (primitive) language – a language-game – like that of the builders involves thinking of speakers more or less similar to ourselves’ – in the case of the builders, probably not very similar to ourselves. Still, the form of life involved in imagining a primitive language will have to be a form of our life, of human life. The reason why it has to be a form of our life is not that we are incapable of imagining radically alien forms of life (e.g. the forms of life of ants, elephants or Martians). The reason is that imagining such alien forms of life 29

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would not help us understand the supposedly imagined language, let alone our own. And that would deprive the whole exercise of its point. After all, we try to imagine primitive languages in order to get a grip on certain aspects of our own use of language. But we can make something of the imagined language or language-game only if the life in the context of which it is used is so familiar to us that it does not stand in need of explanation. Otherwise the whole effort would merely add further obscurities to something which is unclear to us anyway. In the course of these reflections we have touched on two questions: (1) To what extent and where is it relevant to distinguish between ‘language’ in the sense of a primitive or model language, on the one hand, and ‘language’ in the sense of a full natural language or language in general, on the other? (2) What is the role of forms of life in trying to understand the functioning of language? Closely connected with both questions are the opening of §6 and a certain kind of worry which has often been voiced regarding this passage. Wittgenstein writes as follows: We could imagine that the language of §2 was the whole language of A and B; even the whole language of a tribe. The children are brought up to perform these actions, to use these words as they do so, and to react in this way to the words of others.13 The worry which has been articulated by several commentators and, in particular, by Rush Rhees in his article ‘Wittgenstein’s Builders’, is that if the language is really restricted to what we are told in §2, then it either cannot truly form the entire linguistic activity of these people or the people are too different from us to serve as a useful model of language use. As Rhees points out, in the situation of the builders it would be practically impossible to find room for the distinction between sense and nonsense or for the notion of standards of linguistic correctness. And without that sort of distinction and without such a notion there would not be much point in speaking of a language at all. Moreover, the situation of the builders seems to lack too many aspects of language use that we should want to regard as essential to anything worth calling a language: thus there is, for instance, no place in the world of the builders where the concept of conversation14 could begin to do some work. Other commentators (e.g. Norman Malcolm)15 have responded to the worry expressed by Rhees by trying to fill in what from Rhees’s point of view, appear to be gaps without changing the situation described by Wittgenstein beyond recognition. That worry and these attempts at remedying the situation are natural responses to Wittgenstein’s description. I think we are meant to entertain the worry and to attempt finding remedies. It would be a mistake to think that Wittgenstein is asking us to imagine a world which would as it were be 30

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described completely by his brief account of the builders, their calls and their actions. If we took that description as a complete description of something resembling the real-life situation of an entire tribe, we should not learn anything from it. On the contrary, we should show that in our view the difference between robots or ‘marionettes’16 and human beings is minimal. Such a view would be the opposite of Wittgenstein’s. His own view, however, is expressed indirectly. His saying that we could imagine the language of §2 was the whole language of a tribe is similar to saying things like: we could imagine that between 1400 and 1700 all people suffered from severe colour-blindness and in spite of that some of them created all those paintings they did produce in the real world. In a sense we really can imagine such a thing. One might even write a novel about it without falling into obvious contradictions and incoherences. But in another sense we cannot imagine it, and that is the philosophically relevant sense of ‘imagination’ which Wittgenstein is addressing here. For as soon as we try to make our non-philosophical imaginings cohere with usable concepts of colourperception, painting and, in particular, realistic and helpful ideas about what painting means in our world or a world relevantly similar to ours, we shall find that those imaginings are full of holes and cannot possibly help understand our concepts of colour-vision, painting and appraising works of art. Similarly, as soon as we try to make the scene of the builders cohere with a usable concept of language (involving ‘sense/nonsense’, ‘conversation’ and other notions mentioned by Rhees) we shall find that we cannot help adding more and more materials to Wittgenstein’s description until we get a much fuller picture than the one drawn in §2. As regards the exegesis of the opening of §6, the moral to be drawn from these observations is clear: Wittgenstein is not asserting that a primitive language like (2) affords a useful model of our human concept or concepts of language. It functions as a model which, through due reflection on the challenge posed by the suggestion of completeness, can serve to indicate which further materials need to be assembled for us to arrive at something that might deserve being called a glimpse at the ‘essence of language’ or ‘the way language functions’. Let me add that Wittgenstein’s tale does not work by indirection alone:17 §6(b) with its remarks on teaching, training, explanation and its highly elaborate digression into the world of association and fancy marks a stark contrast between the marionette scene going with language (2), on the one hand, and a few aspects of real language use, on the other. This contrast clearly underlines the gappiness of language (2) if it is not used as an object of comparison to set off the unbounded richness of our language but misused as a picture of our full natural language or a natural language similar to ours. Moreover, §6(c) with its remark on the indispensability of context makes it plain that, sure, we may talk fruitfully about something (e.g. language (2)) in isolation but must reckon with the fact that, without its context, the isolated 31

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something could not count as something definite: without a context it would not even be an isolated something. So far I have mentioned only a few points relevant to understanding Wittgenstein’s idea of a primitive language or language-game. And I do not intend to say much more. But before trying to draw together the different strands of my chapter in the light of my earlier question regarding irony and wordplay I should like to take advantage of the fact that Wittgenstein’s characterization of language (2) is a description he himself commented on several times in his later writings. Of what is probably the most interesting one of these comments there exist at least three different versions.18 The only version I have seen referred to and quoted in the literature is the one published in Zettel, which (understandably but unfortunately) does not give variant readings. This version was clipped from a typescript which, in its turn, was published as the second volume of Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology. It is longer than the remark in Zettel and follows a couple of additional comments on §2. The published typescript is based on manuscripts which contain roughly the same text plus another interesting remark later discarded by Wittgenstein. In his manuscript the comment reads as follows: And here one would have to say something about my language-game no 2. – Under what circumstances would one really call the sounds produced by the builder, etc., a language? Under all circumstances? Certainly not! – Was it wrong, then, to isolate a rudiment of language and call it language? Should one really say that this rudiment is a language-game only in the context of the whole that we are used to calling our language? Now, above all the context is not the mental accompaniment of speech (‘meaning’ and ‘understanding’) which in one’s imagination one tends to regard as essential to language. Of course one has a right to declare language-game no 2 a degenerate language,19 but after all the same is true of those language-games with which20 children begin to talk. The only thing I should find dangerous would be if someone said: ‘Look, you tacitly presuppose that these humans think; that in this respect they are similar to human beings as we know them; that in playing this language-game they do not proceed purely mechanically. For if you imagined that this is what they do, you yourself would not call it speech.’ Now, what should I answer him? Of course it is true that in many respects the life of those people must be similar to ours, and that I did not say anything about these similarities. //and that I did not explicitly mention these similarities.// But the important point is precisely this: that I can imagine their thinking to be rudimentary 32

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//primitive//; that there is such a thing as ‘primitive thinking’ which is to be described by way of primitive behaviour.21 No doubt these remarks contain a great number of interesting points some of which I shall simply ignore. But I shall use these remarks to begin to summarize some ideas which have been touched on in this chapter: 1 A scene like the one involving our builders can be described in different ways, and while certain ways would justify our talking of a language, others would be such that the sounds-cum-behaviour described would not deserve the name ‘language’. Now, it is interesting that Wittgenstein does not call language-game 2 a fragment of our language but a rudiment, which suggests that it is an elementary, a basic structure which is far from fully developed. On the other hand, its not being fully developed suggests that it could develop into something more complex – something which, even if it is not our language, would approximate to it. In other words, a rudiment is an early or primitive stage in the development of something much richer. 2 Wittgenstein says that one may call language-game 2 a degenerate language.22 He does not say that one ought to call it that, but he admits that one has a right to do so. Of course, one might want to think that this is not really different from speaking of a primitive language. And up to a point this is unexceptionable, but I think that ‘degenerate’ has a special use here which does not entirely overlap with any of the uses of ‘primitive’ we have mentioned so far. First, it recalls §19, where ‘Slab!’ and, implicitly, the other shouts of language 2, too, are called ‘degenerate sentences’. This use of the word ‘degenerate’ is explained by comparison with the expression ‘degenerate hyperbola’. One might also think of other passages in Wittgenstein’s writings, such as his justly famous observation that tautologies can be seen as degenerate sentences on the side of truth (RFM, p. 167 [III, §33]). At any rate, the idea is that what is degenerate is a kind of borderline case, something to be found at one of the extreme end points of an array of phenomena; and its extremity is supposed to be such that one would hardly count it as an instance of the relevant class (language, sentence, etc.) unless certain efforts permitted it to be seen as related to standard members of that class, even though one may have to invent intermediate links to perceive clearly that it may form part of the chain of phenomena in question. Although both rudiments and degenerate cases can be conceived as something primitive, they count as primitive relative to different kinds of development. Talking of rudiments suggests a genealogical way of looking at things: rudiments are early stages that can, but need not, unfold and develop into something much richer. A degenerate case, on the other hand, is a case that is added to a large group of standard examples because from a certain perspective it can be seen as just about belonging to the same group. But it 33

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is only by courtesy, as it were, that one will count it as a specimen of the relevant class. 3 Another interesting point that cannot really be discussed here is that Wittgenstein claims that the language-games by means of which children learn their mother tongue are not to be seen as segments of a full language but as primitive languages in the sense of degenerate games. That must mean that they are more like models or borderline cases of our adult use of language. I take it that this may involve the possibility of attributing properties to these games which do not belong to our adult use. A possible candidate worth scrutinizing would be the property of completeness (or, perhaps, closure). 4 What is the danger Wittgenstein perceives in the comment made by his imaginary interlocutor? I think it is the following: as Wittgenstein’s reply suggests, there is some truth in what the interlocutor is saying, but this truth needs to be brought out in a more circumspect way than by simply agreeing that in describing a language like 2 and intending it to be the description of a language, one presupposes that the builders think. Simply agreeing to that might be misconstrued in the sense of the position explicitly attacked in §32. That is the position according to which a child learning his mother tongue could be regarded as someone who can ‘already think, only not yet speak. And “think” would here mean something like “talk to itself ”’. This is precisely the position which Wittgenstein is attacking in the early sections of the Investigations, and Wittgenstein’s awareness of the danger lurking in agreeing to the alleged presupposition confirms the importance of seeing §§1 and 2 as essentially connected with §32: there are very close ties between them.23 The danger lurking in agreeing too hastily to the supposed presupposition can be avoided by talking about thinking only by way of behaviour. That does not mean behaviourism; it merely means that without a conception of the life and language of the purported thinkers you have no effective means of talking about their capacities of thinking. A description of primitive behaviour may then justify an ascription of a primitive form of thinking. But that will depend on a number of features of that description, and Wittgenstein does not claim that there is a simple correlation between complexity or primitiveness of behaviour, on the one hand, and complexity or primitiveness of language, on the other. In our discussion we have distinguished various meanings, or shades of meaning, of the word ‘primitive’. Most of them involve the idea of a comparatively low degree of complexity. Two additional connotations were brought in by the expressions ‘rudimentary’ and ‘degenerate’. In all these senses the word ‘primitive’ may also bear the more or less pejorative connotation mentioned earlier. But what is essential to remember in the context of language-games is that a 34

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primitive language – and a language-game (in the relevant or narrow sense)24 is a primitive language – is not really a language. It may be a rudiment, a fragment or a model of a language, but it is not language in anything one might wish to call the full sense of that word. All language-games (in the relevant or narrow sense) are primitive languages, but not all language-games are primitive: many of them may turn out to be extremely complex. Just look at the list in §23, and you will certainly find quite a few you would not wish to call ‘primitive’, even though you may find it revealing to construct more primitive versions than those we are familiar with. What is the point of introducing the concept ‘language-game’ or ‘primitive language’? Surely there must be a number of correct and useful answers to this question. But the main point is connected with their not being real language: they have a much higher degree of clarity and simplicity, and hence of Übersichtlichkeit, than real language. For this reason their position is that of ‘objects of comparison’ (as Wittgenstein writes in §130) ‘which are meant to throw light on the facts [Verhältnisse, perhaps: means or powers] of our language by way not only of similarities, but also of dissimilarities’. This, I take it, is a valid point and a fruitful one. At the same time it helps elucidate why there is all this irony in the first sections of the book. For if you remember what we were told as children, namely, that one ought not to compare apples with pears, you will quickly see that in the case of languagegames the possibilities of comparison are limited. We may be able to compare different language-games but what, strictly speaking, we cannot do is compare language-games with our real language.25 It was exactly because we had no grip on our language that we started isolating or constructing those language-games. But we do not want them merely to throw light on each other; we want them to clarify our language or, perhaps, Sprache überhaupt. Of course, this cannot work in a straightforward manner. For there is no possible procedure for making direct comparisons between language-games and language. The microcosm of a language-game does not reveal a full mirror image of the macrocosm of language. But by positioning a number of microcosmic images in such a way that they reflect each other as well as some aspects of the macrocosm we hope to gain a better understanding of language in general.26 Thus, if we speak of ‘comparison’ here, the word is used in a loose sense. But at the same time we must be aware of the fact that we should not be able to isolate, construct or grasp primitive languages unless we already knew how to operate that vast instrument called ‘language’. Only, it is not really an instrument; otherwise we should not find it impossible to make comparisons in the strict sense between a model, or models, and the genuine article. But we know that models, certain kinds of language-games, can be helpful. And these models include calculi and logical systems as well as all the various kinds of language-games described or alluded to by Wittgenstein. But no single kind of language-game will get us very far, let alone permit us to grasp the 35

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essence of language. We may use all the models there are; and we are able to make use of them because we have practical knowledge of how to use language. The irony of the early sections of the Investigations serves two purposes: first, it indicates that the essence of language is something we shall never grasp. The most we can achieve is insight into primitive forms, rudiments and degenerate examples of the way language functions. The irony underlines that this is precious little but, at the same time, better than nothing – we may count ourselves fortunate to have that much at our disposal.27 Second, the irony helps identify a central issue motivating a good deal of what is going on in the Investigations. The issue is connected with the question how pictures of the essence of language mislead us into holding faulty ideas about linguistic meaning. It can be put by asking: what is the right manner of talking about language? How is it possible to talk about language by means of discussing fragments, rudiments or degenerate forms of language if you do not know how to specify what they are fragments, rudiments or degenerate forms of? But putting these questions bluntly, the answers you will receive are (if you receive any at all) not likely to help you much. Only by seeing the mixture of impossibilities and hopes from a perspective like the one suggested by Wittgenstein’s ironical remarks will you be able to steer clear of a primitive conception of something which may fruitfully be approached via a conception of something primitive.

Notes 1 ‘The Augustinian Picture’ – this is the title of the first chapter of the first volume of Gordon Baker and Peter Hacker’s magisterial commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Baker and Hacker 1980). 2 Rhees’s translation (TS 226) as revised by Wittgenstein (in bold type) runs as follows: ‘In these words we get – it seems to me – a definite picture of the nature of human language. Namely this: the words of language name objects – sentences are combinations of such names. | In this picture of human language we find the root of the idea: every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated to the word. It is the object which the word stands for’. 3 TS 226: ‘That philosophical concept of meaning is at home in a primitive picture of the way in which our language functions. But we might also say that it is a picture of a more primitive language than ours.’ I think that ‘But one [we] might as well say . . .’ captures the force of Wittgenstein’s German words best. 4 Published in volume IV (see especially pp. 10–1) of the so-called Wiener Ausgabe of Wittgenstein’s writings between 1929 and 1933 and, of course, in the Bergen Electronic Edition of Wittgenstein’s Nachlass. 5 A ‘clean’ version (i.e. the TS text without Wittgenstein’s manuscript changes) has been published as volume XI of the Wiener Ausgabe. See chapter II, §7, entitled ‘Der Begriff der Bedeutung stammt aus einer primitiven Auffassung der Sprache her’. 6 This is Rhees’s edition of Wittgenstein’s German translation of the Brown Book. 7 I.e. MS 142, published in the Kritisch-genetische Edition of Philosophische Untersuchungen.

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8 TS 226: ‘Let us imagine a language for which the description which Augustine has given would be correct. The language is to be the means of communication between a builder A and his assistant B. A is constructing a building out of building blocks; there are cubes, columns, slabs and beams. B has to hand him the buildingstones in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose they use a language consisting of the words: “cube”, “column”, “slab”, “beam”. A calls out the words; – B brings the stone that he has learned to bring at this call. | Regard this as a complete primitive language’. 9 In the relevant sense (that is, the sense I am interested in in this chapter) all language-games are ‘constructed’. In the case of ‘invented’ language-games this is obvious; in the case of ‘natural language-games’ their description involves selection – they too are isolated objects of comparison. For the distinction between natural and invented language-games, see the essay ‘Language-Games’ in Baker and Hacker (1980). (Cf. the qualification spelled out in footnote 24, below.) 10 Here I am, of course, thinking of young Wittgenstein’s use of ‘Urbild’, ‘Urzeichen’, ‘primitive proposition’, ‘Elementarsatz’, etc. 11 See my papers ‘Chor und Gesetz: Zur “morphologischen Methode” bei Goethe und Wittgenstein’ (Schulte 1990) and ‘Goethe and Wittgenstein on Morphology’ (Schulte 2003). 12 Here I am thinking of Tractatus (4.001) ‘Die Gesamtheit der Sätze ist die Sprache – The totality of propositions is language’. In this passage ‘die Sprache’ is ‘Sprache überhaupt’. As will become clearer in the course of this chapter, much of §§1ff. of the Investigations can, in my view, be read as (ironical) comments on this proposition of the Tractatus. 13 TS 226: ‘We could imagine that the language (4) [=(2)] is the entire language of A and B; even the entire language of a tribe. The children are brought up to carry out the activities in question, to use such & such words to react in such & such a way to the words of others’. 14 Rhees 1970: 81. 15 Malcolm 1995: 172–81. 16 Rhees 1970: 83. Cf. Warren Goldfarb (1983). On p. 270 Goldfarb says that the ‘imagined builders do seem mechanical and animal-like’. It is interesting to see that Mulhall (2001) calls the shopkeeper scene in §1 an ‘oddly mechanical tale’ and remarks that the shopkeeper’s way with words may strike us ‘as surreal and oddly mechanical’ (p. 46). 17 Of course, ‘directness’ is a relative term: what to me seems a direct way of conveying something may seem to be an indirect way to another person. But apparently Wittgenstein, who preferred direct forms of speech when addressing relatives and friends, could not stomach a high degree of directness in his philosophical writing. (By the way, directness is by no means the same thing as simplicity, clarity or vividness of description.) 18 Further interesting comments can, for example, be found in RFM, pp. 343 (VI, §40) and 433 (VII, §71). 19 Wittgenstein’s German seems to mean ‘explain language-game no 2 as a degenerate language’ but I think he intends ‘declare . . .’. 20 Perhaps ‘by means of which’. 21 My translation. A transcription of the German original can be found in the Appendix. 22 It goes without saying that the German word ‘degeneriert’ is generally used pejoratively – cf. ‘primitiv’. 23 The importance of seeing the connections between §§1 and 32 has been underlined by Eike von Savigny. See his comments on these sections in his commentary on the Investigations (von Savigny 1994). See also Oswald Hanfling 1989: 60f.

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24 The ‘relevant or narrow sense’ of the expression ‘language-game’ is that of most occurrences of ‘language-game’ in PI. However, there is another use of this phrase where it does not mean more than ‘use of the word “X” ’ or ‘use of language’ in some general way. As examples one might mention §§71 (‘I mean the language-game with the word “game[/play]” ’) and 249 (‘Lying is a languagegame that needs to be learned like any other one’). In the former case the phrase ‘language-game’ is tantamount to ‘use of the word “game/play”’; in the latter it is simply employed to stress the fact that language use involves mastery of a large number of techniques. These sorts of ‘wide’ or ‘loose’ uses of the expression ‘language-game’ are Cambridge parlance of the 1930s and 1940s; it simply serves the purpose of stressing the ‘use’ aspect of language. It is this loose sense Wittgenstein himself employs when he speaks of the ‘language-game with the word “pain” ’ (§300), for instance. Throughout this chapter I use the phrase ‘language-game’ in its narrow sense (cf. footnote 9, above). The necessity of making this qualification explicit was pointed out to me by Cora Diamond. 25 I should emphasize two respects in which attempts at making comparisons are bound to prove futile: (1) is a matter of size, as it were. If you look at a puddle of water, on the one hand, and at the ocean, on the other, there is not much you can learn from this ‘comparison’, except for the fact that the two terms of your pair are not really comparable. (2) is a matter of use. If the notes are looked at as material objects, a note of counterfeit money may fruitfully be compared with a note of genuine money. But as far as their uses qua counterfeit vs. genuine money are concerned, they diverge too dramatically to permit useful comparison. 26 The point that in §2 our concept of (a) language is alluded to and indirectly discussed has been noted by Stephen Mulhall in his interesting account of that passage (Mulhall 2001), where he says: ‘In effect, Wittgenstein has constructed a fictional context of a particular sort, and invited us to project our concept of a language into that context’ (p. 54). 27 Of course, to some extent the irony is self-irony. In the Blue Book Wittgenstein had expressed his hope that ‘we can build up the complicated forms [of language] from the primitive ones by gradually adding new forms’ (p. 17), and great chunks of the Brown Book were parts of an attempt to develop a rich language (‘our language’) from simple building-blocks in a constructive manner. When in autumn 1936 Wittgenstein stopped working on his German translation of the Brown Book and embarked on a new manuscript, which later became the Urfassung of PI, the break with that sanguine notion was consummated and found expression in the irony of his later writings. The radicalness and importance of this break became clearer to me in the course of extremely helpful conversations with Peter Hacker.

Bibliography Baker, G.P. and Hacker P.M.S. (1980) Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning, An Analytical Commentary on the ‘Philosophical Investigations’, vol. 1, Oxford: Blackwell. Goldfarb, W. (1983) ‘I Want You to Bring Me a Slab: Remarks on the Opening Sections of the Philosophical Investigations’, Synthese 56: 265–82. Hanfling, O. (1989) Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy, London: Macmillan. Malcolm (1995) ‘Language-game (2)’, in Malcolm, Wittgensteinian Themes: Essays 1978–1989, ed. by Georg Henrik von Wright, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

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Mulhall, S. (2001) Inheritance and Originality: Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Oxford: Clarendon. Rhees, R. (1970) ‘Wittgenstein’s Builders’, in Rhees, Discussions of Wittgenstein, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Schulte, J. (1990) ‘Chor und Gesetz: Zur “morphologischen Methode” bei Goethe und Wittgenstein’, in Schulte, Chor und Gesetz, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. –––– (2003) ‘Goethe and Wittgenstein on Morphology’, in F. Breithaupt, R. Raatzsch and B. Kremberg (eds) Goethe and Wittgenstein, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, pp. 55–72. von Savigny, E. (1994) Wittgensteins ‘Philosophische Untersuchungen’: Ein Kommentar für Leser, 2nd edn, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.

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APPENDIX The following remarks are taken from MS 136 (3/1/48). |53a| ?/ Und hier müßte man etwas über mein Sprachspiel N° 2 sagen. – Unter welchen Umständen würde man die Laute des Bauenden etc., wirklich eine Sprache nennen? Unter allen? Gewiß nicht! – War es nun falsch, ein Sprachrudiment zu isolieren & es Sprache zu nennen? Soll man etwa sagen, daß dies Rudiment nur in der Umgebung des Ganzen, was wir unsre Sprache zu nennen gewohnt sind, ein Sprachspiel ist?? ?/ Nun, vor allem ist die Umgebung nicht die geistige Begleitung des Sprechens (das ,Meinen‘ & ,Verstehen‘) das man sich als der Sprache wesentlich vorzustellen geneigt ist. 冕 1 Man hat natürlich ein Recht, das Sprachspiel No 2 als eine degenerierte Sprache zu erklären, aber das sind ja auch die Sprachspiele mit denen die Kinder zu sprechen anfangen. / Gefährlich wäre es mir nur, wenn |53b| einer sagte: ,,Du setzt eben stillschweigend schon voraus, daß diese Menschen denken; daß sie in dieser Beziehung den uns bekannten Menschen gleichen; daß sie jenes Sprachspiel nicht rein mechanisch betreiben. Denn stelltest Du Dir vor, sie täten’s, so würdest Du’s selbst nicht ein Sprechen nennen.“ Was soll ich nun dem antworten? Es ist natürlich wahr, daß das Leben jener Menschen dem unsern in vieler Beziehung gleichen muß, & daß ich über diese Ähnlichkeiten nichts gesagt habe. //& daß ich diese Ähnlichkeiten nicht weiter erwähnt habe.// Das Wichtige ist aber ist eben, daß ich mir ihre Sprache, wie auch ihr Denken rudimentär //primitiv// vorstellen kann; daß es ein ,primitives Denken‘ gibt, das welches durch ein primitives Verhalten zu beschreiben ist.

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There are only inessential differences between the MS text and the TS version (TS 232, pp. 655–6, §§202–4), except for the fact that the paragraph marked 冕(= schlecht)2 has been dropped. Zettel, §99, was clipped from TS 232; changes were made in handwriting (handwriting in bold type): [Zum Sprachspiel No 2] „Du setzt eben stillschweigend schon voraus, daß diese Menschen denken; daß sie in dieser Beziehung den uns bekannten Menschen gleichen; daß sie jenes Sprachspiel nicht rein mechanisch betreiben. Denn stelltest du dir vor, //nämest Du an,// sie täten’s, so würdest du’s selbst nicht ein Sprechen //einen den Gebrauch der Sprache //einer rudimentären Sprache// nennen“. Was soll ich nun dem antworten? Es ist natürlich wahr, daß das Leben jener Menschen muß dem unsern in vieler Beziehung gleichen muß und daß ich habe über diese Aehnlichkeiten nichts gesagt habe. Das Wichtige aber ist eben, daß ich mir ihre Sprache, wie auch ihr Denken, primitiv //rudimentär// vorstellen kann/könnte sein kann, daß es ein ,primitives Denken’ gibt, welches durch ein primitives Verhalten zu beschreiben ist. Die Umgebung ist nicht die ,Denkbegleitung‘ des Sprechens. Zettel §98, which also deals with language-game no. 2, was not clipped from TS 232 but from the earlier TS 229 (remark from MS 132, 21/10/46). In Zettel, the relevant sections run as follows:

98. Sagen wir, es denke jeder, der sinnvoll spricht? Z.B. der Bauende im Sprachspiel No. 2? Könnten wir uns nicht das Bauen und Rufen der Wörter etc. in einer Umgebung denken, in der wir es mit einem Denken nicht im entferntesten in Zusammenhang brächten?

98. Do we say that anyone who is speaking significantly is thinking? For example the builder in languagegame no. 2? Couldn’t we imagine him building and calling out the words in surroundings in which we should not connect this even remotely with thinking?

99. (Zum Sprachspiel No. 2) „Du setzt eben stillschweigend schon voraus, daß diese Menschen denken; daß sie in dieser Beziehung den uns bekannten Menschen gleichen; daß sie jenes betreiben. Denn stelltest du dir vor, sie täten’s, so würdest du’s selbst nicht den Gebrauch einer rudimentären Sprache nennen.

99. (On language-game no. 2) You are just tacitly assuming that these people think; that they are like people as we know them in that respect; that they do not carry on that languagegame merely mechanically. For if you imagined them doing that, you yourself would not call it the use of a rudimentary language. 40

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

Was soll ich nun dem antworten? Es ist natürlich wahr, das Leben jener Menschen muß dem unsern in vieler Beziehung gleichen, und ich habe über diese Ähnlichkeiten nichts gesagt. Das Wichtige aber ist, daß ihre Sprache, wie auch ihr Denken, rudimentär sein kann, daß es ein ,primitives Denken‘ gibt, welches durch ein primitives Verhalten zu beschreiben ist. Die Umgebung ist nicht die ,Denkbegleitung‘ des Sprechens.

Notes to Appendix 1 Crossed out ?/ 2 In most cases this mark does not signify that Wittgenstein does not agree with the ‘content’ of the relevant remark; it often means that he is dissatisfied with his way of expressing it.

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3 DIAGNOSIS AND THERAPY Christening simple objects PI 38–64 Eike von Savigny

1 Wittgenstein at philosophical diagnosis and therapy My aim in this chapter is to clarify, by way of looking at PI 38–64, what it is that Wittgenstein is doing where he engages in philosophical diagnosis and therapy, and to show, at the same time, that this is what he is engaging in in that sequence. Wittgenstein is famous for having canvassed, in his later work, for the idea that the main task of the philosopher consists in freeing philosophizing people of their problems rather than just in clarifying their problems or even in helping them to find solutions. This has commonly been called his ‘therapeutic’ way of doing philosophy. The word ‘therapy’, however, can be misleading since it tends to hide the fact that Wittgensteinian therapy is a completely rational, intellectual enterprise. Let me give an example of what it is not, and contrast it with one of what it actually is. Imagine you have just proven to your own satisfaction that non-human animals do not have non-derived rights because man, as the most highly developed creature, is the aim and purpose of nature, which means that nonderived rights apply to man only whereas rights of animals, if they exist, must be derived from human rights and from corresponding human duties (like the duty not to do cruel things to animals because this will weaken your disposition to be kind to humans). Now as night falls you are out in a place where there is a wonderfully clear sky with myriads of twinkling stars. You lie down on your back and gaze at the sky in amazement. Stars, enormously far away, enormously many. Where are we? At the centre of the universe? Or are we just lost and lonely, negligible things in a negligible place? Stars, all of them suns like our own one, perhaps with planets like our earth, and perhaps with life on some planets – intelligent life? Who are we? Anything special? Remarkable in any respect? Suddenly you find yourself sobbing. 42

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Your sense of superiority is gone, and thinking again about non-derived rights you simply do not understand any longer how you could think such silly things about a human top position in nature. You do not trust your own reasons any longer – surely they must have been special pleading. You may even come to feel that there is no case to be argued – you have taken resort to moral reasoning because it promised to help you in avoiding a decision on what kind of person you want to be. (That may be different with different people, of course.) You have undergone philosophical therapy – you have been cured of a moral conviction that had been established by an argument in moral philosophy. Because you permitted yourself to wonder at the stars, and at your position with respect to them, your moral make-up has been disturbed by a deep emotional shock. What distinguishes this from Wittgenstein’s way of therapy is mainly the fact that you did not need to analyse your own reasoning, to look for mistakes in it, and to find out why you made the mistakes in the first place. Part of a therapeutic attempt in Wittgenstein’s way might have gone somewhat like this: ‘Well, there is a top of the staircase, and whoever is on top is the one who has climbed highest. And in a democratic republic, there will be public offices, and you may be elected to a higher office, and if you have been elected to an office such that you cannot be elected to a higher one, then you are president (or prime minister, as the case may be). And if you march steadily north until you cannot march north any further, then you will be at the north pole. But if you march further east than anyone else, does that mean that you have approached the east pole?’ That is, Wittgenstein might have directed your attention to your faulty reasoning from being the most developed creature to being the end of development – without, however, explicitly saying that this was a mistake you committed. On the contrary, his usual practice is to illustrate your mistake without even saying what he is illustrating. You have to find out for yourself; otherwise, you won’t see through your mistake, let alone why you made it. You will not have gained real insight. In my little example, he might have pointed, in this indirect way, to other mistakes instead: that of confusing the last step of a process with its purpose; or that of mistaking the top of phylogenetic development for the top of a moral hierarchy; or that of confusing the top of a hierarchy of rights and duties with the origin of such rights and duties – or what have you. In all likelihood, he would also have directed your attention to possible motives for defending a special human position, and would have done it in the same way – by adducing parallel examples. (Of course, he would have done better than I did just now.) What matters for present purposes is that it is all being done in a perfectly cool, calm and collected style; there is nothing emotional about it. In the interest of insight, it is all reason and argument, even if implicitly so, designed to provoke his readers to think for themselves. And this procedure remains implicit to a degree that can, at times, drive his readers crazy because it can be terribly difficult to find out what he wants to show. 43

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As therapy, in Wittgenstein, is all reason and argument, it can easily be mistaken for the philosophical activity of establishing or refuting a position. Now, both activities can be found in the Investigations, practising therapy as well as establishing certain views. Very often, it is a matter of hard exegetical work to find out what he is doing in a given passage. Our sequence (PI 38–64) is a case in point: at first sight, Wittgenstein is busy refuting a philosophical theory; in fact, the sequence consists of ever so many examples of critical reasoning. But as we have just seen, this is what we have to expect from his kind of therapeutic activity, too; and what I want to show is that it is the latter task Wittgenstein is pursuing here. I understand that such an interpretation is anything but trivial: first, because the theory Wittgenstein seems to be proving wrong is a close relative of a view defended in his Tractatus (which he famously rejected in his later work), and second, because I am obliged to offer a hypothesis on what the target of Wittgenstein’s diagnosis is. In section 2 of this chapter, I shall briefly indicate why it is acceptable to treat our sequence as a coherent string of remarks. In section 3, I shall try to understand the metaphysical theory, stated in §39 and 46, that it is concerned with, and I shall conclude that Wittgenstein does not tell us what a metaphysically minded philosopher might think its explanatory value to consist in. In sections 4 and 5, I shall argue, by way of detailed analyses of §§40–5 and a brief summary of the remaining remarks, that the text is restricted to philosophical diagnosis and therapeutic suggestions; it does not make a case for or against anything. In section 6, I shall argue that the basic diagnosis is the following: the theory’s alleged achievement consists in a fake explanation of the invented ‘fact’ that a solitary speaker can create a language by helping himself to ostensive definitions.

2 Why do PI 38 to 64 form a sequence? Since I want to present PI 38–64 as aiming at diagnosing exactly one philosophical misconception, I have to give reasons for thinking that the sequence really forms a coherent whole. This is not seriously controversial (although there may be good reasons for letting it begin with PI 37), which permits me to be brief. Viewed from inside, all sections of this sequence concern a metaphysical theory about what a genuine name is. This question is never again taken up in the book. Also, our sequence has an unusually perspicuous organization: §§38–9 outline the interlocutor’s problem and his theory. Sections 40–5 examine the idea that having a bearer is necessary for a word to be a name (the name-bearer relation being the primary source of meaning for the metaphysical theory). Section 46 quotes Plato for some themes that are involved in the §39 theory and to be discussed in what follows: simplicity of ‘primary elements’ in §§47–9, their necessary existence in §50, and the naïve relation 44

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of designation (of ‘primary elements’ by their names) in §§51–4. The text of §§55–64 makes repeated attempts to diagnose claims, taken verbatim or almost verbatim from §§39 and 46, that are central to the opponent’s theory: §§55–6 on the connection between indestructibility and simplicity, §57 on indestructibility, §58 on the necessary existence of name-bearers, and §59–64 on simplicity and unique analysis. Viewed from outside, the preceding text, up to §37, has discussed themes from §1, and has succeeded in driving Wittgenstein’s interlocutor into a corner (on which see more below in section 6) where resorting to a helpful theory seems natural. The subsequent text, starting with §65, is highlighted as introducing a new theme by the sentence: Here we come up against the great question that lies behind all these considerations. Wittgenstein then starts discussing a new question, maybe the question whether or not, in natural languages, terms are used according to explicit rules, maybe the question whether or not there is just one kind of linguistic activity – whatever you think he is discussing there, it is not the question of the existence or necessity of ‘genuine names’ and of what may follow if they do exist. Thus, our sequence looks coherent from inside, and it appears clearly demarcated from the remaining text. We may safely treat it as a coherent string of remarks.

3 What does the metaphysical theory say? In this sequence, Wittgenstein examines a kind of metaphysical reasoning; so much will be uncontroversial. That is, Wittgenstein deals with an opponent who invents all kinds of funny things and surprising ‘facts’ – all well and good, but why should anyone be interested? Or, to ask the question in more practical terms: why should an author who has been concerned, in PI 1–37, with how things must stand for words and sentences to be meaningful, all of a sudden devote twenty-seven sections to that funny theory? Postponing a detailed answer until section 6, let us use the following heuristic device: Wittgenstein was an outspoken opponent of philosophical theories, as misotheoric as they come. For this professed aversion, just compare these famous lines from PI 109: And we may not advance any kind of theory. There must not be anything hypothetical in our considerations. We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place. This is what his declarations come to. It is controversial whether he really followed, or might, indeed, have been able to follow, this sweeping battle-cry 45

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in practice; but the controversy need not concern us here since the theory under consideration is sure to be one of those which he really wanted to teach philosophers to get rid of. Note that the lines just quoted also refer to Wittgenstein’s reason for warning philosophers not to build theories: they tend to do it in order to explain an alleged discovery that they have made up in order to extricate themselves from some deep puzzlement. So our heuristics will consist in interpreting the theory as an attempt at explaining an alleged fact, and this alleged fact will have to be one that Wittgenstein’s interlocutor has resorted to somewhere between PI 1 and PI 38. Whether or not the heuristics is fruitful will, of course, have to be measured against its exegetical success. The metaphysical reasoning is laid out explicitly, and it is laid out twice (§§39, 46). The text, however, interweaves its themes to such a degree that the focus of attention becomes unclear: real names are supposed to need bearers to be meaningful; bearers of real names exist necessarily; bearers of real names are simple; bearers of real names cannot be described (they can only be named); real names are the elementary parts resulting from an analysis of ordinary sentences; unless real names resulted from such an analysis, ordinary sentences would be meaningless. Some parts of the text link these themes in such a way that individual claims look as if they were explained or established by other ones; however, the resulting sketch of a metaphysical theory is incomplete and ambiguous. I shall begin by trying to understand the ‘Excalibur’ argument from §39 and the major supplementary ideas from the Theaetetus, quoted in §46, in order to find out why a proponent of the metaphysical theory might find it useful. Part of the idea of the ‘Excalibur’ argument is that when a whole has been destroyed in such a way that its destructible parts, too, (including the destructible parts of destructible parts, etc.) have been destroyed, we arrive at indestructible elements; and these are simple, i.e. they do not have parts. The destructibility of a whole is explained, quasi-causally, by its not being simple (its having parts); this is Wittgenstein’s reason for using ‘to break up’ (‘zerschlagen’) with respect to the destruction of Excalibur. (If Excalibur had been destroyed by melting it down, no unmeltable parts would have resulted.) The existence of simples, on the other hand, or what comes to the same, the ‘fact’ that indestructible parts are simple, is not explained; it is postulated for the purpose of getting the explanation of destructibility going. This is a metaphysical inference to the best explanation; it makes use of the additional independent postulate that the destruction of parts, of parts of parts, etc., cannot go on forever. Given the speculative boldness manifested by the whole enterprise, the additional postulate may seem to reflect the natural and insignificant mistake of supposing that for a complex to be composite, there must have been a finite process of composing it. It is, however, also an instance of a more general idea which I call the ‘this-cannot-go-on-forever’ 46

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postulate. I shall comment on its relevance to the interlocutor’s clinging to his metaphysical theory in section 6(b). The ‘Excalibur’ argument assumes that if an object a consists of the same parts as an object b, and if both objects have been composed from these parts in different ways,1 then if ␣ is the name of a, it is not the name of b. Furthermore, the argument assumes that if the composition of the parts of an object a has been undone, then a does not exist any longer, and if ␣ used to be the name of a, it is no longer a (meaningful) name. The second case may even be considered a special case of the first one; for the heap of pieces that remains after Excalibur has been decomposed is just another object consisting of the same parts differently composed. In Wittgenstein’s view, it is important for the metaphysical theory that putting together the same parts in different ways results in different complexes; for he spends several sections in examining its converse, namely, the claim that there is just one way of dismantling a complex into parts. In §39, the idea is presupposed: ‘So the word “Excalibur” must disappear in the course of an analysis of the sense’*;2 I take ‘an analysis’ to mean ‘the only correct analysis’, which implies that for a given sentence, there is just one translation that contains only ‘real names’. The ontological counterpart is, of course, that there is one and only one way in which a complex is composed of simples; putting together the same elements in a different way would not result in the same complex. Sections 48–9 treat this idea directly with reference to the Theaetetus passage, and §§59–64 treat its semantic version that sentences have just one analysis by which to arrive at their real meanings. (In §60, there is the same transition from the idea that a broom is actually composed of broomstick and brush to the idea that a sentence about a broom is really about broomstick and brush, as there is, in §39, the transition from the idea that if Excalibur has been destroyed – which means recomposed in the form of a heap – then the sentence ‘Excalibur has a sharp blade’ is no longer about anything.) Now the difficulty the argument is designed to treat is not anxiety about the stability of the universe; it has to do with the fear that names might loose their meanings if all things whatsoever were constantly recomposed: But if ‘Excalibur’ is the name of an object, this object no longer exists when Excalibur is broken in pieces; and as no object would then correspond to the name it would have no meaning. (PI 39) I suggest the connection between that fear and constant recomposition to be the following: recomposition means change, change means alteration, alteration means loss of identity, and what has lost its identity cannot keep its name. Thus name-bearers must have no parts because they must be unalterable; or to put it differently, they must be simple because they must have no properties. Only that which has properties can change. Elements are, in 47

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fact, treated as properties rather than as something which has properties when it comes to the opponent’s last line of retreat in §§56–8. This aspect of simplicity is emphasized by the quotation from the Theaetetus. Wittgenstein quotes the passage3 as an answer to the following question: ‘Now what is the point of saying that names really signify simples?’* (§46). We may assume that he has chosen the most informative answer he has found in the text. And what this passage – in his heavily edited version, see section 6(d) – contributes to the meaning of ‘simplicity’ is just this: everything that exists in its own right can only be named, no other determination is possible, and what exists in its own right has to be . . . named without any other determination (Wittgenstein’s omission). The result of attributing a property F to an object a is complex in the sense that if you point to a which is F, you may be pointing either to the object a or to its property F, so that your pointing gesture will be ambiguous. So I take ‘simple’ to mean ‘without properties’, and this fits very well with ‘indestructible’ meaning ‘unchangeable’. In §50, the metaphysical picture is enriched by the idea that ‘primary elements’ exist necessarily. Necessary existence is more than indestructibility, which only means that if a primary element exists, it will do so forever. Indestructibility is not a property worthless in a guarantor of meaning; for it ensures that a name-bearer will last and that christening it will fix the given name’s meaning forever. But it must first be there in order to be there forever. The general idea underlying the proof of their necessary existence is that otherwise ‘primary elements’ could not even be named, and a related idea is used in §55: since the truth of a description is independent of whether or not it is actually given, the state of affairs that would exist if it were true does exist if it is true (even if nobody has actually given the description). Therefore, the primary elements of which this state of affairs would be composed if it did exist, do exist even if it does not exist itself, because otherwise the possible description could not become true.4 I do not see a connection between this kind of necessary existence and indestructibility and take it to be a relatively independent element; in fact, Wittgenstein’s way of extracting it from Plato’s report that ‘no other determination is possible, neither that it is nor that it is not’ (which, according to Plato, was just one among several forbidden determinations) testifies to his particular interest in adding this element to his target theory. Even if we have a moderately clear idea of how the elements of the theory are thought to be connected with each other, we still do not know what, in 48

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Wittgenstein’s view, it is intended to explain. (Remember that, according to our heuristics, he denounced philosophical theories as pretending to have genuine, while possessing merely bogus, explanatory value.) He remains silent on this question. Section 39, containing the ‘Excalibur’ version of the theory, begins as follows: But why does it occur to one to want to make precisely this word [‘this’] into a name, when it evidently is not a name? – That is just the reason. For one is tempted to make an objection against what is ordinarily called a name. It can be put like this: a name ought really to signify a simple. Then the first statement of the theory follows. It is intended to ‘show’ that ‘real names’ of ‘simple objects’ are the only guarantors of linguistic meaning; but there is eloquent silence, on Wittgenstein’s part, as to what the theory could possibly explain about the fact, presupposed implicitly, that ‘this’ could be used, in the role of a ‘real name’, to signify simples. Diagnosing a philosopher’s motive for holding a theory requires finding out about its alleged explanatory value; holding the theory is just a syndrome to be diagnosed. Wittgenstein’s silence on this matter is worth noting because he describes the metaphysical theory – a syndrome characteristic of an, as yet unspecified, illness – in so much detail. More often than not, he leaves to his readers even the task of working out what the symptoms are he is busy diagnosing. Take, as a concise example of his more usual style, this beautifully phrased5 exchange from PI 435: If it is asked: ‘How do sentences manage to represent?’ – the answer might be: ‘Don’t you know? You certainly see it, when you use them.’ For nothing is concealed. How do sentences manage it*? – Don’t you know? For nothing is hidden. Here, the reader is not even told what the symptoms of the underlying philosophical illness are, how it manifests itself; fortunately, however, he has been told before, at PI 93, that what Wittgenstein has in mind is the idea of sentences achieving it to represent a state of affairs (Anscombe’s word for the German ‘Satz’, translated as ‘sentence’ in PI 435, is here ‘proposition’): [The enormous importance of propositions,] together with a misunderstanding of the logic of language, seduces us into thinking that something extraordinary, something unique, must be achieved by propositions. – A misunderstanding makes it look to us as if a proposition did something queer. 49

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Thus at PI 435, unless the reader remembers the earlier passage, he can only try to make sense of Wittgenstein’s repetition of the seductive phrases ‘How do sentences manage?’ as well as of the reassuring remarks ‘Nothing is concealed’, ‘Nothing is hidden’, and if he proceeds this way, he may be lucky enough to hit at what Wittgenstein wants to expose, namely, the idea of a sleight of hand by which the sentence manages to do the representing in the role of an active subject. (By stressing, in §93, ‘misunderstanding’, Wittgenstein also hints at the diagnosis: the expression ‘a sentence’ can occur as a syntactical subject in sentences whose predicates denote ‘activities of representation’ – a sentence expresses, reports, explains, refers, etc.) As far as I can see, this is Wittgenstein’s usual way of prompting his readers to work out for themselves that a given phrase really displays symptoms of philosophical confusion – they really have to take the trouble to find out what his remarks are diagnoses of, rather than look for theses he might be engaged in refuting. In order to establish that our sequence, as a whole, exhibits this very character of an attempt at diagnosing philosophical confusion, I shall show this in detail in the next two sections, dealing chiefly with §§40–5 (postponing some remarks on §38 to section 6, and giving only a brief summary of the diagnostic points in §§47–64).

4 The diagnostic character of PI 38–64 At first sight, the beginning of §40 looks as if it introduced a critical discussion of the ‘Excalibur’ argument that precedes it: Let us first discuss this point of the argument: that a word has no meaning if nothing corresponds to it. If construed as arguing against this premise, the remainder of the section would be weak for three reasons. First: if the word ‘meaning’ is being used illicitly if it is used to signify the thing that ‘corresponds’ to the word then there simply are no cases where ‘the meaning of “Mr N.N.”’ is (in fact, i.e. successfully) being used to signify Mr N.N.; on the other hand, if that is supposed to mean that the sentence ‘Mr N.N. is the meaning of “Mr N.N.”’ is linguistically deviant, then Wittgenstein is begging the question. Second: When Mr. N.N. dies one says that the bearer of the name dies, not that the meaning dies. And it would be nonsensical to say that, for if the name ceased to have meaning it would make no sense to say ‘Mr. N.N. is dead’. 50

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Wittgenstein here presupposes that a person who dies ceases to exist; but a defender of the argument is not forced to accept that, and it is far from clear that when we say, ‘Pegasus does not exist’, we are using ‘Pegasus’ as a name. Third, nobody ever tries to refer to Mr N.N. by using the expression ‘the bearer of the name “Mr N.N.”’. Therefore, ‘one says that the bearer of the name dies’ etc. has to be read de re: ‘one says of the bearer of the name that he dies; one does not say it of the meaning of the name’. In this context, that cannot be used as a premise because it is the very point at issue. On the whole, then, the section would be completely inconclusive if it were construed as an argument against the point ‘that a word has no meaning if nothing corresponds to it’. However, it is quite convincing if construed as a diagnosis of how someone might come to hold this opinion. For if he, in fact, confused the meaning of a name with its bearer then he would be forced to say that without a bearer nothing can be a name. In §41, Wittgenstein refers to the language-game of §15, where each tool was marked with its own sign; the builder could show his assistant one of the signs (as inscribed on a label), and the assistant would have to fetch the corresponding tool. The present section describes three situations which agree in that the sign the builder shows his assistant is no longer attached to any intact tool and that this failure, on the part of the sign, causes the mark to lose or change its use and, thereby, its meaning. Therefore, being attached to a tool – ‘having a bearer’ – is relevant to a mark’s being a meaningful name to the extent that the language-games the mark is used in causally require that people can actually have dealings with the bearer. This may be the case in some language-games,6 and if we think only of these we will be prone to think that there are no names without a bearer. This, then, is the diagnostic point of the section. There are two ways to read the first sentence of §42. (We are still dealing with variations on the language-game of §15.) Anscombe translates the German ‘etwa auch’ as ‘for instance also’: But has for instance a name which has never been used for a tool also got a meaning in that game? This is lexically possible; however, it fits better with the exchange between Wittgenstein and his interlocutor to read the sentence as the latter’s rhetorical question (translating ‘etwa auch’ as ‘even’): But have even names that have never been used for a tool got meaning in that game? That is, the interlocutor expresses his bewilderment in view of the possibility of someone’s going so far in neglecting the necessity of name-bearers. Once again, Wittgenstein’s answer would be a weak reason for the conclusion that there may, in fact, be such eternally void names; for he describes just one 51

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possible use, namely, that the assistant has to shake his head when shown such a sign, which might be ‘a sort of joke between them’. Certainly, this use does not characterize the sign as a name. On a charitable interpretation, Wittgenstein does not discuss the interlocutor’s question but asks him to imagine situations, perhaps even fantastical ones, that will help him to see that having dealings with a bearer may be just one among many features of using a sign that turn it into a name. Postponing my interpretation of §43 to section 5, I now turn to §44, where Wittgenstein asks us to imagine a use of names that ‘are used only in the presence of the bearer’; would these be the metaphysical theory’s ‘real names’, as distinct from ‘Excalibur’ and other ordinary names? This might be a diagnostic step: has the opponent rashly generalized from such examples? Actually, there are such names, e.g. certain ceremonial forms of address such as ‘Your Majesty’. However, they are simply too rare to lure anyone into a general theory; there may be more to the idea: But we can imagine a language-game with names (that is, with signs which we should certainly include among names) in which they are used only in the presence of the bearer; and so could always be replaced by a demonstrative pronoun accompanied by* the gesture of pointing. What matters for ‘Excalibur’, as distinguished from such names, turns out to be that if Excalibur has been destroyed it is no longer present rather than that it does not exist any longer. The therapeutic intention has shifted from the need for a name-bearer to the question whether names are really (or whether ‘real names’ are) similar to demonstratives. Since the following §45 abandons this question and prefers to ask whether demonstratives are names, we are expected to answer the present question for ourselves. A simple answer would be: even if using the names in question could be replaced by demonstrative uses of ‘this’, that would not turn them into demonstratives, because they would still lack most of the characteristic uses of the latter ones. Perhaps Wittgenstein is here hinting at a deeper point. Speaking about what is present in one’s surroundings may, indeed, be a use of language which is basic in some way or other. And in such cases, you can direct your own and other people’s attention to what you are speaking about. This fact, however, must not be confused with the idea that you can speak about things because you can direct your own and other people’s attention to them. The first half of §45 presents a fine example of a peculiarly Wittgensteinian technique: The demonstrative ‘this’ can never be without a bearer. It might be said: ‘so long as there is a this, the word “this” has a meaning too, whether this is simple or complex’. 52

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This way of expressing the matter lends itself equally well to reporting metaphysical discoveries as to describing the trivial facts that the discoveries boil down to. Reading the sentences metaphysically, we get:

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‘This’, the demonstrative, has a bearer of necessity. Or even: Let there be a possible object of attention; this will suffice for ‘this’ to be meaningful, and this can be achieved with simple as well as with complex objects.

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that does not make the word into a name. On the contrary: for a name is not used with, but only explained by means of, the gesture of pointing. Before turning to my last detailed analysis, that of §43, let me summarize without argument what I take to be the main diagnostic and therapeutic points of the remainder of our sequence: the idea that there is simplicity independently of any context, i.e. prior to all language-games (§47) – an idea which is grounded in one context’s being so suggestive that one tends to be blind to the possibility of moving to another one (§48); confusing an activity like that of marking an object with a sign with establishing minimal linguistic contact through pure naming (§49); sliding down the following chute: for the name to be used in a given language-game, it is necessary that a bearer of the name exists – it is necessary that a bearer of the name, as used in this language-game, exists – it is necessary that a bearer of the name, which is used in this language-game, exists – it is necessary that a bearer of the name exists – necessarily, the name has an existing bearer – the name has a necessarily existing bearer – there is a necessarily existing object that is the bearer of the name (§50); failing to think about what ‘being the name of’ may really amount to and therefore failing to realize that this relation can obtain in virtue of the most diverse sorts of situations (§§51–4); making the very same mistake of oversimplification with respect to the roles of standards in the use of words (§§55–6); confusing the senselessness of a sentence with its expressing a metaphysical impossibility (§§57, 58); generalizing from the 53

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uniquely determined construction of artefacts out of parts to a unique composition of the world (§59); misconstruing statements about things that are composed of parts as statements about the parts and their way of composition (§60); generalizing from the observation that ‘having the same sense’ is an intelligible relation in some contexts to the prejudice that it is intelligible in any context (§61–2); confusing analysis with enlightenment and knowledge of parts with basic knowledge (§§63–4). From these examples, we can learn a very important lesson about Wittgenstein’s diagnostic and therapeutic procedure: he introduces philosophical observations to use them in arguments; but these arguments are designed to lead his interlocutor to understand where his philosophical thinking has gone astray. In such cases, Wittgenstein’s philosophical observations and statements are not used to proclaim, or to insist upon, or to establish philosophical points of view. There is, in our sequence, an often-quoted half of a section that exhibits this characteristic in the extreme. It is perhaps the most frequently quoted paragraph in the whole Investigations, but it has practically always been quoted illegitimately, as if it expressed a statement of a philosophical point of view: §43a.

5 A striking example: PI 43 Section 43a has been treated, again and again, as Wittgenstein’s statement of his ‘use theory of meaning’ – notwithstanding the blatant fact that if it were such a statement, it would lack any recognizable point and purpose in its context: For a large class of cases – though not for all* – in which we employ the word ‘meaning’ it can be explained* thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language. Since the explanation of the word ‘meaning’ is restricted to ‘the meaning of a word’, the paragraph says that in cases which belong to the ‘large class’ and where the word ‘meaning’ is used to refer to word meaning, the word ‘meaning’ (nothing else, and in particular, not word meaning – the reference is unambiguous in the original) can be explained in a certain way. Now if someone says, ‘The word “A” can be explained thus: A is B’, he is employing the so-called material mode of speech – ‘A is B’ looks like a statement about the objects A and B, but the utterance is intended as a linguistic explanation to the effect that the expression ‘A’ can be replaced by the expression ‘B’. That is, when Wittgenstein writes, ‘the meaning of a word is its use in the language’, we are supposed to understand this in the sense of ‘the expression “the meaning of a word” can be replaced by the expression “the use of this word in its language”’. ‘Cases where we employ the word’ are contexts where we use it. So what §43a says is: In many, though not in all contexts 54

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which contain the word ‘meaning’ as referring to word meaning, the word ‘meaning’ can be replaced by the expression ‘use in the language’. What is Wittgenstein up to? It might be advisable to consider at least the immediate context, §43b:

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And the meaning of a name is sometimes explained by pointing to its bearer. Now, since names are words, the meaning of a name is the meaning of a word; therefore, §43b is a context which contains the word ‘meaning’ as referring to word meaning. Section 43a reveals itself as a recommendation to reformulate §43b – provided Wittgenstein intends the case of §43b as one which belongs to the ‘large class’ mentioned in §43a, where ‘meaning’ can be replaced by ‘use in the language’. Does he intend that? Compare: ‘On many evenings – though not on all – I go to the movies. And tonight . . .’ in contrast to: ‘On many evenings – though not on all – I go to the movies. Tonight, however, . . .’. Unless §43b is in the ‘large class’, the text should read ‘The meaning of a name, however, . . .’; however, it reads ‘And the meaning of a name . . .’. Accordingly, §43b is in the ‘large class’ where the word ‘meaning’ can be replaced by the expression ‘use in the language’. If we perform this substitution, we get: And the use, in the language, of a name is sometimes explained by pointing to its bearer. This is so true that it is close to being trivial. We explain the name’s use in the language by explaining, with the help of a pointing gesture, who is to be called by that name. We do this only sometimes, namely, when the bearer is present and when the conditions discussed in §§30–1 are satisfied (as they usually are): The addressee has to know that it is the name of a person which is being explained, and he also has to know how to use a person’s name. What is the point of telling us all that? Remember the diagnostic points made in the context of §43. Section 40 has diagnosed the mistake of confusing the bearer of a name with its meaning. Sections 41–2 try to understand why one might nevertheless be misled: we are so used to having dealings with a name-bearer when using a name that we mistake the name-bearer for the only thing that is relevant for the name’s meaning. Section 44 envisages language-games where names are used only in the presence of their bearers; §45 notes that the demonstrative ‘this’ cannot be used without something being pointed to (something similar to the bearer of a name, only that ‘this’ is no name). Placed among these remarks, §43 can be seen to be a further diagnostic suggestion (which loses its cleverness when paraphrased): ‘You think that the name’s bearer is the name’s meaning because you can point out its meaning 55

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by pointing to its bearer. Now look: isn’t it possible very often – sure, maybe not always, but don’t bother about other cases now – to speak of “the use in the language” instead of “the meaning” of a word; and isn’t it certainly so when we speak of explaining the meaning of a name by pointing to its bearer (instead of explaining the name’s etymology or describing the bearer)? What we explain in such cases is whom to call by that name, i.e. how to use the name in the language. But you would not, for this reason, mistake the name’s bearer for the name’s use; then why should you, for that very reason, mistake it for the name’s meaning?’ The job of §43a is quite obvious, then. It helps us to remember what it is that is being explained when a name’s meaning is explained by pointing to its bearer. The diagnosis is helpful only for an interlocutor who agrees that in the class of cases under consideration the word ‘meaning’ can, in fact, be replaced by the expression ‘use in the language’; so this is supposed to be common ground, and Wittgenstein has no business at all to state it as a ‘use theory of meaning’.7 This is not to deny, of course, that he did subscribe to a view that comes close to such a theory; it just means that he cannot be taken to have proclaimed this view, carefully qualified by ‘though not for all [cases]’, in this very passage – the only one where it looks as though it had been formulated explicitly. I think that PI 43a presents a particularly convincing example in support of my suggestion that, whenever Wittgenstein is busy clearing up puzzles and confusions in a completely perspicuous, rational, well-argued way and thus cannot help using premises and establishing conclusions, his way of presenting things must not be misunderstood – establishing certain conclusions is not, then, the point of his discussion. For diagnosis and therapy to be successful, any philosophical background that is necessary for the imagined rational dialogue has to be common ground among the partners.8

6 Wittgenstein’s final diagnosis At the end of section 3, I noted that even if content and structure of the metaphysical theory can be clarified, it still remains unclear which alleged fact it has been designed to explain. That is, even if readers agree that what the theory purports to establish is that there is a guarantee for linguistic meaningfulness thanks to ‘real names’ of ‘simple objects’ and that the latter exist in some preferred way, they may still disagree about the problems a philosopher might intend to solve by proposing such a theory. For the puzzlement the theory is meant to help him get out of has not been stated explicitly. I take the alleged fact the metaphysical theory is designed to explain to be the following: a previously a-lingual subject that is restricted to his own mental resources can, by attending to some object – by mentally pointing to it – christen this object in such a way that its name is now a word with an unambiguous meaning. There are four main reasons for this interpretation: 56

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first, read in this way, the sequence fits in well with the preceding text of the Investigations; second, it makes good sense of the philosopher’s using the ‘this-cannot-go-on-forever’ principle in his theory; third, §38 is meant to attribute precisely this idea of an isolated christening to Wittgenstein’s opponent, and to ridicule it; fourth, the interpretation makes sense of the fact that Wittgenstein treats demonstratives as instances of ‘real names’. (a) From the very first section of the Investigations, Wittgenstein has been dealing with an opponent who has tried to explain the meaningfulness of expressions by attributing to language learners or speakers competences they are claimed to possess independently of their mastery of a language but which are, in fact, disguised linguistic competences. This begins in §1. It is uncontroversial that among its targets is the idea that words have meanings because they designate objects and that sentences have senses because they are combinations of such designations. But Wittgenstein’s own comment, in §32, on his quotation from Augustine’s Confessions in §1 shows that there is more to the idea, something that makes it interesting and important: Augustine describes the learning of human language as if the child came into a strange country and did not understand the language of the country; that is, as if it already had a language, only not this one. Or again: as if the child could already think, only not yet speak. And ‘think’ would here mean something like ‘talk to itself ’. This comment is correct because what the quotation in §1 claims little Augustine did in learning his first language presupposes competences which might even be considered as metalinguistic: he ‘saw this’, namely, that his elders ‘named some object’; he ‘grasped that the thing was called by the sound they uttered as they meant to point it* out’; what they wanted to point out he ‘found out from their gestures’*. Thus the way Augustine, as quoted in §1, purports to have learnt to speak presupposes that he could talk to himself all along – that he could talk all along, for short. The same point has been made in §25: the explanation that animals ‘do not think, and that is why they do not talk’ is refused bluntly, being an explanation of something by itself. Augustine assumes that some process of acquiring linguistic competence is necessary, but he implies that in the course of this process, the learner can avail himself of precisely the competence he is supposed to be acquiring. In this picture, the ability to speak needs a foundation; however, this foundation is supposed to be provided by the speaker himself. The child Augustine that appears in §1 is described, in §32, as mastering language single-handedly, without any external backing. Now in §32, Wittgenstein explicitly refers to §1, and there he comments on Augustine’s learning story that it gives us a ‘picture of the human language’ according to which ‘the individual words in language name objects – 57

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sentences are combinations of such names’. The minimal explanation of milking this idea out of the learning story, as commented on in §32, seems to be: in Wittgenstein’s view, the picture of words being names is fostered by the idea that man can be a speaker all by himself. Sections 32 and 24 are no incidental remarks; both carry particular weight because they mark clear caesuras: with §24, Wittgenstein has finished the direct discussion of the §1 theory of the meaningfulness of expressions (words from §2 to §19a, sentences from §19b to §24), and §32a is the end of the discussion of ostensive definition. Ostensive definition, in turn, has no clear connection with the §1 theory unless it is the means by which the ‘meaning is correlated with the word’, i.e. unless pointing is involved in the origin of meaning; this is why Wittgenstein turns to the idea of pointing in §§33–6. He tries to show his opponent that even the capacity to point to something unambiguously presupposes linguistic competences, and having done that, he brings the discussion to an end with the exclamation mark of §37. Isn’t it a kind of last resort if the opponent now falls back on a theory that would explain how an a-lingual subject can, in fact, point to something unambiguously, and can thereby christen it, and can thereby create linguistic meaning? There may be other reasons for inserting the sequence §§38–64 right here; but this one seems to be quite a good reason anyway.9 (b) We noted in section 3 that the metaphysical theory commits the mistake of supposing that breaking a complex down into parts cannot go on forever, that this process must eventually conclude with parts that cannot be broken into yet further parts. This amounts to the same as saying that for a complex to be composed of parts there must have been a finite process of putting it together. I called this an instance of the ‘this-cannot-go-on-forever’ principle. This is a common kind of philosophical fallacy; think of the ancient atomists, or of Aquinas’ idea, implicit in his First Cause argument for the existence of God, that for a chain of causes reaching to the present it must have begun a finite number of steps ago. It has a double function for the alleged explanatory achievement of the metaphysical theory. First, remember from (a) that the holder of that theory presupposes that linguistic meaning is brought about by linguistic means (which was the point of §§32 and 25). Now if you explain words verbally, ‘this cannot go on forever’, and the normal way out is resorting to ostensive definition: you explain what ‘red’ means by pointing to something red and saying, ‘This is red’. So a holder of the principle needs to be able to appeal to an opportunity of ostensive definition at the start of explanation. Our example of the ‘this-cannot-go-on-forever’ principle provides such an opportunity – partless objects which you can point to in order to define your words unambiguously. In fact, from the days of the British empiricists, philosophers have tried to explain how words become meaningful (an enterprise that has not always been distinguished from an explanation of how concepts are formed) by postulating what they called simple ideas to start with. 58

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(c) I think that §38 confirms my view of our sequence’s point and purpose to a reasonable degree. For if meaning originates in pointing, then it is tempting to jump to the conclusion that original names should be very much like demonstratives (§38a), a temptation which Wittgenstein explains twice, in b and d. His explanation in d is easy to understand: Naming appears as a queer connexion of a word with an object. – And you really get such a queer connexion when the philosopher tries to bring out the relation between name and thing by staring at an object in front of him and repeating a name or even the word ‘this’ innumerable times. For philosophical problems arise when language idles*. And then* we may indeed fancy naming to be some remarkable act of mind, as it were a baptism of an object. And we can also say the word ‘this’ to the object, as it were address the object as ‘this’ – a queer use of this word, which doubtless only occurs in doing philosophy. The philosopher ignores the actual use of the word, trying instead to use it all by himself in addressing an object by means of it, and hoping in vain to manage in this way to call the object by its name – a deplorable sight, signalled by Wittgenstein with a pun that turns on the double meaning of the German ‘Verbindung’, translated as ‘connexion’. It can also mean a chemical compound, and if we take up this suggestion and read the second occurrence of the word accordingly, then what is accomplished by the attempt to connect word and object is nothing but a kind of tableau consisting of an object and a stammering philosopher.10 Let us now turn to Wittgenstein’s comment, in §38b, on §38a: [. . .] Yet, strange to say, the word ‘this’ has once* been called the only genuine name; so that anything else we call a name was one only in an inexact, approximate sense. This queer conception springs from a tendency to sublime the logic of our language – as one might put it. In order to understand this, we have to make up our minds what the ‘tendency to sublime the logic of our language’ might be. The text of this section contains no hint to anything elevated (and is in this respect arguably different from the use of the word ‘sublime’ in §89); on the other hand, something has saliently been removed from the tableau consisting of the philosopher and the object he tries to address, namely, uses, in languagegames, of the word ‘this’ – the word the philosopher utters in his vain attempt at addressing the object. For this reason, I take the ‘tendency to sublime the logic of our language’ to be a tendency to separate or purify the rules of our language from what they are rules for, namely, from language use. When 59

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language is not being used, it is, figuratively speaking, inactive, ‘is idling’, and the philosopher gets into trouble by trying to find out anything about it while actively disregarding its embedding in human activities. Wittgenstein is here using ‘to sublime’ in the sense of the chemical method of purifying substances by evaporation and subsequent condensation – a cunning comparison, because in order to get at the real thing, you have first to convert it into something ghostly. The word ‘to sublime’ is explicitly glossed as meaning ‘to purify’ in §94, and allusions to the idea of an essence’s being something to be got at in its pure form only by wrenching it from seclusion pervade the first part of the sequence §§89–133, which treats the mistake of regarding rules of language as use-independent, in §§89–108. (See §§91–2, 97, 98, 100–2, 105, 107, 108.) The points of the explanations in b and d are one and the same, then: it is a mistake to fancy one could make linguistic contact with an object all by oneself. It is clear from the example – demonstratives – that Wittgenstein takes his opponent to think that this solitary kind of contact is to be achieved by pointing or attending; I turn to this issue now. (d) Supposing a self-sufficient subject’s alleged capacity to point unambiguously to be ‘explained’ by the metaphysical theory makes sense of the close connection Wittgenstein sees his opponent as attempting to establish between ‘real names’ and demonstratives. (This was the objective entertained by Russell, whom I take to be the target of the unspecified reference in §38a;11 cf. 1918: 524–5, and 1914: 445–6.) Letting alone the fact that the sequence commences, in §38, with this very example, it is also discussed in §§44–5 (see above, section 4), which the reader can only construe as discussing the §39 Excalibur argument; however, in the Excalibur argument there is no mention of demonstratives at all. Wittgenstein is apparently eager to present the quest for ‘real names’ as something very close to the quest for expressions that are as close as possible to demonstrative pronouns. He even goes so far as to touch up his Theaetetus quotation in a way that would have earned him some red ink from a tutor. Remember that the passage is quoted as a classical example of the metaphysical theory; there are two omissions (which Wittgenstein has marked by dots), and I supply the text of the first one (translating Preisendanz’s translation): [With any attribution over and above pure naming of a primary element] one would attribute to it being or non-being; but one ought not to attribute anything to it if one only wanted to name it in and of itself. For it ought to be loaded neither with an ‘itself’ nor with a ‘that’ nor with an ‘each’ nor with an ‘alone’ nor with a ‘this’, nor with any other attributions of a similar kind. For these are the most general expressions since they are joined to all words; however, they are not the same as the words they are connected with. 60

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The italics are mine; Wittgenstein suppresses Plato’s report that his informants had forbidden to load a ‘primary element’ with a ‘this’; he conceals a detail because it does not fit his presentation. Demonstrative pronouns are, of course, precisely those linguistic expressions whose use depends on successful unambiguous pointing. (Sections 44–5 are particularly explicit in this respect.) That is, for pointing to be successful, there must be something that is pointed to, and this something must be simple for the pointing to be unambiguous. Let me add, as a concluding remark, that my interpretation of what the alleged explanatory achievement is intended to be does not explain why the theory postulates the breaking down or ‘analysis’ to be unique. Therefore, the interpretation is certainly not the best one could think of. However, I hope it is an interpretation that gives one something to think about.12

Notes 1 ‘If they [the parts] are combined differently Excalibur does not exist’ (§39). 2 The asterisk marks modifications of the Anscombe translation. I read the German text as implying that there is just one analysis. 3 From Karl Preisendanz, Platon, Protagoras und Theaitetos, Jena 1925 (201 E–202 B). 4 This is not new, of course (see Baker and Hacker 1980: 165), but I like the idea of finding it in the text without help from the Tractatus. 5 This is a comment on the German text. 6 Wittgenstein returns to this idea in §50, when he presents his diagnosis of the idea that ‘primary elements’ exist necessarily. 7 Specht has seen that paragraph b is what matters without, however, recognizing the diagnostic aim (1963: 108–9); Baker and Hacker have noticed the diagnostic aim without, however, recognizing the connection between the two paragraphs (1980: 243). 8 To the extent that Wittgenstein uses statements, suppositions, or observations for purposes of rational diagnosis, he is, of course, committed to sticking to them in other contexts, too. By making a large number of such moves he would come to commit himself to certain comprehensive views on some questions. This, however, is not the point of the present chapter. 9 Baker and Hacker have clearly shown that, as regards ostensive definition, Wittgenstein disagrees with his opponent precisely on the point whether or not it needs linguistic background (1980: 171–2, 179–80), and they have made the same point in passing about pointing gestures (ibid. 184). My reading differs from their interpretation in making this matter Wittgenstein’s starting point for our sequence. 10 I would like to add an observation which is irrelevant to the interpretation because probably unknown to Wittgenstein, and not used by him anyway, but, to my mind, very amusing. The German for ‘address’ is ‘ansprechen’; ‘entsprechen’, German for ‘correspond’ – a word often used for referring to the relation between an object and its name – meant ‘to answer’ in early Modern High German but became obsolete. (Interestingly, ‘to answer’ seems to be proper English for ‘to correspond’ in the sense of ‘to fit’.) An object that ‘entspricht’ (corresponds) to a name would

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(in that obsolete state of German) be an object that answers if it is being addressed with its name. 11 Not an original idea, of course; cf. Baker and Hacker 1980: 224–5. 12 I would like to thank Joachim Schulte for turning my draft text into intelligible English.

Bibliography Baker, Gordon P. and Peter M.S. Hacker (1980) An Analytical Commentary on the ‘Philosophical Investigations’, vol. I, Wittgenstein, Understanding and Meaning, Oxford, Blackwell. Russell, Bertrand (1914) ‘On the Nature of Acquaintance’, The Monist 24: 1–16, 161–87, 435–53. Russell, Bertrand (1918, 1919) ‘The Philosophy of Logical Atomism’, The Monist 28, 1918, 495–527, and 29, 1919, 32–63, 190–222, 345–80. Specht, Ernst K. (1963) Die sprachphilosophischen und ontologischen Grundlagen im Spätwerk Ludwig Wittgensteins, Kant-Studien Ergänzungsheft 84, Köln.

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1 Peter Hacker has reminded us in his contribution to this volume that the apparently unbroken sequence of remarks on the nature of philosophy running from section 89 until section 133 of the Philosophical Investigations is, in fact, constructed from material dating from two different periods. Sections 108(b)–133 were written in 1931, but sections 89–108(a) were written six years later, in 1937. The question I would like to address here is how far, if at all, this information about the prehistory of this portion of the Philosophical Investigations1 might inform our reading of it in its final form, the form in which Wittgenstein eventually presents it to his readers. Since Wittgenstein presents us with both sequences, he cannot have felt that the later material simply superseded the earlier; we must, rather, assume that both contribute in their own way to Wittgenstein’s purposes and, hence, that both must be accommodated in any account of his views on the nature of philosophy. The crux of the matter is exactly how this is to be done. For example, can we assume, simply from the fact of their joint retention, that – as most commentaries imply – individual remarks and sets of remarks culled from each sequence can simply be combined, as ingredients on an entirely equal footing, in our overall account of Wittgenstein’s views on philosophy? Or might it, rather, be a matter of some significance that Wittgenstein’s own mode of combining the two sequences is one of juxtaposition – in other words, that he did not himself produce a single, hybrid or composite sequence consisting of interwoven strands from both subsequences, but rather ensures that his reader will encounter each sub-sequence entirely within its own historical horizon of composition? This essay hazards the thought that sections 89–133 essentially constitute a diptych – two portraits or sketches of the same landscape made from different points in Wittgenstein’s long and involved journeyings, the second 63

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delineated with both the landscape and its earlier portrait in view, but placed before its chronological predecessor in Wittgenstein’s final ordering of his philosophical album, and with the hinge or pivot between them placed silently between one sentence and its successor within a single section. An initial reason for judging this thought worth the hazard might be found in the fact that Wittgenstein’s final text is not, in truth, entirely silent about its own historical lamination – call it the doubleness or duplexity (the duplicity?) of the sequence. For the sentence from the 1937 panel of section 108 that constitutes one arm or plate of this textual hinge itself invokes the idea of a hinge or pivot (‘. . . our examination must be rotated . . . about the fixed point [Angelpunkt – central point, pivot, hinge] of our real need’). Since it is uncontroversial to regard an understanding of this remark as crucial to any proper understanding of Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy, it might be worth considering the possibility that its deployment of the figure or image of a pivot has a three-fold function. It characterizes at once the nature of the operation Wittgenstein intends to perform on the philosophical tradition, the nature of its own contribution to the discussion in which that characterization is developed, and the hinged or pivoting nature of the discussion as a whole. And why might anyone seek to make these three points by means of a single trope or turn of language, unless he took them to be internally related – each point only fully graspable in the light of the other two? Is it not, however, a decisive objection to this characterization of Wittgenstein’s sentence that the third of its putative purposes must remain invisible to any reader lacking the necessary knowledge of the historical evolution of the text of the Philosophical Investigations? How could Wittgenstein’s figure be meant to invite such an interpretative turn if its immediate context offers no indication of the historical suture it effects? This objection would indeed be decisive, if the text did not mark this historical break or stratification in other ways – ways that any sufficiently reflective reader might be in a position to remark upon without scholarly aid. We must, accordingly, begin by asking whether the two chronologically distinct sub-sequences in this stretch of Wittgenstein’s text are also distinguishable thematically, stylistically, formally and tonally – in short, with respect to any dimensions of form and content to which an author might reasonably expect his readers to respond directly (even if not immediately).

2 The 1931 sequence contains a number of Wittgenstein’s most famous remarks about his own philosophical method or methods – remarks which faithfully encapsulate the ways in which he goes about his business both before and after this point in the Investigations. My question is whether they are equally faithfully observed at the very point in that text at which they find expression. 64

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Here, it will help to place two of those remarks together with a third – perhaps less famous, but no less significant. The first two run as follows: [W]e can avoid ineptness or emptiness in our assertions only by presenting the model (paradigm) as what it is, as an object of comparison – as, so to speak, a measuring rod; not as a preconceived idea to which reality must correspond. (The dogmatism into which we fall so easily in doing philosophy.) (PI 131) If one tried to advance theses in philosophy, it would never be possible to question them, because everyone would agree to them. (PI 128) The third occurs a little earlier: One might think: if philosophy speaks of the use of the word ‘philosophy’ there must be a second-order philosophy. But it is not so: it is, rather, like the case of orthography, which deals with the word ‘orthography’ among others without then being second-order. (PI 121) According to this third remark, any sequence of remarks that a Wittgensteinian philosopher might produce about the nature of philosophy ought to have exactly the qualities characteristic of her remarks about any other topic – whether it be Augustine’s picture of words as names, family resemblance or determinacy of sense. In particular, taken in conjunction with the first two quoted remarks, Wittgenstein’s philosophizing about philosophy should strive to avoid dogmatism and to refrain from advancing theses. Do the remarks that run from 108(b) through to 133 appear to fit this putative self-description? Re-reading the second panel of Wittgenstein’s diptych in this light, some of its features – any one of which might more or less understandably pass unremarked on a first (or indeed, on any given subsequent) reading – take on a certain prominence. To begin with, this stretch of the text is loaded with definitive pronouncements about the nature of philosophy. The barrage begins almost immediately: . . . our considerations could not be scientific ones. It was not of any possible interest to us to find out empirically ‘that, contrary to our preconceived ideas, it is possible to think such-and-such’ – whatever that might mean . . . And we may not advance any kind of theory. There must not be anything hypothetical in our considerations. We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place. (PI 109) 65

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It continues in a manner that can come to seem unremitting: Your scruples are misunderstandings. (PI 120) Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot give it any foundation either. It leaves everything as it is. (PI 124) And its concluding sections sustain the same note: Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything. – Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden, for example, is of no interest to us. (PI 126) The dominant tone of voice here is striking. For a writer usually inclined to deploy a multitude of qualifications to both the content and the assertoric form of his remarks (‘We might say’, ‘I am inclined to say’, ‘I want to say’, ‘What does it mean to say?’, and so endlessly on), and to such seductive effect, this stretch of text appears overbearingly to be in the business of laying down the law. There is so much that we must and must not do, so much that we could only do and cannot do, that any self-respecting reader is likely to find herself resisting Wittgenstein’s claims with increasingly vehement annoyance. After all, Wittgenstein himself is inveterately suspicious of philosophical ‘musts’ (‘Don’t say: “there must be something common . . .”, but look and see . . .’ (PI 66)); and where he does resort to them, they are typically presented as epitomizing articulations of grammar painstakingly laid out in the immediate textual context. Here, however, no such pains are taken; and it is, anyway, difficult to see how the necessities he adverts to could be thought of as articulating aspects of the grammar of ‘philosophy’. His remarks certainly don’t recall us to the way that word is ordinarily used by philosophers; and if they are, rather, stipulations governing his own use of that word, with the preceding examples of his philosophical method at work being what is meant to motivate us to accept it, then even a reader duly impressed by those examples might hesitate to conclude that every philosophical problem will necessarily be similarly amenable to those methods, and to them alone. A philosophical voice that repeatedly arrogates such authority to itself, without laying out the grounds of its own authority or that of any of its specific pronouncements, will only create the impression of an arrogance as bottomless as it is groundless. 66

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The closest cousin to this voice encounterable elsewhere in Wittgenstein’s writings is that of the Tractatus; and with this recollection, a number of other features of the 1931 sequence come into prominence. For example, we are told that ‘the results of philosophy are the discovery of one or another piece of plain nonsense and of bruises (welts, wounds) that the understanding receives as a result of trying to storm the limits of language. The bruises allow us to recognize the value of the discovery’ (PI 119). This idea or image of the limits of language, together with its correlate notion of simple or plain nonsense, seems strongly Tractarian; as does the idea (prominent in section 120) that any question not expressible in our ordinary language simply cannot be a genuine question (cf. the analysis of scepticism in TLP 6.51: ‘For doubt can exist only where there is a question; a question only where there is an answer, and this only where something can be said’). The same is arguably true of the opposition employed in section 120 between using language fullblown and adducing mere externalities about language in our explanations of language. In short, even without knowing the date of their composition, it would not be difficult to receive the impression that this sub-sequence has not entirely shaken off Tractarian inspiration and attitudes.

3 We might further characterize this impression by saying that the voice of Wittgenstein’s interlocutor, never sounded in the Tractatus but a pervasive stylistic signature of the first eighty-eight sections of the Philosophical Investigations, is rarely present in the 1931 sequence; and on the few occasions on which any even indirect objection to authorial pronouncements is voiced, it is done in citation marks which function as signs of reported or imagined rather than dramatized speech. Wittgenstein happily diagnoses the illusions under which the makers of such remarks must (he tells us) be operating, but never actually replies directly to them and, hence, never makes any effort to respond on the same conversational level either to the words or the fantasies to which (he claims) they give voice. At best, he seems to be talking to us, his readers, about these others’ utterances, as if we have attained a level of insight of which they are unfortunately deprived. ‘Language (or thought) is something unique’ – this proves to be a superstition . . . itself produced by grammatical illusions. (PI 110) ‘The general form of propositions is: this is how things are.’ – that is the kind of proposition one repeats to oneself countless times. One thinks that one is tracing the outline of the thing’s nature over and over again, and one is merely tracing round the frame through which we look at it. (PI 114) 67

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Wittgenstein doesn’t even try to set about proving that he is, here, citing a superstition, or the mere tracing round of the frame through which we look at things; he simply expects us to take his word for it. In short, his previously unwavering commitment to a diagnostic or therapeutic dialogue with those who might disagree with him – his concern to respond precisely to the fine details of their words, and to articulate as fully and convincingly as possible what motivates them, as well as what is going awry with them – vanishes almost without trace. And what rushes into the textual void is an authorial voice that appears to recognize no conversational or dialogical others; what it is minded to say is rarely a response to anything specifically said by another but, rather, a self-originating enunciation, a laying down of the law.

4 The impression that, with respect to philosophy, Wittgenstein is anxious to have the first as well as the last word, is reinforced by the rhetorical strategy he employs to clarify his own conception of how philosophy should, or must, be done. For he presents us with a long list of specific respects in which the distinguishing characteristics of the true philosophical method are presented as standing in clear, simple, absolutely sharp opposition to the distinguishing characteristics of its scientistic other: explanation vs. description, hypotheses/ theses vs. reminders, metaphysical vs. everyday usage, theories vs. perspicuous presentations, interference vs. leaving everything as it is, and so seemingly endlessly, on. The two philosophical ideals appear to be polar opposites in every specifiable respect. It is as if an endless list of such distinguishing marks can be generated from the underlying essential difference between them, with every item on that list essentially uncontaminated by any trace of its other. As Augustine might have put it, the philosophical universe as the 1931 sequence presents it is thoroughly Manichean, not only in its conception of good and evil as utterly alien each to the other, but also in its conception of evil as something substantial – possessed of a reality at least equal to the good. This sits uneasily with Wittgenstein’s declaration elsewhere in the 1931 sequence that ‘[W]hat we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards [literally, structures of air]’ (PI 118), which suggests that his investigations stand in opposition to that which has only the appearance of genuine substance. But when one’s own conception of authentic philosophizing is constructed as a systematic negation of the distinguishing features of another conception of philosophizing, it is hard to take seriously the claim that the authentic conception has no competitors, that it really is the only possible way of doing things and, hence, that advocating it is not a matter of advancing a contestable methodological thesis. The threat of internal incoherence in Wittgenstein’s chosen strategy here is marked by its tendency to lead him into repeated self-contradiction. For 68

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example, despite being told in section 126 that ‘what is hidden . . . is of no interest to us’, we are told almost immediately afterwards that ‘the aspects of things that are of most importance for us are hidden . . .’ (PI 129). Second, despite being told that ‘the results of philosophy are the uncovering [Entdeckung] of . . . plain nonsense’ (PI 119), and of ‘the importance of finding and inventing intermediate cases’ (PI 122) – not to mention the concluding claim that ‘the real discovery [Entdeckung] is the one that makes me capable of stopping doing philosophy when I want to’ (PI 133) – we are then firmly told that ‘one might . . . give the name “philosophy” to what is possible before all new discoveries [Entdeckungen] and inventions’ (PI 126). Third, after condemning our desire to fix our gaze ‘absolutely [completely] sharply’ on the facts (PI 113) and to construct ideal languages in place of our everyday, spatio-temporal one, we are told that we can and should aim at ‘complete clarity’ and the ‘complete’ disappearance of philosophical problems by means of the construction of ‘clear and simple’ imaginary language-games (PI 130, 133). These difficulties, of which Wittgenstein gives no indication of being aware, let alone of having the resources to overcome, hardly encourage the reader to share his apparent conviction in the purity and self-evidence of his methodological vision. And if we imagine the sequence containing these contradictions as picking directly up from section 88, its thematic and tonal discordance with those preceding remarks is obvious. For of course, the great question that sections 1–64 bring us up against, and to which sections 65–88 are responsive, is that of the essence of language; and Wittgenstein’s response famously denies that the concept of ‘language’ has an essence, if by ‘essence’ one means something that is common to all its instances, something articulable by a merkmal definition (i.e. in terms of distinguishing marks, necessary and sufficient conditions for its application). After reading the twenty or more sections in which Wittgenstein articulates the idea that this and other concepts might, rather, have a family resemblance structure, and points out that concepts with such a structure could be accused of vagueness or inexactness or indeterminacy of sense only if one deploys variously inept or empty conceptions and standards of exactness and determinacy, it is all the more striking to imagine oneself then embarking immediately upon sections 108(b)–133, in which the structure of Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘philosophy’ is rigorously, even rigidly articulated – quite as if it possesses a pure, underlying essence whose characteristic marks precisely, exactly and determinately distinguish it from even its closest competitors. Since section 134 then draws us into an exploration of our concept of a ‘proposition’, in which Wittgenstein attempts to show that its structure resembles that of the paradigmatic family resemblance concept (that of a game – cf. PI 135), our sense as readers that sections 108(b)–133 operate on an altogether different plane from that of the remarks preceding and succeeding them could only be intensified. 69

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5 In effect, then, the 1931 sequence, in general, plays into the hands of those readers of Wittgenstein who believe that his view of philosophy as something other than a matter of advancing theses about the phenomena under examination is itself a thesis, in fact a meta-thesis about philosophy and, hence, not only highly contentious (given its more or less obvious dependence on a variety of inter-related claims about language, grammar, forms of life, natural reactions and so on) but essentially self-subverting. And if much of the tone, spirit and approach of the 1931 sequence appears to confirm this, then the many individual remarks in that sequence which deny it will, at best, be seen as self-deluding – expressive of an unattainable, and probably undesirable, ideal of the subject, a fantasy or illusion. But of course, Wittgenstein in fact prefaced his 1931 sequence on the concept of philosophy with a sequence written in 1937 (within which there is a reiterated denial (PI 97) that any concepts – presumably including that of philosophy itself – constitute a super-order in relation to any others). How, then, is the impact of the 1931 sequence, and its perceived relation to the first eighty-eight sections of the book, modified by this intervention? How far, and in what ways, does the 1937 panel of this diptych discriminate and even provide the necessary diagnostic and therapeutic resources for its readers to go on to discriminate, between what the 1931 panel means to say, and what it (self-subvertingly) shows in the saying of it? In short, to what extent can we think of the 1937 sequence as aiming to pivot the 1931 conception of philosophy, as well as the conception of philosophy from which both sequences claim to avert themselves, around the fixed point of our real need?

6 As always, it is worth trying to begin at the beginning – at the renewed beginning of Wittgenstein’s extended consideration of philosophy, the beginning of section 89: These considerations bring us face-to-face with the problem: In what sense is logic something sublime? (PI 89) There is no mention of the concept of the sublime, or of any obvious ancestor or analogue to it, in the 1931 sequence. This is not, however, its first appearance in the Philosophical Investigations; but its earlier emergence occurs almost in passing, and without any extensive development, although its immediate context is strikingly similar to the present one: If you do not want to produce confusion you will do best not to call [indexical] words names at all. – Yet, remarkably, the word ‘this’ has 70

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been called the only genuine name; so that anything else we call a name was one only in an inexact, approximate sense. This queer conception springs from a tendency to sublime the logic of our language – as one might put it. The proper answer to it is: we call very different things ‘names’; the word ‘name’ is used to characterize many different kinds of use of a word, related to one another in many different ways; – but the kind of use that ‘this’ has is not among them. (PI 38)

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The notion of a family resemblance structure is plainly at work here also, although not yet explicitly so labelled (one might say that it is subliminally present), and ‘subliming’ is thereby anticipatorily presented as characterizing a tendency in us to resist any acknowledgement of such a possibility. But section 38 takes us beyond a further diagnostic or therapeutic concern with this tendency, towards a more detailed grammatical investigation of the modes of use of ordinary names that the ‘queer’ conception of them passes over. It is only in the 1937 sequence on philosophy that the notion of ‘subliming’ is recalled, elaborated and put to work – brought to textual consciousness, one might say, by the need to bring the phenomenon of family resemblance concepts explicitly into play. Even here, however, Wittgenstein refrains from offering any direct explications of this apparently technical term. Instead, the ensuing sections of the 1937 sequence are crowded with imagery and metaphor – inter-linked chains of figuration that attempt to capture our sense of the peculiar character, the queerness, of logic. We must, therefore, unfold the logic of those chains. I have argued elsewhere (Mulhall 2001: Secs. 20–2) that Wittgenstein’s concept of the sublime has (at least) three facets – that of the subliminal, that of sublimation understood as refinement or purification, and that of sublimity. When we sublime the logic of our language, we think of it as lying at ‘the bottom of things’, as ‘the ground or essence of everything empirical’ (PI 89) and, hence, as ‘something that lies within, which we see when we look into the thing, and which an analysis digs out [exhumes]’ (PI 92). In other words, logic lies beneath the surface of ordinary experience and ordinary life, below the threshold of everyday awareness. If, however, logic ‘is prior to experience, [it] must run through all experience; no empirical cloudiness or uncertainty can be allowed to affect it – It must rather be of the purest crystal’ (PI 97). Here, the priority of logic to the empirical realm which it nevertheless informs is pictured as the pollution or dilution of logic by the world of experience; we must distil its crystalline forms from the impurities in which it is suspended. Once we do, however, we isolate something sublime and encounter something exalted; we are elevated to or perhaps beyond a certain threshold. It is as if we stand at the very limits of human experience, aware at once of the finitude of human understanding and of that which transcends 71

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it. The sublimity of logic, its ideality, ‘is unshakeable. You can never get outside it; you must always turn back. There is no outside; outside you cannot breathe’ (PI 103). As Wittgenstein’s formulations suggest, we oscillate between an idea of logic as a limit or condition, and an idea of it as a limitation, as fencing us off from something. Is there no outside, or just no outside for us (living, breathing creatures)? We find ourselves on ‘slippery ice where there is no friction, and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk’ (PI 107). Just as the 1937 sequence is held together by the interweaving implications of these three dimensions of the concept of subliming logic, so those dimensions are themselves unified by a common inflection or implication – the idea of logic as imprisoned and imprisoning. The sublimity of logic is experienced as a constraint or barrier – as if the inhuman void we picture lying beyond it constituted a wished-for emancipation from or fulfilment of our humanity, the satisfaction of the all-too-human desire to transcend humanity. And the ideas of logic as subliminal and as requiring sublimation ask us to think of logic itself as imprisoned in the empirical, as needing to be exhumed or crystallized out of the circumstances of ordinary human life; it is as if the embrace of the everyday were that of the grave, from whose disfiguring pollution logic must be resurrected or transfigured. But if we think of logic as imprisoned in the ordinary, and of ourselves as imprisoned by logic, then we must think of ourselves as imprisoned, even entombed, in the ordinary; so attempting to dig logic out from the everyday will at once symbolize and realize our attempts to enact our own freedom from ordinariness. For if we bring logic back into our grasp, then we must surely at least bring within our view that which it places beyond our grasp; how could we bring the limits of human reality into focus without at least glimpsing the sublimely icy vacuum that lies beyond that threshold? And by the same token, if we can overcome the idea of logic as imprisoned in the ordinary, we might thereby overcome our own sense of logic as liminal, as demarcating that which is within from that which is beyond human experience and, hence, overcome our own sense of imprisonment in the (mere, the impure, the entombing) everyday. Wittgenstein’s counter-concept of family resemblance concepts centrally contributes to this enterprise of desublimation and, hence, directly confronts us with the sense in which the sublimity of logic is a problem (a product of our subliming), because it contests our willingness to attribute a hyperbolic rigidity to the logic of our language – to picture the underlying structure of the empirical as if it exhibited a species of rigor mortis. What makes a graveyard of the everyday is our urge to impose fantasies of precision upon its logical ground – fantasies about the meaningfulness of words as dependent upon the existence of rules for every possible context of their application (PI 80), rules which stop up all the cracks through which doubt might conceivably creep in (PI 84), rules whose exactness is thought of as absolute, 72

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and thus as entirely independent of any human goal or purpose (PI 88). For anyone in the grip of such fantasies of precision, their rejection will seem to invite catastrophe; for:

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Set against the fantasy of logic as ‘the most concrete, as it were the hardest thing there is’ (PI 97), the recovery of everyday conceptions of its rigour will appear only to weaken or render it, to make it glutinous by contaminating it with the glutinous mire of ordinary life – quite as if logic were a spiderweb, prone to distort and tear, and to enmire those investigating it, rather than the superlatively strong reinforcing that prevents our everyday inhabitations from giving way. Set against the conviction that such imagery is the outthrow of fantasy, however, the question arises: how might one achieve a return to the ordinary, an acknowledgement of the (everyday) sense in which logic is sublime, that will not present itself as a loss or weakening of logic? If the illusion of superrigidity is ‘like a pair of glasses on our nose through which we see whatever we look at’ (PI 103), then how could anything we see through them convince us to take them off? Wittgenstein’s answer – the culmination of his 1937 reflections – appears to be: by a turn, a turning around, a conversion. And its pivot is ‘the fixed point of our real need’. But what is our real need? And why must it, and how can it, bear the weight of this turn?

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7 We need to look again, and in rather more detail, at the opening sections in the 1937 sequence. These considerations bring us up to the problem: in what sense is logic something sublime? For there seemed to pertain to logic a peculiar depth – a universal significance. Logic lay, it seemed, at the bottom of all the sciences. – For logical investigation explores the nature of all things. It seeks to see to the bottom of things and is not meant to concern itself whether what actually happens is this or that. – It takes its rise, not from an interest in the facts of nature, nor from a need to grasp causal connections: but from an urge to understand the basis, or 73

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essence, of everything empirical. Not, however, as if to this end we had to hunt out new facts; it is, rather, of the essence of our investigation that we do not seek to learn anything new by it. We want to understand something that is already in plain view. For this is what we seem in some sense not to understand. Augustine says in the Confessions ‘quid est ergo tempus? si nemo ex me quaerat scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio’. – This could not be said about a question of natural science (‘What is the specific gravity of hydrogen?’, for instance). Something that we know when no-one asks us, but no longer know when we are supposed to give an account of it, is something that we need to remind ourselves of. (And it is obviously something of which for some reason it is difficult to remind oneself.) We feel as if we had to penetrate phenomena: our investigation, however, is directed not towards phenomena, but, as one might say, towards the ‘possibilities’ of phenomena. We remind ourselves, that is to say, of the kind of statement that we make about phenomena. Thus Augustine recalls to mind the different statements that are made about the duration, past present or future, of events. (These are, of course, not philosophical statements about time, the past, the present and the future.) (PI 89, 90) The ‘logic’ that is subject to subliming here is not just (as in PI 38) ‘the logic of our language’, but also (consonant with Wittgenstein’s lifelong practice with the term) the distinctive kind of investigation that takes the logic of our language as its topic or subject-matter – logical investigation, or philosophy; and this referential duality pervades the discussion. First, Wittgenstein links a certain fantasy of logic as grounding all the sciences with a fantasy of logical investigation as seeing through or to the bottom of things; then he appears to acknowledge nevertheless that the originating urge or interest of any logical investigation is indeed to understand the basis or essence of empirical phenomena; and then he characterizes his own (‘our’) logical investigations as themselves possessing an essence. In short, his concern with the nature of philosophy (in both its traditional and its Wittgensteinian forms) is with what is essential to them; it is just the kind of concern that philosophical remarks about philosophy should manifest if they are to treat its nature as one more first-order philosophical issue. Wittgenstein goes on to characterize the essence of his way of philosophizing without subliming it. His opening claim (that genuine philosophizing is not furthered by learning anything we did not already know) is not presented (in his 1931 manner) as an ungrounded or self-grounding starting-point from which further methodological generalities can be unfolded. Instead, he presents it as determined by the nature of distinctively philosophical questions 74

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or, more precisely, by the distinctive kind of confusion or bewilderment such questions express and, hence, to which any authentic philosophical method must see itself as responsive; and he illustrates this distinctiveness by citing a particular, canonical example. The example comes from Augustine; hence, Wittgenstein anchors this sequence of remarks about philosophy in the text from which the preceding eighty-eight philosophical remarks about language took their initial orientation (thus further declaring his aversion to second-order philosophizing, the deliberate flatness of the textual terrain of the Philosophical Investigations); and he anchors his general claim about philosophy in the actual unfolding of the Western tradition of philosophizing. To adapt other words of the 1931 sequence: from the outset of the 1937 sequence, we are dealing with philosophy as a spatio-temporal phenomenon, not as if it were some non-spatial, non-temporal unthing [Unding] (PI 108). More specifically, the example allows Wittgenstein to develop his conception of authentic philosophizing in just the way in which, in section 90, he tells us that he would articulate his philosophical remarks about any phenomenon. For of course, by reminding us there that Augustine addresses his philosophical problem by recalling what kind of thing we (nonphilosophically) say about time, he also invites us to remark that in section 89 he addressed his current philosophical problem (that of identifying a distinctively philosophical problem) precisely by recalling the kinds of thing we say when expressing philosophical bewilderment about such things as time. To the extent we acknowledge Augustine’s words as genuinely exemplary of what we philosophers are inclined or driven to say, we must also admit that they express a kind of bewilderment to the resolution of which new information is patently not relevant (if we know what time is when no-one asks us, our inability to give an account of its essential nature cannot result from ignorance, and must be overcome by reminding us of something). Put this together with the fact that the progress of section 90 is, itself, hinged or pivoted around such apparently throw-away phrases as ‘as one might say’, and ‘that is to say’; and it becomes evident that, to this extent, Wittgenstein’s philosophical investigation of philosophy presents itself as a grammatical investigation.

8 Why, however, might anyone who views philosophy and, hence, any phenomenon in which she takes a philosophical interest, as possessed of an underlying essence, find what Wittgenstein calls a ‘grammatical investigation’ (PI 91) to possess any recognizably philosophical significance? After all, it explicitly eschews the penetration of phenomena in favour of reminders concerning what we say about phenomena; if so, how can it satisfy our urge to understand the basis or essence of phenomena? 75

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A crucial part of Wittgenstein’s response to this concern comes in section 92. This finds expression in questions as to the essence of language, of propositions, of thought. – For if we too in these investigations are trying to understand the essence of language – its function, its structure – yet this is not what those questions have in view. For they see in the essence, not something that already lies open to view and that becomes surveyable by a rearrangement, but something that lies beneath the surface. Something that lies within, which we see when we look into the thing, and which an analysis digs out. ‘The essence is hidden from us’: this is the form our problem now assumes. We ask: ‘What is language?’, ‘What is a proposition?’ And the answer to these questions is to be given once for all; and independently of any future experience. (PI 92) Here, Wittgenstein explicitly declares that he inherits the philosophical tradition’s characteristic concern with essence, and thereby identifies a perspective from which his grammatical investigations can be seen as continuous with that tradition, a way of satisfying the need that draws us to participate in philosophy at all. However, he also declares his difference from that tradition, the respect in which he proposes to reorient or reconstitute its ways, in declaring that only a conception of essence as finding expression in grammatical structure and function and, hence, as always already open to view (or at least surveyable by a rearrangement of what we always already know), can give real substance to that concern – can make philosophy anything other than a pursuit of the chimerical. What he opposes is thus not a concern with essence as such, but a particular fantasy of what such a concern must be – the structure of air which the picture of ‘essence as hidden from us’ reveals itself to be. This picture of Wittgenstein’s relation to the tradition is very different to that which we might have gleaned from the 1931 sequence alone, with its Manichean division of authentic philosophizing from its sophistic counterpart by means of a list of straightforwardly opposed features or qualities – as if each is constructible as a point-by-point negation of the distinguishing marks of the other. According to the 1937 sequence, we need the concept of ‘essence’ to characterize Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy’s subjectmatter in both its traditional and Wittgensteinian forms and, hence, to see that what he propounds as the only authentic philosophical method really is a way of doing something recognizably philosophical, an inheritor of that cultural form; but we need a different (more precisely, a genuinely substantial as opposed to an empty or sublimed) conception of that concept. 76

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Furthermore, that conception of essence cannot (pace the 1931 sequence) be characterized without using terms that are central to (Wittgenstein’s best attempt to give voice to) philosophy’s traditional self-understanding. Take ‘hiddenness’, for example; if the tradition thinks of essence as hidden, so too does Wittgenstein. The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something – because it is always before one’s eyes.) The real foundations of his enquiry do not strike a man at all. Unless that fact has at some time struck him. – And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and powerful. (PI 129) This conception of the hiddenness of essence is, of course, not that of the tradition; but (as the 1931 sequence shows, despite its repeated attempts to deny it) we cannot characterize genuine philosophizing without making use of the term. The same is true of the notion of ‘depth’, which Wittgenstein employs at the outset of section 89 to characterize a sublimed conception of logic, and of our investigation of logic: ‘For there seemed to pertain to logic a peculiar depth’. This, too, is a concept Wittgenstein turns out to need (to have needed even in 1931) in order properly to characterize his own conception of philosophy: The problems arising through a misinterpretation of our forms of language have the character of depth. They are deep disquietudes; their roots are as deep in us as the forms of our language and their significance is as great as the importance of our language. – Let us ask ourselves: why do we feel a grammatical joke to be deep? (And that is the depth of philosophy). (PI 111) One could go on. Traditional philosophy assumes that essences can be brought into view by analysis; but Wittgenstein tells us that aspects of grammatical investigation ‘may be called an “analysis” of our forms of expression, for the process is sometimes like one of taking a thing apart’ (PI 90). Traditional philosophy aims to achieve a certain kind of ordering of our concepts; but grammatical investigations also ‘want to establish an order in our knowledge of the use of language; an order with a particular end in view’ (PI 132). Traditional philosophy makes use of discoveries; but grammatical investigations make use of, and embody, ‘the real discovery’ (PI 133). Traditional philosophy invents new languages; grammatical investigations invent new language-games (PI 130). Traditional philosophy yearns for 77

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complete resolutions of problems through complete analyses (PI 91); grammatical investigations aim at the kind of complete clarity that makes philosophical problems completely disappear (PI 133). From the perspective established at the outset of the 1937 sequence, then, traditional philosophizing and grammatical investigations are not utterly distinct from each other in every specifiable respect. Rather, pretty much any term needed to capture the central concern and the implicit (although ultimately empty or fantasized) self-understanding of traditional philosophizing can come to seem equally compelling in an accurate characterization of the activity Wittgenstein proffers in its stead. In a sense, then, nothing – no specifiable thing – is different after the Wittgensteinian event in philosophy; and yet everything is different. Every word the tradition says about itself chagrins him, precisely because they are the right words used in the wrong spirit – or more precisely, in a spirit which voids them of sense, sublimes them. In his philosophical revolution, every such term remains, but is meant (put to work) differently, or rather properly put to work for the first time – recovered from emptiness by being given a genuine, everyday use. Each word is not, then, to be rejected but rather projected differently, turned aside from metaphysical subliming, returned to the everyday sublimity of its use in characterizing a genuine possibility for philosophy and, thus, a way of making our urge to understand the essence of things humanly intelligible (a drive we can satisfy). If one source of Wittgenstein’s counter-conception of philosophical method is a grammatical investigation of ‘philosophical problems’ and ‘philosophical bewilderment’, then another is what one might call a grammatical construction or reclamation – the delineation of a perspective from which we might mean what the tradition subjects to subliming, so that each unmoored but undismissible word of its implicit selfunderstanding is turned around the fixed point of (made capable of giving expression to) our real need.

9 Wittgenstein’s recurrence here, in 1937, to the dimension of need and desire is of real moment. Traditional philosophy might have a false conception of the needs it addresses – it might even engender false (inauthentic) needs in those it attracts; but Wittgenstein in 1937 sees nothing false or fantastic in the idea that it is an essential part of philosophy’s business to attract us, to be responsive to a real human need, to satisfy our desires as well as – say – our reason. But what, according to Wittgenstein, is that real need? At the very end of the 1931 sequence, he says this: It is not our aim to refine or complete the system of rules for the use of our words in unheard-of ways. 78

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For the clarity that we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear. The real discovery is the one that makes me capable of stopping doing philosophy when I want to. – The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question. – Instead, we now demonstrate a method, by examples; and the series of examples can be broken off. Problems are solved (difficulties eliminated), not a single problem. There is not a philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, like different therapies. (PI 133)

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As we might now expect from the 1931 sequence, there is a certain unresolved tension within these four paragraphs. The second deploys conceptions of clarity and disappearance that recall absolutized conceptions of exactness, precision and determinacy, not only from Wittgenstein’s general discussion of family resemblance concepts, but also from the sequence’s own earlier characterizations of traditional philosophizing (e.g. its desire for an absolutely sharp or clear gaze (PI 113), or for the delineation of the super-order of concepts (PI 132)). For its author to think of his own philosophical practice as effecting the complete disappearance of philosophical problems (all of them? completely?) is surely as idealized as the sublimed conceptualizations of other phenomena for which he castigates traditional philosophy. And yet, the third and fourth paragraphs develop a perspective that is far more in tune with the sequence’s own best methodological perceptions. For they link specific philosophical questions with the question of philosophy, quite as if reaching towards the conviction that Wittgenstein begins from in section 89, six years later – that the concept of philosophy itself is as much a site of philosophical problems as any other concept, that philosophy itself can be put in question not only by, but in exactly the same way, and for exactly the same reasons, as any other philosophical topic. These paragraphs also link the business of giving philosophy peace with the acknowledgement of the internal multiplicity of philosophical method; to talk of philosophy as consisting of a variety of related methods, each of which can be explained by example, is to picture ‘philosophy’ as a family resemblance concept, and thus to resist the impulse to sublime it. In other words, at the very end of his 1931 reflections, Wittgenstein achieves a perspective from which he can treat ‘philosophy’ as just one more first-order concept and, hence, can present his philosophical remarks about philosophy as flowing seamlessly in theme and tone from the preceding eighty-eight sections of his book. The 1937 sequence picks up from there by pointing out that there is no necessity to conceive philosophical problems as having the form the tradition pictures them as having (thereby rendering them insoluble): ‘The essence 79

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is hidden from us’. There is a sense in which philosophy is concerned to understand essence, and in which that essence is hidden from us; but it is not compulsory to fantasize essence as hidden from us by the phenomenon whose essence we are trying to understand – by its surface, its appearance, the ordinary or everyday aspect it presents to us. The essence of any given thing is hidden from we philosophers not by the thing itself but by us. More specifically, it is hidden by our tendency to idealize our concept of the ideal in philosophy – to sublime or absolutize its real, everyday ideality, and then to predicate it of that in relation to which it is an ideal.

10 Wittgenstein offers two examples. The second concerns a philosophical problem about the essence of language, specifically one concerning the idea of determinacy of sense that preoccupied him in sections 65–88: On the one hand it is clear that every sentence in our language ‘is in order as it is’. That is to say, we are not striving after an ideal, as if our ordinary vague sentences had not yet got a quite unexceptionable sense, and a perfect language awaited construction by us. – On the other hand it seems clear that where there is sense there must be perfect order. – So there must be perfect order even in the vaguest sentence. (PI 98) Our ordinary sentences make perfect sense, and we know this; but we tend to sublime this concept of perfection, and then – when that sublimed concept patently fails to apply to what we know to be perfectly intelligible ordinary sentences – we conclude that it must be hidden beneath or within them, and, hence, that we must accordingly penetrate the sentences themselves to dig it out. We now inhabit or live out (are absorbed or gripped by) the idea that the ideal ‘must’ be found in reality. We do not as yet see how it occurs there, nor do we understand the nature of this ‘must’. But we think that it must be in reality because we think that we already see it there. This way of thinking of the ideal is unshakeable. You can never get outside it; you must always turn back. There is no outside; outside you cannot breathe. – Where does this idea come from? It is like a pair of glasses on our nose through which we see whatever we look at. It never occurs to us to take them off. (PI 101, 103) 80

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In other words, philosophical problems have two roots: our tendency to idealize or sublime our ideals (as if essentially dissatisfied with their sheer ordinariness, their everyday sublimity), and our inability to deny our satisfaction with the ordinary, our knowledge that the everyday is, in fact, perfectly in order. The first drives us to say that ‘this isn’t how it is!’; the second drives us to say ‘yet this is how it has to be!’ (PI 112). Hence, to overcome our fantasy of the everyday as hiding its essence from us, we need to reconfigure or reorient both our dissatisfaction with the everyday, and our satisfaction with it. Since ideals are objects of comparison that we employ, in relation to which phenomena are judged wanting in some specific respect, we need to acknowledge that the everyday can legitimately be viewed as in need of improvement – for example, as lacking in clarity. But since the ordinary role of ideals in our language and our lives is to induce improvements for specific purposes and in specific ways, we need to acknowledge the emptiness of attempts to judge the everyday as absolutely or completely unclear, as essentially wanting or imperfect. Any particular ideal provides a way of representing the actual as imperfect in a specific respect; but no such method of representation is necessary, and the application of any such method is ultimately our responsibility, the expression of our commitment to a possibility of comparison.

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11 Wittgenstein’s first example of subliming and then misapplying an ideal relates not to a philosophical problem about language but to the philosophical problem of characterizing the nature of philosophy. [A grammatical] investigation sheds light on our problem by clearing misunderstandings away. Misunderstandings concerning the use of words, caused, among other things, by certain analogies between the forms of expression in different regions of language. – Some of them can be removed by substituting one form of expression for another; this may be called an ‘analysis’ of our forms of expression, for the process is sometimes like one of taking a thing apart. But now it may come to look as if there were something like a final analysis of our forms of language, and so a single completely resolved form of every expression. That is, as if our usual forms of expression were, essentially, unanalysed; as if there were something hidden in them that had to be brought to light. When this is done the expression is completely clarified and our problem solved. It can also be put like this: we eliminate misunderstandings by making our expressions more exact; but now it may look as if we were moving towards a particular state, a state of complete exactness; and as if this were the real goal of our investigations. (PI 90, 91) 81

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These remarks track the idealization of an ideal of, or for, philosophy. In each specific case of a philosophical confusion, there will be a way of achieving a clear, reorienting view of our ordinary use of the words that have generated our bewilderment. This may take the form of offering a reformulation of a given expression, something Wittgenstein is happy to call an analysis of it. But the possibility that, for any given confusion an expression generates, there is some reformulation or clarification of it that will dissipate that confusion, is sublimed into the possibility that some reformulation of that expression will entirely eliminate any possible confusion that it might generate ‘once and for all, and independently of any future experience’ (PI 92). This idealization of the philosophical ideal of exactness, precision or clarity is what torments actual, everyday philosophizing; for, because it projects an empty or inept idea of the kind of clarity that a philosophical recounting of our speech might attain, no mundane or ordinary achievement of clarity – one that entirely dissolves the specific confusion to which it is responsive – can satisfy our fantasized need for a guarantee that any other confusion will be equally responsive to it. Hence, even a successful analysis of a philosophical problem will leave philosophy itself in question, by tormenting us with the ever-receding prospect of an apparently attainable, but actually unattained state of clarity or precision. Our fantasized philosophical need is one of complete clarity, where ‘completeness’ is understood in a sublimed way and, thereby, rendered both undismissable and unattainable (‘this [specific analysis] is how it must be; but this can’t be how it is’ (PI 112)). Our real philosophical need is also one of complete clarity; but here ‘completeness’ is understood as determined by the specific problem in response to which clarity is sought. A philosophical problem has the form, ‘I don’t know my way about’, but there is no such thing as absolute or unspecific disorientation; when someone has lost her bearings, she has done so somewhere, with respect to a particular starting-point and a particular destination. Hence, for each specific philosophical problem, a complete resolution of that problem is attainable, without any residual dissatisfaction about the fact that the specific analysis that achieved this resolution cannot guarantee that no further, specific confusions might be generated by the relevant expression in other circumstances. Hence, our desublimated philosophical ideal really can give me peace, can make me capable of stopping doing philosophy whenever I want; but this is not because it identifies our ideal state with our present actuality (analysis, reformulation, perspicuous re-presentation is needed in each specific case). Rather, it is because I can completely resolve any given philosophical problem (or series of them) without feeling that I have not yet reached the only truly satisfying philosophical goal.

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12 Once again, we can see that Wittgenstein’s 1937 remarks give us the means to understand the best of his 1931 remarks while resolutely treating the question of the nature of philosophy on a par with any other philosophical question. For his tracking of our idealizations of our philosophical ideals of analytic exactness, precision and determinacy draws all-but-explicitly on insights established in sections 65–88, in his identification of various inept and empty sublimings of our everyday concepts of exactness, precision and determinacy of sense in the field of philosophical problems concerning language. For what, after all, would it be like to have an analysis of a form of expression that stopped up all the gaps (cracks, holes) through which a philosophical confusion might creep (cf. PI 83)? ‘Exact’ is praise; to call something ‘inexact’ is to say that it attains its goal less perfectly than that which is more exact. Hence, the crucial point here is what we call ‘the goal’; and if the goal of a philosophical analysis is to remove a particular confusion, then what will allow us to attain that goal will depend entirely upon the nature of each specific confusion, a genus whose species will be as various as our language and its myriad forms of expression. Hence, there is no more a single ideal of philosophical analysis than there is a single philosophical confusion. And if we try to lay one down, we will find it difficult (to say the least) to hit upon one that genuinely satisfies us (cf. PI 88). Wittgenstein’s target is, of course, in part the Tractarian conception of a completely analysed expression, and its counterpart ideal of a notation which would display its logical form such as to prevent any possible confusions between logically distinct forms of expression. But it also targets those aspects of his 1931 writing that fail either to say or to show their adherence to the desublimated conception of philosophy that other aspects of that sequence articulate. The difference can be vanishingly small – the difference between saying ‘the philosophical problems should completely disappear’ and ‘each philosophical problem should completely disappear’ (PI 133); or it might be as large as that between speaking and acting as if grammatical investigations are essentially purified of any traces of the distinguishing features of traditional philosophizing (hence, essentially emancipated from, a singular transfiguration of, that historical tradition), and acknowledging that grammatical investigation orients itself at every point by reference to its traditional predecessor, by transfiguring every term of its self-understanding, and that it must do so (if it is to maintain its claim to be a mode of philosophizing at all) by satisfying our real philosophical need, the need that draws us to the subject in the first place – the need to recover at once from some specific instance in an unending series of (a distinctive kind of ) disorientation in our lives with words, and from our tendency to orient ourselves in that task by reference to a sublimed conception of the reorientation that might be achieved thereby. 83

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One might say: the hidden essence of traditional philosophy is its sublimed conception of its subject-matter as hidden by that which it grounds, rather than by its own conception of it; whereas the hidden essence of grammatical investigation is its conception of itself as the uncanny other of traditional philosophy – as turning the tradition at every familiar point, but around the pivot or hinge of our continuing need to achieve a clear view of the essence of things and, thereby, to release ourselves from self-induced disorientation. The desublimated ideal of how we might attain such a goal is, itself, a reorientation. It depends upon recognizing that we are tempted to picture even our own counter-conception of philosophy as possessed of a pure, singular essence (rather than as a family of problem-sensitive methods), as essentially transcending, purifying and liberating us from the philosophical tradition (rather than internally reorienting it, finding a way genuinely to mean every word it says), and as aiming at a single, final state of pure and perfect clarity and peace, from which all possible torment and bewilderment has been excluded (rather than at overcoming specific, tormenting disorientations from case to case, every day). Each step in our progress is one which must entirely resolve our problem; but there is no step that can finally resolve all conceivable problems. To think otherwise is to substitute an inept or empty conception of a state of perfect philosophical clarity for one that sees perfect clarity as the unattained but attainable prospect of each specific state of philosophical unclarity. What the 1937 sequence shows is that even the Wittgenstein of 1931 remained partially or episodically haunted or possessed by the false or inauthentic philosophical perfectionism he had begun to identify and criticize. And by placing the chronologically earlier sequence after the later one, Wittgenstein makes three different, although related, points. First, he ensures that the 1931 sequence, with its tendency to maintain itself at a level of abstract generality (as if analysing a super-order of concepts) is grounded or earthed and, hence, can arrogate to itself the authority earned by the 1937 sequence’s persistent attentiveness to concrete, historical expressions of philosophical bewilderment and self-understanding. Second, he declares that authentic clarity about the nature of philosophy (and, hence, of philosophical clarity) is attained or unattained in exactly the way in which it is attained or unattained with respect to any philosophical topic. If the 1937 sequence had followed the 1931 sequence, the overall trajectory of their readers’ experience with them would have been one of smooth, step-by-step progress from an episodic and partial grasp of the nature of philosophy to a deeper one – quite as if Wittgenstein’s own personal development (from the Tractatus to 1931 to 1937 and on) exemplified the universal truth of a kind of Whig theory of philosophical progress; as if, once started, philosophical insight inevitably deepens and purifies itself. By putting the earlier sequence after the later, he enacts the contrary perception that philosophical clarity (even, perhaps particularly, about philosophy itself ) is never 84

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perfectly attained, attained once and for all; it can always be lost, although it can always be recovered. Third, since the 1937 sequence, properly appreciated, provides us with everything we need to identify, comprehend and avert ourselves from the subliming aspects of the 1931 sequence before we encounter it, Wittgenstein also ensures that if, despite that preparation, we fail to distinguish the sublimed from the desublimated in those textually subsequent remarks, then we have only ourselves to blame. In other words, by making it possible for us unknowingly to participate in the enactment of renewed disorientation that his text performs, to hide from ourselves the fact that his later methodological remarks are not a reiteration but, rather, a subliming of his earlier insights into philosophy’s true sublimity, he deepens the methodological moral of the diptych as a whole. For what could be more chastening to us, as philosophers and as readers, than to find ourselves identifying with an icily subliming condemnation of the sublimers of logic? What could better awaken us to the depth of our perverse drive to misunderstand the ordinary, to miss its satisfactions, than the experience of finding ourselves praising its everyday sublimity in the very terms and tones that fence us from it, making it humanly uninhabitable, within and without philosophy?2

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I have amended Anscombe’s translation whenever I felt it necessary in order to convey the full implications of Wittgenstein’s remarks. This chapter was written during my appointment as John Findlay Visiting Professor in the Philosophy Department at Boston University. I would like to thank the members of that department for their invitation to take up this post, and the Warden and Fellows of New College, Oxford, for making it possible for me to accept it. I would also like to thank the participants in my class on Wittgenstein and Heidegger at Boston University, as well as audiences at Colgate University and the University of Chicago, to whom earlier versions of this material were delivered, for their stimulating questions and suggestions. The comments of James Conant, Ed Witherspoon and Juliet Floyd were of particular help in clarifying my thinking about these matters.

Bibliography Mulhall, S. (2001) Inheritance and Originality, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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5 A COGNITIVE SELF-THERAPY PI 138–97 Eugen Fischer

Wittgenstein compared his treatment of philosophical questions to the cure of an illness, his philosophical methods to different therapies. In this paper, I try to spell out the point of these comparisons. To this end, I analyse Wittgenstein’s problems and proceeding in sections 138–97 with the help of some new concepts, in part adapted from clinical psychology, namely, Aaron Beck’s ‘cognitive therapy’. I first use them to conceptualise the problems at issue in such a way as to bring out why anything worth calling a ‘therapy’ is required, in the first place. I then employ the model of cognitive therapy to clarify what Wittgenstein is doing in response. This will familiarise us with a little noted but highly important kind of philosophical predicament, and with a straightforward approach to it that is in many ways revolutionary.

1 Introduction In section 138 Wittgenstein turns to a problem about sudden understanding, which he apparently comes to terms with in section 197, the last section of the Investigations that was contained already in the early version of the work (the Frühfassung of 1937–8, TSS 220–1, henceforward: FF). In between, Wittgenstein repeatedly returns to the theme of the problem, while moving criss-cross through a bewildering range of topics: he discusses first apparently sudden understanding of the word ‘cube’ (139–42), then understanding – not of another expression but – of the system of a number series (143–50) and, in particular, its sudden understanding (151–5). He digresses into a discussion of reading, conceived of in a rather unusual manner as the transformation of written signs into sounds or vice versa (!), with or without understanding (sic) (156–78), then returns to his previous topic (179–84), considers next how the way in which a formula is meant determines a number series (185–90) and, finally, returns once more to the topic of sudden understanding, though not of 86

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such a series but of an (unspecified) ‘word’ (191–7), with a digression into the way in which a machine symbol determines a machine’s movements (193–4). The apparent marks of ineptitude noted in the introduction to the present volume are thus very much in evidence: Wittgenstein moves swiftly through various topics that appear to be, at best, rather loosely related, digresses twice into topics of no evident philosophical relevance, and keeps coming back to one main problem, whose discussion he might well seem to have been unable to integrate into one sustained treatment. The present chapter is to reveal the system that underlies this apparent chaos: not a systematic doctrine but a methodical approach of philosophical therapy, in whose light all the apparent marks of ineptitude turn out to make perfectly good sense. Before we try to clarify what Wittgenstein did here, and why, we might as well point out what he was not trying to do: he was not much concerned with advancing general and non-trivial theses, claims of the sort philosophers typically make and often argue for. Consider what is generally regarded as his discussion of the notion of understanding: sections 143–55 and 179–84. These have frequently been taken to advance general claims about criteria of linguistic understanding. If taken at face value, however, practically all of the sections thus interpreted make far more restricted claims: claims, e.g. about the use of the expressions ‘Now I know how to go on’ and ‘Now I can go on’ with respect to number-series (180a1).1 A certain idea recurs in at least two such remarks, namely, the idea that the use of various things is one criterion for some sort of understanding: the use one makes of a picture is a criterion of one’s understanding of a method of projection (141c); and one’s application of an algebraic formula in generating a number-series is one criterion of how one understands that algebraic expression (146b6). But while clearly implying that the same point is recurring here (146b4), Wittgenstein nowhere bothers to explicitly sum up what one might take to be the general idea, in a neat assertive statement he would then go on to endorse. Indeed, the entire discussion contains only three non-trivial remarks of suitable generality: 150, 182 and 154d. The first of these is so extremely vague as to represent rather a pointer than the expression of a statement. The second, only added at the rather late stage of the Zwischenfassung, is primarily concerned with setting a ‘grammatical exercise’ rather than advancing the (at any rate rather modest) ‘grammatical claim’ that the criteria we accept for ‘fitting’, ‘being able’, and ‘understanding’ are ‘more complicated’ than one is first inclined to think. This leaves us with one single remark that looks like the expression of a typical philosophical claim (154d) – and even this was only added in the process of revision (in handwriting, in BFF, i.e. TS 239). Advancing philosophical theses, ‘material’ or ‘grammatical’ in nature, thus seems to have been, at best, a rather low priority in Wittgenstein’s ‘discussion of understanding’. So what was he trying to do, instead? This chapter will explore a pleasingly pedestrian answer: in the investigation of sections 138–97, he was trying 87

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to cope with the problems that he explicitly set out in its course, chiefly in sections 138–9, 151–3 and 191–7. A proper understanding of the nature of these problems will prove the key to an understanding of Wittgenstein’s efforts to cope with them. With the help of a few new concepts, I will therefore analyse in some detail how these problems arise, and of what kind they are. This will allow us to make good sense, first, of Wittgenstein’s declared aims and, second, of the approach he employed to attain them. In both cases, the crucial insights will be gained by bringing out precisely those aspects of his problems and proceeding that lend a point to his comparison between the treatment of a philosophical question and that of an ‘illness’ (255), and of his methods with ‘different therapies’ (133d). Which is all to the good, as these comparisons, integrated only into the final version of the Investigations, arguably represent Wittgenstein’s final stage of insight into the nature of his own work.2

2 Some new notions A radio-astronomer is rumoured to have knocked his instruments until they stopped emitting noises he found unintelligible and therefore put down to a malfunction. He was more attentive than others who simply failed to notice what they were not prepared to understand. The pulsars were then discovered by yet others who picked up the same signals when already possessing some concepts to make sense of them. The Investigations are replete with features that are, at first sight, positively odd. Some of them occasioned some violence to the text (for a start, at the hands of the translator), others quietly went unnoticed – both, arguably, also for lack of handy concepts to make sense of them. I wish to remedy this lack, though talk of ‘introduction of concepts’ may be a little grand for the occasion: although some of them were first developed by clinical psychologists and have a technical ring to them, the terms in question are very convenient to bring into view perfectly everyday phenomena ordinarily talked about in a roundabout way. And this is how we shall use these terms: to bring into view some phenomena we are actually quite familiar with but are all too willing to forget about the moment we style ourselves ‘rational thinkers’ (rather than trying to be, more plainly, reasonable people). In everyday life, we exercise varying degrees of control over our thinking: sometimes we make a conscious effort, e.g. to apply certain rules of inference, sometimes we simply let our thoughts drift or think of nothing in particular. In the latter case, we may suddenly be hit by a thought that spontaneously occurs to us out of the blue (‘I forgot to turn off the stove!’). Occasionally, such a thought recurs even once we have reflectively dismissed it (‘Don’t be silly! You always check before leaving the house’). Psychologists speak of more or less ‘controlled’ and ‘automatic’ thinking, and of ‘autonomous thoughts’: 88

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A subject’s thought is autonomous iff it spontaneously occurs to the subject when he is exercising a low degree of control over his thinking, and recurs, in the same form or as a variation on the same theme, even once it has been reflectively dismissed.

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While some such thoughts are highly salient (‘The stove!’), others are not, in particular when they are at odds with our own considered beliefs, which tend to inspire conjectures about what thoughts we ‘must be having’. In this case, autonomous thoughts may be sincerely reported only the moment the subject makes a conscious effort to attend to what he is ‘tempted’ or ‘inclined to say’, whether or not he judges the idea in question reasonable. This happened, e.g. in the case that first inspired the cognitive approach to emotional disorders (Beck’s ‘Anna O.’): A woman who felt continuous unexplained anxiety in the therapy sessions was describing certain sensitive . . . conflicts. Despite mild embarrassment, she verbalized these conflicts freely and without censoring. It was not clear to me why she was experiencing anxiety in each session, so I decided to direct her attention to her thoughts about what she had been saying. Upon my inquiry, she realized that she had been ignoring . . . [these thoughts]. She then reported the sequence: ‘I am not expressing myself clearly . . . He is bored with me . . . He will probably try to get rid of me.’ [Thus] . . . her chronic anxiety during the therapy sessions began to make sense. Her uneasiness had nothing to do with the . . . conflicts she had been describing. But her self-evaluative thoughts and anticipations of my reactions pointed to the essence of her problem. Even though she was actually quite articulate and interesting, she had continual thoughts revolving around the theme of her being inarticulate and boring. (Beck 1976: 32) These thoughts are part and parcel of a more comprehensive habit of thought: frequently, they are interpretations of remarks made or events observed (say, the tired therapist’s suppressed yawn). These interpretations are usually wrong, and not even natural in the circumstances. But they are reasonable in the light of assumptions that are specific instantiations of the general theme in question (here: ‘As people realise, I am inarticulate and boring’). Such misinterpretations usually go with inferences that tacitly presuppose assumptions articulating this very theme, i.e. inferences that are invalid as they stand but can regularly be rendered valid by supplying such an assumption as a further premise. Even though otherwise a perfectly competent thinker, the subject thus regularly makes leaps of thought, of two kinds: misinterpretations and invalid inferences, informed by assumptions 89

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revolving around always the same theme. They occur mostly in automatic but also in more controlled thinking, indeed, even in quite careful reflection. The habit of making such leaps of thought is ‘autonomous’ in the sense that the subject is not aware of relying on the assumptions in question and may, indeed, even reflectively reject them as false or unwarranted, all along. These tacit assumptions may, but need not, occur themselves to the subject as autonomous thoughts. Thus, an autonomous cognitive habit is the habit of making leaps of thought informed by assumptions instantiating or articulating a certain theme, assumptions the subject is not aware of relying on and may even reflectively reject. While it is in (cognitive) psychotherapy that most trouble is taken to identify such habits, they are more or less evident in the thinking of every human being: all of us frequently leap to conclusions that rely on tacit assumptions we are able to identify only with some effort. (Philosophers will be familiar with the fact that it is significantly more difficult to identify tacit premises in others’ arguments when one shares them oneself, equally tacitly.) Some such assumptions recur systematically. And presumably some of these assumptions or more specific implications of them would occur to us as autonomous thoughts, if (like Beck’s patient) we attended to what we are inclined or tempted to say, when making those leaps of thought. Finally, Beck’s example illustrates nicely that autonomous thoughts may have much the same emotional consequences as considered beliefs: the lady felt (almost) as anxious in the session as if she had sincerely and reflectively believed she was boring her therapist. (Before you find this outrageous, recall that the thought that you left the stove on may spoil your afternoon stroll, even once you have thought the matter over and concluded that you did not.) This is of the essence of emotional disorders. They involve feelings that are, in a quite specific sense, pathological: they are intelligible in the light of autonomous thoughts but utterly unreasonable in the light of the beliefs the subject reflectively holds throughout. This term is, of course, more frequently used in other senses. But this one is arguably the most pungent. After all, there need not be anything wrong with you if you have feelings that are ‘particularly severe and disabling’ or ‘utterly unwarranted by the objective situation’: severe and temporarily disabling feelings are perfectly normal, e.g. in the face of the death of a loved one. And anyone may have feelings unwarranted by the objective situation, if he has been misinformed and thus came to hold false beliefs. By contrast, the mismatch between the subject’s feelings and his own reflective beliefs 90

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always constitutes a disorder – to which, ultimately, autonomous cognitive habits may give rise. To cure an emotional disorder is to put an end to such pathological feelings. The ‘cognitive approach’ is to do this by identifying and ‘modifying’, i.e. weakening or breaking, the relevant cognitive habits. Beck found that in many cases this could be achieved simply by eliciting and refuting, again and again, autonomous thoughts that manifest the habit: this ‘purely cognitive’ exercise proved enough whenever the habit was not sustained by too powerful a psychological motivation. We shall see that the problems Wittgenstein tries to cope with in sections 138–97 of the Investigations are in some pertinent ways similar to the problems thus addressed by cognitive therapy: they arise in the context of autonomous thoughts, from autonomous cognitive habits, which Wittgenstein attacks much in line with the ‘cognitive approach’.

3 Wittgenstein’s autonomous thoughts The discussion of reading revolves around the theme that it is a ‘special conscious activity of mind’ (156): that a conscious act constitutes the criterion for making the difference between actual reading and behaviour that merely looks like it (159), that real reading involves a highly characteristic experience (165), that when reading one feels a kind of influence of the letters (169), just as one has a particular experience of being guided by the original when transcribing a text (173) or copying a doodle (175). The sentences that express these different variations on the theme are prefaced by, or contain, odd riders that have, by and large, been ignored: ‘. . . we shall be inclined to say . . .’ (156e), ‘So we should like to say . . .’ (156g), ‘. . . we are tempted to say: . . .’ (159a1), ‘– we should like to say –’ (165a1), ‘Here I should like to say . . .’ (165a9, 173b11), ‘I should like to say . . .’ (169c2, 176a4, 177a1), ‘. . . and then you would like to say . . .’ (174a3), where ‘should like to say’ and ‘would like to say’ are of course translations of the same German expression: ‘möchte ich/möchtest du/sagen’. In line with English – though not German! – usage, Wittgenstein might be taken to use ‘I should like to say that . . .’ quite simply to advance the claim that . . . . I will now argue that, first, it is indeed Wittgenstein who is speaking here in his own voice: he uses the ‘I’ to refer to himself. But, second, he is not at these points making the claim that . . . . First, while the general theme is natural enough (though not philosophically prominent), some of its variations are put by means of rather idiosyncratic formulations, and all of them are formulated in the context of quite outré behaviour which Wittgenstein describes in the first person: who would want to say, ‘I experience the because’ (176, 177)? Wittgenstein ‘would like to say’ this ‘when I reflect on what I experience in such a case’ as the one he considered a moment before (177), namely, when he is copying an arbitrary doodle, to pin down the ‘experience of being guided’ by the original doodle (175) – something no 91

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other philosopher is known to have engaged in. And this latter point also holds of his less idiosyncratic inclinations: he would ‘like to say: when I read I feel a kind of influence of the letters working on me – but I feel no influence from that series of arbitrary flourishes on what I say’ (169c2) after having actually conducted the ‘experiment’ (169c8) of drawing a line of arbitrary flourishes and comparing the experience he has when reading a sentence with the one he has when looking along the line (169a2–3). There is no evidence to support the very unkind suggestion that Wittgenstein is setting up a remarkably unrealistic straw-man under the guise of a fictitious ‘I’. Hence, we should assume that he here uses the first-person pronoun to refer to himself, and is sincerely stating what he ‘would like to say’ in the particular situations he describes. But, second, in writing that he would like to say that . . ., he is not advancing the claim that . . . . In the first person, he tells us what he ‘would like to say’ mostly after having made the experiment he finds to refute the idea in question (169c2, 176a4, 177a1, following the experiments of 169 and 175). He then calls the idea a ‘fiction’ (166a2) or ‘imagination’ (170c1), and seeks to render the thought intelligible as a (misguided) interpretation of a salient feature of the experience had during the experiment at issue (170a, cf. 177), an interpretation that strikes him as particularly attractive ‘when I say “guidance”, “influence”, and other such words to myself. “For surely”, I tell myself, “I was being guided” – Only then does the idea of that ethereal, intangible influence arise’ (175b7–9). Outside such reflection on those experiments, the thought ‘would never have occurred’ to anyone (170a1). So, far from endorsing them, Wittgenstein is, here, merely expressing ideas that occurred to him and struck him as attractive when describing a particular experiment he conducted, in particular terms (177a2), things he in this sense ‘would like to say’ – but which he rejects firmly enough to raise the question of how such things could occur to him, in the first place. (In 140a2, he wonders apropos another such thought: ‘How could I think that?’) Which question he answers for the ideas that instantiate the main theme on reading by conceptualising them as fictions conjured up under the influence of particular language. Also, the other riders mentioned at the outset are used to express such ideas. In discussing the different things he ‘would like to say’, Wittgenstein is readily switching between the first persons singular and plural: what ‘I should like to say’ (165a8–9) renders more precise what ‘we should like to say’ (165a1–2); the next variation on the general theme, again: what ‘I would like to say’ (169c2), is a thought that ‘would never have occurred to us . . . if we had not . . .’ (170a1), spelled out with the words ‘We imagine . . .’ (170c1), but enlarged on with the words, ‘For when I speak of . . . that is really meant to imply . . .’ (170c2). Hence, also, in saying what ‘we should like to say’ Wittgenstein is, here, expressing ideas that, at certain points, struck him as attractive, even though he reflectively rejected them. 92

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Very occasionally, Wittgenstein uses the related rider ‘we are inclined to say’ in making moves of a different kind, namely, in advancing claims usually associated with ordinary language analysis: in section 160, e.g. Wittgenstein imagines a situation (under the influence of some poison, someone systematically transforms into sounds signs not belonging to any existing alphabet) and ventures a hypothesis about how most competent speakers would describe it: ‘here we should probably be inclined to say he was making up an alphabet for himself ad hoc and then reading accordingly’ (my translation). The first articulation of the main theme on reading, though, is in a different boat: ‘If we think of [one particular] sort of reading, the reading of a beginner [that was previously described], and ask ourselves what reading consists in, we shall be inclined to say: it is a special conscious activity of mind’ (156e). ‘We’ are said to have this inclination when thinking of a quite specific situation (rather than: all our lives or ‘whenever we philosophise’). But it is not a preference for one description of that situation (say, ‘The pupil really reads’) over another. It is an inclination to answer not the ‘linguistic’ question, ‘How (as “reading”or “guessing”, etc.) is the activity imagined or considered to be described?’, but the entirely different and peculiarly philosophical question: ‘What does reading consist in?’. Thus, sentences containing the rider ‘we are inclined to say’, just like those containing ‘we should like’ or ‘are tempted to say’, are frequently best regarded as expressing exactly what they purport to express: an inclination or temptation or desire to say certain things that Wittgenstein has and might share with kindred spirits – mostly things he, at the same time, reflectively refuses to endorse. The riders mentioned at the outset mark only some of the inclinations and desires Wittgenstein attends to. Others are reported through – not all but many of the – remarks commonly attributed to a shadowy ‘interlocutor’ who is sometimes being addressed in the second person, if his remarks are not simply enclosed in double quotes. Wittgenstein, however, usually uses the ‘you’ to address himself, as one sometimes does in soliloquy (‘But now I ask myself: What are you doing?’ 173b8), and explicitly acknowledges as his own, crucial mistakes and wild ideas of the ‘interlocutor’ he addresses. Among these are instantiations of precisely the two core ideas we shall see to jointly raise the main problem of 138–97. The first surfaces in the mistake that ‘we should like to express by saying: I should have thought the picture [that came before my mind when I understood “cube”] forced a particular use on me’, which he acknowledges as ‘my mistake’ (140a1) after it has been made by ‘you’ in saying “It’s quite simple . . .” (139d4–5). The second and related idea is first exposed when Wittgenstein turns from acts of understanding to acts of meaning: ‘your idea was that that act of meaning the order had, in its own way, already traversed all those steps . . . Thus you were inclined to use such expressions as: “The steps are really already taken, even before I take them in writing or orally or in thought”’ (188). Subsequently, Wittgenstein explicitly treats this idea and inclination as his own: ‘“All the steps are really already taken” 93

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means: I no longer have any choice. The rule, once stamped with a particular meaning, traces the lines along which it is to be followed through the whole of space. – But . . . my description only made sense if it was to be understood symbolically. – I [!] should have said: This is how it strikes me [!]’ (219). Wittgenstein also reports such inclinations in double quotes that are not accompanied by an address in the second person, as the evolution of a related remark from its manuscript source shows: “To us, a series only has one face!” – Certainly; but which? Surely the algebraic one, and that of a segment of its expansion. Or does it also have another one? – “But everything already lies in this!” Well, what more do you [!] want. That happens to be the exclamation that this situation brings about. – And it is now a different question: why I [!] am inclined to say precisely this. – For it // that // doesn’t belong to the application of the rule. (MS 124, 184; my translation) In the course of this soliloquy, Wittgenstein does address himself in the second person. In the section derived from this, however, no such pronoun occurs; what he himself is inclined to say now simply appears in double quotes: “To us, a series only has one face!” – Certainly; but which? Surely the algebraic one, and that of a segment of its development. Or does it also have another one? – “But everything already lies in this!” – But that is not an observation about the segment of the series, or about anything that we notice in it; it rather gives expression to the fact that we only look at the mouth of the rule and do [sic], and do not appeal to anything else for guidance. (228, my translation) [The last sentence gives one sort of explanation of ‘why I am inclined to say precisely this’ – note the idiosyncratic phrasing, as awkward in German as it is in English, which Anscombe smoothed down.] Wittgenstein came to attach considerable importance to this exercise of attending to inclinations to talk nonsense, to ideas that in certain situations strike one as plausible and attractive, even though one reflectively rejects them all along. Thus he exhorted himself about a year after finishing his work on the Investigations: ‘Don’t, for Heaven’s sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! Only don’t fail to pay attention [literal translation: to listen] to your nonsense’ (MS 134, 20; 5.3.1947, CV 64). Already, sixteen years earlier, he had insisted upon the importance of giving so ‘characteristic’ an expression to wrong lines of thought that it is being accepted as ‘the true expression of [one’s] feeling’ (FF 108b, derived from BT 410). By the time of the 94

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Zwischenfassung, he had come to conceive of this as the task of giving ‘a psychologically accurate exposition of the temptation to say this-or-that’ (ZF 216, early version of section 254). In the light of this remark, some of the relevant manuscript material, like the extract just quoted (and its surround: MS 124, 184–5, quoted below), reads like records of deliberate efforts to attend to such ‘temptations’, to what one is inclined to say when relinquishing deliberate control over one’s thinking and allowing oneself to say ‘how things strike one’, no matter how nonsensical: thoughts that occur to Wittgenstein in the course of this exercise (rendered for the most part in double quotes) alternate with comments on them made in cold blood, and responses to these comments that occur to him spontaneously. Many of these thoughts then recur as variations on the same general theme, even once the general idea and the thoughts previously instantiating it have been reflectively rejected: take the things Wittgenstein ‘would like to say’ on reading and copying. Both parts of our first definition are thus satisfied: these and the other ideas we discussed in this section occurred to Wittgenstein as autonomous thoughts.

4 Wittgenstein’s cognitive habits But why did he explicitly attend to them? Why should a philosopher bother to take note of things that may occur to him, when he reflectively rejects them or, indeed, coolly judges them to be not even faintly sensible? This and the next section build up to the two parts of an answer: Wittgenstein’s autonomous thoughts are part and parcel of two autonomous cognitive habits. And cognitive distortions in line with these two habits generate the puzzles from which Wittgenstein, here, seeks to rid himself. Practically all the autonomous thoughts reported or emerging in sections 138–97 are instantiations of, or variations on, two general themes. One of them we already encountered in the discussion of reading. In more general terms, it can be characterised as concerning ‘context-sensitive activities’ like reading, taking down a dictation, or copying a text or figure: these activities are associated with characteristic forms of behaviour such as, e.g. looking at a text and following it line by line with one’s eyes. But it is conceivable that the characteristic behaviour is performed without qualifying as reading, copying, etc. Indeed, it actually happens that pupils recite a text they know by heart while looking at the text and even following it line by line with a finger, thus pretending to be reading it off when they do not. In such cases, we make the difference between true and merely apparent V-ing by reference to behaviour in other, actual or possible, situations: we consider, e.g. whether the child is able to recite the same text without consulting it, or to read out another text of comparable difficulty. But the moment they think about it in the abstract, many people find it plausible to say that this difference has to be made by some mental or inner event. Of course, Wittgenstein sincerely and reflectively repudiated this idea. But, even so, he has autonomous 95

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thoughts according with this idea, not only on context-sensitive activities but also on understanding, in particular, on understanding of the system of a number-series. While of course no activity, this particular kind of understanding is similar to context-sensitive activities in that it goes with highly characteristic behaviour: continuing a segment of the series, uttering a formula, etc.; but, as in the case of reading etc., it is conceivable that a subject behaves in these ways and yet fails to understand. It is, thus, with respect to everything that strikes him as relevantly similar to context-sensitive activities, that Wittgenstein is tempted to say things in line with: Schema A: When someone actually V-ies, (1) a mental event takes place that makes the difference between true and merely apparent V-ing, and (2) makes him act as appropriate, with more than merely causal inexorability. The working of an inner mechanism serves here as a model of ‘mental events’ (156g). Schema and model jointly constitute what can aptly be called the ‘mentalistic picture of context-sensitive activities’. The second theme concerns logical or ‘grammatical’ determination: we sometimes say that a conclusion is ‘already contained in’ the premises that logically entail it. Again, Wittgenstein is inclined to say something along these lines in a host of further cases. For example, the way in which we use a word is one criterion of how we understand it. Conversely, the assumption that I do understand that word correctly generally suggests that I will use it correctly, and would seem to logically entail this, in conjunction with various other assumptions (of sobriety, care, etc.). In a way, therefore, my understanding of the term seems to determine how I will use it, and to determine this with a ‘grammatical’ inexorability comparable to that of logic. In many such cases Wittgenstein feels inclined to say things in line with another assumption he never reflectively endorsed: Schema B: When something determines something else with stronger than merely causal inexorability, the former somehow already contains or anticipates the latter, i.e. brings it into some sort of existence before it actually comes about. The workings of an ‘ideally rigid’ ethereal mechanism or machine, then, are the model for ‘more than merely causal inexorability’ (193). This schema and model jointly make up what can fittingly be called the ‘actualistic picture of logical determination’. The schemata and the models that go with them bias both Wittgenstein’s automatic and his more controlled thinking, issuing both in the autonomous thoughts that occur to him when ‘listening to’ his inclinations and temptations to talk ‘nonsense’, and in conclusions he may momentarily endorse. 96

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These conclusions are manifestly reached through leaps of thought that tacitly presuppose assumptions instantiating those schemata. Many of those autonomous thoughts are analysed by Wittgenstein himself as misinterpretations informed by such assumptions. Let’s now take note of the autonomous thoughts he reports and the leaps we can observe in his controlled reflections. The textual markers discussed above allow us to identify the following reports of autonomous thoughts, in sections 138–97:

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(147a2, b1) When I say I understand the rule, I am not saying so because I have found out that up to now I have applied the formula in such-andsuch a way. I know the application apart from remembering actual applications to particular numbers. (Correct as it stands, but in 147a1 interpreted in line with A1) (156e) Reading is a conscious activity of mind. (A1) (156g) Two different processes, or mechanisms, are going on in the proficient reader and the beginner (who is pretending), and this difference in what is going on in them distinguishes reading from not reading. (A1, model A) (159a1) The one real criterion for anybody’s reading is the conscious act of reading, the act of reading the sounds off from the letters. (A1) (165a1–2) Reading is a quite particular process, with something special and highly characteristic going on. (A1) (165a9) The words I utter come in a special way. (A1) (169a1) When we read, don’t we feel the word-shapes somehow causing our utterance? (A1, model A) (169c3) When I read I feel a kind of influence of the letters working on me – but I feel no influence from that series of arbitrary squiggles on what I say. (A1, model A) (170c1) A feeling enables us to perceive as it were a connecting mechanism between the look of the word and the sound that we utter. (A1, model A) (173a1) But being guided surely is a particular experience. (cf.165a1–2. A1) (173b11) The experience of being guided is something more inward, more essential. (A1) 97

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(174a3) The experience of deliberation is a particular inner experience. (Extension of A1 from ‘context-sensitive’ verbs to adverbs qualifying ‘conscious activities’) (176a4, 177a1) When being led by a figure I copy, I experienced the because. (A1, model A) (184a5) When I suddenly remember a tune, I have the distinct feeling as if it were there. (B) (188a) That act of meaning the order had in its own way already traversed all those steps: when you meant it your mind as it were flew ahead and took all the steps before you physically arrived at this or that one. (B) (188b) The steps are really already taken, even before I take them in writing or orally or in thought. (B) (191a1, 197a1) It is as if we could grasp the whole use of the word in a flash. (Where the misplaced caution – ‘as if ’ – is due to B, see next section) (193a2) The action of a machine seems to be there in it from the start. (Consequent B) (193c1) The future movements of the machine are, in their definiteness, like objects which are lying in a drawer and which we then take out. (Consequent B) (194b5, 7) Possibility is something which is like reality. Possibility is something very near reality. (194b9, 10) The possibility of the movement stands in a unique relation to the movement itself; closer than that of a picture to its subject. It is not an empirical fact that this possibility is the possibility of precisely this movement. (Antecedent B) (195a1) What I do in grasping determines the future use of the word not causally and as a matter of experience; rather, in some queer way the use itself is in some sense present. (B) (197a5) The future development must in some way already be present in the act of grasping and yet isn’t present. (Consequent B) The thoughts clearly reported as autonomous thoughts thus mostly instantiate schemata (B) and (A1). Thoughts instantiating (A2) are discussed in sections 139c–146 and 181–3: when the picture of a cube comes before my mind in understanding the word ‘cube’, I must go on to apply the word precisely to cubes (140a1–2); we must go on thus in case the picture is supplemented by a projection schema (141a1–4). Once Wittgenstein has made it clear that the picture might as well exist as a drawing in front of the subject, rather than in his imagination (141b3), he seeks to dislodge the idea 98

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that when told to copy the picture ‘0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9’ on the board a pupil will inevitably put down this number-series (143), and the thought that the pupil must continue the series of natural numbers correctly when given an explanation employing some such picture as (145a):

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_0, _1, _2, _3, _4, _5, _6, _7, _8, _9 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 But he still feels inclined to voice the idea that the understanding of a number-series is the source from which the correct use flows like a series (inexorably) derived from an algebraic formula, a (mental) state that forces the subject to continue the series correctly (146a6–b2). Variations on this theme recur once Wittgenstein has clarified that we use the exclamation ‘Now I know how to go on!’ rather like a signal, the correctness of whose use depends upon the circumstances: when the right formula occurs to us, e.g. we may say this if, and only if, we have learnt algebra and have already used formulas of the kind in question before (179–80). This observation gives rise to the thoughts: ‘When it is under the right circumstances that a subject says, “Now I know how to go on”, then he must subsequently be able to continue the series correctly’ (cf. 181), and ‘There is a totality of conditions such that someone could not but go on correctly if all of them were fulfilled’ (cf. 183). While he explicitly reports only two of them (140a1–2, 146a6–b2) as autonomous thoughts, Wittgenstein repeatedly tells himself to ‘be on [his] guard against thinking’ such things (183a5), wants to get himself to acknowledge that other responses than the supposedly inevitable ones might occur as well (144a6), and finds it necessary to remind himself of these other possibilities, even though they really are obvious (145a6). The ideas in line with (A2) thus manifestly struck him as plausible, even forceful, while he was throughout careful not to endorse them. I therefore propose to regard them, too, as autonomous thoughts of his. The schemata and models identified do not merely surface in such thoughts. Both bias systematically all of Wittgenstein’s thinking, including his controlled reflections: as we will show in detail later, those schemata and models jointly distort his interpretation of thoughts and utterances, experiences and events. And, as we presently find out, Wittgenstein regularly draws inferences in accord with the schemata. With systematic inadvertence, assumptions instantiating them wholly or in part are being tacitly presupposed in leaps of thought that lead him precisely into the three principal puzzles of 138–97: into the difficulties about supposedly sudden understanding raised in sections 138–9, into the muddle about strangely elusive mental events involved in genuinely sudden understanding that he develops in sections 151–3, and into the full-blown puzzle about, again, supposedly sudden understanding that he treats in 191–7. 99

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Let’s consider first the least complex second of these problems. Wittgenstein develops it from the first-person perspective, changing between the first persons singular and plural, to sum up: ‘I am in a muddle’ (153a7) – clearly he himself felt muddled and confused. On the face of it, the muddle is generated quite simply by an attempt Wittgenstein makes to identify a mental event that will fit the bill of assumption (A): a mental event that (1) occurs whenever someone suddenly understands the system of a number-series, and (2) inexorably makes the subject act as appropriate. For the mental events that readily come to mind as accompaniments of the sincere exclamation ‘Now I understand!’ (which Wittgenstein goes through in 151) need not go with the ability to continue the series correctly (as he seems to observe in 152). Hence, the true mental event or process of understanding seems to him hidden behind these mere accompaniments (153a1). And this concealment seems strange because he thought he exclaimed ‘Now I understand’ because he understood (153a5), which he seems tempted to interpret as meaning: because he grew aware of the relevant mental process. But, of course, Wittgenstein does not endorse any such assumption as (A). From the start (151b4), he equates the pertinent understanding with an ability; in the end (154c1, d), he explicitly rejects the opposing idea (A1) of understanding as a mental process; and, all along, he countenances only what ‘remains’ of (A2) after ‘cleansing’ it of this idea. The way an algebraic expression is applied is one criterion of how it is understood (146b6), so that the attribution of its correct understanding ‘inexorably’ implies that of the ability to correctly continue the series. So, of course, Wittgenstein does not deliberately look for a mental event that satisfies the very bill (A) makes out. Rather, he is led into the muddle by reflection that crucially involves three presumably inadvertent leaps of thought in line with precisely the first part of schema (A). The first leap is from 151b5 to 151b7. Considering the case of a pupil who suddenly understands the system of a number-series and is, thus, able to continue the segment so far developed on the board, Wittgenstein asks: ‘So this capacity, this understanding, is something that makes its appearance in a moment. So let us try and see what it is that makes its appearance here’ (151b4–5). As he explicitly equates understanding of the system with the capacity to continue the series, one would expect him to answer the question ‘What is it that makes its appearance here?’ by some more detailed or otherwise informative description of that capacity that is what makes its appearance here. But, instead, Wittgenstein jumps to the question ‘What happened here?’ (151b7), which is a question about a – presumably mental or inner – event. The second leap, from the mental events described in reply, in 151b–d, to the question 152a, involves a weaker version of the same presupposition (A1): ‘Are the processes which I have identified the understanding?’. Even when a negative answer is expected, the question presupposes that the 100

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understanding might very well be some such mental event or process as the ones he described. Wittgenstein tacitly recasts the question as that of whether attributions of those processes and of understanding mean the same, and gives a negative answer because ‘it is perfectly conceivable that the formula should occur to him [etc.] and that he should nevertheless not understand’ (152b1–2). Presumably, he has in mind here the possibility that the subject might fail to continue the series correctly. The conflation of the two possibilities is, of course, unproblematic, as it is in line with both (A2) and his explicit view on criteria of algebraic understanding. Not so Wittgenstein’s final leap of thought, from 152b2–4 to 153a1, as analysed by himself: from the fact that ‘Now I understand the system’ does not mean the same as ‘The formula occurs to me’, he jumps to the conclusion that the former must describe a process occurring behind that of saying (sc.: or thinking of) the formula (154a). Which move relies on the ‘linguistic’ version of (A1): attributions of understanding describe mental processes. The three vicious leaps of thought forcefully illustrate how the habit of inadvertently drawing inferences in line with assumptions he reflectively rejects may lead a philosopher into a muddle he has to make some efforts to dissolve to his own satisfaction. Table 5.1, below (in section 6), gives an overview over these and other leaps of thought Wittgenstein makes in sections 138–97, and the perplexities to which they lead.

5 The main problem of sections 138–97 Controlled reflection marred by cognitive distortions in line with the mentalistic picture (A) thus gets Wittgenstein into the muddle of sections 151–3. The main puzzle, first mooted in sections 138–9 and fully spelled out in sections 191–7, is a more complex affair, the result of controlled reflection and automatic thought in line with both the mentalistic picture (A) and the actualistic picture (B) – and, indeed, with the meaning-body conception that frequently goes with the Augustinian picture of language. To clarify the nature of the final problem, we will first consider section 197. To unravel the lines of thought that led Wittgenstein into it, we shall then move back to sections 138–9. The discussion of supposedly sudden understanding, the main theme of sections 138–97, culminates in the discussion of the impression that ‘it is as if we could grasp the whole use of a word in a flash’ (191a1, 197a1), namely, when we hear or say the word with understanding (138a4, cf. 197a6). This remark articulates the feeling that something ‘astonishing’ and ‘queer’ is happening when we understand a word (cf. 197a4). Indeed, that we should be able to grasp the whole use in a single instant (cf. 139b3–4) seems so astonishing and queer that the thought stops short of suggesting that such a thing might actually happen: ‘It is as if we could grasp . . .’. This sense of wonder is of the peculiar kind Plato took for the starting-point of 101

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philosophising: a feeling of amazement or wonder in the face of an entirely familiar and pedestrian phenomenon – like understanding a word we hear or say. From where does this feeling come? According to Wittgenstein’s own analysis, ‘It becomes queer when we are led to think that the future development must in some way already be present in the act of grasping and yet isn’t present’ (197a5, my translation) – a thought that is, indeed, apt to induce intellectual vertigo. In the Frühfassung, the later sections 191–7 form part of the discussion of the ‘hardness of the logical [and mathematical] “must”’ (FF 349–57). This context renders it less than surprising that the present thought is yet another variation on the theme that ‘everything already lies’ in what comes before our mind when we consider the segment of a numberseries with understanding. This is the theme of various things Wittgenstein explicitly reports he is inclined to say about that ‘hardness’, without ever explicitly countenancing them. Clearly, then, Wittgenstein in 197a5 reports an autonomous thought he had himself. This autonomous thought gave rise, in him, to the feeling of amazement and wonder he adverts to in 197a4. The opening sentence articulating this feeling (197a1) sums up how, in the grip of that thought, things struck him (cf. 219). But why should Wittgenstein (or anyone else, for that matter) be led to think that ‘the future development [or use] must in some way already be present in the act of grasping’? He answers: ‘For we say that there isn’t any doubt that we understand the word, and on the other hand its meaning lies in its use’ (197a6). It is a platitude that (unless we travel abroad) we mostly understand the words we hear or say. And while Wittgenstein was, in general, careful not to endorse answers to the dubiously meaningful question ‘What is the meaning of a word?’ (as evidenced, e.g. by the – in German – cautious formulation in section 43, the mere conditional in 138, and the double quotes in 560), he arguably did countenance the use of ‘The meaning of a word lies in its use’ as a slogan, to sum up facts like these: when we ask what the meaning of a certain word is we want to know how it is used or how we should use it; when we explain its meaning we explain the manner in which it is to be used; we often ask ‘What do you mean by that word?’ when someone uses it in an unusual way and we want to know how he uses it. The slogan should, hence, be read as: ‘The meaning lies in the word’s way or manner of use’. But this does not even faintly suggest that the future use has to be ‘present in the act of grasping’: quite obviously, I do not know how I will use a word when I know how it is to be used; for all I know, I might get drunk or original. Second, Wittgenstein appears to have in mind the understanding we can be credited with when hearing or saying a word we understand (138a4). On his considered view, this ‘understanding’ consists in nothing over and above the general competence of using the word: the possession of this general competence which may manifest itself in various different situations, rather than any mental act or process, makes the relevant difference between someone who 102

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hears or utters a word with understanding and someone who hears or parrots it without – this, at any rate, is the principal upshot of sections 138–83. Properly interpreted in line with Wittgenstein’s considered views, the platitude and slogan (of 197a6) thus do not even remotely suggest that an ‘act of grasping’ occurs whenever we hear or say a word we are familiar with, let alone that its ‘future use’ or ‘development’ (195a1, 197a1) should be in any way present when we know how it is to be used. To sum up: Wittgenstein puts his feeling of amazement and wonder down to what we learned to conceptualise as an autonomous thought (197a5). And this thought is entirely unreasonable in the light of his two pertinent considered beliefs (197a6). So is his peculiarly philosophical sense of wonder. This feeling, thus, is in one crucial respect analogous to the feeling of anxiety experienced by Beck’s patient: it is intelligible in the light of an explicitly reported autonomous thought but unreasonable in the light of the beliefs he reflectively holds at the same time. But, reasonable or not, Wittgenstein actually did jump from the platitude and slogan he identified as his point of departure to the ideas that are apt to induce his philosophical sense of wonder. He did so by two leaps of thought that implicitly rely on precisely the two assumptions he is most intent on unsettling in the preceding part of the Investigations: on the schemata constitutive, respectively, of the mentalistic picture of understanding and of the meaning-body conception that frequently goes with the Augustinian picture of language. He makes both leaps in section 138. The first is this: ‘We understand the meaning of a word when we hear or say it; we grasp it in a flash’ (138a4). This move is odd: we only say that we ‘grasp the meaning of a word in a flash’ when we pick it up in a sufficiently informative context (rather than looking it up in a dictionary or being told). We then say something about how we first came to understand the word. In advance of some innovative explanation of meaning, it is, therefore, not even meaningful to say that we ‘grasp a word’s meaning in a flash’ when we hear or say a word we are already familiar with (though we can, of course, say that we grasped in a flash the import or implications of what was said by an utterance of the complete sentence, or the allusion made through the particular choice of words). In making this move without any explanation whatsoever, Wittgenstein is relying on an instance of schema (A1):

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When someone says or hears a word with understanding, a mental event takes place that makes the difference between this and merely apparent understanding (merely parroting the word or listening with an unwarrantedly knowing smile).

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the working of an inner mechanism, this formulation then suggests that a certain link or relation is being established between the subject and the word’s meaning. Which renders it natural for Wittgenstein to slip from saying that ‘we understand a word’ into saying that ‘we understand the meaning of a word’ (138a4), which is as unidiomatic in German as it is in English (you know, or are familiar with, either a word or its meaning, but are said to ‘understand’ only the former). Thus, (A1) and the model it goes with first influence Wittgenstein’s formulation of a platitude and then have him jump from it to a piece of nonsense, namely, from (1) ‘When we hear or say a word we (usually) understand it’, to (2) ‘When we hear or say a word we (usually) grasp its meaning’. The second leap is constituted by an odd interpretation of his own slogan that ‘the meaning is the use we make of the word’ (138a3), which we saw to amount to: ‘The meaning is the way or manner in which the word is used’. In raising the objection that ‘what we grasp in this way is surely something different from the “use” which is extended in time’ (138a4), Wittgenstein interprets it differently: of course, also, a manner of use can be said to have a temporal extension, as words acquire a certain use and lose it again (rather quickly, e.g. in the case of youth language). But there is no obvious difficulty in the idea that we come to understand in a flash one such way in which the word may be used. As Wittgenstein does not bother to explain any less than obvious difficulty, he must mean something different by ‘the use which is extended in time’: he interprets it in line with an assumption articulating the ‘meaning-body conception’ that informs the discussion of 136b–138a3, namely, The meaning of a word is an object – with a temporal, if not a spatiotemporal extension. In section 138, he thus interprets the phrase as meaning ‘the several instances of the word’s use that are spread out over time’, before focusing, in sections 191–7, on the future instances of use (195a1, 197a5). He thus manifestly jumps from (3) ‘The meaning is the use we make of the word’, to (4) ‘The meaning is the sum of the instances of the word’s use’. While we saw three paragraphs up that (1) and (3) don’t even suggest a puzzle, (2) and (4) do imply a highly perplexing conclusion: (5) When we hear or say a word, we (usually) grasp all of the instances of its use. And this, Wittgenstein spontaneously protests, cannot be (138a4). 104

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He then considers the question by means of an example: ‘When someone says the word “cube” to me . . . I know what it means. But can the whole use of the word come before my mind, when I understand it in this way?’ (139a). He finds it so puzzling that the whole use of the word (spread out over such a long period of time!) should be present to us in a single instant (cf. 139b3–4), that he immediately gives a negative answer: ‘No, what can come before my mind in an instant, what I can grasp in a flash, is not the whole use or meaning of the word, but something that determines this meaning.’ This implicit answer emerges from the explicit continuation: ‘Well, but on the other hand isn’t the meaning of the word also [!] determined by this use? And can’t these two ways of determining the word’s meaning [through what is being grasped, on the one hand, and through the use made of the word over time, on the other] conflict?’ (139b1–2). That is: faced with the consequence (5), Wittgenstein suddenly finds the idea of ‘grasping a word’s meaning’ so puzzling that he retracts it, and moves from (2) to the idea that when we hear or say a word, we grasp something that determines the meaning, which he again equates with the uses or applications made of the word. That we should actually be able to grasp the meaning or use itself, seems too mind-boggling to be true. Already at this point, he is presumably seized by a sense of wonder that can be put into the words: ‘“It is as if we could grasp the whole use of a word in a flash”’ (191a1, my italics). Precisely to escape it, he moves to a new thought, that instantiates schema (A2): (6) When I hear or say a word with understanding, something comes before my mind and determines the use I make of the word, with logical rather than merely psychological compulsion. Thus, the ‘mistake’ he diagnoses as his own: ‘I should have thought the picture [I supposed to come to my mind when I hear the word “cube”] forced a particular use on me’ (140a1–2), namely, forced him to apply the word precisely to cubes, with logical compulsion rather than the ‘merely psychological compulsion’ that, he is subsequently inclined to say, is all there is to it (140a4–5). But the move from the idea that I grasp the meaning or use of a word when I hear it to the idea that I then grasp something that determines its meaning or use brings him no lasting relief from puzzlement. An autonomous thought, reported in section 195, infers from the new assumption (6) a conclusion that is slightly different from but no less puzzling than (5), namely, the conclusion that the future instances of use must somehow already be present in the act of grasping: ‘ “But I don’t mean that what I do now (in grasping) determines the future use causally and as a matter of experience, but that in a queer way, the use itself is in some sense present”’ (195a1, my translation). The first, explicit, premise is that (6) what comes before my mind when I understand a word, what I then grasp, determines the future use with not 105

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merely causal inexorability – but with logical compulsion. The second, tacit, premise is uncovered by one of three diagnostic remarks that separate the counterparts of sections 195 and 197 in the Frühfassung (FF 355). It is a strong version of schema B: When something determines something else with logical compulsion, the latter somehow already is the former. These two premises jointly imply that: (7) When I hear or say a word with understanding, I grasp something that somehow already is the future use of the word – so that ‘the future use is in some sense present’ in the act of grasping (as 195a1 concludes). Which is the thought to which Wittgenstein puts down his sense of wonder (in 197a5; Anscombe’s translation of 195a1 and 197a5 obscures the subtlety by turning what is in German an ‘act of grasping’, tout court, into an ‘act of grasping a sense’ or ‘the use’). The slip in this sentence (197a5), which speaks of ‘the future development’ instead of ‘the future use’, betrays the influence of his autonomous thought that ‘everything already lies’ in what we grasp when understanding a number-series, which may serve to illuminate the related present conclusion: [When I consider the segment with understanding] I believe to see a design drawn very fine in a bit of a series [A1], which only stands in need of “and so on” to reach to infinity [B]. “I see a distinctive character in it.” – Well, presumably something that corresponds to the algebraic expression. – “Yes, only nothing written, but positively something ethereal.” – What a queer picture. – “Something that is not the algebraic expression, something for which this is only the expression!” [A1, model B] (MS 124, 184–5, kept as Z 276) [Sequel to remark “But everything already lies in this!” quoted in section 3, entire passage source of PI 228–9.] In other words, when I consider the segment of a series (and understand its system), I discern in it, or grasp, something ethereal, like a design with an ‘and so on’ attached, that somehow already comprises the whole expansion, including all of its future development. The influence of the actualistic picture of logical determination also accounts, I think, for the most glaring inconsistency of sections 138–9. First, Wittgenstein implies that the meaning of a word is its use (138a3), and then states clearly that the use determines the meaning (139b1). But, one would like to object, a thing cannot be determined by itself ! However, the 106

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determination in question is ‘more than merely causal’, logical, determination, so that, by (B), the use ‘somehow already is’ the meaning. The actualistic picture thus affected Wittgenstein’s thinking not only in sections 191–7 but also in 138–9, when first mooting the problem. To sum up, two distinct lines of thought lead Wittgenstein to a thought that makes him feel puzzled, even though he does not endorse it: to the perplexing idea that when we hear or say a word with understanding there occurs an act of grasping in which all the (future) instances of the word’s use are somehow present. Wittgenstein rehearses the first line of thought in controlled reasoning, the second occurs in automatic thought. The first proceeds via the notion that whenever I hear or say a word with understanding, I grasp its meaning. The second starts out, instead, from the idea that I then grasp something that determines its meaning. Wittgenstein moves from one notion to the other, precisely to avoid the perplexing conclusion. But he is confronted with it, either way. In his deliberate reflection, two leaps of thought in line with the mentalistic picture of understanding (A) and the meaning-body picture, respectively, lead him from platitudes to perplexity. In his automatic thinking, a leap of thought in line with the actualistic picture (B) takes him there from a slightly different point of departure. The influence of all three pictures is evident in both the reflection and the automatic thought. The main perplexity of sections 138–97, a peculiarly philosophical sense of wonder in the face of a pedestrian phenomenon, thus results from the interplay of different autonomous habits of thought. These findings will allow us to make good sense, first, of Wittgenstein’s general aims and, then, of the way in which he pursues them in sections 138–97, i.e. of his ‘therapeutic’ approach.

6 Wittgenstein’s declared aims In the year he engaged upon the second and final major round of work on the Investigations, Wittgenstein concisely characterised the philosophical task he set himself: ‘The philosopher is someone who has to cure in himself many diseases of the intellect [Krankheiten des Verstandes], before he can arrive at the notions of common sense’ (MS 127, 76r: 1944; CV 50). This has two clear implications. First, at least the immediate aim of ‘the philosopher’, i.e. Wittgenstein, is simply to return to notions of common sense from which he strayed. Second, diseases of the intellect prevent him from apprehending these notions properly. To achieve his aim, he therefore has to address the therapeutic task of curing those diseases in himself. Both the, at first sight ridiculously modest, aim and a motivation that lend it a point are prefigured already in the earliest methodological remarks (from 1931) published in the Investigations: ‘If one tried to advance theses in philosophy, it would never be possible to debate them because everyone would agree to them. The aspects of things that are most important for us [namely, when doing philosophy] are hidden through their simplicity and familiarity’ 107

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(128–9a1). The exercise of getting the humdrum back into view is worthwhile because it puts an end to self-made mystery: ‘The results of philosophy are the uncovering of one or another piece of plain nonsense, and bumps that the intellect has got by running its head up against the limits of language. These bumps make us see the value of the discovery’ (119, my translation; Anscombe completely distorts the meaning by imagining an ‘of ’ before the first ‘bumps’; note the comma before ‘&’ in the Urfassung). That is, philosophical activity has got two kinds of results. Some such activity results in ‘bumps’ – take, e.g. the reflections of sections 138–9 and 151–3 that lead Wittgenstein from familiar facts and pedestrian observations into puzzlement and confusion, the ‘bumps’. Other philosophical work results in the discovery of plain ‘nonsense’ in such reflections. The ‘bumps’ lend this discovery what value Wittgenstein can discern in it, i.e. he uncovers ‘nonsense’, quite simply, so as to dispel the puzzlement and confusion engendered by the other, vicious, kind of philosophical reflection. His main motivation is the desire to escape from bogus mystery. To this end, he seeks to return to the notions of common sense from which philosophical reflection led him into such mystery. Also the diagnosis is prefigured in the earlier remarks: ‘Philosophical problems . . . are solved . . . against a drive to misunderstand [the workings of our language]’ (109a8, my translation), and at least many of them arise from such and related misunderstanding (111a1). The intellectual drive thus also generates many of those puzzles and confusions, in the first place. Note the implications of the strong term ‘Trieb’ (which Anscombe renders as ‘urge’): you find a drive in yourself, like the innate drives for sex and food; even if not innate, you experience it as a datum. And it asserts itself in certain situations while lying dormant in others; when asserting itself, it may drive you with great force, controllable only with a considerable effort (typically absent in the case of the intellectual drive at issue). The drive to misunderstand can be dysfunctional, in this technical sense. In particular (though not exclusively) if the person affected is a philosopher, it will ‘interfere with his occupational functioning’. Non-somatic pathology is commonly regarded as a matter of person-relative dysfunctionality. A non-somatic condition is ‘pathological’ if it is ‘disabling’, i.e. ‘interferes with the occupational or social functioning’ of the particular person in it (where one and the same urge, say, may interfere with the occupational functioning of one person but not another who has a different occupation). In this well-established sense, the present drive is pathological in a philosopher. Experienced as given, occasionally acute and, in philosophers, pathological, this intellectual drive can, indeed, be aptly termed a ‘disease of the intellect’. This diagnosis and the aim and motivation previously indicated jointly provide the rationale of the notoriously ill-understood project of a philosophical therapy. They have struck many commentators as over the top (if not below the belt). Now that we have conceptualised the main problems of sections 138–97 as the result of 108

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autonomous cognitive habits, we are in a position to make good sense of all three. At any rate some of the ‘drives to misunderstand’ he diagnosed, arguably in himself, are such habits of thought. He is manifestly driven to place puzzling interpretations like (2) and (4) on pedestrian facts and innocuous slogans like (1) and (3) and, thus, to jump to perplexing conclusions like (5) and (7). These leaps are part and parcel of comprehensive cognitive habits. Such habits may be ‘pathological’ also in a less pragmatic sense than the one we just encountered. In the case where the subject is not merely unaware of relying on assumptions that instantiate the defining schema of the habit but reflectively rejects all such assumptions, the habit is pathological also in a sense analogous to that applying to the feelings involved in emotional disorders (explained in section 2). This is true of Wittgenstein’s habits (A) and (B). Autonomous cognitive habits like these are his ‘diseases of the intellect’; each pathological habit is one such ‘disease’. To see how the predicament thus diagnosed lends a point to Wittgenstein’s aim, we need to clarify the vicious effects of these habits: to become clear on the extent to which they bias his thinking, and on the relevance of the biased interpretations and leaps of thought that result. To this end, cognitive therapists employ the useful ‘ABC-schema’. ‘A’ stands for the ‘activating event’ or fact the distorted thoughts are thoughts about, under a straightforward and uncontroversial description the subject acknowledges as correct. ‘B’ stands for the distorted, mainly autonomous, thoughts at issue (often misleadingly called ‘beliefs’), as well as for the tacit assumptions the subject acknowledges. ‘C’, finally, stands for the ‘emotional and behavioural consequences’: the feelings, actions, and urges to act, with which the subject responds to the ‘activating event’, that are intelligible only in the light of the previous Bs. Table 5.1 gives such an overview over those of the puzzles and muddles of sections 138–97 that we have analysed or at least touched on, so far. The findings summed up by Table 5.1 allow us to spell out in detail what Wittgenstein’s immediate aim comes down to, and to render his motivation intelligible. In all cases analysed, he leaps from, ultimately, a statement, finding, observation or question that is perfectly true, correct, or sensible – and, as often as not, rather pedestrian – to statements, conclusions or questions which are not. This happens in two ways: inadvertent misinterpretation and mindless inference. Both yield results that may be met with either of two attitudes. Wittgenstein thoughtlessly countenances some at first, while, throughout, he is careful not to endorse others. The latter are autonomous thoughts that capture ‘how things strike him’. Inadvertent misinterpretation occurs in cases (a), (b), (d), (e) and (f ). Here, Wittgenstein simply mistakes the question or statement he starts out from (e.g. ‘I was guided’) for another (‘I had a characteristic experience of being guided’); he inadvertently interprets the former as amounting to the latter (and only subsequently recalls, e.g. that his ‘being guided’ consisted in drawing one line parallel to the other, 109

B (2) When we hear or say a word, we grasp its meaning (138a4) (4) The meaning is the sum of the instances of the word’s use. Whence: (5) When we hear or say a word, we should grasp its whole use, extended in time – which cannot be! (138a4) Interpreted in the light of A1 as: ‘What happened here?’ (151b7)

A1&2: ‘There must be an event that guarantees correct continuation of the series’ tacitly presupposed in leap to conclusion: the true mental event of understanding is hidden behind the coarser accompaniments that readily sprang to mind (153a1) Interpreted in the light of A1 as: I said ‘Now I understand’ because I noticed the mental event

A

(a) 138–9 (1) When we hear or say a word, we understand it (138a4) (3) The meaning is the use we make of the word (138a3)

(b) 151 Considering an example: upon finding a law for the numberseries presented, B exclaims: ‘Now I can go on!’ (151b1–3), and asking: ‘What is it that makes its appearance here?’ (151b5)

(c) 152–3 Finding that all the events he came up with are compatible with failure to understand (152b2–4)

(d) 153 Observation that I said ‘Now I understand’ because I understood (153a5)

Table 5.1

Feeling of confusion in the face of the previous conclusion that the event is hidden: ‘I am in a muddle’ (153a7)

Urge to search and grasp this hidden mental event (153a1)

Brainstorming to come up with various (mental) events that may occur in such a situation (151b-d)

Sense of wonder articulated by: ‘It is as if we could grasp the whole use of the word in a flash’ (191/7a1)

C

When I understand a word, I grasp something that determines the future use logically, not merely causally (195a1) B: ‘When one thing logically determines another, it somehow already is the other’ (FF 355) tacitly presupposed in leap to conclusion: ‘The future development must in some way already be present in the act of grasping’ (197a5)

(h) 191–7 We understand the word, and its meaning lies in its use. (197a6)

4111 A1: Due to the tacit assumption that there must have been a characteristic experience, ‘the idea of an ethereal, intangible influence arises’ (175b8)

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(g) 175–7 Finding that I don’t want to describe thus any experience I recall having (176a2, 177a2): ‘But if I say what happened, I no longer find it characteristic’ (175a6)

0111 Interpreted in the light of A1 as: I had an experience of being guided, i.e. ‘I experience[d] the because’ (177a1)

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(f) 175–7 (cf. 169–70) ‘Sure enough, I was guided here’ (175a4, b7), namely, , when copying an arbitrary doodle (175a1–2)

111 Sense of wonder articulated by: ‘It is as if we could grasp the whole use of the word in a flash’ (191/7a1), i.e. amazement – ‘It’s astonishing’ – alternating with unease – ‘It’s queer’ (cf. 197a3)

Feeling of dissatisfaction with any description of the event: ‘It’s as if I couldn’t believe that I merely looked . . . and drew a line’ (175b3–4), i.e. intellectual unease

When I say ‘I was guided’, I look for a characteristic ‘experience of being influenced’ (176a1)

Feeling of confusion: ‘I am in a muddle’ (153a7)

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1

(e) 153 ‘I say [the mental event of understanding] is hidden’ (153a6) and, at the same time, that I want to look for it

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rather than in a characteristic feeling (177). In cases (c) and (g), by contrast, he jumps from correct findings to puzzling conclusions he throughout realises to be distinct from them. Finally, in the most complex cases (a) and (h), initial misinterpretations are exacerbated by an inference proceeding from them. In these last four cases, as in (f), Wittgenstein (ultimately) arrives at ideas he is throughout ‘only’ tempted to countenance, while he momentarily endorses the statement or question obtained in (b) and the opening move in case (a). Most moves are in accord with the schema (A1). This autonomous cognitive habit thus manifests itself in two ways of distorting platitudes, which may mutually reinforce each other. Against this drive to misunderstand, and others like it, Wittgenstein wants to win through to such common-sense notions as that we usually understand a word we hear or say, that a sincere speaker will say ‘Now I understand’ because he understood, or that when copying a figure one is being guided by the original. He wants to get himself to apprehend these platitudes as what they are, without distorting them through inadvertent misinterpretation or mindless inference, in line with ideas he reflectively rejects. But why should Wittgenstein want to pursue this, at first sight ridiculously modest, aim? For an answer, we need to turn from the distorted interpretations and conclusions to the ‘behavioural and emotional consequences’ both have regardless of whether or not they are momentarily being endorsed. The ‘behavioural consequences’ consist in the urge to hunt for snarks: for mental events of understanding and a characteristic experience of being guided. Partial yielding to these urges leads to disappointing findings – (b) and (h), analogous (c) – from which he leaps to puzzling conclusions. The behavioural thus exacerbate the crucial ‘emotional consequences’: the feelings of confusion, intellectual unease, and amazement that are unreasonable in the light of their pedestrian objects but intelligible in the light of the distorted constructions put on these. Wittgenstein analysed many of these distortions as such, himself (154, 169–70, 175–7). And he clearly implied that he found the problems he put down to such ‘misinterpretation’ deeply disturbing (111a1–2). He thus thought the return to the notions of common sense worthwhile because it would put an end to his unwarranted, but all too real, feelings of perplexity. As suggested above, these are the ‘bumps’ that make him appreciate the value of nonsense uncovered (119). The comparison of his general predicament to that of Beck’s patient may drive home this value. In the grip of the pertinent cognitive habit, the patient time and again put a wrong construction on others’ remarks and demeanour, and on her own experiences. In automatic thinking, a compliment made with all signs of sincerity is interpreted as phoney, the yawn of a tired friend is regarded as a sign of boredom with her, her excitement before a talk is taken to reveal intuitive insight into her own ineptitude (‘I can tell I’m going to muck it up again’). Accordingly, she regularly felt wretched, rejected, or afraid. Her autonomous cognitive habit thus turned her, in fact, reasonably 112

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successful life into a series of apparent failures, and made her feel stuck in an endless mire of misery. While arguably due to different causes and manifestly accompanied by a far higher level of insight into it, Wittgenstein’s predicament is structurally similar, and almost as disturbing: time and again in philosophical reflection, his autonomous habits of thought turn facts and findings that are actually rather pedestrian into a series of apparent puzzles, and make him feel bogged down in a vast mire of mystery. To escape from this disturbance constantly refuelled by drives to misunderstand is the declared ultimate aim of his philosophical work: ‘Thoughts at peace [literally: Peace in the thoughts]. That is the goal someone who philosophises longs for’ (MS 127, 41v: 4.3.1944; CV 50).

7 Wittgenstein’s therapeutic approach This aim can be pursued with more or less ambition. The greater ambition would be to prevent the recurrence of the thoughts (under ‘B’) that disturb him by engendering feelings of confusion, amazement and unease (under ‘C’) in the face of the familiar (under ‘A’): to break the habit of inadvertent misinterpretation and mindless inference, in line with assumptions one rejects. The more modest aim would be to shed the feelings of perplexity the resulting thoughts hitherto went with: to learn to put on these thoughts a common-sense interpretation on which they no longer seem puzzling. In a severe case like Wittgenstein’s, a realistic aim presumably lies half-way between the two: to expose and weaken the autonomous cognitive habits responsible for the various eruptions of perplexity, while learning to live without puzzlement with what remains of these habits in spite of all efforts. This is the bipartite task we shall see Wittgenstein address in sections 138–97. At the ‘local’ level, he sometimes tries to place a common-sense interpretation on puzzling autonomous thoughts he did leap to. This move is at its most involved in the case of the crucial thought: ‘ “But I don’t mean that what I do now (in grasping) determines the future use causally and as a matter of experience, but that in a queer way, the use itself is in some sense present.” – But of course it is, “in some sense” . . . the sentence only appears queer when one imagines a different language-game for it from the one in which we actually use it’ (195), namely, when one wants to use it as a description of some sort of process (196). It is idiomatic German to say that a use was ‘present to one’ when hearing or uttering a word. (That only the German use of the word was thus present – ‘Mir war nur der deutsche Gebrauch von “originell” gegenwärtig’ – may be my excuse for calling a dress ‘original’; for this reason, it did not occur to me that the English hostess might regard as an insult what was meant as a compliment.) In this sense, it is of course a manner of use that is present to one. But if we want to give the sentence ‘The future use was present to me in the act of grasping’ a reading that is less than puzzling, we can still render it as, ‘The manner in which I would generally 113

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use the word from then on was present to me when I first came to understand it’. We can, thus, dispel the unease induced by a puzzling autonomous thought that occurs to us, by coming up with an interpretation of its expression, which is in line with common usage. Presumably, this is what Wittgenstein does when pointing out that the expression of a thought perplexing him could be interpreted in such a way, as he repeatedly does in a more straightforward manner (here: 191a3, 197a2–3). This takes him from ‘apparently queer’ thoughts to notions of common sense and the conclusion, ‘But there is nothing astonishing, nothing queer, about what happens’ (197a4). At a higher level, he employs precisely the techniques cognitive therapists use to identify and ‘modify’, i.e. weaken or break, relevant autonomous habits of thought. When they are not sustained by a powerful psychological motivation, such habits can be significantly weakened ‘simply’ by eliciting and refuting, again and again, autonomous thoughts and tacit assumptions manifesting them – as the success of Beck’s cognitive therapy has amply proven. The two main moves are typically supported by giving two kinds of accounts: alternative accounts of the topics of the distorted thoughts at issue, and accounts of their formation that render intelligible how the subject ‘could think such things’ without implying the truth of these thoughts. All these moves are as straightforward as the ‘trivial means’ Wittgenstein took to free us from ‘profound philosophical disquiets’ (VW 70). Indeed, in sections 138–97 he makes these very moves time and again, while seeking out precisely the topics his thinking on which is most affected by the present habits. We will now consider and explain first the principal moves of exposure and refutation, and then the two moves made to support them. Wittgenstein has to deploy all these moves, in order to weaken his (in our sections) most persistent habit: the habit of applying the schema (A1). His other habits require a less full treatment. I therefore focus on his struggle with the ‘toughest’ case, in sections 147–80. Immediately before (139c–46) and after (181–3), he addresses (A2). Then, in section 184, he turns to (B). 1 Exposure proceeds through logical reconstruction of one’s reflections, and probing for autonomous thoughts. Tacit assumptions can be exposed through logical reconstruction of pertinent reflections, which reveals leaps of thought and identifies unstated assumptions that would render them valid. Thus, Wittgenstein uncovers, in 154a, his previous leap of thought, from 152b2–4 to 153a1. Autonomous thoughts can be elicited by attending to what one feels inclined or tempted to say, at various points that are illustrated by the first three autonomous thoughts on the list above (in section 4). Wittgenstein attends to what he is tempted to say with approval when making a pertinent leap of thought (140a1–2 on 139d4), in protest when making a statement at odds with his habit’s theme (such as the protest of 147a1–2 against 146b6), or in answer to a question (145b3=146a3) a correct answer to which (145b4) he feels inclined to interpret tendentiously (146b5–6). 114

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Wittgenstein engages more in probing for autonomous thoughts than in logical reconstruction. Such probing requires some subtlety. Naturally, a subject in the grip of an autonomous habit, of a schema and a model to fill it in, will feel the inclination or temptation to say things that instantiate the relevant schema most strongly when dealing with topics to which the corresponding model can be applied in the most straightforward manner. In other words, autonomous thoughts manifesting the habit will be more salient on these topics than on others. Thus, consider the model (A) of a mental event: the workings of an inner mechanism. This model applies most straightforwardly if there is something we can readily conceive of as an ‘input’ that sets the mechanism going, and an ‘output’ generated by its workings. This we have in the cases of reading, taking down a dictation, copying, all regardless of understanding. In brief, in the cases which Wittgenstein, prima facie surprisingly, lumps together under the label of ‘reading’ (156a2), the ‘input’ consists in the written signs to be read out, the sounds uttered by the dictating teacher, the figure to be copied. The words uttered in reading, the signs written down upon dictation, the figure copied, then, are the ‘output’ (cf. 170c2). Contrast this with understanding. When we understand a sentence we hear, it may be tempting to think of the words uttered as the ‘input’. But what is the ‘output’? And if it is something we say ourselves, the sounds we produce might be thought the ‘output’ – but for what ‘input’? Here, no answers suggest themselves naturally (but have to be cooked up). It is, therefore, no surprise that Wittgenstein reports no autonomous thought on understanding that clearly instantiates (A1), untainted by (A2), even though he frequently makes leaps of thought that tacitly rely on it; and that he reports a host of such thoughts on ‘reading’. This lends his apparent digressions their point and purpose: to expose relevant autonomous thoughts, he repeatedly moves to the topics where they are most salient. When struggling with habit (A1), he moves to ‘reading’ (156–78); when dealing with habit (B) he moves to the topic of machine symbolism (193–4), where the model (B) of the ethereal machine applies in the most straightforward manner. In the case of his thoughts on reading, Wittgenstein has to overcome a characteristic obstacle before he can elicit thoughts capable of refutation. He has to check a temptation to move from his first idea that the difference between true and merely apparent reading is made by a conscious mental act (156e) to an idea incapable of straightforward refutation: the idea that the difference could be made by reference to an unconscious cerebral process, accompanied by reluctance to take any other way of making the difference seriously (156g5). To check that temptation, Wittgenstein simply clarifies what it is that tempts him, and what he would be doing in yielding to the temptation. Having provided a context in which he feels tempted to voice the idea (158a1–3), he brings out that what tempts him is the a priori claim that a cerebral mechanism must make the difference between true and merely apparent reading – made in complete ignorance of any relevant empirical fact 115

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(158a4–7). But, he concludes, if it is a priori, it merely articulates a ‘form of representation’ we find ‘compelling’ (158a8, my translation). He would merely rule out one manner of speaking and thinking in favour of another (cf. Z 442), on no other grounds than that he found the latter compelling, namely, found it compelling upon having to ‘admit’ that his first idea, involving a conscious mental activity, is false (156g1–2). This reflection is enough to make Wittgenstein return to thoughts revolving only around this first idea, which he proceeds to elicit. 2 Refutation: Wittgenstein then refutes these thoughts in different ways, depending upon their content. The bulk of the discussion of reading focuses on a sequence of autonomous thoughts in which each cedes only as much ground as made absolutely necessary by the refutation of the previous thought: (1) ‘The one real criterion for anybody’s reading is the conscious act of reading, the act of reading the sounds off from the letters’ (159a1). (2) [Even if we do not seize on this conscious act or process as a criterion to distinguish genuine from merely apparent reading, still] ‘reading is a quite particular process’: We merely need to ‘read a page of print’ to ‘see that something special and highly characteristic is going on’ whenever we read (165a1–2). (3) [Even if no special or characteristic trait I am conscious of is shared by all cases of reading, still] ‘I feel [in various different ways perhaps] a kind of influence of the letters working on me, when I read’ (169c3). The first, Wittgenstein considers a ‘grammatical’ claim. (2) and (3) formulate psychological claims. Accordingly, he addresses the former by considering how competent speakers would describe conceivable situations, and refutes the latter by empirical ‘experiments’ (169c7) with himself in the dual role of subject and observer. In both cases, it is worthwhile to bring out the subtleties of his proceeding that has been cast all too often into coarse moulds that will not fit. To fully convince himself of the falsity of (1), Wittgenstein first clarifies its content by reminding himself of the various sensations characteristically involved in reading (159). Then (160a), he conceives of a case in which we would describe the subject as ‘reading’ even though he has none of these sensations but rather others, characteristic of reciting something from memory. (Upshot: we do not insist upon the former sensations as a necessary condition of reading.) Next (160b), he conceives of a subject who, under the influence of some drug, pronounces various arbitrary squiggles as if they were signs of a familiar alphabet, and does so with all the outward signs and 116

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sensations characteristic of reading. Some competent speakers, Wittgenstein notes, would say that he reads, others that he does not. (I.e. the sensations adverted to are at least not universally acknowledged as a sufficient condition of reading.) More importantly, he finally goes on to develop the case in a way that makes clear that the outward signs, rather than the sensations, incline those speakers who are so inclined, to describe the subject as reading: if he goes on to consistently pronounce each squiggle in the same way, presumably most competent speakers would say that he makes up an alphabet on the spot and reads accordingly. This makes us aware of an implicit linguistic decision at odds with (1): the moment we consider concrete cases, we are manifestly inclined to use systematic responses, rather than characteristic sensations, as a criterion of reading. The next thought (2) has two parts: there is something characteristic about the experience of reading (165–6); and whenever we read, one particular process takes place that we recognise (due to that characteristic experience, one will first think) (167–8). In response to the first idea, Wittgenstein teases out what he is inclined to regard as characteristic about the experience of reading: ‘ “The words I utter come in a special way.” . . . They come of themselves . . . the spoken words as it were slip in as one reads’ (165). To refute the idea thus rendered more tangible, he then makes an experiment: he first reads a letter and then thinks up a sound while looking at a flourish, to determine whether some such experience distinguishes the genuine first from the merely apparent second case of reading. He finds that he cannot grow aware of any experiential difference in the way the words came (166a3–12). To counter the second part of the idea, ‘when we read one particular process takes place, which we recognise’ (167a2), Wittgenstein reminds himself of some qualitative features of experiences had in reading, and states that none of them is in evidence in all cases of reading (168). This amounts to a refutation of the idea considered, if the qualitative features enumerated are all those he ‘recognises’, and if the final statement is supported by actual self-observation in various cases of reading – as his approach to (3) suggests. To refute the thought that ‘I feel a kind of influence of the letters working on me, when I read’ (169c3), Wittgenstein proceeds in two steps. First, he pins down the feelings or experiences that can, indeed, be aptly described as ‘experiences of influence etc.’ (171a), and then reads a few sentences in print as he usually does when he is not thinking about the notion of reading (171b). He seems to observe that in doing so he does not have any of the experiences previously identified, and exhorts himself not to try to get around this finding, e.g. by saying that he had them ‘unconsciously’ (ibid.).

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3 Accounts of thought-formation: To get himself to fully accept these refutations, i.e. to shed all temptation of getting around them by hunting for such snarks as unconscious experiences of being influenced or guided, Wittgenstein offers accounts of how he could think such things, that expose 117

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his autonomous thoughts as ‘fictions’ (166a2) or ‘imaginations’ (170c1) by rendering them intelligible as misguided interpretations of various kinds of things. In the discussion of (2), he clearly implies that he interpreted a difference in the situation of utterance as a difference in the way the words came (166a13–17), and the uniformity in the appearance of pages of print (the case of reading adverted to when first venting the pertinent idea, in 165a1–2) as the recurrence of a characteristic trait in the experience of reading (167). He then explains how (3) arises from the experiential difference he notices when, and only when (171b), he makes the experiment of first reading some letters of print and then looking along a line of flourishes written down for this purpose (169a2). The difference is this: ‘when I see the letter it is automatic for me to hear the sound . . . inwardly . . . and I pronounce the letter more effortlessly when I read it than when I am looking at “§”’ (169c6). In (3), he interprets this experiential difference as one between an influence, and the lack of one (170a2–3). Wittgenstein pins down the situation in which this interpretation is particularly appealing (170b): when reading slowly, with a particular philosophical question in mind (What happens when we read?), which is about an event or process. We may add that the thought thus betrays the influence of both schema and model (A). In line with (A1), Wittgenstein’s thought generalises unduly and has it that whenever he reads, he has the feeling he is tempted to regard as one of influence. And it foists the mechanistic model of mental events on the supposedly ubiquitous feeling, as Wittgenstein finally spells out: ‘when I speak of the experiences of being influenced . . . that is really meant to imply that I as it were feel the movement of the lever which connects seeing the letters with speaking’ (170c2). Here, and a moment later (in 175–7), Wittgenstein applies to his autonomous thoughts about reading an idea he had, in the Frühfassung, explicitly explained with respect to understanding (to which topic, however, he does not apply it, presumably for lack of pertinent autonomous thoughts): Consider the pronunciation of a word as its spelling presents it. How easy it is to persuade oneself that two words – e.g. ‘fore’ and ‘four’ – sound different in everyday use – because one pronounces them slightly differently when one has the difference in spelling directly in view. Comparable with this is the opinion that a violin player with a fine sense of pitch always strikes F somewhat higher than E sharp. Reflect on such cases. – That is how it can come about that the means of representation produces something imaginary. So let us not think we must find a specific mental process, because the verb ‘to understand’ is there and because one says: Understanding is an activity of mind. (BFF 172, between later sections 154 and 155; kept as Z 446b) 118

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This subtle idea is not to be confused with the more familiar notion that particular linguistic expressions in common use are philosophically misleading to all and sundry, or at least to anyone engaging in abstract reflection. In Wittgenstein’s present example, the subject actively ‘persuades himself’ of his erroneous idea, and is not passively misled by the different spelling. Second, in doing so he seizes on something he actively does in quite specific situations which involve no explicit abstract reasoning: pronouncing two words when having in mind the difference in spelling, or reading slowly when asking oneself what is happening when one reads. Third, what Wittgenstein regards as the crucial ‘means of representation’ are not only symbols but philosophical statements (instantiating our schema A): ‘Understanding is an activity of mind’ or ‘True reading presupposes the setting up of a connection in the reader’s mind, or brain’ (the ‘form of representation’ he finds tempting in section 158). What the self-analyses in line with these ideas actually reveal, thus, are misinterpretations of things he says (‘I’m being guided’ (175–7)) or of experiences he enjoys under quite specific circumstances (169–71), that betray an active drive to misunderstand: the autonomous cognitive habit pinned down by schema and model (A). The reference to ‘means of representation’ obviously yields no explanation of why Wittgenstein has this habit. To take up his present example: when their attention is drawn to the different spelling of ‘four’ and ‘fore’, most language students merely curse the lack of systematic correlations between spelling and pronunciation – and make no effort to persuade themselves of anything. Only those (all too) ready to be misled will be unduly impressed by this or that feature of the pertinent ‘means of representation’. So what function do Wittgenstein’s self-analyses actually fulfil, if they do not explain why he came to have the thoughts at issue? Arguably, the same function that the overtly non-explanatory ‘accounts of thought-formation’ offered in the course of cognitive therapy serves: they ‘merely’ reveal the extent to which the subject leaps to wrong interpretations of innocuous ‘activating events’, spontaneously, unthinkingly, and without warrant. This insight into the nature of his own thinking is to nurture in the subject a mistrust of his interpretative urges, and to help him accept the refutation of the thoughts that result from them, here: to counter the urge to conclude that, all the same, there must be a specific mental process of understanding (even though it is strangely elusive), that there must be something characteristic about the experience of reading or copying (which he cannot pin down), etc. 4 Outline of alternatives: Not only the final but also the opening move of the discussion of reading makes good sense, the moment it is regarded as fulfilling the function of a supporting move common in cognitive therapy. In section 157, Wittgenstein points out how the difference between genuine and merely apparent reading can be drawn without reference to any ‘inner’ event, namely, 119

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by reference to further responses to written signs, in other situations. He provides a context in which this proposal strikes us as attractive. If we trained people to serve as ‘reading machines’ we would, indeed, care first and foremost about whether they consistently respond correctly to given signs. Finally, Wittgenstein derives from either alternative a consequence that can be tested against our ordinary way of speaking. If we used a certain experience or inner mechanism as a criterion of reading, we could say of a particular word that it was the first word the subject read; when we refer exclusively to his overt performance, we cannot say this. The tacit upshot is: as we indeed do not say this, we must commonly distinguish genuine from merely apparent reading without reference to any ‘inner’ event but, rather, in something like the way he imagined for the ‘reading machines’. This clearly will not do as an analysis of our ordinary concept of reading (which 156a2 anyway tells us will not be discussed). But it does fulfil a function ‘alternative accounts of the topic at issue’ serve in cognitive therapy: by revealing that things do not have to be as the subject thought, it drives home that the subject’s spontaneous thoughts on this topic (reported in 156e and g) already constitute an interpretation in the light of unquestioned background assumptions. Appreciation of this point is to help the subject expose and soberly assess pertinent autonomous thoughts. To which bipartite exercise Wittgenstein then proceeds. He thus makes all the four major moves of cognitive therapy: exposure and refutation of pertinent autonomous thoughts, supported by accounts of their formation and outlines of alternatives to them. In the present context, all moves manifestly fulfil (some of) the functions cognitive therapists commonly deploy them for. While his other cognitive habits require less full treatment, Wittgenstein’s struggle with his most persistent habit of thought amounts to a full-blown cognitive (self-)therapy. These findings allow us to make good sense of the apparent marks of ineptitude in the text, noted at the outset. So, far from haphazardly jumping from topic to topic, Wittgenstein addresses precisely those topics his thinking on which is affected by the habits or ‘drives’ he wants to expose and weaken. He arranges them in quite neat order: sections 139–83 treat the habit of thinking in line with the mentalistic picture (A), sections 184–97 deal with the actualistic picture (B). The former treatment divides neatly into two: the struggle with (A1) in sections 147–80 is embedded in the treatment of (A2), in 139–46 and 181–3. The reprise makes sense: sections 181–3 deal with (A2) in the new guise in which it re-emerges after the treatment of (A1). Second, both of his apparently wild digressions are well-motivated: the models of the two pictures at issue apply most directly to reading and the use of machine-symbolism, making these topics particularly suited for eliciting pertinent autonomous thoughts. Third, the feelings of perplexity in the light of sudden understanding, surfacing in sections 138–9, 151–3 and 191–7, are due to the interplay between different autonomous habits of thought, and 120

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will persist as long as these habits have not been weakened. Which can only be done gradually, by eliciting, refuting and analysing a host of pertinent, related but diverse, autonomous thoughts. Hence, it is no sign of ineptitude that thoughts about sudden understanding, supposed and genuine, are being discussed again and again.

8 Wittgenstein’s philosophical relevance This exegetical success recommends the present account of Wittgenstein’s predicament, aim, and approach. He is in the grip of autonomous habits of thought that have him jump, in line with assumptions he explicitly rejects, to ideas that are not even faintly sensible but induce in him a sense of wonder or confusion, whether or not he momentarily endorses those ideas. Either way, these feelings are pathological in the sense that they are utterly unreasonable in the light of his own stable, reflective beliefs. His aim is to shed these pathological feelings of perplexity, constantly refuelled by ‘drives to misunderstand’: to achieve ‘peace in the thoughts’. To do so, he exposes and weakens the pertinent ‘drives’, i.e. habits, employing what later became the core techniques of cognitive therapy. To take the mystery out of what distorted thoughts keep recurring in spite of these efforts, he puts on them interpretations in line with our ordinary ways of talking. If successful, the result of Wittgenstein’s auto-therapeutic endeavours will be that he is free from bogus puzzlement. But no insight (except into the nature of his own personal problems) will have been gained, no truth about the world established. This lends new content and force to the question of relevance that has puzzled so many readers of Wittgenstein: why should his cognitive self-therapy, even if successful, be of interest to anyone else – and, in particular, to any other philosopher? In a nutshell, the answer is this: the root of Wittgenstein’s predicament is by no means unique. Most serious philosophers are driven by autonomous habits of thought. Systematic misinterpretations and leaps of thought, in both automatic and controlled thinking, generate bogus mystery, articulated by pseudo-problems philosophers then waste their lives working on. Many philosophers are in need of therapy to save them from unwarranted perplexity and waste of effort. Wittgenstein’s text is therefore instructive to them, to the extent to which it helps them gain insight into their own predicament and furnishes them with a pertinent therapeutic approach. I develop these ideas in detail, in my forthcoming Philosophical Delusion and its Therapy (Fischer 2005). Here, a brief illustration may at least render them intelligible. Consider the metaphysical vision of phenomenalism. It rests squarely on two exemplary philosophical intuitions: that all we perceive are sense-data, and that we might as well ‘cancel through’ anything imperceptible ‘behind the representationalist’s veil’. To support the all-important first intuition, its proponents typically adduce the ‘argument from illusion’ that starts out like this: 121

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Consider . . . [a straight] stick which is refracted in water . . . [I]t must be assumed that the stick does not really change its shape when it is placed in water . . . Then it follows that at least one of the visual appearances of the stick is delusive; for it cannot both be crooked and straight. Nevertheless, even in the case where what we see is not a real quality of a material thing . . . we are still seeing something; and . . . it is convenient to give this a name. And it is for this purpose that philosophers have recourse to the term ‘sense-datum’. By using it they are able to give what seems to them a satisfactory answer to the question: What is the object of which we are directly aware, in perception, if it is not part of any material thing? (Ayer 1940: 4) This question clearly presupposes what is to be argued: that we are not seeing ‘part of any material thing’; and it is particularly remarkable in view of the fact that it has been assumed at the outset that we do see an exemplary material thing, namely, a stick – and, presumably, both the part above and the part in the water. Logically valid argument leads up to a fancy and unnecessarily cautious formulation of the platitude that when immersed in water the stick appears crooked, even though it really is straight. From this, a mere leap of thought leads straight to the conclusion: that when something appears to us different than it really is, we are seeing something immaterial, a sense-datum. So far from supporting it, the ‘argument from illusion’ merely articulates a philosophical intuition, after pointing out a situation in which it strikes those who have it as particularly powerful. The same is true of many of precisely the most influential pieces of philosophical prose: brief but compelling stories misleadingly called ‘arguments’, such as, say, Descartes’ ‘argument from dreaming’. Philosophers’ visions, metaphysical and other, tend to rest on intuitions unsupported by argument. In the situations outlined by the stories passed off as arguments, these intuitions occur as automatic thoughts. When letting our thoughts drift in contemplation of the sight, with neither a purpose in mind nor any particular interest in the stick (or the water it is immersed in), we spontaneously want to say, ‘Really, all I see is that crooked speck, which I cannot touch’. This automatic thought is then treated as a philosophical intuition to be honoured at all cost. From the assumptions that such ‘delusive’ are qualitatively indistinguishable from ‘veridical’ perceptions, and that perceptions that are qualitatively alike must have the same kind of object, it is inferred that all we ever see are specks, sense-data, rather than material things. In spite of the quite patent absurdity of these last assumptions, not even their remarkable consequence causes the proponents of the ‘argument’ to take a deep breath and question their sudden thought that they ‘really’ see only the crooked speck, not the straight stick. Thus, many philosophers are no strangers to automatic thoughts involving terrible distortions. The most salient of these are the 122

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‘philosophical intuitions’ they regard as encapsulating deep, if partial, insights into profound general truths, ‘truths’ they duly proceed to derive from them, if necessary with the help of the most dubious further assumptions. The result of this distorted thinking is the articulation of a philosophical vision that is just that: a groundless vision. The automatic thoughts at the beginning of the garden-path are typically part and parcel of an autonomous cognitive habit that biases our thinking from the start and to the end. As we have seen, we inadvertently rely on the assumption that we do not perceive anything material already in the course of the very ‘argument’ meant to establish this. And we may stick to this assumption, an instance of the present habit’s schema, with peculiar persistence. Upon a moment’s reflection on the initial situation, we may want to add: ‘Of course, it is perfectly good English to say that we then see the stick, a material thing. But I see the speck somehow more directly, and it is all that I directly see.’ The moment we become clear on what we mean by ‘direct perception’, we find we want to apply this new expression only where the object of perception cannot appear otherwise than it really is, and may realise that we are using it to talk about the appearances of things: to describe how they appear to us in particular situations, rather than how they actually are. But, of course, what appears to us thus still is the stick, and adherence to the ‘intuitive insight’ that all we see is a bent sense-datum, it turns out, amounts to no more than the insistence upon a new way of talking about how that material thing appears to us. Fine philosophers like A.J. Ayer rehearsed this line of thought, stressed its conclusion – and proceeded to interpret, conversely, our ordinary talk of material things as a convenient way of describing our sense-data. This interpretation is in line with the core doctrine that all we really see are such sense-data, which they had just found unwarranted by what ‘argument’ they could adduce: yet another manifestation of the autonomous cognitive habit. The groundless vision is thus generated by an autonomous habit of thought that then keeps the philosopher under the vision’s spell – even if he is in a position to know better. Thus, the habit gives rise to unwarranted perplexity and may motivate pointless efforts. The perplexity is due to the mismatch between the vision inspired by the ‘intuitions’, and the more mundane ways of thinking and talking that the philosopher is unable and, perhaps, unwilling to shed. Thus, the phenomenalist wonders: ‘How is it possible for us to use, every day, expressions that ostensibly refer to publicly accessible material things with causal properties, located in physical space?’ (cf. Ayer 1940: 244) – a pseudoproblem only raised by his vision that all we actually see (indeed, all that actually exists) are transitory and private sense-data devoid of physical extension and causal efficacy. To remove what unease this clash between his vision and common sense may cause him, and at any rate to reconcile the two, he then rushes to develop a philosophical theory that purports to answer that question. Which is, of course, rather a waste of time and effort: as his vision 123

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is entirely groundless, there is no point in reconciling it with common sense (or anything else, for that matter). If it conflicts with our reflective beliefs, one should instead try to shed the vision, so as to put an end to both the unwarranted perplexity and the waste of time and effort. But, as phenomenalism illustrates, a philosopher’s vision typically is not under his control. Powerful autonomous habits of thought first force it on him, and then keep him under its spell. They force it on him through a series of automatic thoughts exacerbated by leaps in controlled reflection. And they may keep him under its spell even if he has seen through those supposed ‘insights’. When affected by such an autonomous habit, a philosopher is in need of a therapy that weakens or breaks it. Not suffering from a compulsive disorder, he is of course free to decide to put an end to his pointless endeavours, any time; but he needs therapy to be able do so without regret and the feeling of a task left undone, of perplexing puzzles evaded. Arguably, quite a few serious philosophers were, and are, in this situation.

9 Wittgenstein’s therapeutic turn One of these philosophers, of course, is Wittgenstein. Most of the Tractatus derives its point from the metaphysical vision of a world’s essence mirrored by logic, resting on such intuitions as that a proposition represents a state of affairs in the way a model used at court pictures an accident, intuitions to be honoured even at the price of inventing ‘logically proper names’ and postulating sempiternal simples of which one knows nothing. The most important, and most novel, move Wittgenstein later made is to have distanced himself from such automatic thoughts: to have conceptualised them not as philosophical intuitions to be honoured at all cost but as unfounded impulses to say things that are, all too often, not even faintly sensible, as one realises the moment one does not deliberately dismiss one’s common sense, driven by an ‘urge to misunderstand’. In these cases, one needs to expose the impulses as what they are, automatic thoughts that go unquestioned, and to weaken them to a point at which one no longer feels compelled to ‘honour’ them. This, I think, constitutes the most fundamental and revolutionary aspect of the later Wittgenstein’s manifold reorientation of philosophical work: his ‘therapeutic turn’. Wittgenstein, himself, gradually became clearer on its content and eventually articulated it by comparing ‘the philosopher’s’ treatment of a question with the treatment of an illness (255): ‘What we are “tempted to say” in such a case is of course not philosophy; but it is its raw material. Thus, e.g. what a mathematician is inclined to say about the objectivity and reality of mathematical facts, is not a philosophy of mathematics, but something that philosophy would have to treat’ (254a4–5, my translation) – like an illness, namely, by weakening the inclination to say those things that give rise to pointless questions. After this reorientation of his philosophical efforts, in the very early 1930s, Wittgenstein still had to struggle for considerable time against the cognitive 124

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habits he had indulged when working on the Tractatus. Much perplexity continued to be engendered by the autonomous habits that persisted in his philosophical reflection, namely, by the mismatch between them and his ordinary ways of thinking and talking. At this point, he differed in three respects from most other philosophers. He no longer mistook the elaboration of a groundless vision for the pursuit of truth, combining insight with the decency – and strength – to acknowledge it. As a result, he abstained from constructing – pointless – philosophical ‘theories’. But, even so, he felt the perplexity much more keenly than most philosophers. At root, however, his predicament is the same as theirs: he is in the grip of autonomous habits of thought that confront him with bogus problems. Any philosopher in this not uncommon situation can, therefore, profit from the Investigations’ record of Wittgenstein’s efforts to liberate himself from autonomous cognitive habits he had earlier indulged. From it we can derive insight into our own predicament, and a therapeutic approach to cope. To conclude: all too often, philosophy is toil to conquer lands that have in them no gain but the name. Therapy is to ease the urges that drive a philosopher into these wastes: to make him resist them, without misplaced regret. In these parts of our subject, the alternative to the modesty of therapy is the valour of Don Quixote. We can do our duty towards ourselves, or cultivate a vision’s gentle madness. Wittgenstein’s work is instructive for those who share both the root of his predicament and his preference of duty over self-deceit.3

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Reference to section (180), paragraph (a) within section, and sentence (1) within paragraph, of the German text. The parsing into sentences is not always obvious. But a rough indication seems better than an even rougher one. Section 255 as written in 1945 (MS 116, 323) and typed into the final typescript (TS 227), typed up/compiled in late 1945/early 1946. No earlier did the relevance of 133d, jotted down in 1937/8 (MS 116, 186), become fully apparent to Wittgenstein. He appended it to that typescript on an extra slip of paper. Some further remarks of similar import date from 1944–7. The much noted earlier (1931) mention of psychoanalysis (FF 108, derived from BT 409–10), by contrast, is quite irrelevant in this context. It compares neither his problems nor his approach to anything treated or done in psychotherapy, but primarily elucidates a criterion of correctness for the attribution of certain lines of thought. (The most pertinent early related remark, VW 68–70 in the Waismann-papers, is probably of no evidential value either, as the editors take it to be ‘mislocated’ in the context in which it would imply an etiological claim.) For helpful comments, I am indebted to Erich Ammereller, Cora Diamond, Peter Hacker and Stephen Mulhall, for the historical information in Fn. 2 to Joachim Schulte. My most important and long-standing debt is to Gordon Baker whose encouragement and criticism, through many years, helped me to develop concepts of philosophical therapy to a point at which they could profitably be employed in Wittgenstein-exegesis.

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Bibliography Ayer, A.J. (1940) The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge, London: Macmillan. Beck, A.T. (1976) Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorder, New York: International Universities Press. Fischer, E.J.D. (2005) Philosophical Delusion and its Therapy, London: Routledge.

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6 PUZZLES ABOUT RULE-FOLLOWING PI 185–242

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In this essay I shall offer some comments on Wittgenstein’s remarks on rule-following in the Philosophical Investigations (185–242). I share the view voiced by many commentators that these remarks provide a key to the proper understanding of Wittgenstein’s thoughts on the nature of language, meaning and understanding. However, I find myself in disagreement with the way this key role of Wittgenstein’s remarks tends to be construed in a considerable part of the literature. The main reason for what often seems to me to be a misconstrual of the purposes of Wittgenstein’s considerations is a tendency of many interpretations to neglect or disregard what, in my view, is at once the most striking and challenging aspect of the Philosophical Investigations, namely, the view they present of the nature of philosophical problems and their proper treatment. This tendency is by no means a peculiarity of the discussion of Wittgenstein’s remarks on rule-following though, as I hope to show, it is more of a curiosity with regard to them given the frequency and explicitness with which he gives prominence to their methodological purpose. By focusing, more than has been usual, on this aspect of his investigation. I hope to throw a little more light both on Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations and on his later way of thinking.

1 Philosophy Any reader of the Philosophical Investigations must be struck by what Wittgenstein says about ‘the work of the philosopher’ (PI 127): It was true to say that our considerations could not be scientific ones. [. . .] And we may not advance any kind of theory. There must not be anything hypothetical in our considerations. We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place. (PI 109) 127

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Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything. Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden, for example, is of no interest to us. One might also give the name ‘philosophy’ to what is possible before all new discoveries and inventions. (PI 126) The work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose. (PI 127) If one tried to advance theses in philosophy, it would never be possible to debate them, because everyone would agree to them. (PI 128) Consider also the remark of section 599: In philosophy we do not draw conclusions. ‘But this must be like this!’ is not a philosophical proposition. Philosophy only states what everyone admits. Obviously, Wittgenstein’s view of what philosophy is about and how it ought to be practised diverges radically from the images Western philosophers throughout the ages have projected of their own work. For Wittgenstein does not only want to deny that philosophical enquiry is just like scientific enquiry. This denial would be well in accord with one influential traditional view according to which philosophical questions about the nature and possibility of certain phenomena are more fundamental than, or prior to, scientific questions; and hence that the knowledge we need in order to answer these questions is also of a fundamentally different kind than the knowledge science provides of the facts of nature. Thus, for example, on the traditional view, Augustine’s question ‘What is time?’ is not a physical but a metaphysical question, and the knowledge he was looking for is a priori rather than a posteriori knowledge. What Wittgenstein wants to reject is, rather, the assumption of both the scientist and the traditional view that philosophy, like one of the sciences, is a cognitive discipline, namely, a form of inquiry in pursuit of as yet unknown truths about some subject-matter of which a kind of theoretical understanding is needed. The rationale for Wittgenstein’s rejection of the cognitivist picture of philosophy lies, of course, in Wittgenstein’s conception of the nature of philosophical problems. The business of philosophy, according to Wittgenstein, is not explanation but description, because philosophical questions are not the expression of genuine ignorance at all but of an unclarity about something 128

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we do already, in some sense, know and of which we (only) need to remind ourselves (89). Hence, the understanding we need to gain in order to solve philosophical problems does not consist in the discovery of ‘new facts’:

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[I]t is, rather, essential of our investigation that we do not seek to learn anything new by it. We want to understand something that is already in plain view. For this is what we seem in some sense not to understand. (PI 89)

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According to Wittgenstein, Augustine’s comment on the question ‘What is time?’ is an apt characterization of the nature of philosophical questions in general: what they ask for is ‘something that we know when no one asks us, but no longer know when we are to explain it’ (PI 89). What we are unclear about in philosophy, though it is ‘already in plain view’, and of what we need to remind ourselves, Wittgenstein maintains, is the meaning of words, which lies in their use. Thus, philosophy is to be purely descriptive, because the task of removing philosophical unclarity is the task of reminding us of how words are actually used in our language. Rather than to the task of the scientist, Wittgenstein suggests, the task of the philosopher ought to be compared to that of the grammarian. For just like the grammarian, the philosopher seeks to provide an order in ‘our knowledge of the use of our language’ (PI 132). Both the grammarian and the philosopher try to determine what can be ‘said’, the former by clarifying the rules which determine the ways in which we can put words together to construct syntactically correct sentences, the latter by describing which combinations of words have sense. This makes it apt, in Wittgenstein’s view, to call the philosopher’s descriptions ‘rules of grammar’ and to characterize philosophical, conceptual investigations as ‘grammatical investigations’: Our investigation is therefore a grammatical one. Such an investigation sheds light on our problem by clearing misunderstanding away. Misunderstandings concerning the use of words, caused, among other things by certain analogies between the forms of expression in different regions of language. (PI 90) In one of his manuscripts Wittgenstein writes that his methodological reorientation of philosophy consists in the ‘transition from the question of truth to the question of sense’ (MS 105 (Vol. I): 46). This ‘transition’ has often been taken to involve a shift from a concern with the nature of things to a concern with mere words. As a consequence, Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy as grammar has been criticized for trivializing the task of 129

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philosophy by replacing deep and difficult problems by shallow and superficial ones (see Russell 1959: 214). But nothing could be further from the truth. For Wittgenstein does not suggest that we investigate the use of words instead of investigating the essence of the phenomena, to which these words are meant to apply. What he suggests is something else entirely and much more radical, namely, that the puzzlement about essence is in truth a puzzlement about the use of words, and that our inability to see this is, itself, due to grammatical confusions which suggest to us a certain picture of the essence of things and of the nature of philosophy. Wittgenstein considers this objection in the course of his investigation of the nature of imagination. There one is inclined to protest against Wittgenstein’s methodological instruction: ‘One ought to ask, not what images are or what happens when one imagines something, but how the word “imagination” is used’ (PI 370). For one is tempted to think that the question Wittgenstein wants us to examine is about mere words, while the former question is about the phenomenon of imagination itself. And, surely, one wants to say, it is the phenomenon the word ‘imagination’ is about rather than the use of this word, which is the proper subject of a philosophical analysis. However, Wittgenstein rejects this protest as invalid. He does ‘not want to talk only about words’. He says: For the question as to the nature of imagination is as much about the word ‘imagination’ as my question is. And I am only saying that this question is not to be decided – neither for the person who does the imagining, nor for anyone else – by pointing; nor yet by description of any process. The first question also asks for a word to be explained; but it makes us expect a wrong kind of answer. (PI 370) Essence is expressed by grammar. (PI 371) We are inclined to think that the two questions are different. For we presuppose that the words ‘imagine’ and ‘image’ refer, respectively, to a certain mental process or activity and to a kind of object, i.e. to what happens and to what one has when one imagines something. As a consequence, we believe that the answer to the question ‘as to the nature of imagination’ has to tell us what images are or what happens when one imagines something. We then expect that the analysis of the phenomenon of imagination is somehow like a scientific analysis of the process, say, of digestion, that it tells us what goes on when this process takes place; that it gives us an insight into the hidden nature of this process. And we think that imagination is a mysterious process. According to Wittgenstein, the presuppositions about the essence of imagination are interpretations of the grammar of words, which suggest to us the 130

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pictures of a process and a kind of object. And these pictures are grammatical analogies suggested to us by the use of words not explanatory models of certain phenomena. To interpret the grammar of the word ‘imagine’ on the model of a process is to commit oneself to a certain kind of looking at the nature of imagination. It makes us expect a certain kind of answer to the question of what imagination is. Thus, if we interpret the word ‘imagine’ as having the grammar of a process-word like, say, the word ‘digest’, we want to explain what imagination is in the way we explain what digestion is: by showing or describing what happens when a certain process takes place. But this kind of answer to the question of what imagination is will only be appropriate if this interpretation is correct, if the word ‘imagine’ has the grammar of words like ‘digest’. For this reason, then, We are not analysing a phenomenon (e.g. thought) but a concept (e.g. that of thinking), and therefore the use of a word. (PI 383) Some misunderstandings can be removed by analysis, by substituting one form of expression by another one. But to say that what we need in philosophy is the analysis of a concept can be misleading. Because what we think of here is a definition by means of other words, an explicit rule. But most of the words of our language are not learnt this way. And most philosophically relevant misunderstandings do not stem from the lack of a definition. On Wittgenstein’s view, they are, rather, due to a lack of perspicuity, namely, to the fact that the grammar of our words lacks perspicuity (PI 122). In order to remove philosophical misunderstandings, we therefore need not a definition but a perspicuous representation of grammar, which produces the sort of understanding that consists in ‘seeing connections’ (ibid.), which allows us to understand those aspects of the use of words that we were previously prone to misrepresent. Such misrepresentations of the grammar of words give rise to puzzling ideas (such as, say, that of imagination as a mysterious process) that conjure up the impression of a problem where there is none. Many philosophical problems are, in this way, bogus. The appropriate response to them does not consist in answering the philosophical questions that articulate them, but in making them disappear by achieving the sort of clarity one gains by ‘seeing connections’ in grammar. [T]he clarity that we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear. (PI 133) In its aim to make the problem disappear, according to Wittgenstein, the proper treatment of a philosophical question, rather than being similar to a 131

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scientific investigation, bears an important similarity to the treatment of a medical or psychological problem: The philosopher’s treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness. (PI 255) Thus, the methods of philosophical investigations, properly understood, i.e. the methods that enable one to get rid of philosophical problems, are said to be ‘like therapies’ (133). In particular, the therapeutic treatment of a philosophical problem can – in some respects – be fruitfully compared to psychoanalysis, which aims at helping the patient to get rid of his problems by providing him with a certain kind of understanding of the symptoms of his neurotic illness. It seems to me that there are, at least, two such respects. First, on the psychoanalytic view, these symptoms, like dreams, are the expression of repressed emotional conflicts that have their source, in part, in certain phantastic images the patient unconsciously has of himself and his relationship to others. By making him aware (reminding him) of these conflicts and images, through suitable interpretations of his symptoms, the therapy is supposed to enable the patient to abandon these images and cope with his conflicts. Analogously, on Wittgenstein’s view, philosophical problems are the symptoms of a conflict between the pictures misleadingly suggested to us by some aspects of the grammar of a word and its actual use. By making him aware of the source of this conflict, through suitable interpretation, it helps him to abandon the pictures and the inclination to use certain expressions manifesting these pictures. The other respect in which Wittgenstein saw an analogy between the psychoanalytic treatment of neurotic problems and the therapeutic treatment of philosophical problems is constituted by their reliance on the same criterion of correctness for the interpretations offered. Also in philosophy, the interlocutor has to accept the picture or analogy he is being offered as the correct expression of ‘his feeling’, i.e. of the inclination in question; and he has to accept it as the source of ‘his thought’, i.e. as the source of the ideas that conjure up the impression of a problem. Only in this case is the interpretation offered correct (FF 106, UF 121).

2 A common misunderstanding In 1930 Wittgenstein wrote in his diary: ‘I still find my way of philosophizing new, and am so often struck by its novelty that I must frequently repeat myself. For another generation it will have become part of their very being and the repetitions will seem boring; for me they are essential’ (MS 105 (Vol. I): 46). – Today one can say with some assurance that the generation Wittgenstein was envisaging has not yet arrived. The novelty of his ‘way of 132

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philosophizing’ strikes the present reader of his later work as it struck the author. This may account, in part, for the remarkable fact that in the vast literature on Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations comparatively little explicit attention has been paid to the view of philosophy informing his later way of thinking. In contrast to Wittgenstein’s considerations of almost any other philosophical problem, his remarks on the nature of philosophical problems and their proper treatment have only rarely been critically examined, nor do they seem to play a major role in many discussions of Wittgenstein’s thoughts. Beside the novelty, another reason for this apparent neglect of Wittgenstein’s methodology may be a natural unwillingness to engage seriously with thoughts that radically question one’s philosophical self-image. The third and main reason for this, however, is the objective difficulty of understanding Wittgenstein’s remarks on philosophy and of applying them to the rest of his philosophical investigations. One may, indeed, be forgiven for feeling that, on the whole, too little help is offered by Wittgenstein in the way of clarification and justification of the pronouncements he makes on what philosophy is and what it is not, to enable the reader to critically engage with them. To a considerable extent, this difficulty is, of course, also owed to the form in which Wittgenstein is presenting his thoughts in the Philosophical Investigations, a form that gives the book its unique character but evidently defies our usual expectations of how philosophical argument is to be presented and structured. Wittgenstein characterizes it in the preface by comparing his philosophical remarks to ‘a number of sketches of a landscape’ in which ‘[t]he same or almost the same points were always being approached afresh from different directions’. The arrangement of these sketches is meant to give the reader of his book ‘a picture of the landscape’. ‘Thus’, Wittgenstein writes, ‘this book is really only an album’. At least in part he puts this album-like way of presenting his thoughts down to ‘the nature of the investigation itself ’ which ‘compels us to travel over a wide field of thought criss-cross in every direction’. And indeed, the comparison of his work to an album of sketches which give us the picture of a landscape is apparently closely connected to Wittgenstein’s view that a main source of philosophical unclarity is that we lack an ‘overview’ of the use of our words. It is mainly on account of these difficulties that, in dealing with Wittgenstein’s treatment of philosophical problems, many commentators tend to ignore his methodological remarks and proceed as if, whatever Wittgenstein himself might say, what he must have been trying to do is to advance and argue for substantive philosophical doctrines. One example for this tendency is to be found in the discussion of Wittgenstein’s considerations of rulefollowing. And nowhere, perhaps, is this tendency more evident than in Saul Kripke’s study Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language which has convinced many philosophers that the remarks on rule-following both play a key role for the proper understanding of Wittgenstein’s later thought and 133

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are of great importance to the philosophy of language, mind and mathematics. In fact, I think, Kripke’s achievement is, to a large extent, owed to the fact that it succeeded in offering an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s thoughts which extracts from them a powerful argument for a radical thesis, and in presenting both thesis and argument in a lucid and straightforward form, which abstracts from the peculiarities and obscurities of the style in which Wittgenstein himself presents his thoughts.1 On Kripke’s reading, the aim of Wittgenstein’s remarks on rule-following in sections 185–242 of the Philosophical Investigations is the development of a sceptical problem concerning the possibility of rule-following. In fact, Kripke thinks that it is the fundamental problem of the Philosophical Investigations (Kripke 1982: 78). By developing this problem, Wittgenstein has invented ‘a new form of scepticism’ (Kripke 1982: 62). The conclusion of this sceptical argument is the ‘paradox’ stated by Wittgenstein in section 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. (PI 201) According to Kripke, Wittgenstein accepts his sceptical argument. However, he does not rest content with it but devises a sceptical solution to the paradox.2 This solution is supposed to be given in section 202: And hence also ‘following a rule’ is a practice. And to think one is following a rule is not to follow a rule. Hence it is not possible to follow a rule ‘privately’: otherwise thinking one was following a rule would be the same thing as following it. (PI 202) On Kripke’s reading, the aim of Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations is to show that we cannot make sense of the meaningful use of words as an activity of an individual that is guided by rules as long as we consider the individual in isolation from a community. The natural assumption that an individual’s meaning something by his words, which is the reason why he uses them in a certain way, is a fact about his mental state, Wittgenstein wants to show, leads to the paradoxical conclusion that ‘all language, all concept formation’ is ‘impossible, indeed unintelligible’ (Kripke 1982: 63). According to Kripke’s Wittgenstein, one can only be said to follow a rule, if there exists a community whose agreement on what counts as ‘following’ and ‘not following’ a rule sets the standard of correctness against which the behaviour of an individual is measured. As a consequence, one cannot follow a rule privately. Thus, on Kripke’s interpretation, the conclusion of the so-called 134

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private language argument is already given in section 202. For, if the meaningful use of language is an activity guided by rules there cannot be a language which only its speaker can understand. Kripke’s sceptical interpretation of the paradox of rule-following has been received with much criticism (see Baker and Hacker 1984, McDowell 1984, Malcolm 1986 and Pears 1988). The main point of this criticism was that Wittgenstein, rather than accepting ‘our paradox’, appears straightforwardly to reject it as being based on a misunderstanding: It can be seen that there is a misunderstanding here from the mere fact that in the course of our argument we give one interpretation after another; as if each contented us at least for a moment, until we thought of yet another standing behind it. What this shows is that there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which is exhibited in what we call ‘following the rule’ and ‘going against it’ in actual cases. Hence there is an inclination to say: every action according to the rule is an interpretation. But we ought to restrict the ‘interpretation’ to the substitution of one expression of the rule for another. (PI 201) Obviously, Wittgenstein wants to say that the view that, paradoxically, it is not possible to follow a rule is based on the misunderstanding that to understand or grasp a rule is to interpret it. Hence, there is no need for Wittgenstein to suggest the desperate remedy of a sceptical solution of the paradox. However, notwithstanding their rejection of Kripke’s sceptical reading of the considerations that lead to the paradox of rule-following, many commentators agree with Kripke that Wittgenstein’s solution or resolution of this paradox lies in the insight that following a rule is a social practice (see, for instance, Malcolm 1986 and McDowell 1984). Like Kripke, the proponents of this common view believe that we can only make sense of the concept of following a rule by realizing that it necessarily implies the concept of a community: one can only follow a rule if one belongs to a community of rule-followers whose agreement on what counts as ‘following’ and ‘not following’ a rule sets the standard of correctness against which the behaviour of an individual is measured. Like Kripke, they hold that it is this insight that accounts for the key role of Wittgenstein’s discussion of the concept of following a rule. This insight seems of fundamental importance for the understanding of the nature of language and thought, since if it is correct we can only make sense of the meaningful use of language and the application of concepts, as an activity guided by rules, as a necessarily social phenomenon, i.e. the practice of a community. The debate between the proponents and critics of this ‘social view of rulefollowing’, both as an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s view and in its own 135

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right, has for some time dominated the discussion of Wittgenstein’s considerations of rule-following (see Baker and Hacker 1984 and McGinn 1984 for the minority view). Though I find myself on the side of the critics in this debate, I don’t think that to address the question of whether following a rule essentially requires a community was one of Wittgenstein’s primary concerns. In fact, I believe that to think so is to get the aim of Wittgenstein’s treatment of the problem of rule-following completely wrong, and hence also the role of his considerations of rule-following in the Philosophical Investigations. As I hope will become clear, the aim of Wittgenstein’s investigation is not to argue for a certain contentious conception of the meaningful use of language, as the proponents of the common view have it. Rather, as Wittgenstein’s remarks on the nature of philosophical problems and their proper treatment ought to make us expect, his aim is purely therapeutic.

3 The treatment of a problem To show that this is so, we first of all need to have a closer look at those remarks which introduce the problem of rule-following, namely, sections 185 and 186 of the Philosophical Investigations. In section 185 Wittgenstein reverts to a language-game which he had introduced in section 143 and which provides the medium for a large part of the long investigation of the concepts of understanding and meaning (139–242). Like the language-game he had employed in his examination of the Augustinian picture of language at the beginning of the book, it is one of giving and executing orders: when A gives an order B has to write down series of signs according to a formation rule. The first of these series is that of the natural numbers. Wittgenstein had previously used the example to examine what it is to grasp a rule (143–155). Now he sets the stage for investigating the question of what it is to follow a rule. He imagines the following case. Suppose we judge by the usual criteria that the pupil has mastered the series of natural numbers. We now teach him to follow orders of the form ‘+ n’, where the formula constitutes a rule for a series of cardinal numbers. For instance, we give him the order ‘+ 2’ and do successful tests with him up to 1000. But when he proceeds beyond 1000 he writes ‘1000, 1004, 1008, 1012’. No doubt, even though this possibility is clearly conceivable, it provides us with an abnormal case. Normally, when someone satisfies the usual criteria for having mastered a mathematical operation like that of forming a series he will not disappoint our expectations that he will carry on competently. After all, the language-game under consideration is a rather primitive one, the mathematical operation fairly elementary. In the abnormal case the teacher would probably react by saying to the pupil things like: ‘Look what you have done!’ or ‘You were meant to add two: Look how you began the series!’. But what if he does not understand us? What if he answers: ‘Yes, isn’t it right? I thought that was how I was meant to do it?’ or ‘But I went on in the same way’? In that case, Wittgenstein says, it would 136

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be of no use to repeat the old examples and explanations. For, obviously, it is these examples and explanations which he has misunderstood. What we could say about this person, Wittgenstein suggests, is that it comes natural to him to understand our order with our explanations, as we should understand the order: ‘Add 2 up to 1000, 4 up to 2000, 6 up to 3000 and so on’. Given the primitive character of the mathematical operation the pupil is to perform, there would be a similarity between our case and that ‘in which a person naturally reacted to the gesture of pointing with the hand by looking in the direction from finger-tip to wrist, not from wrist to finger-tip’ (PI 185). By drawing our attention to this abnormal possibility, what does Wittgenstein want to show? The answer to this question is contained in the ensuing dialogue with his imaginary interlocutor. According to the interlocutor’s interpretation, the abnormal possibility raises an epistemological problem. The problem is: how does one know what one must do to follow a rule, and the interlocutor takes Wittgenstein to suggest that one knows this by intuition. What you are saying, then, comes to this: a new insight – intuition – is needed at every step to carry out the order ‘+ n’ correctly. (PI 186) It is natural that being struck by the possibility of understanding the order ‘+ 2’ in an abnormal way causes disquiet. For the case of expanding a series of cardinal numbers seems to be a paradigm example of an operation guided by a mathematical law, i.e. a strict rule which determines a unique successor for the indefinitely many numbers in the series. While it often requires interpretation to apply the rules or criteria for the use of non-mathematical concepts (e.g. legal or moral concepts), the rules that constitute the meaning of mathematical symbols seem to determine their application with logical necessity. As a consequence, we are inclined to explain the perfect certainty with which almost all of us will carry out the order ‘+ 2’ by continuing the initial segment of the series ‘2, 4, 6, 8’ by writing down ‘10’ by our grasp of a rule from which we derive the knowledge of which step is the correct one. It seems that, on the basis of just a finite number of examples and explanations, we come to understand the meaning of the sign ‘+ 2’, i.e. grasp the rule that guides and justifies the use we subsequently make of that sign. All this, in the interlocutor’s view, takes on a disturbingly problematic aspect in the light of the abnormal possibility. For how, when ordered ‘+ 2’, can one know how to continue the initial segment of ‘2, 4, 6, 8’, if the expression ‘+ 2’, like any other sign, can be variously interpreted, i.e. as the expression of different rules which require and justify different ways of expanding the series? Since the explanations that can be given of the sign ‘+ 2’ do not provide compelling reasons for choosing one interpretation rather than the other, for they too can be variously interpreted, it seems, our 137

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knowledge of how to follow the rule ‘+ 2’ cannot ultimately be based on reasons. There appears to be a gap between the order ‘+ 2’ and its execution which, at every step, must be bridged by a new insight or intuition as to which step is the correct one (cf. 431). Hence, the interlocutor concludes that ultimately our knowledge of how to execute the order at each step must be based on a new intuition. Wittgenstein responds to this suggestion by asking how it is decided what is the correct step at any particular stage, if this is not determined by the rule ‘+ 2’ and the examples by which it is explained? For even though intuition may be the way in which we know which step is correct, it is not what makes it correct. Which step is correct must be determined independently of intuition, if there is anything for intuition to intuit. The interlocutor now makes the natural suggestion that ‘The right step is the one that accords with the order as it was meant’. After all, the order ‘+ 2’ is a sign with a particular meaning, it does not merely consist of meaningless sounds. And to carry out the order one must know what is meant by it. Thus, ‘1002’ is the right step after ‘1000’ because of the rule the teacher meant by ‘+ 2’. This is what one must intuit. But what did this meaning consist in and how did it determine the step that accords with the order? When giving the order ‘+ 2’, did the teacher mean an infinite number of particular propositions, among them ‘that he should write 1002 after 1000’. No, says the interlocutor, what he meant was a general proposition from which all the particular propositions follow: ‘. . . what I meant was, that he should write the next but one number after every number that he wrote; and from this all those propositions follow in turn.’ However, if the rule ‘+ 2’ does not by itself determine which step is correct, since it can be variously interpreted, neither does the proposition which specifies what was meant by ‘+ 2’. For this proposition is just a paraphrase of the rule ‘+ 2’. Hence, it remains an open question how what is meant by the rule ‘+ 2’ can provide a criterion of correctness for its application. Therefore, if the interlocutor is right in taking the abnormal possibility to raise the problem of how we know what course of action is in accord with the rule, and if the solution to this problem presupposes such a criterion of correctness, then we have not come closer to a solution of this problem. Pending that solution, the way we apply the rule seems to be completely arbitrary. Wittgenstein therefore suggests that ‘It would almost be more correct to say, not that an intuition was needed at every stage, but that a new decision was needed at every stage’ (PI 186). Were it not for the careful choice of words (‘almost more correct’), the point of Wittgenstein’s critical remark, considered on its own, might be taken to be the rejection of an ‘intuitionist’ epistemology of rule-following in favour of a ‘decisionist’ one. On such a reading, by drawing our attention to the abnormal possibility, Wittgenstein sets the stage for mounting an argument designed to show that, paradoxically, a rule cannot determine what course of action is in accord with it, because any course of action can be brought in 138

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accord with it by some interpretation; in particular, what is meant by a sign cannot determine its use. That such a reading is wrong is, however, decisively shown by the progress of Wittgenstein’s exchange with his interlocutor to whose protest, ‘But I already knew, at the time when I gave the order, that he ought to write 1002 after 1000’, he responds, ‘Certainly, and you can also say you meant it then’. According to Wittgenstein, there is nothing wrong with using these forms of words, any more than with saying ‘The steps are determined by the formula’ (189) or ‘The way the formula is meant determines which steps are to be taken’ (190). What, then, is the point of Wittgenstein’s criticism? The answer is that he wants us to see that there is something wrong with the ‘idea’ or ‘picture’ the interlocutor has of how meaning something by an order or rule determines what must be done to carry it out or follow it. But it is important to be clear about what kind of error the interlocutor is guilty of. Not that Wittgenstein leaves us in any doubt about this. The source of this error, he suggests, is a misunderstanding of the use of the forms of words whose legitimacy the interlocutor is so eager to defend. For one thing, the interlocutor is ‘misled by the grammar of the words “know” and “mean”’ (187) to think that the forms of words ‘I already knew at the time . . .’ and ‘When I gave the order “+ 2” I meant . . .’ are used to refer to a certain act which was performed at the time the order was given, an act accompanying the order, like thinking of the step. Against this Wittgenstein first of all suggests that the use of ‘know’ in the past tense ought to be interpreted not to the actual performance of an act in the past but counterfactually: When you said ‘I already knew at the time . . .’ that meant something like: ‘If I had then been asked what number should be written after 1000, I should have replied “1002”’. (PI 187)

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Since, in fact, the teacher had not been asked at the time there was nothing with which the actual step of continuing the series could have been in agreement or disagreement. Nonetheless we would not doubt that he knew, i.e. was able to say, what was the correct step, any more than we would doubt someone’s word when he said: ‘If he had fallen into the water then, I should have jumped after him.’ That is to say, we would not doubt the assumption that the teacher possessed the necessary elementary mathematical competence, any more than we would doubt his moral competence. Wittgenstein thinks that we are now able to understand what was wrong with the interlocutor’s idea of how meaning the order in a particular way determined what one has to do to carry it out. Here I should first of all like to say: your idea was that the meaning of the order had in its own way already traversed all those steps: that 139

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when you meant it your mind as it were flew ahead and took all steps before you physically arrived at this or that one. Thus you were inclined to use such expressions as: ‘The steps are really already taken, even before I take them in writing or orally or in thought.’ And it seemed as if they were in some unique way predetermined, anticipated – as only the act of meaning can anticipate reality. (PI 188) It seems obvious that, in Wittgenstein’s view, the interlocutor’s idea is not wrong in the sense in which a theoretical idea can be wrong. For it is not an explanatory model at all but a kind of mythological picture. Misled by grammar the interlocutor is under the illusion that the explanation of how the rule ‘+ 2’ determines its application in advance lies in the hidden nature of a mysterious mental act. The effect of this illusion is his inclination to use such expressions as ‘The steps are really already taken, even before I take them in writing or orally or in thought’. Is the interlocutor aware of this mythological picture? I don’t think so. Its role is rather that of an interpretation of his inclination which is to make him aware of the illusion of which his inclination is the effect. Its function, I want to suggest, is in an important respect similar to that of an interpretation given in psychoanalysis of a symptom which is to help the patient to understand, become aware of, the emotional conflict of which his symptom is the expression. The purpose of the interpretation in both cases is to help the patient to liberate himself from his problem, in the psychological case from the emotional conflict, in the philosophical case from the disquiet produced by a misleading aspect of grammar. To accept the mythological picture as the correct interpretation of his inclination to use such expressions is to accept that this inclination has its source in a grammatical confusion and ought to enable one to give up its use. The way the interlocutor understands Wittgenstein’s argument, however, contrasts sharply with the interpretation I have suggested of it. Far from recognizing the therapeutic character of Wittgenstein’s criticism of his idea of how meaning something by the algebraic formula determines the steps to be taken, the interlocutor takes him to question that the steps are determined by the formula at all. ‘But are the steps then not determined by the algebraic formula?’, he asks (189). To which Wittgenstein responds with the comment that the interlocutor’s question ‘contains a mistake’ (189). The mistake consists in the presupposition that there must be an explanation of how the algebraic formula determines the steps; that otherwise we must conclude that they are not determined by the formula. And since Wittgenstein’s argument, as it strikes the interlocutor, aims to show that the most natural explanation of this fact is wrong, he takes Wittgenstein to draw precisely that conclusion. Thus, he mistakes Wittgenstein’s rejection of his interpretation of the grammar of the sentence ‘The way the formula is meant 140

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determines which steps are to be taken’, for a denial of a metaphysical truth, namely, that a rule, meant or understood in a particular way, determines the course of action in accord with it. This he does because he finds his own interpretation natural. In effect, he wants to defend the legitimacy of this form of expression, but he does so in the belief that he is defending a philosophical claim. In Wittgenstein’s view, however, the legitimacy of our ordinary use of this form of expression is not in question at all. Nor is there anything wrong with saying: ‘The way the formula is meant determines which steps are to be taken’ (190). What Wittgenstein does question is, as I said, the legitimacy of the interpretation put upon those words by the interlocutor. That interpretation manifests itself in the ‘metaphysical use’ of such expressions as ‘The steps are in a unique way predetermined by the act of meaning’, which try to capture the elusive essence of the way in which the steps are determined. What we have to do, according to Wittgenstein, is ‘to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use’ (116). For we do use the expression: ‘The steps are determined by the formula . . .’. We can either use it to make a causal statement about how people are brought by education (training) to apply an algebraic formula like ‘y = 2x’ in the same way, i.e. that they all work out the same value for ‘y’ when they substitute a number for x. By making such a statement we may want to distinguish these people from others who apply the formula in different ways. Or we can use this expression to make a grammatical statement about a kind a formula, say ‘y = 2x’, in contrast to one that does not, e.g. in the context of teaching someone the different kinds of formulae. Equally, the sentence ‘The way the formula is meant determines which steps are to be taken’, has a legitimate use. But the criteria for the way the formula is meant are not provided by a description of how a certain act of meaning is performed but by describing the way we always use such a formula: the way we are taught to use it. Having clarified the perfectly ordinary senses in which we can say, ‘The way the formula is meant determines which steps are to be taken’, Wittgenstein now turns to examining a related problem about understanding. It seems undeniable that someone who understands a sign, i.e. grasps its meaning, knows its use. There can be no doubt about this, any more than one can doubt that the way a sign is meant determines its use. But just as we may be puzzled by how this is done, so we may also be puzzled by how one can grasp the whole use of a sign when we understand it: ‘It is as if we could grasp the whole use of the word at a stroke’. Like what for example? – Can’t the use – in a certain sense – be grasped at a stroke? And in what sense can it not? – The point is, that it is as if we could ‘grasp it at a stroke’ in yet another and much more direct sense than that. – But have you a model for this? 141

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No. It is just that this expression suggests itself to us. As the result of the crossing of different pictures. (PI 191) You have no model of this superlative fact, but you are seduced into using a super-expression. (It might be called a philosophical superlative.) (PI 192) If Wittgenstein is right, however, the puzzle about how we can grasp the whole use of a word at a stroke is no more a problem that calls for a kind of theoretical explanation as a solution than was the former puzzle about meaning. When in the course of ordinary life we use the expression ‘I grasped the whole use of the word at a stroke’, it does not seem to us as if there was something astonishing or hard to understand about what happened. It is not as if there were some process whose mechanism we don’t understand or some super-human act we see in a movie. According to Wittgenstein, it is only when we look at that form of expression (‘grasping the whole use of a word at a stroke’), that what happened may come to assume a problematic aspect. For then we may well form the idea of a ‘queer process’, a ‘superlative fact’ of which we have ‘no model’. There is only a ‘super-expression’, namely the sentence ‘It is as if we could grasp it at a stroke in yet another much more direct sense’, which we are ‘seduced into using’. But let us look closer at what is going on here. Wittgenstein says that the ‘super-expression’ results from the ‘crossing of different pictures’. If I am not mistaken, these pictures are, on the one hand, that of a mental process which occurs when one grasps the whole use of a word at a stroke and, on the other, that of the use of the word as a future process. The ‘crossing’ of these pictures produces the idea of a ‘queer process’ in which the future use must in some way be present and yet cannot be itself present. This reading is suggested by the following remarks: In our failure to understand the use of a word we take it as the expression of a queer process. (As we think of time as a queer medium, of the mind as a queer kind of being.) (PI 196) ‘It’s as if we could grasp the whole use of a word at a stroke.’ – And that is just what we say we do. That is to say: we sometimes describe what we do in these words. But there is nothing astonishing, nothing queer, about what happens. It becomes queer when we are led to think that the future development must in some way already be present in the act of grasping the use and yet isn’t present. (PI 197) 142

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Wittgenstein continues this remark by suggesting the source of this thought:

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For we say that there is no doubt that we understand the word, and on the other hand, its meaning lies in its use. (PI 197)

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This brief diagnosis harks back to the very beginning of Wittgenstein’s investigation of the concept of understanding (138–142). The nature of understanding can seem puzzling because, on the one hand, we understand the meaning of the words spoken to or by us ‘when we hear or say them’, i.e. we grasp their meaning ‘at a stroke’, while on the other hand the meaning of a word is its use or is at least determined by its use, and to understand the meaning of a word is to know its use. But how is this possible, if the use of a word is something ‘which is extended in time’? (138). For while, on the one hand, grasping the meaning at a stroke seems to require the presence of what is grasped, what is present cannot be literally identical with the future use of the word. On the other hand, by grasping the meaning of a word one grasps how it must be used. It is therefore a natural thought that what one grasps when one grasps the meaning of a word (i.e. the meaning of the word qua what we grasp) is internally related to the word’s correct use (i.e. the meaning qua use), namely, that the former is related to the latter by determining which use of the word is in accord with it and thus explains one’s knowledge of the use of the word. On this way of looking at the problem, we must look for a model of something that constitutes the meaning of a word qua what one grasps and, like a rule, determines its use. In section 139 Wittgenstein considers one natural suggestion for such a model of what is meant by a word, namely that the meaning of a word qua what one grasps is a kind of picture which comes before our mind when we hear a word and understand it, for instance the picture of a cube when we hear the word ‘cube’. Suppose I am given the order ‘Bring me a cube!’. Then, according to the present view, my understanding of the order (i.e. my knowing of what I am ordered to do), consists in part in my having before my mind something like a picture of a cube which shows me what I have to bring. And what I do will either agree or disagree with that picture. Thus, if I bring a cube, what I do is in accord with it, while if I bring a triangular prism it is not. In his criticism of this suggestion, Wittgenstein draws our attention to the possibility of imagining a method of projection according to which the application of the word ‘cube’ to triangular prisms does after all fit the picture that may come before our mind when we hear the word ‘cube’. Thus, in this case, when I am given the order ‘Bring me a cube!’ and I bring a prism I can be said to have executed the order. The picture of a cube does suggest a certain use to us, but with a different method of projection a different application will be in accord with it. Since it is the method of projection that 143

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determines what is to be called ‘agreement’ or ‘disagreement’ between picture and application, one is tempted to think that to understand a word is to have a picture plus the method of projection before one’s mind. But Wittgenstein’s argument applies equally to any mental representation of a given method of projection, since any schema representing the rule of projection (‘say a picture of two cubes connected by lines of projection’) could also be applied in a number of ways. But if the same mental representation can come before our mind when we hear a word, and yet the use of this word be different, then the word in those cases cannot have the same meaning; and so the suggested solution of the puzzle must be rejected. This criticism is, of course, well known. Nonetheless, it deserves a closer look from a methodological point of view, since it is instructive to note what Wittgenstein has to say about the kind of error his criticism is directed at and the nature of his argument: Then what sort of error did I make? The error which one would like to express by saying: I should have thought the picture forced a particular use on me. How could I think that? What did I think? Is there such a thing as a picture, or something like a picture, that forces a particular application on us; so that my mistake lay in confusing one picture with another? – For we might also be inclined to express ourselves like this: we are at most under a psychological, not a logical, compulsion. And now it looks quite as if we knew of two kinds of case. What did my argument consist in? It called our attention to (reminded us of ) the fact that there are other processes, besides the one we originally thought of, which we would under certain circumstances be prepared to call ‘applying the picture of a cube’. So, our ‘belief that the picture forced a particular application upon us’ consisted in the fact that only the one case and no other occurred to us. ‘There is another solution as well’ means: there is something that I am also prepared to call a ‘solution’; to which I am prepared to apply such-and-such a picture, such-and-such an analogy, and so on. What is essential is to see that the same thing can come before our minds when we hear the word and the application still be different. Has it the same meaning both times? I think we shall say not. (PI 140) We are inclined to think that the error in the suggested solution to the puzzle about understanding which Wittgenstein wants to point out consists in the mistaken belief that the picture logically compels me to use the picture in a certain way. On this way of looking at it, his argument shows that the ‘picture-theory’ of how the meaning of a word determines its use rests on a 144

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confusion between psychological and logical compulsion. On this view, what the proponent of the ‘theory’ doesn’t realize is that ‘we are at most under a psychological, not a logical compulsion’. But, as Wittgenstein indicates, this is not the right way of looking at what his argument is supposed to show and what kind of argument it is. For the erroneous ‘belief that the picture forced a particular application upon us’, says Wittgenstein, just ‘consisted in the fact that only the one case and no other occurred to us’. And the argument that shows this is not a demonstration that our belief was false, since that would presuppose that we knew two kinds of compulsion that we confused. But there is no such thing as logical compulsion. The argument consists, rather, in calling to our attention a fact concerning the use of words, namely, the fact that there are other processes, besides the one we originally thought of, which we would under certain circumstances be prepared to call ‘applying the picture of a cube’. Thus, the error in the ‘picture-theory’ of meaning which Wittgenstein’s argument is designed to bring out is a grammatical confusion. To be sure, the point of Wittgenstein’s argument is to show something about the essence of what is meant or understood by a word, namely, ‘that the same thing can come before our minds when we hear the word and the application still be different’, and that, as a consequence, the word has not the same meaning in this case. However, it does so not by telling us something new, but by a grammatical reminder. Here, as in the sections 185–186 previously discussed, Wittgenstein does not seek to establish that ‘There is no logical compulsion’ forcing us to put down ‘1002’ after ‘1000’ in response to the order ‘+ 2’ or compelling us to apply the drawing of a cube precisely to cubes. Rather, he wants to make us realize how we arrive at the picture of a mysteriously inexorable kind of compulsion, a compulsion that forces us with the inexorability of logic, by the quasi-mechanistic means of an inner ‘psychological’ process. We arrive at this picture, i.e. at the idea that the drawing of a cube or the rule ‘+ 2’ ‘force a particular application upon us’ in this mysterious way, by misinterpreting the responses that come natural to us, as driven by some peculiarly inexorable process, quite simply because no other application occurs to us than the one that strikes us as natural. In reminding us of that, namely, of what abnormal responses we would still be willing to accept as applications of the picture or rule, Wittgenstein thus wants to show us how we came to endorse a mysterious picture that is in conflict with the ways in which we actually speak of ‘grasping a word’s meaning or a rule’. This, then, may enable us to shed this picture. And this resolves the conflict of which the problems we discussed are the symptoms. With section 197 we have only reached the thirteenth of fifty-eight remarks on rule-following. But, I hope, it has already become clear that at least in these remarks Wittgenstein is practising exactly what he is preaching in his remarks about the nature of philosophy. A reading that takes seriously the therapeutic aspect of Wittgenstein’s investigation would therefore, I believe, 145

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also provide a promising perspective for the remainder of his considerations. In particular, the debate on the question of what thesis Wittgenstein is arguing for (be it sceptical or social) may appear in a new light. For if Wittgenstein’s aim is purely therapeutic, he is not arguing for any thesis whatsoever.

Notes 1

2

Kripke is, of course, aware that his way of presenting Wittgenstein’s argument is at odds with Wittgenstein’s own ‘philosophical style’ (Kripke 1982: 5). He therefore suggests that ‘the present paper should be thought of expounding neither “Wittgenstein’s” argument nor “Kripke’s”: rather Wittgenstein’s argument as it struck Kripke’. He also believes that his attempt to present Wittgenstein’s precisely is ‘to some extent to falsify it’ (Kripke 1982: 5). A sceptical solution similar to Hume’s solution of his sceptical doubts about causation.

Bibliography Baker, G. and Hacker, P.M.S. (1984) ‘On Misunderstanding Wittgenstein: Kripke’s Private-Language Argument’, Synthese 58: 407–50. Cavell, S. (1979) The Claim of Reason, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Diamond, C. (1991) The Realistic Spirit. Wittgenstein, Philosophy and Mind, Massachusetts: MIT Press. Kripke, S.A. (1982) Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, Oxford: Blackwell. McDowell, J. (1984) ‘Wittgenstein on Following a Rule’, Synthese 58: 325–63. McGinn, C. (1984) Wittgenstein on Meaning, Oxford: Blackwell. Malcolm, N. (1986) Wittgenstein: Nothing is Hidden, Oxford: Blackwell. Pears, D. (1988) The False Prison. A Study of the Development of Wittgenstein’s Philosophy, Vol. 2, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Russell, B. (1959) My Philosophical Development, London: Allen & Unwin.

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7 THE DEMAND FOR SYNOPTIC REPRESENTATIONS AND THE PRIVATE LANGUAGE DISCUSSION PI 243–315

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1 When one thinks of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, and in particular of §§243–315, the word ‘übersichtlich’: that is, ‘easy to survey’, ‘synoptic’,1 does not spring to one’s lips. One is much rather reminded of the way Wittgenstein characterizes the book in the Preface: as ‘travel(s) over a wide field of thought, criss-cross in every direction’: The same or almost the same points were always being approached afresh from different directions, and new sketches made. . . . Thus this book is really only an album. (PI, Preface) If this is an apt description (and I think it is), what are we to make of Wittgenstein’s claim in §122 that ‘the concept of a synoptic representation (übersichtliche Darstellung) is of fundamental significance’ for him? Here is §122 in full: A main source of our failure to understand is that we lack a synoptic view [nicht übersehen] of the use of our words. – Our grammar is not easy to survey [fehlt es an Übersichtlichkeit]. – A synoptic representation [übersichtliche Darstellung] produces just that understanding which consists in ‘seeing connexions’. Hence the importance of finding and inventing connecting links. The concept of a synoptic representation [übersichtliche Darstellung] is of fundamental significance for us. It characterizes our 147

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form of representation, the way we look at things. (Is this a ‘Weltanschauung’?) (PI §122) Where in the Philosophical Investigations do we find such synoptic representations? – I believe what Wittgenstein had in mind here are simple, fictitious language-games, like that of buying apples (§1), the builders (§§2, 8, 15, 21), the description of coloured squares (§§48, 64), ordering someone to fetch composite objects (§§60, 62), or the reading of a table according to different schemas (§86). There is strong evidence for this interpretation in §5 of the Investigations. Having mentioned the distorting influence of a wrong philosophical notion of meaning, Wittgenstein continues: It disperses the fog to study the phenomena of language in primitive kinds of application in which one can command a clear overview [übersehen] of the aim and functioning of the words. (PI §5) Here, simple language-games are characterized, almost verbatim, as übersichtliche Darstellungen of the use of words. The same point is made in the Blue Book: If we want to study the problems of truth and falsehood, of the agreement and disagreement of propositions with reality, of the nature of assertion, assumption and question, we shall with great advantage look at primitive forms of language in which these forms of thinking appear without the confusing background of highly complicated processes of thought. When we look at such simple forms of language the mental mist which seems to enshroud our ordinary use of language disappears. We see activities, reactions, which are clearcut and transparent. On the other hand we recognize in these simpler processes forms of language not separated by a break from our more complicated ones. We see that we can build up the complicated forms from the primitive ones by gradually adding new forms. (BB 17) In this passage, for ‘synoptic’ (übersichtlich) we have another visual metaphor: ‘transparent’. In the Brown Book, too, Wittgenstein defends the idea that a complicated and confusing part of grammar may be represented by judiciously invented simple language-games, each exhibiting one aspect of the grammar of the word under discussion: ‘some examples showing these features in exaggeration, others showing transitions, certain series of examples showing the trailing off of such features’ (BB 125). Thus, the reader should be given a 148

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whole series of such simplified examples; as indeed Part I of the Brown Book consists largely of a succession of simple language-games with some comments interspersed. Although in the Investigations Wittgenstein used this device much less frequently, still there are instances where a simple languagegame is made more complicated and thus brought closer to our actual use of language (esp. §§2, 8, 15). This fits well what Wittgenstein says in §122 about the importance of finding or inventing ‘connecting links’. The word ‘inventing’, incidentally, makes it clear that fiction is a legitimate device for a synoptic representation. Further evidence can be found in Friedrich Waismann’s Logik, Sprache, Philosophie, a book that was written in the 1930s in close co-operation with Wittgenstein as an attempt to give a systematic account of the latter’s new philosophy. Chapter IV.2 is entitled ‘Language Games’ and explains the method of giving ‘synoptic representations’: We could invent new language games and imagine that, for instance, some primitive tribe knows only one of these language games or only a certain combination of them; and thus we illuminate the boundless [unübersehbare, literally: unsurveyable] ever-changing complex of language by contrasting or comparing it with clearly defined constructions which nevertheless we cannot help calling ‘language’. (LSP 125; PLP 79) Then this procedure is compared to Goethe’s conception of an ‘original plant’ (Urpflanze): His conception of the original plant implies no hypothesis about the temporal development of the vegetable kingdom such as that of Darwin. What then is the problem solved by this idea? It is the problem of synoptic representation. ‘All the organs of plants are leaves transformed’ offers us a schema in which we may group the organs of plants according to their similarities as if around some natural centre. . . . That is precisely what we are doing here. We are collating one form of language with its environment, or transforming it in imagination so as to gain a view of the whole of the space in which the structure of our language has its being. (LSP 127f., cf. PLP 81) 2 In a recently published variant of this passage the final sentence translates:

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we situate a linguistic form in its surroundings, we see the grammar of our language against a background of similar and related games, and that banishes disquiet. (VW 310f.) 149

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A simple, possibly invented, language-game, or even a series of them, is an illuminating object of comparison (PI §130). Like the schema of the ‘original plant’, it provides a synoptic representation of some potentially puzzling features of our language. Apart from such textual support, the interpretation that simple languagegames are instances of synoptic representations seems also to win by default. No other candidates are plausible. In particular, there are no systematic lists of grammatical rules in the Investigations.3 There are only sporadic grammatical propositions or reminders that some philosophical claim is in conflict with common usage (e.g. that the bearer of a name is not what one calls its meaning (§40), or that it is often correct to say ‘I know he’s in pain’ (§246)). Such sporadic reminders certainly do not merit the title ‘synoptic representation’. So if Wittgenstein’s simple language-games cannot be called ‘synoptic representations’, we would have to dismiss §122 as an entirely unfulfilled programme. Furthermore, it is certainly true that such simple language-games are what synoptic representations are supposed to be: namely, a characteristic feature of Wittgenstein’s mature writings (cf. §122b). Against the idea that simple language-games might be intended as synoptic representations it has been objected that ‘we cannot represent the rules of chess through describing draughts’ (Glock 1996: 281). – Of course one cannot represent all the rules of one game by describing a different game, but in philosophy we never need to have a comprehensive set of grammatical rules (philosophy is not linguistics); we are only concerned with certain puzzling features of grammar (cf. Baker and Hacker 1980: 95).4 To develop the games analogy: suppose someone is puzzled to hear that in chess a pawn can be promoted to a queen. Now this sort of promotion: that in a board game one piece is turned into another, can indeed be demonstrated and explained by using a less complicated game, like draughts. And in such a case one might well say that the teacher makes the promotion of a draughtsman stand for or represent the promotion of a chess pawn. Similarly, Wittgenstein uses the simple language-game of the builders (PI §2) to make, or illustrate, some fundamental points about language in general: that the use of language is essentially interwoven with non-linguistic activities; that even where Augustine is correct in so far as each word is associated with an object, such a correlation is not enough to account for the meaning of a word (PI §10); rather, the meaning of a word is its use (PI §43). And in the subsequent extensions of the builders’ language-game (PI §§8, 15, 21) Wittgenstein illustrates some basic features of colour words, numbers, proper names, and the difference between reporting and ordering. Simplification is what makes a representation synoptic (cf. TS 302, 21). In a lecture Wittgenstein used the analogy of country and map: for language and an account of its grammar (AWL 43). Maps are so much easier to survey than the country they represent because they simplify matters; they leave out millions of details, which makes it possible to print them on a small sheet of 150

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paper. (A map that depicted every pebble would be pretty useless.) Similarly, a written grammar that conscientiously recorded each and every detail of our use would probably be not much less confusing than the real thing. The wealth of details would prevent us from seeing the crucial points and connections – the main contours of the grammatical landscape – that are philosophically relevant. – Note also that in a good map features of particular interest may be exaggerated. Street maps, for example, depict streets much wider than they actually are. That is not a mistake, but a way of making the map easier to read. – A map is a synoptic representation; but a long and detailed account of one’s travels criss-cross through the country is not, even if it serves the same purpose of giving someone a good idea of how the land lies. Therefore, neither the Philosophical Investigations as a whole, nor what could be regarded as its chapters (like the Private Language Discussion), can be called synoptic representations – whatever their enlightening effects on a reader.

2 If this interpretation is correct, there are some synoptic representations in the Investigations, but not that many. There was a time when Wittgenstein intended to make more use of this device than eventually he did. This earlier stage is embodied in the Brown Book. Why did he soon give up the method he employed there: of simply sketching one fictional language-game after another? Perhaps he found that such synoptic representations are not quite the panacea he had once hoped they were. They may be sufficient to dissolve some philosophical problems, but others are more recalcitrant. One can distinguish between two stages of a philosophical problem. At first a misleading analogy (or form of expression) produces a disquietude (Beunruhigung), as Wittgenstein often calls it: something appears paradoxical, impossible or inexplicable. Such a disquietude typically manifests itself in a question of the form ‘How is it possible . . . ?’ (e.g. ‘How is it possible to follow a rule?’(PI §217)), or – in all those cases where a noun produces the wrong impression of there being an object – by a ‘What is . . . ?’-question (e.g. ‘What is time?’(PI §89); ‘What is language?’(PI §92)). A disquietude is the early stage of a philosophical problem. Given a certain temperament it may lead to a more advanced stage. We may be led to answer those questions: to develop metaphysical views, a philosophical theory, in conflict with common usage and without any clear use. Thus, at a second stage, philosophical confusion becomes dogmatic. It’s easy to see how a synoptic representation can provide an appropriate therapy for a disquietude. Seeing clearly how a language-game works ‘disperses the fog’ (PI §5), exposes the ‘false appearance’ (PI §112) as mere appearance, and those questions can be dispatched lightly, by trivial answers that make fun of the questions (TS 220, §111).5 Things are different with substantial philosophical positions. Consider, for instance, §273: 151

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the word ‘red’ means something known to everyone; and in addition, for each person, it means something known only to him (PI §273) Here, one could of course present a simple language-game of colour words, thus giving a synoptic representation of the essential features of our colour language and, of course, a private meaning of the word ‘red’ would play no role in such an account. But that would hardly convince those who believe in private meanings of colour words. Once we are not just baffled or disquieted by a philosophical picture, but firmly in its grip, a demonstration that it is in conflict with common usage is unlikely to have much effect. Indeed, some philosophical pictures are presented quite expressly against common usage, and as a correction of it (e.g. idealism, solipsism (PI §402)). Obviously, in such a case much more is required than an account of the workings of our language. A considerable part of the therapy will be concerned with the philosophers’ anomalous use of language, trying to expose it as pointless or inconsistent.

3 I shall now turn to the Private Language Discussion – and its lack of a synoptic view. I shall outline two cases where the reader is likely to be puzzled by the way Wittgenstein presents his text. (A) It is natural to take §243b as providing the title question, as it were, to this chapter of the book: ‘Could one have a language that referred to one’s private experiences?’ But note the exchange that leads to the final wording of the question. The sensible reminder that it is perfectly possible in our ordinary language to record one’s feelings and moods is not contradicted, but dismissed as irrelevant (‘that is not what I mean’), followed by a more precise description of the subject matter of the envisaged language: not any old sensation, but one’s immediate private sensations. The implication seems to be that not all our sensations etc. are strictly private. What the interlocutor appears to have in mind are those diffuse feelings and finer nuances of experience that are so notoriously difficult to put into words. However, no such thing is discussed in the following sections. After the interlude of §§244–5, instead of answering the question from §243 Wittgenstein appears to change the subject. He turns to the somewhat different issue whether others can know for certain whether I am really in pain (§246). This is not an answer to the question of §243 as, for one thing, of all sensations pain must be the last thing the interlocutor had in mind, because pain is obviously an experience for which we have a word in our public language. Moreover, §246 is concerned only with the sceptical doubt whether others are ‘really’ in pain, presupposing a general understanding of the word ‘pain’, whereas the initial question is about the far more radical idea that others cannot even understand the words that denote my private sensations. 152

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If §246 does not really address the question raised in §243, but only a related one, §253, where the discussion of privacy is taken up again, seems completely irrelevant. ‘Nobody else can have my pains’ is of course another possible interpretation of the expression ‘privacy of sensations’ – but clearly not the one that is at issue in §243. The discussion in §253 would apply just as well to ‘Nobody else can have my smile’ or ‘Nobody else can have my cough’, though evidently neither a smile nor a cough is a candidate for something that ‘can only be known’ to its owner. So, here Wittgenstein begins a discussion with a question, but what at first glance appears to be an attempt to answer it is, if taken as such, rather unfocused or entirely off the mark. (B) Consider the famous centre-piece of the Private Language Discussion, the private diary of §258. Many readers, even among Wittgenstein’s admirers, have felt somewhat uncomfortable about it. True, the no-criterion objection seems correct and unanswerable; but still, there is a lingering feeling that this sort of diary is possible after all; and would that not mean that a private language is possible after all?6 Has the ‘perfect clarity’ Wittgenstein aimed at (PI §133) really been achieved in this case? Is there not some disquietude left? (Incidentally, Wittgenstein himself occasionally seems to have felt a little unsure about the private diary. In 1946, two years after the writing of those sections, he returned to it in a way that showed that some of the disquietude about a private sensation language had not been entirely cured (RPP I §§393–9)7.) The problem about §258 is this. It is unclear whether the scenario is supposed to be inconsistent, or whether it just falls short of what Wittgenstein’s interlocutor meant to achieve. The stronger reading is suggested by the final conclusion of §258: And that only means that here we can’t talk about ‘right’. (PI §258) And by §260, which implies that the diarist failed to make a note of anything:

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‘Well, I believe that this is the sensation S again,’ – Perhaps you believe that you believe it! Then did the man who made the entry in the calendar note down nothing whatever? – Don’t consider it a matter of course that a person notes something down when he makes a mark – say in a calendar. (PI §260)

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But should it really be impossible to associate a certain sensation – for which we have no natural expressive behaviour – with a sign and keep a record of the re-occurrence of this type of sensation? That seems to 153

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be what Wittgenstein is saying here; but it is contradicted in §270, where he describes circumstances under which the diary becomes useful (nützlich): I discover that whenever I have a particular sensation a manometer shews that my blood-pressure rises. (PI §270) Clearly, this discovery and the ensuing usefulness of the diary presuppose that it already was a sensation diary before (cf. Hanfling 2002: 31–3). For it to be possible to discover that a certain sensation is always followed by rising blood-pressure, it must also be possible to find that it is not always so followed. Hence, it must be meaningful to speak and keep a diary of that sensation independently of any such useful correlation. What then are we to make of the sensation diary of §258? – I shall argue that it is best understood as a synoptic representation, as promised in §122; though somewhat misleadingly presented. Still, the Private Language Discussion is not easy to survey. And to become clear not only about the apparent leaps at the beginning of the Private Language Discussion, but also about the role of §258 it is important first to have a clear idea of the overall aims and strategy of these passages and their arrangement. That I shall turn to now before returning to §258.

4 One of the things that make it so difficult to understand what is going on in these sections is that Wittgenstein does not always bother to preface his discussions with an explicit and comprehensive account of the philosophical picture he is engaged to combat. Of course he often quotes with disapproval a philosophers’ statement, but such statements are only the corollaries of an underlying picture. And a clear understanding of that picture is required to see how those philosophers’ statements hang together, as symptoms of the same ‘disease’. Otherwise crucial sections can easily appear in the wrong light (as I began to illustrate about §258), and it will seem as if he jumped capriciously from one question to another (as demonstrated above with §§243, 246 and 253). Well, to some extent he does jump from one question to another; that cannot be denied. But there is some method in his crisscrossing in so far as all his remarks are united by a common target: a particular philosophical picture with its ramifications. So to make the Private Language Discussion easier to survey I shall now spell out the underlying picture, draw out its consequences in a synoptic diagram, and then try to correlate that diagram with some of Wittgenstein’s remarks. 154

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As P.M.S. Hacker observed, Wittgenstein’s main concern in the Private Language Discussion is an offshoot of the Augustinian picture of language (Hacker 1990: 16), which has it that: (AP) Meaning is due to reference: words stand for objects.8

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From which it is tempting to derive the negative claim that: (AP.n) The use of a word is irrelevant to its meaning (semantics ⫽ pragmatics).

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The Augustinian picture may be roughly appropriate for some words,9 but it is not acceptable in its intended generality (PI §§2f.).10 Some counterexamples are fairly easily recognized as such. But sensation words are a more difficult case. Applying the Augustinian picture to sensation words (and other psychological terms) means that sensations must be objects. Evidently they are not physical objects; they are objects perceived by one’s inner sense inside one’s mind. And the mind is a private container to which only its owner has access. This inner-object conception of sensations is explicitly mentioned in §293 and §304 (cf. §374), but unfortunately not at the very beginning of the Private Language Discussion. The inner-object conception of sensations has three corollaries: (1) (2) (3)

I have my sensations. I perceive my sensations directly. You perceive my sensations only indirectly through their effects on my outward behaviour.

These have further consequences. With its roots and branches the innerobject conception can be represented by a diagram (see Table 7.1). This metaphysical picture, with its implications, is the landscape which Wittgenstein traverses criss-cross in §§243–315. Table 7.2 is a correlation to show which point is to the fore in which sections. Ad (A). Following the order of his remarks, one can see that he begins at the very end: the idea of a private sensation language is an extreme consequence of the Inner Object Picture. Then, after a short sketch of how we learn sensation terms (§244) – indicating a better construal of this part of grammar – in §246 Wittgenstein moves back to an earlier, less radical implication of the picture: direct and indirect perception providing certainty or mere surmise respectively. Section 253 is not strictly pertinent to the private language discussion, but – as the diagram shows – it is concerned with another branch sprouting from the Inner Object Picture: if you have a sensation as one has a beetle in a private box, then of course what is in your box cannot be in 155

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Table 7.1 (AP) Meaning is due to reference: words stand for objects. (AP.n) The use of a word is irrelevant to its meaning (semantics ⫽ pragmatics). (0) Sensations are objects, inside people’s minds. (1) I have my sensations. (2) I perceive my sensations directly.

(3) You perceive my sensations only indirectly.

(1a) You can’t have my sensations.

(3a) You can never know whether I have a certain sensation.

(2a) I know (and am justified to claim) that I have a certain sensation.

(3b) For all we know, even inanimate things might have sensations.




(2 3 c) One knows what a certain sensation is only from one’s own case.
(2 3 d) One cannot convey to others what one knows.
(2 3 e) Different people may mean different things by a sensation word (⇒private sensation language).

Table 7.2 (AP): (AP.n): (0): (1), (1a): (2), (2a): (3), (3a): (3b): (23c): (23d): (23e):

§§264; 304 §§(257); 260f; 268; 270; 291 §§(244); 283; 293; 296; 304; 305; 308; 313; 374 §§253 §§246–252; 289f; 292; 303 §§246–252; 293; 303 §§281–5; 288 §§243; 272f; 293; 295; 302; 315 §§278–80 §§243; 256–8; 272f.

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mine. The question of a private sensation language from §243 is resumed only in §256, after various remarks showing pain to be a sensation far from private in virtue of its straightforward connection with natural expressive behaviour. I do not think too much should be read into the order and arrangement of the remarks. It would be nice if one could argue that there was some kind of hidden necessity in this particular arrangement, but there is not. Wittgenstein himself cautioned us that there was not – ‘really only an album’ – and his method of composition makes it a priori unlikely that there should be. Remember that these remarks were not written to fit each other, like the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle; rather, they were taken out of quite different contexts and joined together as well as their diversity would allow. And it is remarkable that Wittgenstein never did what most people would have done: add some new sentences in between those remarks to weld them together; to make smoother transitions from one to the next. On the contrary, fairly tight lines of argument in an earlier version of the book were broken up by the insertion of other remarks, related but also distracting and making it more difficult to see some crucial links. Thus, the Intermediate Version has §256 immediately followed by §258, before Wittgenstein decided to insert what is now §257, a remark that was written eleven years earlier (in 1933); which effects a retardation in the progress of the action. Section 257 gives another version of the setting for the private diary and a very succinct anticipation of some comments on it that are made in §§260, 261 and 270. Obviously that kind of insertion does not add to the text’s Übersichtlichkeit. Again, in the Intermediate Version, §261 was immediately followed by §270. That means, the whole presentation and discussion of the diary issue was given in one block of five sections. Now, however, there is a long dramatic pause before the final act: eight new sections separate the first part of the discussion from its resolution in §270. Spelling out systematically what Wittgenstein argued against helps one to find one’s bearings; shows that the remarks are all connected through their opposition to one ramifying metaphysical conception; but it does not make the book any less like an album, in which one moves backwards and forwards, and sometimes leaps from one
end to the other. Having said that, the jump from §243 to §246 – from (2 3 e) back to (2a) and (3a) – is not incomprehensible. To begin with, Wittgenstein gives an idea of the far-reaching consequences of the Inner Object Picture: a private sensation language. However, the treatment starts in more familiar regions, with the common-or-garden example of pain and the common place of the comparative uncertainty of our knowledge of others’ pain. This is in accordance with Wittgenstein’s maxim:

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In philosophy treat the clear cases first, not the unclear ones. The latter will be dissolved when the former are. (TS 211, p. 510)11

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How does Wittgenstein attack the Inner Object Conception? First, there are various pertinent reminders (cf. PI §127): how in fact we learn to speak of pain (PI §244); that often we do say of others that they know that I’m in pain (PI §246). Apparent linguistic evidence for the Inner Object Picture is shown to be specious by a reminder of its actual context and meaning (PI §247); and we are reminded of cases where the claim of epistemic privacy begins to look ridiculous (PI §249; cf. §303b). Second (though not in order of appearance, but much later in the text), some of those metaphysical statements are denounced as pointless: as nothing but idle expressions of a picture without any use outside philosophy (PI §§295f., 298, 303). The most powerful presentation of this kind of criticism is the simile of the beetle in the box (PI §293): the Inner Object Picture is exposed as entirely irrelevant to our actual talk about sensations. Third, in one short (but wonderfully crafted) paragraph (PI §302)
Wittgenstein draws attention to an inconsistency in the Inner Object Picture (2 3 c): that I know sensations only from inner experience is incompatible with (3) and (3c): that I attribute sensations, though precariously, to others.12 However, the two most prominent criticisms of the Inner Object Picture emerge out of the discussion of one of the few instances of a synoptic representation in the Investigations: the private sensation diary in §§258 & 270, to which now I return. Ad (B). Wittgenstein remarks that the private sensation diarist has no criterion of the correctness of his entries, and he concludes: One would like to say: whatever is going to seem right to me is right. And that only means that here we can’t talk about ‘right’. (PI §258) The verdict is a little too harsh. For it does not mean that. ‘Whatever is going to seem right to me is right’ is not the same as, ‘Anything is right’. It would still be wrong for me to write down ‘S’ on a day when none of my sensations seemed to be of the same kind as the one I initially called ‘S’. Hence, one can very well speak of a right or correct application of ‘S’. As Wittgenstein remarked in a different place, truth can coincide with truthfulness (PI, p. 222). Seeming right is the same as being right in the domain of sensations and feelings. The conclusion that is warranted by the lack of a criterion in §258 is rather: ‘And that only means that here we can’t talk about an error.’ Which is exactly what Wittgenstein says about reporting one’s pain: But I can’t be in error here; it means nothing to doubt whether I am in pain! (PI §288)13 158

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This is a powerful argument directed at the very core of the Inner Object Picture. If a sensation were an inner object perceived and identified through introspection, it would be conceivable that one should misperceive and misidentify it. It would be possible to be mistaken in one’s belief that one was in pain. That sounds absurd, and §258 and §290 explain why: we do not identify our sensations by criteria. And where there is no criterion, there is no possibility of error. The crucial move is a re-interpretation of modal words: from a metaphysical explanation why something seems impossible to a logical one. Wittgenstein makes parallel moves in response to all three branches of the Inner Object Picture, as shown (in italics) at the bottom line of Table 7.3. In each case there is something impossible: to have another’s sensation; to perceive another’s sensation directly; to misperceive one’s own sensation.

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Table 7.3 (AP) Meaning is due to reference: words stand for objects. (AP.n) The use of a word is irrelevant to its meaning (semantics ⫽ pragmatics). (0) Sensations are objects, inside people’s minds. (1) I have my sensations. (2) I perceive my sensations directly.

(3) You perceive my sensations only indirectly.

(1a) You can’t have my sensations.

(3a) You can never know whether I have a certain sensation.

(2a) I know (and am justified to claim) that I have a certain sensation.

(3b) For all we know, even inanimate things might have sensations.

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(2 3 c) One knows what a certain sensation is only from one’s own case.
(2 3 d) One cannot convey to others what one knows.
(2 3 e) Different people may mean different things by a sensation word. (⇒private sensation language) (1x) It is conceivable that you have my sensations.

(2x) It is conceivable that I misperceive my sensations and am in error about them. (⇒I have a criterion of correctness.)

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(3x) It is conceivable that you perceive my sensations directly.

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According to the Inner Object Picture such impossibility is due to the metaphysical constitution of things: to the fact that everybody’s beetle is in a box to which no one else has access (cf. PI §293). But in that case the opposite state of affairs should at least be conceivable. And as this is not so, the picture must be wrong. What looks like a metaphysical impossibility is, in fact, a logical one, like the impossibility of scoring a goal in tennis: 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’. (Z §134; cf. PI §114) That is the rejection of (3x); in the Investigations the same point is made in §374. (1x) is dispatched in §253; while (2x) is the target of the no-criterion objection launched in §258 (and pursued further in §§259; 265–7; 270f.; 288; 290; 292). The point to emphasize is this: The ‘no criterion’- objection of §258 is not an objection to the private sensation diary described in this section, but an objection to a misconstrual of this or indeed any other sensation language: namely the Inner Object Conception and its immediate consequence that one perceives
one’s own sensations. It is directed at (2) (in my diagram), not directly at (2 3 e), and not at all at the idea of keeping a record of sensations without a natural expression. The point concerns ordinary sensations, like pain, just as much as the private (i.e. fictitious) scenario without the distraction of natural expressions or a familiar use of the sensation word. The scenario itself – and not just a misconstrual of it – is criticized in §260: a note has a function, and this ‘S’ so far has none. (PI §260) But the criticism is not particularly convincing: many respectable applications of language have no function; are just idle talk. Perhaps the word ‘use’ would have been better than ‘function’ (Hanfling 2002: 31). Anyway, as the words ‘so far’ indicate, this remark is not meant to point out an irremediable flaw in the set-up of the diary, it is merely an admonition that the languagegame is not yet complete. Next, Wittgenstein complains that we have no reason ‘for calling “S” the sign for a sensation’ (PI §261). Is this supposed to mean that the diarist has not really got a sensation when he writes ‘S’? No. After all the question was whether someone who had sensations without any natural expression for them 160

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could keep a diary about them. So the worry is not that those entries may not be correlated with occurrences of sensations – it is presupposed that they are; the worry is that such a correlation does not suffice to make ‘S’ a sensation word.14 Such a correlation is not enough to establish that the diarist has mastered the concept of a sensation (cf. PI §384). (As an animal could be trained to make a certain noise at the sight of a bicycle, without having the concept of a bicycle.) What then would be a reason for calling ‘S’ the sign for a sensation? Well, suppose we asked the diarist, ‘Where is that S?’ and he answered, ‘In my left knee’, then we had some reason for regarding ‘S’ as a sensation word. If he added further that usually S lasted for about half an hour and was slightly unpleasant, especially when he was running – he would display an ability to talk about a sensation and thus show some grasp of the concept of a sensation; even if those entries did not fulfil any function. However, finding the right sort of function, or usefulness for ‘S’ may make it particularly clear that it has the use of a sensation word. That is what Wittgenstein demonstrates in §270. When recording S the diarist applies a manometer, and perhaps a few days later he is able to say, correctly, that his blood-pressure is rising without using any apparatus. We ask, ‘How do you know?’, and get the reply, ‘There’s S again’. An awareness of S is understood to be informative about one’s bodily state; – so the use of ‘S’ displays an important and typical feature of bodily sensation language-games. This should not be read as implying that in order to be meaningful the sign for a sensation must be useful (although, unfortunately, this is what §260 seems to suggest). In fact, it is not even clear that it is the sign ‘S’ or the diary entries that are particularly useful; primarily it is the regular occurrence of a certain sensation that comes in handy, whether it is given a name or not. But even if we change the description so that the diary becomes instrumental in the discovery of the link between S and rising blood-pressure, such usefulness provides only a particularly clear example of a sign being used in a respectable language-game, suitable for a stylized account of grammar in a synoptic representation. This is comparable to the obvious usefulness of the builders’ language-game of §2. A’s utterances help them in constructing a building; and that underscores Wittgenstein’s central point that language is an activity insolubly intertwined with other activities in our lives. But the linguistic meaningfulness of A’s utterances would not be undermined if he ordered B to give him those building-stones only for fun. Similarly in §270, Wittgenstein might just as well have shown ‘S’ to be a sensation word by connecting those entries with other behaviour in a way that does not make either of them appear useful. Suppose, for instance, that after every ‘S’ entry the diarist went to bed for a couple of hours, and somehow it became clear that the occurrence of S was his reason for lying down, – then, again, it would be reasonable to regard ‘S’ as a sensation word. Yet, it does not matter whether taking a rest after S is, in fact, sensible from a medical 161

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point of view; the important thing is that taking a rest is a typical reaction to bodily feeling. Hence, when it occurs as a response to something the diarist calls ‘S’ we have a reason to regard this sign as reporting some sort of bodily feeling. Taken together, §§258 and 270 make as good an instance of a synoptic representation as one can find in the Investigations. A simplified, hence easily surveyable representation of a segment of sensation language. In two steps we are given a scenario that fulfils the minimum requirements of a languagegame of naming and referring to a comparatively private sensation: (i) Every now and again, in response to certain sensations that have no other expression, someone enters the sign ‘S’ into a diary. (ii) After a while he is able to say correctly when his blood-pressure is rising, citing S as evidence. Contrary to (AP.n), (i) alone does not suffice to endow the sign with meaning. Correlation of a sign with some phenomenon is not enough for the sign to become a name of that phenomenon.15 The sign must have an understandable use (PI §260),16 and its grammar must show some typical features of the use of sensation words (PI §261). Furthermore, the description of (i) affords Wittgenstein a good opportunity to show that sensations are not inner objects perceived through introspection (the ‘no criterion’ objection levelled at (0) and (2)).

Wittgenstein’s moves against the Inner Object Picture 1

Reminders of trivialities that contradict the picture (e.g. §§244, 246, 247, 249).

2

Pointlessness of those metaphysical statements exposed (§§293, 295f., 298, 303).

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Inconsistency of the picture demonstrated (§302).

4

What is supposed to be metaphysically impossible, hence at least conceivable, is shown to be logically impossible (i.e. nonsense) (§§253; 259, 265–7, 270f., 288, 290, 292; 374).

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An understandable use, appropriately related to states of the body, is shown to be indispensable for a sensation word (§§257, 260, 261, 268, 270, 291).

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5 Finally, I would like to attempt an explanation why both the overall structure of the Private Language Discussion and the presentation of its crucial arguments leave so much to be desired; that is to say, leave so much exegetical work to be done by Wittgenstein scholars. First, Wittgenstein found it impossible to write a clearly structured treatise. He thought he was able to teach philosophy, but not to write a philosophical book (MS 118, p. 172). The best he could write were ‘philosophical remarks’; his ‘thoughts soon went lame’ if he ‘tried to force them on in any single direction against their natural inclination’ (PI, p. vii). This was partly due to his intellectual temperament, but it was also ‘connected with the very nature of the investigation’ (PI, p. vii). Wittgenstein likened his philosophy to therapy: the treatment of diseases of the understanding (PI §255). That is to say, it offers no positive doctrine, but merely the dissolution of conceptual confusions. It is essentially a reaction to something else. It needs to follow someone’s conceptual confusions and someone’s inclinations to respond to objections or defend a philosophical picture through further refinements. Thus, the dialogue form is essential to it. But to the extent to which one’s interlocutor’s worries and responses move, sometimes abruptly, from one issue to another, one needs to follow these movements – even though they may seem confusing to others – if one is to convince one’s interlocutor. And perhaps this is what individual worries and responses are usually like: they frequently jump from one point to another, in a way that seems natural to oneself but less so to others. Even so, Wittgenstein felt that his book was not as well-presented as it could have been: I should have liked to produce a good book. This has not come about. (PI, p. viii; cf. Monk 1990: 503; MS 152, p. 13) Its shortcomings were partly due to his own temperament. His natural inclination was to ‘jump about all round a topic’ (CV 33); to keep changing his position: ‘not to stand too long on one leg, so as not to go stiff’ (CV 32). Obviously, this natural inclination to jump around is still manifest in the Investigations, in spite of the author’s attempts to control himself. This jumpiness was connected with some uncertainty as to what he did and what he did not need to discuss. As he noted in 1947 (when the book was largely finished):

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He accused himself of asking ‘countless irrelevant questions’ (CV 77) and of making repetitions that others might find boring (CV 3); and in a draft of a preface to the Investigations, from 1948, he described the movements of his remarks thus: Only every so often does one of the sentences I am writing here make a step forward; the rest are like the snipping of the barber’s scissors, which he has to keep in motion so as to be able to make a cut with them at the right moment. (CV 76) In a lecture in 1939, having compared philosophical problems to the difficulty of finding one’s way in an unfamiliar town (cf. PI §123), and likening his own task to that of a guide, he adds: In order to be a good guide, one should show people the main streets first. But I am an extremely bad guide, and am apt to be led astray by little places of interest, and to dash down side streets before I have shown you the main streets. (LFM 44) Second, Wittgenstein was not particularly concerned to make himself generally understood. For one thing, he loathed the idea of giving results to people who had not done any honest work to deserve them. He despised popular science: what he thought of as attempts to give people the impression of understanding something that they did not really understand (RW 117). And it is easy to imagine the disgust which he would have suffered at seeing publications like Wittgenstein in 90 Minutes. In the Preface to the Investigations he announced: I should not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking. (PI, p. viii)17 And in a remark from 1948 he enjoins himself: ‘Anything the reader can do for himself, leave it to the reader’ (CV 88). No doubt Wittgenstein did a good job of putting his readers on their mettle. Apart from the fact that no synoptic accounts are given of the targets of his remarks, almost every section leaves something to be pursued further by the reader.18 More importantly, Wittgenstein’s main concern was to solve his own philosophical problems; to achieve clarity for himself. The dialogues in the Investigations are quite authentic in that the interlocutor, far from being an invented straw man, gives expression to what Wittgenstein himself, at some point, felt inclined to say. As he remarked in 1948: 164

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Almost the whole time I am writing conversations with myself. Things I say to myself tête-à-tête. (CV 88)

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In many instances it is views held by Wittgenstein when he wrote the Tractatus that are presented and responded to in the Investigations (e.g. PI §§23, 39ff., 65, 108, 114). He was fully aware that those who did not happen to have wrestled with very similar problems would find it extremely difficult to understand his remarks (cf. TLP, Preface). About the Blue Book, which is far less aphoristic and hence much easier to read than the Investigations, Wittgenstein warned Russell (not exactly a tiro in philosophy) that he thought it very difficult to understand ‘as so many points are just hinted at’ (CL 296). Clearly, he must have been aware that that was true in even greater measure of his mature work. Indeed, in the Preface he reckons that:

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It is not impossible that it should fall to the lot of this work . . . to bring light into one brain or another – but, of course, it is not likely. (PI, p. viii) He certainly hoped to be read and appreciated, but only by a small number of kindred spirits, ‘a few friends spread out over the world’ (CV 9; cf. 12f.); those whose style of thinking was sufficiently akin to his own to enable them to understand what must remain obscure to others: For if a book has been written for only a few readers that will be clear just from the fact that only a few understand it. The book must automatically separate those who understand it & those who do not. (CV 10)

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By no means did he address himself to the community of academic philosophers, the ‘philosophical journalists’ (CV 75), those who wrote for, and enjoyed reading, as ‘impotent and bankrupt’ a periodical as Mind.19 Anyway, Wittgenstein did not think that the study of philosophy should be encouraged. ‘I don’t recommend it’, he said to O.K. Bouwsma, ‘It’s for people who cannot leave it alone’ (WC 68). Wittgenstein’s own answer to Ryle’s question ‘What has a fly lost who never got into a fly-bottle?’ (cf. PI §309) was a resounding ‘Nothing’. Far from trying to persuade anyone to study philosophy, he would strongly advise his best students against pursuing it any further.20 Finally (and perhaps most importantly), Wittgenstein believed that a philosopher should be a poet (MS 120, p. 145r).

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I believe I summed up my attitude towards philosophy by saying: really philosophy should only be written as poetry. (CV 28)21

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This is not to be dismissed as merely a somewhat purple way of saying that philosophy should be presented in a neat and elegant form. That Wittgenstein was serious about the idea of philosophy as a kind of poetry is indicated by the solemn way the remark is prefaced. What exactly does it mean? – To begin with, Wittgenstein was obviously concerned about the right flow of language, its quasi musical aspects. The way he constantly revised his remarks shows that he came as close as probably no other philosopher to Nietzsche’s maxim: that one should work on a page of prose as scrupulously and painstakingly as a sculptor works on a statue (Human, All Too Human, vol. II, 2. §95).22 One poetic ideal that appealed strongly to Wittgenstein was naturalness, the avoidance of all mannerisms, and false pathos.23 On that account he admired the unpretentious prose of Gottfried Keller, Hebel and Tolstoy; but disliked the preciousness of Rilke (WC 72). A mark of great poetry (of the cultural tradition Wittgenstein appreciated) is the appearance of perfect ease and naturalness in spite of all constraints imposed by form (rhythm and rhyme). Something analogous, it seems to me, is aimed at and often achieved in the Philosophical Investigations: what is difficult and highly complicated is to appear light and effortless.24 The constraints that Wittgenstein had to struggle with, while trying to give the impression of a natural succession of seemingly simple observations, were of course not rhythm and rhyme, but his task of dissolving recalcitrant philosophical problems and tracing their interconnections. But just as the choice of words in a poem should not appear to be dictated by rhythm and rhyme (although largely it is), it seems that Wittgenstein preferred to give the impression that one remark casually led on to the next, while their real purpose: the way they relate to a network of philosophical confusions was left largely unexplained. ‘If this book is written as it should be written’, he once remarked, ‘then everything I say must be easily understandable, indeed, trivial, but it should be difficult to understand why I say it’ (MS 117, pp. 140f.).25 Wittgenstein preferred not to push the point of his remarks under the reader’s nose. The light touch he aimed at in his writing precluded him from giving pedantic circumstantial explanations of all his respective targets and their interconnections. Not only is the point of Wittgenstein’s remarks often left unexplained, many of the remarks themselves have the terseness and density that are typical of poetry, and leave so much to say and write to readers and scholars. We already came across that brilliant §302, which gives the outlines of a thought weighty enough to be spelled out at the length of a substantial journal article. Earlier I mentioned how peculiar it was that although Wittgenstein constantly polished and reshuffled his remarks, he never tried to fuse them together by inserting smooth transitions from one to the next. He insisted on emphatic pauses between his remarks, which of course is a formal device closely related to the division of a long poetic text into stanzas. Finally, Wittgenstein had a poet’s taste for striking figures of speech. ‘I always take joy in my own good similes’ (D 144), he once wrote in his diary. 166

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Sometimes the same point is made by a whole series of similes: looking up a table in the imagination (PI §265); buying several copies of today’s paper (PI §265); different ways of looking at a clock to determine the time (PI §266); testing the stability of a bridge in the imagination (PI §267). Are all of them necessary to get the point across, or is it not also artistic enjoyment that accounts for such variations on the same theme? The peculiarities of Wittgenstein’s style that can be annoying from an academic philosopher’s point of view, are largely those that make his book aesthetically so attractive and that add to Wittgenstein scholarship some of the enjoyment of the interpretation of poetry.

Notes 1 The German word ‘übersichtlich’ and its cognates are notoriously difficult to translate consistently into English. In lectures Wittgenstein used the word ‘synoptic’ (AWL 43), and for the most part I shall follow his example. 2 Note that PI §122, the remark about the importance of a synoptic representation, originates in Wittgenstein’s discussion of Frazer’s Golden Bough in MS 110, p. 257 (PO, p. 132), where it is preceded and followed by remarks on Goethe’s morphological method of setting things in juxtaposition rather than hypothesizing about their development. 3 And the lists that are sometimes quoted from RPP II §§63 and 148 (= Z§§472, 483, 621, 488–92) are mere plans for the treatment of that area, not intended to be offered to the reader in this form. 4 MS 121, p. 18: ‘we describe [the rôle of a word] only so far as it is necessary for the clarification of philosophical problems (wir beschreiben [die Rolle eines Wortes] nur so weit, als es nötig ist, philosophische Probleme zu klären)’. Note, incidentally, that Wittgenstein does not normally speak of rules as the object of a synoptic representation: in PI §122 it is grammar, in other writings it is the use of words, concepts or linguistic facts that are to be represented in a synoptic manner. 5 ‘“How do sentences manage to represent?” . . . Don’t you know? You can see it when you use them . . . For nothing is concealed’ (PI §435). 6 ‘You approach from one side and know your way about; you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about’ (PI §203). 7 On 8 September 1946 (MS 131, pp. 216f.), he expressed exactly the worry I just mentioned: But isn’t it possible after all? – :

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But for feelings of bodily movements and the like isn’t there a kind of private ostensive definition after all? I bend a finger, for example, and remember the sensation. . . . Now could I not, for my private use, call this sensation ‘S’, use my memory as criterion of identity, and now say ‘Yes, that is S again’ etc. . . . Of course being the same here means seeming to be the same. (RPP I §§393, 395)

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(Note that this is not just another draft of §258. Rather, the same philosophical question resurfaced in a different context.) Then, once more, he managed to reassure himself that the lack of a criterion was indeed an insuperable objection: ‘No, this difficulty is not an affectation’ (RPP I §396). On the following day, again, 167

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the rejection of the scenario was qualified by considerations similar to those of §270 of the Investigations: Such utterances could be important; if for example we observe certain physiological correlates of the sensations. (RPP I §399) 8 There is good evidence that Wittgenstein himself regarded the Augustinian picture as the ultimate source of the private language confusions: i

The reader is reminded of it in §264 of the Investigations; and its application to sensation language is rejected in §293 and §304. ii The text of §257, right at the core of the Private Language Discussion, was originally (in MS 115, p. 91) a continuation of the first paragraph of §27, where Wittgenstein lists some one-word exclamations and then asks rhetorically: ‘Are you inclined still to call these words “names of objects”?’ iii Manuscript 166, entitled ‘Notes for the Philosophical Lecture’, contains three drafts of a lecture on the private language problems; each one begins with the Augustinian picture: Meaning consisting of the word referring to an object. . . . As introduction: / Word referring to an object. . . . Common idea: a word has meaning by referring to something. . . . (PO 447, 451, 454) 9 Provided it is not taken to imply (AP.n). 10 Cf. BT 209v: ‘Language consists in naming objects, namely: people, species, colours, pains, moods, numbers, etc. [Sprache besteht darin, daß man Gegenstände benennt & zwar: Menschen, Gattungen, Farben, Schmerzen, Stimmungen, Zahlen, etc.]’. 11 ‘Behandle die deutlichen Fälle in der Philosophie, nicht die undeutlichen. Diese werden sich lösen, wenn jene gelöst sind.’ 12 A more detailed, and probably more influential, account and explanation of this argument was given by Peter Strawson (1959: ch. 3). 13 Also in the case of pain Wittgenstein once used that slightly exaggerated expression (‘no “right”’ instead of ‘no error’): ‘One cannot “be right (or wrong)” in saying: “I am in pain” [Es kann Einer nicht “Recht (oder Unrecht) haben”, wenn er sagt: “ich habe Schmerzen”]’ (MS 121, p. 5). Cf. MS 159, p. 11v: ‘ “You are immediately aware” makes one think you are right about something, that you can be shown to be wrong about; whereas the point is that there is no right (or wrong) about it. (And of course no one would say: I’m sure I’m right that I have pain.)’ 14 Here, again, it is important ‘not to represent the matter as if there were something one could not do’ (cf. PI §374). Of course, it is possible to have a sensation without a natural expression for it and then write down the sign ‘S’. The question is whether we should accept that as a piece of sensation language. 15 Cf. MS 119, p. 275: ‘But what is the point of language? Is it to accompany experiences with noise? (Wozu dient denn die Sprache? Dazu die Erlebnisse mit Lärm zu begleiten?)’ 16 Cf. Schroeder 1998, §§42–7. 17 Cf. MS 119, p. 64. 18 Consider, for example: ‘This body has extension.’ To this we might reply: ‘Nonsense!’ – but are inclined to reply ‘Of course!’ – Why is this? (PI §252)

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That is not just a rhetorical question. Or: Think of the recognition of facial expressions. . . . Think, too, how one can imitate a man’s face without seeing one’s own in a mirror. (PI §285)

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It is less than self-evident what exactly one is to think of here and how these matters are supposed to help the discussion in hand. Malcolm 1984: 100; cf. also 107. Cf. also Malcolm 1984: 28. Cf. MS 115, p. 30; MS 146, pp. 32 and 50; MS 133, p. 13r. In MS 120, p. 145r Wittgenstein compares his aesthetic attitude towards philosophy to Nietzsche’s. CV 10: ‘Everything ritualistic (everything that, as it were, smacks of the high priest) is strictly to be avoided because it straightaway turns rotten.’ An unintentional tribute to Wittgenstein’s success in his attempt to make his writing appear light and effortless is Russell’s notorious comment that in the Investigations Wittgenstein seemed to have grown ‘tired of serious thinking’ (Russell 1959: 161). ‘Wenn dieses Buch geschrieben ist, wie es geschrieben sein sollte, so muss, was ich sage, alles leicht verständlich, ja trivial sein, schwer verständlich aber, warum ich es sage.’

Bibliography Baker, G.P. and Hacker, P.M.S. (1980) Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning. An Analytical Commentary on the ‘Philosophical Investigations’, vol. 1, Oxford: Blackwell. Glock, Hans-Johann (1996) A Wittgenstein Dictionary, Oxford: Blackwell. Hacker, P.M.S. (1990) Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind, vol. 3 of An Analytical Commentary on the ‘Philosophical Investigations’, Oxford: Blackwell. Hanfling, Oswald (2002) Wittgenstein and the Human Form of Life, London: Routledge. Malcolm, Norman (1984) Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 2nd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Monk, Ray (1990) Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, London: Cape. Russell, Bertrand (1959) My Philosophical Development, London: Unwin. Schroeder, Severin (1998) Das Privatsprachen-Argument. Wittgenstein über Empfindung und Ausdruck, Paderborn: Schöningh. Strawson, P.F. (1959) Individuals. An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics, London: Methuen.

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8 ‘PHILOSOPHY STATES ONLY WHAT EVERYONE ADMITS’

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In philosophy we do not draw conclusions. ‘But it must be like this!’ is not a philosophical proposition. Philosophy only states what everyone admits. (PI §599) This is one of Wittgenstein’s most important statements about the nature of philosophy. Commentators seem reluctant to take it at its face value. Peter Hacker comments on the first sentence: ‘It does not mean that there are no arguments in philosophy, or that no definitive conclusions can be drawn from them, e.g. that solipsism and idealism are incoherent, or that a private language is unintelligible’ (Hacker 1990: 329). Garth Hallett comments on the third sentence: [T]o appear plausible this too must be recognized as prescriptive, not descriptive. The trouble is that even the concluding words may have to be read ‘which everyone ought to admit’. (Hallett 1977: 567) Hallett is right, of course, that Wittgenstein is talking about philosophy as correctly understood, not philosophy as mismanaged and misunderstood by bad philosophers. But he is talking about what everyone actually admits, and not what everyone ought to admit. To affirm that good philosophy states only what everyone ought to admit is close to tautology. However, it must be admitted that ‘everyone’ in Wittgenstein’s text means ‘everyone, when not philosophizing’. Against Hacker, I think Wittgenstein is seriously maintaining that strictly speaking there are no arguments in philosophy, and that philosophical methods lead to no conclusions. If it is possible definitively to dispose of philosophical errors such as solipsism and idealism, or the belief in private 173

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objects, this is achieved by methods that resemble the cure of a delusion rather than the deduction of a theorem. I think, therefore, that the passage deserves fuller treatment than it has been given by these commentators. In context, it is a warning against hypostatizing feelings, where there are no feelings, as an explanation of our thoughts. But, as both commentators recognize, this is a particular application of a general conception of philosophy enunciated more fully in sections 126–8, where they deal more fully with Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy. Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything. (PI §126) If one tried to advance theses in philosophy, it would never be possible to discuss them, because everyone would agree to them. (PI §128) Section 126 obviously corresponds to the first part of §599 (‘In philosophy we do not draw conclusions’) and §128 to the final part (‘Philosophy only states what everyone admits’). There are good reasons why commentators should seek to soften the force of these sections and their application in §599. Wittgenstein’s philosophical practice does not seem to accord with his description of the role of philosophy: he frequently makes statements that do not look at all like things that everyone admits. Certainly, the Investigations contains many passages which anyone other than Wittgenstein would call arguments; and from time to time Wittgenstein, himself, refers to his own procedures as arguments (e.g. PG pp. 75, 227; PI §40 and §140; often in the Blue and Brown Books). Nonetheless, I believe Wittgenstein meant his remarks to be taken quite seriously. However, before explaining what I think he meant, I wish to compare my chosen text from the Investigations to a parallel passage in the Tractatus, namely, 6.53: The right method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science – i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy – and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions. In the Investigations the right method in philosophy consists in saying nothing except what everyone admits – this too, I shall maintain, will be something that has nothing to do with philosophy. ‘What everyone admits’ now replaces ‘propositions of natural science’ (or ‘the totality of true 174

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propositions’, 4.11). In the Investigations as in the Tractatus, the nearest thing that there is to proof in philosophy is the demonstration to a metaphysician that he has failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions. The demonstration, of course, now takes a different form: it consists of showing that he is using a sign without the support of any language game. (Either he has taken a sign from an existing language game and used it outside the network within which alone it has sense; or he has purported to invent a new sign without appropriately embedding it in a new game.) Why, then, does Wittgenstein say that philosophy does not make deductions or draw conclusions? There are, I believe, two reasons, corresponding to two different tasks that Wittgenstein assigns to philosophy. First, there is the negative, therapeutic task of philosophy: the resolution of philosophical problems by the dissolution of philosophical illusion. Second, there is the more positive task of giving us an overview of the actual working of our language. (The two tasks, of course, overlap.) In neither activity is there any room for deduction, for the drawing of conclusions from premises in accordance with logical rules. The negative philosophical task is the destruction of philosophical illusion, the castles in the air built by bad philosophers. This is the task that Wittgenstein describes as the turning of latent nonsense into patent nonsense (§464). The reason why there is no room for deduction here is that the philosopher’s dogma is not a genuine proposition from which other things might follow, but only a piece of nonsense in disguise. As was said in the Tractatus, it is impossible to judge a piece of nonsense (5.5422): it is equally impossible to make a piece of nonsense a premise in an argument. For that reason, I think Hacker is wrong to believe that Wittgenstein admits the possibility of argument in philosophy. Hacker claims that, for instance, it follows from the private language argument that idealism and solipsism are misguided philosophies. But he does, of course, recognize the problem here. It follows, he adds in a footnote, ‘not by deductive inference! Solipsism and idealism are not false but nonsense!’ (1, 478). But that point is too important to be left as an afterthought, and we may well be puzzled about what kind of following this is. A reason why one might think that there is room for argument even in Wittgensteinian therapy is that the philosophical treatment of a problem may well involve the use of words like ‘so’, ‘therefore’ and ‘because’ which are characteristic of genuine inference. But that is due to the demands of the therapeutic procedure. The misguided philosopher believes that his dogma is a genuine proposition. To cure him of that illusion we have to humour him: we have to take his pseudo-proposition seriously by treating it as if it was a genuine proposition and drawing consequences from it. Of course these consequences will themselves be pseudo-propositions and only pseudo-consequences. The purpose of this operation is not to lead the patient to a conclusion that he will recognize as false, so that he will have to give up his premise. It is, 175

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rather, to bring him to realize the illusory nature of his original claim, and thus make him cease to wish to persevere with it. It is literally a reductio ad absurdum, not the reduction to self-contradiction that goes by that name in logic textbooks. The therapeutic procedure is not, however, a mere incantation. It must obey the laws of logic. What ‘follows from’ the pseudo-proposition must be what would really follow from it if it were a genuine proposition. To the nonWittgensteinian philosopher – and in particular to the philosopher whose intellecual malaise is being treated – it does, indeed, appear to be an argument. A commentator, therefore, who uses expressions such as ‘the private language argument’ need not necessarily be in error about Wittgenstein’s therapeutic conception of philosophy. Philosophy, as has been said, has for Wittgenstein a positive as well as a negative task, namely that of presenting an overview of the use of language. But conclusions are not drawn in the course of the positive task, any more than they are in the course of the negative task. But the reason is a different one, a reason that is alluded to in §128: if one tried to advance theses in philosophy it would never be possible to discuss them, because everyone would agree to them. This is the only context, in the Nachlass, in which the word ‘thesis’ is used. In the school of philosophy in which I received my own first training, ‘theses’ were very important. A textbook of a philosophical subject would be divided not into chapters but into theses. A thesis in an epistemological text, for instance, ran like this: ‘The human intellect forms universal concepts of objects of sense experience.’ The statement of the thesis would be followed by an explanation of the terms in it, a list of adversaries, a deductive proof, and a set of answers to objections. The list of adversaries to that particular thesis was a long one, including nominalists (Roscellinus, Hobbes, and British empiricists) and conceptualists (Ockham and Kant). I do not know how widespread this method of teaching philosophy was in continental universities in the early part of the twentieth century. However, it is well known that Waismann tried to express the Wittgensteinian philosophy of the early 1930s in a set of theses (WWK 233–61). Wittgenstein at once enunciated the principle enshrined in §128. ‘Wenn es Thesen der Philosophie gäbe, so dürften sie zu keinen Diskussionen Anlass geben. Sie müssten nämlich so abgefasst sein, dass jedermann sagt: Ja, ja, das ist ja selbstverständlich.’ (See also §§108, 215). Genuine philosophical theses have no adversaries. Aristotle laid it down that in a genuine demonstration the premises must be better known than the conclusion. If Wittgenstein is right that the theses of philosophy must be things that are self-evident and incontestable, then there can be no Aristotelian demonstrations in philosophy. This is because any would-be conclusions will be as well known as any premises that could be offered in their support. 176

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Section 127 gives the reason why theses in philosophy must be truisms. ‘The work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose.’ These reminders are reminders of the obvious: of aspects of things that we do not notice because they are always before our eyes (§129). The theses of philosophy are, I believe, reminders of the obvious truths that we are tempted to overlook. They are what replace the ‘propositions of natural science’ in the Tractatus account of philosophical method. Like them, they have nothing to do with philosophy in the sense that they have no philosophical content. They do not contain any information that is not well known to the non-philosopher. In several places, Wittgenstein seeks to illuminate this account of philosophy by invoking Plato and Augustine. In MS 110, 131–2 he writes: Ich kann doch am Schluss nicht mehr sagen als jeder weiss. Ich kann doch nur: auf das aufmerksam machen, was jeder weiss, d.h. sofort als wahr zugibt. (Das sokratische Erinnern an die Wahrheit.) (After all, in the end I cannot say more than everyone knows. I can only point out what everyone knows, i.e. what everyone will immediately admit as true. (The Socratic recollection of the truth.)) In PI 436, and in several different contexts, he cites Augustine’s Confessions (XI, 22): Manifestissima et usitatissima sunt, et eadem rursus nimis latent, et nova est inventio eorum. (These things are utterly obvious and commonplace but at the same time they are deeply obscure, and their discovery is always fresh.) Neither authority is, in fact, saying the same thing as Wittgenstein. Plato’s Socrates sees not just philosophy, but all scientific knowledge, as being a matter of remembering. Augustine’s familiar items, such as time, elude us not because of their everyday simplicity, but because they have mysterious hidden natures. Wittgenstein can say both that what is hidden is of no interest to us (§126) and also, a moment later, that the aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden (§128). The first passage uses hidden in Augustine’s sense (hidden in spite of being familiar), and the second in Wittgenstein’s special sense (hidden because familiar). I now want to ask how far Wittgenstein’s practice matches his theory. How far do the sections we have been expounding present an accurate description 177

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of the philosophical procedure of the Investigations? Does Wittgenstein’s philosophy only state what everyone admits? Does it never draw conclusions from an argument? I believe that the passages we have been considering give an accurate, but incomplete, account of Wittgenstein’s general philosophical practice at the time when he was working on the Investigations. This can be illustrated from the discussion of thought and thinking that begins at section 318. There, Wittgenstein explores and explodes a number of philosophical errors about the nature of thinking. One error attacked is the idea that thought is a mental process accompanying spoken sentences. ‘Thinking,’ Wittgenstein says, ‘is not an incorporeal process which lends life and sense to speaking’ (§339). Is this not a philosophical thesis, the conclusion of an argument? Wittgenstein at once rejects this interpretation of his remark. ‘Am I acquainted with incorporeal processes, then, only thinking is not one of them? No; I called the expression “an incorporeal process” to my aid in my embarrassment when I was trying to explain the meaning of the word “thinking” in a primitive way.’ ‘Thinking is an incorporeal process’ is not a false statement, an error to be denied. The sentence can even be used to express, in a clumsy and misleading way, a recognition of the difference between the grammar of ‘eat’ and ‘think’. What is rejected is a pseudo-proposition, the expression of a misleading imagination. When, in another passage, Wittgenstein rejects talk of an inner process of remembering, he is not denying anything, only setting his face against a futile philosophical picture (§306). If Wittgenstein is successful he persuades the reader to join him in rejecting the idea that thinking and remembering are inner, incorporeal, processes. He does not persuade by offering reasons, though it is rational, not unreasonable, for the reader to accept his persuasion. Wittgenstein proceeds not by presenting arguments for a negative conclusion, but by assembling reminders of the obvious. These reminders include the philosophical statements that, once uttered, are assured of universal assent. But they are also of several other types: many of them are not statements at all, but questions, or commands, or jokes. It is, indeed, remarkable how little of Wittgenstein’s text consists of statements of any kind. If we take, as a sample chosen more or less at random, sections 501–30 of the PI, we find that they contain 105 sentences. Less than half of these (43) are in the indicative mood at all: 35 sentences are questions, 17 are quotations (sentences for discussion) and 10 are commands (usually to carry out a thought-experiment). Of the indicative sentences many simply set the stage for an example, or expand upon targeted quotations. What, then, are the theses in philosophy that Wittgenstein has in mind, the statements that everyone admits? I suggest the following as examples. 178

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Cheese does not grow or shrink without a cause (§143) Dogs do not talk to themselves (§357) If I say falsely that something is red, then it isn’t red (§429) Nothing could induce me to put my hand into a flame (§472) A smiling mouth smiles only in a human face (§583) When I raise my arm, my arm goes up (§621) These are all truisms that are, on the face of it, devoid of philosophical content. What makes them philosophical is that they are presented in the course of the treatment of a philosophical problem. That they are being used as philosophical may often be brought out by an unusual emphasis. Thus, the sentence in §429 is best translated ‘If I say falsely that something isn’t red, then all the same it is red that it isn’t.’ In spite of §599, such truisms of everyday are not the most important method that Wittgenstein uses in the clearing up of philosophical confusion. A technique much more often employed is the drawing of distinctions. If someone says that sensations are private, the first step in enlightening him is to propose two different paraphrases of ‘private’, in §246 and §253. To clarify the concept of thinking, we distinguish between instantaneous understanding (§§319–26), thoughtful utterance (§§327–39), talking in one’s head (§§344–8), and so on. Someone who wants to say something metaphysical about thought may well be cured of his wish by being reminded of the many different ways in which ‘think’ is used. Again, if we want to get clear about an emotion, like fear, we need to make a distinction between its object and its cause (§476). And again, we can understand a sentence in two very different senses of ‘understand’ (§531). Another favoured method of achieving philosophical clarity is to draw a comparison between different human activities that provide the context of language games, so that the learner is assisted in seeing the similarities and the differences between them. Thus, ‘Understanding a sentence is much more akin to understanding a theme in music than one may think’ (§527). For this purpose, of course, Wittgenstein often invents imaginary language-games. These are not approximations to an explanation of language, but ‘objects of comparison which are meant to throw light on the facts of our language by way not only of similarities, but also of dissimilarities’ (§130). Philosophical confusion, we might say, happens when the imagination takes over the role of the intellect. We have a picture of how a word is used, and the picture conflicts with our understanding of the word, which is expressed in our actual use of it. Wittgenstein’s method of dealing with this is to give the imagination enough rope to hang itself. The vague and confused 179

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and ultimately nonsensical picture we have is to be painted in concrete detail, which will make its nonsense patent. The anti-private-language ‘argument’ is a paradigm of this kind of treatment. According to Wittgenstein, ‘There is no such thing as a private language’ is not a philosophical conclusion. If ‘p’ is nonsense, then ‘not-p’ is nonsense too. ‘There is no such thing as private ostensive definition’ is nonsense no less than ‘There is such a thing as private ostensive definition’. One cannot avoid the difficulty here by saying ‘It is wrong to speak of “private ostensive definition” ’. That is not a statement about those three sounds. Why should I not use them to mean ‘Three blind mice?’. It purports to be a statement about those words used in the way that the private linguist uses them. But, of course, there is no such way; and that is the point of the ‘argument’ about private language. But you are not giving anyone any information when you tell him there is no such thing as a private language. That is why it is not the conclusion of an argument. However, the kinds of technique that I rehearsed in previous paragraphs show that while it may be true that philosophy consists in assembling reminders of the obvious, it is a very incomplete account of the method of PI to say that it only states what everyone admits. There are many other methods employed besides the statement of the kinds of truisms I have listed. Moreover, there are many statements in the text that are not at all truisms to which everyone would say ‘Ja, ja, selbstverständlich’. Here are a few examples. The meaning of a word is its use in the language (§43) Essence is expressed by grammar (§371) You learned the concept ‘pain’ when you learned language (§384) It is in language that an expectation and its fulfilment make contact (§445) Something can look like a sentence which we understand, and yet yield no sense (§513) These are very like the kind of thesis proposed by Waismann and discouraged by Wittgenstein. They are quite different from the truisms I listed above. First, they are explicitly about language. On the face of it, they are substantive statements of linguistic philosophy. Second, they are not likely to be uncontested. The ordinary person, to be sure, is unlikely to say ‘no, no’. She is more likely to be puzzled by them than to contradict them. But they are likely to be contradicted by many a philosopher: and if they are themselves true statements, then their contradictions cannot be the nonsense that is Wittgenstein’s paradigm of wrongheaded philosophy. 180

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I find it difficult to reconcile statements of this kind with the account of philosophy we have been considering. The account, as I remarked earlier, resembles that given in the Tractatus. At 4.112 we are told: Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. Philosophy does not result in ‘philosophical propositions’ but rather in the clarification of propositions. Notoriously, there is a problem about how one reconciles the actual propositions of the Tractatus with the description here given. I do not wish to enter into that problem, but simply to point out that the account of 4.112 remains true within the account of philosophy given in the Investigations. ‘Elucidations’ is quite a good word to cover the truisms, questions, distinctions, comparisons, etc. that make up more than ninety per cent of the text of the Investigations. It is only the few statements of the kind we have just illustrated that clash with 4.112 in the way that almost every proposition of the Tractatus does. Though I have tried my best to do so I do not believe that it is, in the end, possible to reconcile Wittgenstein’s account of philosophy with the entirety of his philosophical activity in the Investigations. Others will, perhaps, be more successful in reconciling his theory with his practice. Those who find it impossible to make the reconciliation will be forced in the end to make a choice between accepting his theory and following his practice. If one gives priority to the theory, then perhaps the simplest method of effecting some kind of reconciliation is to look on the Waismann-like theses of the Investigations as momentary yieldings to a form of philosophical expression which he had long rejected in theory, and to a great extent grown out of in practice. The sentences in question are, of course, among the most quoted ones of the Investigations. Nonetheless, it might be claimed, nothing would be lost if they were all excised from its text, and there would be a substantial gain in consistency. On the other hand, one might give priority to the practice, and write off the theory. The metaphilosophy, it might be claimed, is an inadequate account even of Wittgenstein’s own philosophy: it is more obviously inadequate as an account of the best practice of the philosophers of the past. It is no surprise if Wittgenstein’s account of the nature of philosophy should turn out to be one of the weakest parts of his philosophizing: the same is true of the greatest philosophers from Plato and Aristotle onwards. If we discard Wittgenstein’s account, we can treat philosophical statements, in accordance with tradition, as being bearers of truth values: as being either necessarily true or necessarily 181

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false. We can then treat philosophical arguments, including Wittgenstein’s own, as perfectly genuine arguments proceeding in accordance with normal logical rules. For my part, I find it hard to decide between these alternatives; sometimes I am tempted by the one, and sometimes by the other. I wish to conclude not by arguing in either direction, but by drawing attention to the fact that Wittgenstein’s own thought on the nature of philosophy was fluid, and did not remain fixed in the pattern of the remarks in the Big Typescript and in the Investigations. Shortly before his death, when writing the notebooks that became On Certainty, he became more and more interested in propositions of the kind that I listed earlier as reminders of the obvious, and less concerned to make the grammatical generalizations that are difficult to reconcile with his second-order remarks. But the tension remained to the end. Such statements as ‘humans have brains in their skulls’ and ‘the earth existed long before my birth’ and ‘if someone’s arm is cut off it will not grow again’, began to exercise him as occupying a middle ground between grammatical propositions and empirical propositions. In §401 he asks what the relation is between these certain propositions, propositions that ‘stand fast’ for us, and the language-games that give meaning to our utterances. He replies: Propositions of the form of empirical propositions, and not only propositions of logic, form the foundation of all operating with thoughts (with language). He goes on immediately: In this remark the expression ‘propositions of the form of empirical propositions’ is itself thoroughly bad. He could not hide from himself that there were more things in his philosophy than could be confined within his metaphilosophy.

Bibliography Hacker, P.M.S. (1990) Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind, Volume 3 of An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations, Oxford: Blackwell. Hallett, G. (1977) A Companion to Wittgenstein’s ‘Philosophical Investigations’, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

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9 THE USE OF ‘THEORY’ IN PHILOSOPHY Oswald Hanfling

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It was true to say that our considerations could not be scientific ones . . . And we may not advance any kind of theory. There must not be anything hypothetical in our considerations. We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place. And this description gets its light, that is to say its purpose, from the philosophical problems. These are, of course, not empirical problems; they are solved, rather, by insight into the workings of our language, and that in such a way as to make us recognize those workings, in spite of an urge to misunderstand them. The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by assembling what we have long known. (PI 109) Philosophy merely puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything. Since everything lies open to view, there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden is of no interest to us. (PI 126) Wittgenstein’s rejection of theory from philosophy has seemed absurd to many readers. What, they may wonder, is this great but perhaps eccentric philosopher talking about? Doesn’t philosophy consist largely of theories? Perhaps, they might say, those remarks are appropriate for what Wittgenstein intended to do, but hardly for philosophy in general. How, then, were those remarks meant? When Wittgenstein wrote ‘We may . . .’ and ‘We must . . .’, did he mean philosophers in general, or was he speaking merely of what he intended to do – following a familiar convention in using ‘we’ to mean ‘I’? The word ‘our’ in the third sentence (‘our considerations’) must have been meant in the singular, since he refers in the first sentence to what he had said in the Tractatus (4.111). And in the preceding sections he constantly uses ‘we’ to express his own views. (In the opening 183

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sentence of PI 108, for instance, he writes: ‘We see that what we call “sentence” and “language” has not the formal unity that I imagined . . .’, and here he is clearly contrasting his present views with those he had previously held.) Nevertheless, we might suppose that his rejection of theory would also have implications for the philosophy of others. It is true that he regarded himself as doing philosophy in a new way, going so far as to suggest that what he was doing was ‘one of the heirs of what used to be called “philosophy” ’ (BB 22). But there are obvious continuities between his concerns and those of earlier writers. His work would not, indeed, have the importance it has if this were not so. Hence, we might expect his objection to theories to apply also to the work of others; perhaps, indeed, he would have regarded the use of theories as a fundamental flaw in their work. But would this be justified?

1 What is wrong with the theories in philosophy? To approach this question, we must consider what is meant by ‘philosophy’. This word has been, and continues to be, used in various ways. It is, we may say, a family resemblance concept with a very extensive family. In the first of the sentences I have quoted, Wittgenstein was separating philosophy from the theories of natural science. But in former times ‘philosophy’ was used to include, and sometimes even to mean, natural science. It has also been normal to apply the word to systems of thought, such as Marxism, which consist largely of social and economic theories together with prescriptions for social improvement that are deduced from them. (Such deductions – about ‘the good life’, etc. – have, indeed, been prominent in philosophy since Plato and Aristotle.) When applied to such examples, the separation of philosophy from science would clearly be untenable, and so would the statement that philosophy ‘neither explains nor deduces anything’. The word ‘philosophy’ has, however, been used in a more specific sense, to include only the kind of method and questions that Wittgenstein was interested in. In his case they include such questions as ‘What is the meaning of a word?’, ‘What is the role of mental processes in meaning, understanding and thinking?’, and ‘In what sense can a rule or definition determine how we are to proceed?’. And his method of dealing with these was to be that of reflection on what he called ‘the grammar’ of the relevant concepts. But this was not a merely personal method – one that may have suited Wittgenstein but of no validity beyond that. There is, after all, a vast body of philosophical literature that conforms to that approach – in which philosophers deal with a variety of important questions by such non-empirical methods. A prominent example is the question ‘What is knowledge?’ This is essentially a question about a concept; and the appropriate way of dealing with it is by considering how the word ‘knowledge’ is used in various contexts: which uses are acceptable (or even obligatory) and which are not. This is how the 184

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question is, indeed, discussed in the relevant literature. A person, writes one philosopher, may properly be said to know that p if conditions A, B and C are satisfied. No, replies another; here is a case in which A, B and C are satisfied and yet one would not be said to know that p; hence the conditions A, B and C are not sufficient for knowledge. And so on. This kind of philosophy is sometimes called ‘analytic’, implying that what is sought is an analysis of concepts into component parts. But this is too narrow a description. What is intended also includes other kinds of a priori argument, such as that of Descartes’ cogito, for example, where the analysis of a concept is not the aim. What is necessary is that the method be one of a priori reflection as opposed to empirical discovery or speculation. Thus, the method can also include arguments, such as those of Wittgenstein himself, against the assumption that our concepts must conform to the analytic model. In what follows I shall assume that there is an established use of ‘philosophy’ in this specific, non-empirical sense, and will use the word accordingly. Let us now turn to the meaning of ‘theory’. What did Wittgenstein mean by ‘theory’? ‘It was true to say’, he wrote in the first sentence of my quotations, ‘that our considerations could not be scientific ones’. Here, as already noted, he was alluding to what he had said in his earlier work: ‘Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences’ (Tractatus 4.111). The questions with which he was concerned were not to be treated as questions of natural science, and this was true of both his early and his later philosophy. The scientific understanding of ‘theory’ is not, however, the only one. Theories are put forward in the writing of history; a policeman may have a theory about what happened on the night of the 27th; and so on. And in philosophy the word is often used in a sense that has nothing to do with natural science. An example is the ‘picture theory’ of Wittgenstein’s earlier work; and various other non-scientific theories have been advanced by philosophers, including the theory of descriptions, the causal theory of perception, the causal theory of meaning and the correspondence theory of truth, as well as various theories of ethics and aesthetics. What should we say about these theories? Are they really theories? If so, should they be excluded from philosophy? This is not a question of whether they turn out to be right or wrong. Even if we know that a theory is wrong, we might still regard it as a useful or even essential step to better insights. Working through such a theory might be part of the ‘slow cure’ that Wittgenstein regarded as ‘the most important thing’ (Z 382). Perhaps it will be objected that the examples I gave are not really theories. But how is this to be settled, if not by reference to the actual use of ‘theory’? Thus, echoing Wittgenstein’s remark in PI 246, we might reply: ‘If we are using the word “theory” as it is normally used (and how else are we to use it!), then theories are often of that kind’.1 But is this really the last word? It might be argued that those uses of ‘theory’, though well established, are regrettable. 185

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2 A diluted sense of ‘theory’ The word ‘theory’ is often used, in philosophy and elsewhere, in what I shall call a ‘diluted’ sense. This kind of dilution is a common occurrence in the use of words. The distinctive sense of ‘issue’, for example, has largely been lost; nowadays it often means nothing more specific than ‘topic’ or ‘question’. These dilutions may be irritating for some, but perhaps do no harm.2 But this is not so in other cases, such as the use of ‘dilemma’ to mean nothing more specific than ‘difficulty’; for this may interfere with the recognition of an interesting and important logical structure. A similar point may be made about the use of ‘empathy’ in place of ‘sympathy’, which is now common. Again, the use of ‘déjà vu’ to mean nothing more than ‘previously experienced’ obliterates recognition of the distinctive and interesting phenomenon for which the expression was coined. Another victim of dilution, more relevant than those mentioned so far, is the word ‘argue’. So-and-so, we are told, argued that p. But did so-and-so really argue that p? (What was his argument?) Or did he merely state that p? The word ‘argue’ is often used to mean no more than that. (The same is true of the first-person ‘I would argue that p’, when used without any intention, or perhaps any ability, to produce an argument for p.) Now the word ‘theory’ has undergone a similar dilution. In philosophy and in other subjects too, it may mean no more than ‘view’ or ‘opinion’. Thus when we read that ‘according to one theory . . .’, this may mean no more than that this is the view of some people. In these cases, nothing is being explained or deduced; a statement is merely put before the reader or hearer. The opinions concerned may be regarded, by those who hold them at least, as more or less obviously true, without any need for argument or defence. Of this kind is the ‘picture of the essence of human language’ that Wittgenstein derived from the text he quoted from Augustine in PI 1 – where, indeed, ‘picture’ may be preferred to ‘theory’. According to that picture, ‘the individual words in language name objects’ and ‘sentences are combinations of such names’; and here, says Wittgenstein, we find the roots of the following idea: Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands. (PI 1) This idea of human language is obviously akin to that of the Tractatus; but in what sense is it a theory? In the Tractatus we are given a theory that posits an underlying structure to explain what our language really consists in and how ‘determinacy of sense’ is achieved.3 But no such theory is given in the passage from PI 1. The idea of language that is here indicated may seem to amount to little more than a set of familiar facts or truisms. Of course, words 186

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are commonly used to name objects (as well as sensations, actions, relations, etc.); and the statement that sentences consist, to a large extent at least, of combinations of such words, is at least plausible. The same may be true of the idea that the meaning of a word – what the word means – is an object (or class of objects, perhaps) with which the word is correlated. It is because this conception of language may strike the reader immediately as plausible and hardly in need of defence, that it is suitable as a starting point for Wittgenstein’s investigation. It is, in that respect, more powerful than any theory could be. Some very influential philosophical theories have been of this kind. When Locke tells us that words ‘stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them’ (Essay 3.2.2) (the ‘empiricist theory’ of meaning), he apparently thinks that this is more or less obvious and not in need of defence. (Perhaps, if confronted with Wittgenstein’s remarks about philosophy, he would have said that this is nothing more than a ‘description’ or ‘reminder’ of how words function.) Berkeley, in the opening sentences of the Principles of Human Knowledge, regarded it as ‘evident to anyone who takes a survey of the objects of human knowledge’ that they are ‘ideas’ of one kind or another (the ‘empiricist theory’ of knowledge). A causal theory of perception, to take another example, is put forward without argument by Descartes in the Passions of the Soul (I/23). And various other theories, such as the correspondence theory of truth, the expression theory of art and others, have been stated as truths that ‘lie open to view’. In these cases nothing is posited and nothing is explained; we are merely told (‘reminded’) of how things are. Such theories may be taken for granted without even being made explicit. Plato’s discussions about art, for instance, are based essentially on a ‘mimetic theory’ of art; but this theory was not stated, let alone defended, in those discussions. And what is wrong with describing Wittgenstein’s ‘reminders’ themselves as theories, as some commentators have done? Thus, one might speak of his theories of first-person knowledge, family resemblances, meaning and use, the nature of mathematics, and what it is to follow a rule. It is true that there is no need to introduce the word ‘theory’ here, and in view of Wittgenstein’s denials it may be thought perverse to do so. Nevertheless, the description of his views as ‘theories’ would be in accordance with an established usage. Does it matter that the word ‘theory’ is used in the diluted way, to include the cases mentioned earlier, which might just as well be described as ‘views’, ‘claims’, or ‘statements whose truth is taken for granted’? Of course such usages may do no harm; they may, in any case, be so well entrenched that it would be difficult to avoid them. (How easily could we replace ‘theory of descriptions’ with some other label, avoiding the word ‘theory’?) Nevertheless the use, or excessive use, of this term in philosophy is liable to be misleading. This is especially so in a culture in which natural science is widely regarded as the main engine of intellectual progress, and in which the word ‘theory’ is 187

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largely associated with natural science. In these conditions it is tempting to assume that philosophical claims and arguments are essentially of the same kind as those between competing theories in science; and that progress in philosophy is, or ought to be, of the kind that occurs in natural science. The loose use of ‘theory’ among philosophers may also lead to a conflation of what is, in the specific sense, theoretical with what is, in that sense, pre-theoretical. Thus, it is often assumed that the concepts of ordinary language, which are the raw material of much philosophical theorizing, themselves embody a theory or set of theories (or that they are ‘theory-laden’). This may come about as follows. Philosophers have claimed that what we perceive are not really tables and chairs, but ‘sense data’ that represent them; and this is called a ‘representational theory’ of perception. But now the contrary view – that we really perceive tables and chairs – has come to be regarded as a rival theory (‘direct realism’). More generally, the concepts we use in speaking of our thoughts and feelings, etc., have come to be regarded as a proto-scientific theory, under the name of ‘folk psychology’; and in this way the ground is prepared for attempts to subvert that ‘theory’ in favour of a superior one, conforming to the science of modern times. It is a mistake, however, to describe those concepts as embodying a psychological theory. Their existence is presupposed by the formulation of theories, and by discourse in general.4 There is also another way in which the use of ‘theory’ may be misleading. Consider Russell’s theory of descriptions, which included statements such as the following: When you state that the present King of France is bald, you say ‘There is a c such that c is now King of France and c is bald’ and the denial is . . . ‘Either there is not a c such that c is now King of France, or, if there is such a c, then c is not bald’. (Russell 1956: 251) Here we have a simple claim about what it is we are saying when we make a certain kind of statement. This is even clearer if we replace the technical terminology by ordinary English, as follows: When you state that the present King of France is bald, you are saying that there is now such a person as a King of France, and that this person is bald; and when you deny that the present King of France is bald, you are saying that either there is no such person, or if there is, that person is not bald. Faced with these claims, one should be able to decide whether they are true by reflecting on one’s knowledge of the language: a few simple examples should show whether they are true, or clearly and wholly true. 188

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Did Russell suppose that the truth of his claims could be confirmed in this way? If so, he was clearly mistaken.5 In a later writing, however, he said that he had ‘no wish to claim the support of common usage’. His motive, he explained, had been one of convenience: ‘I find it more convenient to define the word “false” so that every sentence is either true or false’ (Russell 1959: 179). There is an unclarity, then, about the status of Russell’s claims, and about the use of ‘theory’ in this case. A new way of defining words can hardly be described as a theory, even in the diluted sense.

3 Theory and deductive argument I have spoken of a diluted sense of ‘theory’. It is clear, however, from the passages quoted at the start of this essay, that Wittgenstein had a more specific sense of ‘theory’ in mind when he said ‘we may not advance any kind of theory’. A theory, as indicated in those passages, is put forward with the purpose of explaining as opposed to describing, and the explaining is done by reference to something that is hidden as opposed to lying open to view. Such theories may be hypothetical, and the problems with which they deal are empirical ones. These conditions are satisfied by many of the theories of natural science, as well as others. They represent a familiar paradigm of what we mean by ‘theory’ – a standard by reference to which other uses of the word might be regarded as extended or diluted. Examples are the positing of an unobserved planet to explain irregularities in the movement of heavenly bodies; of the prehistoric movements of continents to explain the configurations that we observe today, and of internal mechanisms to explain the ability of birds to reach distant destinations. The classic theories of chemistry and mechanics can also be included here. In the first, the composition of substances was explained in terms of theoretical (‘hidden’) entities whose existence was posited rather than observed; while in the second the motions of bodies are explained by laws in which motions are idealized as opposed to being open to view. The theories of metaphysics may also be added here. These do not, of course, belong to natural science, but they conform to the model of explaining observed phenomena by invoking entities or processes that do not lie open to view. The Tractatus theory of meaning is an example. Here, as mentioned before, it is argued that the positing of ‘simple’ signs and objects is necessary to account for ‘determinacy of sense’ (cf. TLP 3.23). And here also we read that man possesses the ability to construct languages capable of expressing every sense, without having any idea how each word has meaning or what its meaning is . . . It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from [everyday language] what the logic of language is. (TLP 4.002) 189

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Now the philosophical theories that amount to nothing more than statements or claims whose truth is supposed to be obvious are clearly far removed from the kind of theory that Wittgenstein had in mind. (He was not referring to theories in the diluted sense.) Let us, however, consider theories that are arrived at and defended by deductive argument. These include, for example, most of the recent theories of knowledge, truth and meaning. The same is true of Descartes’ argument about the essence of human beings. Again, a theory that was originally put forward without supporting argument may receive such support from later writers. This has been true, for example, of the causal theory of perception as defended by such writers as Ayer and Grice, in contrast to some of the versions and presentations of earlier writers. What should we say about the use of ‘theory’ in such cases? How does it conform to what I shall the ‘Wittgensteinian paradigm’? Such theories do have explanatory aims. In the case of knowledge, for example, they purport to explain what knowledge consists in; and in this respect they resemble those theories of natural science that purport to explain what things or substances consist in.6 There are also, of course, important differences. A theory (analysis) of knowledge does not appeal to some hidden entity or process; and it is put forward by way of proof and not hypothesis. Empirical theories, by contrast, are initally propounded rather than proved, and they may be commended as being ‘good’ rather than ‘true’. When the evidence for such a theory becomes so strong as to make it an item of knowledge, we might comment that this is no longer a theory but an established truth. This might be said, for example, about the prehistoric movement of continents, originally propounded by way of a theory, but now regarded as an established truth.7 This is not so, however, in the case of an argument purporting to show, for example, that knowledge can be analysed into such and such conditions. In evaluating such an argument, the question is whether it is true that knowledge conforms to these conditions, rather than whether this is a good theory. And this is connected with the distinction between what is hidden and what is open to view. The premises of a theory of knowledge are openly presented to the reader, and the conclusion – that knowledge consists in such and such conditions – can be checked against the actual use of the concept of knowledge which, again, is open to view. Such philosophical theories, then, conform to the Wittgensteinian paradigm to the extent of having an explanatory aim, but not in other respects. Is the resemblance sufficient to justify the description of them as theories? Here, again, the question is idle. We may just as well recognize that there are different kinds of theories, including some that do not conform, or conform only to some extent, to the Wittgensteinian model. Again, it would not be relevant to object that the theories in question are misguided – that the concept of knowledge, for example, does not lend itself to analysis. For the belief that a theory or analysis is bound to fail is not a sufficient 190

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reason against putting it forward for consideration. This may, indeed, be an essential step towards coming, finally, to agree with Wittgenstein that such endeavours are futile.

4 Philosophical theories as proposals There is also a kind of philosophical writing in which what is put forward is neither a putative truism nor the conclusion of an a priori argument, but an idea that is proposed or suggested for consideration. An example is the mind/brain ‘identity theory’ as presented by J.J.C. Smart in his seminal essay.8 Smart’s idea, that sensations are brain processes, was presented neither as an obvious truth nor as the conclusion of an argument. His argument consisted in putting forward the idea by way of a proposal and then rebutting objections that might be brought against it. His belief was that the proposal would, in essence at least, survive all such objections. And the literature that ensued was largely of the same kind, with opponents arguing that the identification of mind and brain does not make sense and defenders trying to meet these objections, either directly or by offering amended versions of the theory. Here we have a pattern that is typical of the theories of science, as well as others, where these are put forward as proposals, with the expectation that, suitably amended or refined, they will survive in the face of counterexamples and other objections. Various other philosophical ideas can be considered in this light. Let us take Mill’s statement that ‘actions are right in proportion as they tend to produce happiness’, etc. Mill refers to this as a ‘theory’ (Mill 1962: 257), but it appears to be nothing more than a claim about what we mean by ‘right action’. The statement may, however, be viewed as a proposal rather than a claim. Let us suppose, the philosopher may be saying – or we may take him to be saying – that this is what right action consists in; and let us see whether this hypothesis will be proof against counter-examples; and if not, whether it can be modified to accommodate them. This has, in fact, been the way in which the principle of utility has been discussed, and continues to be discussed, to a large extent. Similar remarks may be made, to take another example, about Hume’s ‘constant conjunction’ definition of causation. He presented this as the conclusion of an argument, but that argument is unimportant for the main interest of the definition. Here, again, it is appropriate to regard the definition as a proposal. The interest and importance of the proposal is evident from the fact that it still forms the starting point of most philosophical discussions of causation. Working out what is right and wrong about Hume’s definition remains an ideal starting point for gaining insights into this topic. The ‘picture of human language’ that Wittgenstein introduced in the first section of the Investigations can also be considered in this light. ‘Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word.’ This is not a theory 191

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in the sense in which some hidden principle is posited. Nevertheless, it may be described as a hypothesis in the sense just discussed. Here, a philosopher may be saying, is a plausible statement of what meaning consists in; let us see if it will stand up to counter-examples. In the Investigations counterexamples and other objections quickly follow. It would now be up to a defender of the theory to show how that hypothesis, or a modified version of it, can be sustained in spite of them.9 In this case, as in the previous one, we see that the distinction between the meanings of ‘theory’ and ‘hypothesis’ in philosophy and their meanings elsewhere is not as absolute as might be supposed. But here, again, it would be futile to dispute about whether this is a sufficient justification for what is, in any case, an established usage of words.

5 What lies open to view My aim so far has been to consider the nature of philosophical claims in the context of Wittgenstein’s rejection of theory. I have argued that this rejection may be tenable if ‘theory’ is understood according to the Wittgensteinian paradigm, but not otherwise. In certain respects (explanatory aim, hypothetical structure) philosophical claims may conform, at least partly, to the paradigm. But even when this is not so – when ‘theory’ is used in the diluted sense – a general rejection of this term could not stand against an established usage of it. Let us now consider the rejection of theory, in the Wittgensteinian sense, as applied to his own writings. A key notion here is the contrast between ‘what is hidden’ and what ‘lies open to view’; and what he was opposing were theories of the kind in which something is ‘hidden’. In such theories, which might be scientific or metaphysical, something – some entity or process – is posited as opposed to being open to view. This was so, as we saw earlier, in the Tractatus, which contains a theory about the nature of language. Now such theories may, indeed, be suitable for the physical aspects of language – the production of phonemes by the vocal organs, etc.; but when philosophers offer an account of the nature of language, it is language as a rational system that is under consideration. (It is, also, as a rational activity that language plays a distinctive and vital role in human life.) Now in such a system there are rational (logical) constraints by which we distinguish between right and wrong uses of words; between what makes sense and what does not; between what is and what is not implied by a given speech-act; etc. But these logical conditions (unlike those imposed, say, by the nature of the vocal organs) must be within our purview; they must be available to those who participate in the use of a language – available to be produced in answer to a question, in challenging an improper use of language and, indeed, in producing or evaluating a philosophical claim. If, for example, a philosopher asks ‘What is knowledge?’, the answer he seeks is one that can be found by reflecting on the 192

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conditions under which this word is used, both by him and by other members of the language community. And if his project is to succeed, then the conditions to which he draws attention must be recognizable as such by his readers: they must, as Wittgenstein put it, ‘lie open to view’. The condition of availability is not, however, satisfied by the Tractatus theory of language, and in this respect (though not in others) it is like the theories of natural science. Like them, it relies on entities and structures that are posited as opposed to being open to view, and such entities can play no part in the logic of our language. According to the Tractatus (as quoted earlier), we may have no ‘idea how each word has meaning or what its meaning is’ and ‘it is not humanly possible to gather immediately from [everyday language] what the logic of language is’ (TLP 4.002). But meanings that are hidden from the actual users of language cannot be the real meanings of their words; and a logic that is not available to be applied in the everyday use of language cannot be its real logic, but only an artificial idealization of logic. Hence, it might be said that the Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus, in spite of its title, fails to recognize the logic that actually informs our language. Failure to recognize the condition of ‘availability’ is very widespread nowadays, and it leads to confusions about explanation. Take, for example, the experience, familiar to many people, of knowing the right time on waking up in the morning. This ability is sometimes explained, by scientists and others, by reference to a ‘biological clock’; and the same explanation is given of various time-related occurrences among plants and animals. The notion of a clock may seem to provide just what was needed; but, in fact, it is useless. A clock is an instrument that is available to be consulted, and it explains a person’s knowledge only in so far as it is consulted. But these conditions are not, of course, satisfied in the case of the ‘biological’ clock. This is not merely because the latter is invisible, being located, perhaps, within the brain; for what is also needed is that the person (or plant or animal) be able to understand what the clock says. It is only if this condition were fulfilled that the offered explanation might really be an explanation. I have argued that the logic of our language is essentially something that – to use Wittgenstein’s phrase again – lies open to view. But what is meant here by ‘open to view’? Let us first consider how this description applies to theories of the kind that are based on deductive argument. These are not theories in which some hidden principle is posited. But does it follow that their arguments and conclusions lie open to view? It might be said that they are based – or purport to be based – on ‘truisms’; but these, and the argument as a whole, may be far from apparent to people not skilled in philosophical investigation. Should we conclude, then, that they belong to ‘what is hidden’ – and therefore (following Wittgenstein) ‘of no interest to us’ as philosophers? This would not be right either. They are open to view, we might say, for those who ‘have eyes to see’. Or again, if they do not initially lie 193

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open to view, it is the philosopher’s aim to make them open to view, for those who are prepared to read or listen. Unlike the theoretical objects or principles whose existence is posited but cannot be observed, the philosopher’s conclusions can be confirmed or disconfirmed directly, by those who have followed the argument. They are expected to see for themselves that this proves (‘shows’) what is being claimed. How does this kind of process conform to Wittgenstein’s stricture, quoted at the start of this essay, about ‘not giving new information’?10 Take, for example, the connection between knowing that p and the truth of p. Should we say that a student who has been taught (‘reminded’) about this has been given new information or has acquired new knowledge? In one way the answer is obviously ‘yes’. He is now able to answer correctly questions that previously he could not answer correctly, or not answer at all. On the other hand, one might speak here of ‘implicit knowledge’. A student who had been given the relevant teaching would be expected to see for himself that there is such a connection, once it had been drawn to his attention. Hence, he might describe his previous state by the words ‘I hadn’t realized’, rather than by ‘I didn’t know’. The reminders provided by Wittgenstein himself should also be considered in this light; and here it is relevant to compare the remarks about being ‘open to view’ with what he said about ‘depth grammar’ in another part of the Investigations. In the use of words one might distinguish ‘surface grammar’ from ‘depth grammar’. What immediately impresses itself upon us about the use of a word is the way it is used in the construction of a sentence, the part of its use – one might say – that can be taken in by the ear. – And now compare the depth grammar, say of the word ‘to mean’, with what its surface grammar would lead us to assume. No wonder we find it difficult to find our way about. (PI 664) There seems to be a contradiction between this passage and the statement in PI 126, that ‘what is hidden . . . is of no interest to us’. The ‘depth grammar’ of the word ‘to mean’, for example, was very much of interest to Wittgenstein, as it is to his readers. But how can something be said to lie open to view if it lies deep below the surface? The contradiction is resolved if we recognize that two different senses of ‘surface’ and ‘open to view’ are in play here. The surface grammar of the word ‘to mean’ is that of an active verb: this is how it is ‘used in the construction of a sentence’. Hence, we might suppose that it is akin to such words as ‘to say’ or ‘to eat’, and that the conditions for ‘I meant’ would correspond to those for ‘I said’ and ‘I ate’. We might be similarly misled, as Wittgenstein writes in another passage, by 194

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the uniform appearance of words when we hear them spoken or meet them in script und print. For their use is not presented to us to clearly. Especially when we are doing philosophy! (PI 11)

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This insight should lead us to a deeper understanding of the words in question and of the nature of language in general. But this kind of ‘depth’ is not like that of the hidden items that are posited in science and metaphysics and which, according to PI 126, are ‘of no interest to us’; for the required understanding is available for those who take the trouble to reflect on the workings of their own language. These workings are, in a suitable sense, open to view; but in another sense they are not. For the achievement of that understanding – of seeing through the ‘surface grammar’ – proves to be a matter of considerable difficulty. The paradox is similar to that which Plato presented in the Meno. Given the question ‘What is virtue?’ , we are confronted with a dilemma. Either we already know what virtue is or we do not. If the first is the case, then the question does not arise and no discussion of it is needed; if the second, then we would not be able to recognize the correct answer even if we came across it. It is, however, essential to such answers that we recognize them as correct and do not merely take them on trust, as we might in the case of scientific or historical information. This paradox is not, however, a vicious one. What is needed to resolve it is an appropriate understanding of what is meant in this context by such expressions as ‘open to view’ and ‘we already know’. But what, finally, should we say about Wittgenstein’s philosophy of philosophy – the remarks that form the basis of my discussion, and others like them? Take the statement that in philosophy ‘everything lies open to view’. Does the truth of this statement itself lie open to view? It might be thought that this is a special case; so that what applies to the philosophies of mind, language, knowledge and the rest need not apply to the philosophy of philosophy itself. This resort to special pleading is, however, unnecessary once we accept that ‘open to view’ must be understood in an appropriate sense. In that sense, the nature of philosophy is open to view no less than the nature of meaning, knowledge and the rest; though it is so in a different way. It is open to view because of the ‘transparency’ of such occurrences as reflecting and being reminded. If, for example, my method for arriving at a correct 195

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understanding of knowledge is by reflecting on how this concept is used, then I cannot be unaware that this is my method. Reflecting on my method, I realize that it is one of reflecting on the relevant concepts.

6 Wittgenstein’s diagnostic theories Wittgenstein’s remarks, I said, may be described as expressions of theory in a diluted but established sense of this word, though it may be thought unnecessary and perverse to do so in the face of his denials. There is one respect, however, in which he might be described as putting forward theories in a more specific sense: this is so in the case of his diagnostic remarks.11 In a number of important passages he describes how certain features of language may lead to a ‘bewitchment of our understanding’ (PI 109). Thus, we are liable to be misled by ‘the uniform appearance of words when we hear them spoken and meet them in script and print’, for this may lead us to suppose that ‘language always functions in one way’ (PI 11), and to neglect the radical differences between, for example, the words ‘five’, ‘red’ and ‘apple’ (PI 1). In discussing such topics as meaning, expecting, thinking, etc. he described how we may be tempted to regard them all as mental processes, overlooking the ways – the various ways – in which these concepts actually work. Another pitfall to which he drew attention is the resort to introspection – as if we could become clear about what thinking is by ‘observing ourselves while we think’ (PI 316). And another, more general diagnostic remark was that about ‘the craving for generality’ (BB 18). Now in these passages Wittgenstein is putting forward explanations by reference to contingent matters of fact. These are not like the logical or conceptual truths of which he seeks to remind us when he is making his ‘grammatical’ remarks. Their truth, or the extent to which they are true, varies from person to person; it is a matter of contingent psychology. For some people the ‘private meaning’ assumption, as presented by Locke, Russell and others, is deeply natural and hard to abandon; for others it is not. The same is true of the uniform name-object assumption about the meanings of words. To many people this seems so obviously true as to need no argument, while others are less tempted by it. Again, the existence of mental images (‘pictures in the mind’) has been a powerful and largely detrimental influence in the philosophies of mind and language; but the experiencing of such images varies from person to person. For some it is vivid and frequent, while others can hardly make sense of what is meant by ‘pictures in the mind’. Finally, the craving for generality is strong in some people and has been of great importance both inside and outside philosophy; but this craving, again, is more endemic in some people than in others. There is still a difference, however, between these diagnostic theories and the theories of science and metaphysics in which something ‘hidden’ is posited. The features on which philosophical confusions are blamed are still, 196

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in a suitable sense, ‘open to view’, for they are matters of self-knowledge. The craving for generality, for instance, is sometimes acknowledged by those who have it (though they might not like to describe it as ‘a craving’). Again, in the Tractatus Wittgenstein declared: ‘Men have always had a presentiment that simplex sigillum veri’; and this has certainly been true of many men, though not of all. But someone who has this presentiment might well be aware, without being told, that he has it. (He might also, if he is sophisticated enough, take care not to allow it to mislead him.) The role of mental imagery in one’s life is also a matter of self-knowledge; and finally, a person who resorts to introspection to answer conceptual questions (cf. PI 316) could not fail to know that this is what he is doing. On the other hand, the sense in which these things are ‘open to view’ is not the same as that in which conceptual truths are open to view. What is needed for the former is a kind of self-knowledge, whereas the latter is a matter for reflection on the relevant concepts – on the actual use of the word ‘to mean’, for example. What, finally, is the connection between Wittgenstein’s diagnostic remarks and the description of his work as ‘therapy’? In medicine, diagnosis is often the first step towards cure, and Wittgenstein himself sometimes described his work in therapeutic terms. In a passage I quoted earlier, he spoke of ‘a slow cure’ as being all-important (Z 382); elsewhere he described what he was doing as ‘therapy’ (PI 133); and in yet another passage he stated that ‘the philosopher’s treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness’ (PI 255; see also PI 593). But these remarks are liable to be misleading. Some commentators have regarded them as essential to a proper understanding of Wittgenstein’s work,12 but this seems to me a mistake. Here, again, the condition about being open to view is relevant. What did Wittgenstein mean by ‘therapy’? In the usual medical sense, therapy is, as far as the patient is concerned, a causal and not a rational process. He may take his medicine and be cured of his illness without having the least idea of how it works. But this is not so in the case of argument. Here, the relevant processes – the steps of the argument – must be ‘open to view’; and this is true, of course, of Wittgenstein’s arguments and reminders, as to any others. These arguments and reminders might be said to ‘cure misunderstandings’, but we must not be misled by this figure of speech. The diagnostic remarks may help us to see why and how we may be inclined to go wrong, but that the views in question are wrong must be shown by argument, as indeed they are in Wittgenstein’s writings. There are also passages, however, in which Wittgenstein compared his work with the psychoanalytic method of Freud, ‘which also makes conscious the unconscious and thereby renders it harmless’.13 One might think here of a patient who is brought to recognize that his undesirable tendencies are due, say, to a suppressed resentment against his father. When this has been brought into the open, the resentment may be ‘rendered harmless’ or at least eased. 197

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Now in this case, unlike that of more usual therapies, the cure cannot be wholly beyond the patient’s understanding; it is not as if he could take his medicine and get better without any understanding of it. And the same is true of Wittgenstein’s diagnostic methods. If the remark about the craving for generality is to do any good, then it is necessary for the ‘patient’ to recognize that he has it and how it may have distorted his thinking. And similarly, if he thinks that meaning is a mental process, then he might be cured of his error by being shown how he may have been misled by its ‘surface grammar’. But here again, the comparison with psycho-analytic therapy must not be pressed too far. The latter might relieve the patient of cravings and other disorders that affect his emotional life, making him and others unhappy. But the philosophical ‘therapy’ has no such aim; its aim is to lead people to a true understanding of the questions at issue. And for this it is not sufficient to diagnose sources of error: it is also necessary to show, by argument, that the alleged errors are, indeed, errors and that the alternatives that are offered are, indeed, true. I have stressed the importance of argument in Wittgenstein’s writings. It is true that his arguments are not presented in the form of premises and conclusions. He was also inclined to refer to what he wrote as consisting of ‘remarks’, which may give the impression that they did not contain arguments. But this would be a false impression, for many arguments are apparent in his writings. These arguments are mostly negative: they are designed to refute assumptions that have been, and continue to be, widespread and influential inside and outside philosophy. Here are some examples of kinds of argument that are typical of Wittgenstein’s writings: 1

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You maintain (he says to his imaginary opponent) that such and such must be the case; but here are various examples to show that it need not be so; hence your assumption is false. (This kind of argumentation occurs in his rejection of essentialism, and of various ‘mental process’ assumptions about meaning, thinking, etc.) You think you can, and need to, explain how we are able to follow a rule, understand a word, etc. by invoking such and such a process or principle; but the questions that troubled you arise again with regard to any such process or principle; hence your quest for that kind of explanation is misconceived. You think that such words as ‘pain’ are, or could be, given meaning by an ‘inner’ counterpart of ostensive definition. But the supposed mental act cannot provide a ‘criterion of correctness’, such as exists in the case of ‘pain’. Hence, this is not how such words come to have meaning. ‘When Mr. N.N. dies, one says that the bearer of the name dies, not that the meaning dies. And it would be nonsensical to say that, for if the name ceased to have meaning, it would make no sense to say “Mr N.N. is dead” ’ (PI 40).14, 15 198

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Notes 1 PI 246: ‘If we are using the word “know” as it is normally used (and how else are we to use it!), then other people very often know when I am in pain.’ It may be worth pointing out that this wording is unsatisfactory, implying as it does that non-linguistic facts can be deduced from uses of language – as if our ability to know when others are in pain is dependent on the use of a word. A more accurate, though less elegant, formulation would be: ‘If the question “Can others know whether I am in pain?” is meant in the normal sense (and how else should it be meant!), then the answer must be “yes”.’ 2 The often cited example of ‘refute’ to mean ‘reject’ seems to me relatively harmless. It is usually clear from the context which sense is appropriate. 3 Cf. TLP 3.23: ‘The requirement that simple signs be possible is the requirement that sense be determinate’. 4 For further discussion, see Hanfling 2000: ch.13. 5 For further discussion, see Hanfling 2000: ch. 9. 6 The difference between logical and other kinds of analysis is sometimes marked by the use of ‘in’ in the first case and ‘of ’ in the second, as when it is said that water consists of H2O. 7 This is not to deny that we often continue to speak of such truths as ‘theories’. The word ‘theory’ remains convenient in such cases and is not easily dispensed with. 8 Cf. Smart (1959). Smart’s proposal was described by some as ‘the identity theory’ and by others as ‘the identity thesis’. 9 For a recent attempt in this direction, see Rundle 2001. 10 See also PI 89: ‘. . . it is of the essence of our investigation that we do not seek to learn anything new by it. We want to understand something that is already in plain view’. 11 Wittgenstein’s diagnostic remarks are of great interest and importance, but he is not unique in offering such explanations. Locke, having stated that words ‘stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them’, explains that it is ‘because men would not be thought to talk barely of their own imaginations . . ., [that] they often suppose them to stand also for the reality of things’ (Essay 3.2.4–5); Berkeley suggests that the inclination to laugh at the claim that ‘we eat and drink ideas, and are clothed with ideas’ is due to a failure to distinguish between ‘thinking with the learned’ and ‘speaking with the vulgar’ (Principles of Human Knowledge §51); while Descartes explains that his ‘habitual opinions keep coming back’ and ‘capturing his belief ’, thus preventing him from accepting his conclusions about universal doubt (Descartes, ed. J. Cottingham et al., 15). 12 See, for example, Strawson 1992: 3. 13 MS 109, 174; also the diaries for 1930. These references are taken from Sass 2001: 280. This way of understanding Wittgenstein’s ‘therapy’ is also suggested by Strawson (loc. cit.). 14 This passage is quoted by Gilbert Ryle in his vigorous rebuttal of the view that there are ‘no arguments’ in the Investigations. Cf. Ryle 1979: 131–2. 15 I am grateful to Peter Hacker for comments on a previous draft.

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Bibliography Cottingham, J., Stoothoff, R. and Murdoch, D. (1985) The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 3 vols, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

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Hanfling, O. (2000) Philosophy and Ordinary Language, Routledge: London. Mill, J.S. (1962) Utilitarianism, Collins: London. Rundle, B. (2001) ‘Meaning and Understanding’, in H.J. Glock, Wittgenstein: A Critical Reader, Blackwell: Oxford. Russell, B. (1956) Logic and Knowledge, Allen & Unwin: London. Russell, B. (1959) My Philosophical Development, Allen & Unwin: London. Ryle, G. (1979) On Thinking, Blackwell: Oxford. Sass, L.A. (2001) ‘Wittgenstein and Freud’, in R. Allen and M. Turvey, Wittgenstein, Culture and Arts, Routledge: London. Smart, J.J.S. (1959) ‘Sensations and Brain Processes’, in Philosophical Review, 68: 141–56. Strawson, P. (1992) Analysis and Metaphysics, Oxford University Press: Oxford.

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10 CRISS-CROSS PHILOSOPHY Cora Diamond

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1 Introduction My topic is the conception of clarity in Wittgenstein’s later thought – or, more precisely, his understanding of clarification, taken to be the task of philosophy. I am picking up a suggestion of Warren Goldfarb’s and Steven Gerrard’s, that we see the change in Wittgenstein’s view of clarity as central in the transformation that his thought underwent (Gerrard 2002: 69). It is sometimes argued that a reading of the Tractatus that takes seriously its description of its own propositions as nonsensical, as genuinely without content, cannot allow for the depth and significance of the later change in his thought. But such an idea rests, I think, on failure to see how far-reaching the change is in Wittgenstein’s understanding of clarification, and what it demanded of him, and of us as readers. These issues seem to me to shape Part I of Philosophical Investigations. I can discuss only some of this. My argument is meant to provide a commentary on a number of sections in the Investigations, but also on the claim in the Preface that Wittgenstein’s new thoughts could be seen in the right light only by contrast with, and against the background of his old way of thinking. I believe that that claim holds very strongly indeed of his new thoughts about what is involved in philosophical clarity in relation to his old way of thinking about it.

2 Making things worse I begin by making things worse. That is, one might take a central contrast between Wittgenstein’s early approach to philosophy and his later approach to be that Wittgenstein didn’t, in his later thought, attempt to get all of philosophy done at once, as it were. ‘Problems are solved’, he says, ‘not a single problem’ (PI §133). And we take that to mark a deep difference from the Tractatus. Well, it may be. But I want to make that contrast less clear-cut, or indeed more puzzling, by looking at clarification as we are supposed to go in for it from the point of view of the Tractatus. The correct method in 201

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philosophy, Wittgenstein said, would be to say nothing except propositions of natural science, and then, when someone said something metaphysical, you could show him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions (TLP 6.53). So you are essentially waiting for something metaphysical to turn up in this other person’s statements, and dealing with it when it does turn up. Wittgenstein says that the method wouldn’t satisfy the other person, but surely, if one did go in for that approach, it would appear to be every bit as piecemeal as the approach of the Investigations. Indeed, when we have, at the beginning of the Investigations itself, an approach to philosophical problems about language that appears to be quite piecemeal, we have an interlocutor speaking up at §65, plainly feeling dissatisfied. So it at least appears that we have a situation like this: the Tractatus specifies a piecemeal method of approach which can leave the person on whom it is tried feeling dissatisfied, feeling (that is) as if the philosophical issues have been evaded, and the Investigations demonstrates a method in its first 64 sections which can leave the person on whom it is tried feeling dissatisfied and as if the philosophical issues have been evaded. I believe that the idea that we can make out a big difference between Tractatus and Investigations by taking the former to be committed to an allat-once demonstration that philosophical propositions are nonsensical, where the latter works on a problem-by-problem basis, is confused. Not that there is no difference, no important difference, in the vicinity of this idea, but it’s not that easy to see what it is. What gets in the way is precisely the idea that the Tractatus provides a wholesale approach to the demonstration of the meaninglessness of philosophical propositions. (This isn’t the only thing that gets in the way.) Let me do this wholesale–retail thing in more detail: the wrong idea and the right one. I’m going to argue that there is no wholesale demonstration of the nonsensicality of philosophical propositions that we are supposed to have available to us at the end of the Tractatus, and that therefore there can be no attempt to contrast the Tractatus with the Investigations on any supposed basis of wholesale dismantling of philosophy by early Wittgenstein versus patient disentangling by later Wittgenstein. If there is something wholesale in the approach of the Tractatus, it will need some patient disentangling to see what it is. There are various ways in which one might take the Tractatus to provide a wholesale method for criticizing philosophical propositions. It might be said that we can infer from the Tractatus that such propositions violate logical syntax, and are therefore nonsensical. Or it might be thought that we can use the Tractatus doctrines as the basis of an inference from the failure of philosophical propositions to be bipolar, together with their not being tautologies or contradictions, to the conclusion that they are nonsensical. In the case of a large group of such propositions, including (supposedly) the propositions of the Tractatus itself, it might be thought that the Tractatus allows us to 202

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infer, from the fact that they are attempts to say what can only be shown, that they are nonsensical. But there is a devastating problem with any such attempt to see the Tractatus as providing a wholesale method for dealing with philosophical propositions. Any propositional sign can be used in various ways; there is no reason to doubt, of anything that looks like a propositional sign, that it can be used to express a thought, or to name a cat, or in other ways. So, if there is a ‘wholesale’ approach to demonstrating of any philosophical or metaphysical proposition that it is nonsense, there must first be some way of making clear how the proposition is to be taken, since it can be used to say something perfectly intelligible. It isn’t to be taken in any of the ways in which it wouldn’t be nonsense. How, then, is the intended nonsensical use to be made clear? For only if that can be done could the wholesale approach catch hold of the proposition in question. So some kind of clarification, or attempt at clarification, is going to be involved if the wholesale approach is even to have a chance to connect with some purportedly nonsensical proposition. The devastating problem for a reading of that general type is this: to attempt to specify which way of taking the propositional sign makes it nonsensical, you have to make clear what use of the sign you have in mind. Any such clarification deals with the detail of the individual sentence; it is an essentially retail proceeding. But, in the case of a nonsensical proposition, the attempt at clarification will reveal that it is nonsense by making plain that there is no particular use of the propositional sign that is clearly in focus; there is no way in which the sign is being meant. The ‘wholesale’ approach requires that there be some way of taking the propositional sign, such that the sign, taken that way, can be recognized to be an attempt to express something which propositions allegedly can’t be used to express, or in some other way to violate some or other rule. But then that use must be specifiable, and distinguishable from other uses. But this attempt to specify a use proceeds by attempting philosophical clarification. In the course of that attempt the proposition’s character will be revealed, without any appeal to supposed general Tractatus doctrines.1 I shall put the argument in two further forms. 1 Wittgenstein believed that, if a propositional sign expressed a thought, the proposition could be clarified. The activity of clarification, as he understood it, involved rewriting propositions in a way that would enable us to see clearly what, in a sense, the proposition had shown all along; we would be able to see the use of the proposition more clearly. Since, on the Tractatus view, any propositional sign can, in some use, express a thought, any criticism of something that looks like a proposition as being a mere nonsense must involve distinguishing the supposed use-as-nonsense from other possible ways of using the sign, which might be legitimate. We need to try to specify the use we have in mind. But the attempt to specify the use we have in mind is carried on by attempting philosophical clarification. That is, philosophical clarification 203

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is an activity which we can and, indeed, must attempt to carry through if we want to criticize a thing that looks like a proposition, and claim that it is nonsense. It is, essentially, in the failure of the attempt at clarification of the particular proposition with which we are concerned that we are able to come to recognize that there was nothing there to clarify. There is no philosophical critique of propositions available on the basis of the Tractatus, separate from the Tractatus conception of clarification of genuine propositions. 2 In this version of the argument, I consider an example of a wholesale approach. Suppose someone claimed that, from the recognition that a particular proposition lacked bipolarity, and was neither a tautology nor a contradiction, that it therefore had to be nonsensical, from the Tractatus point of view. The question then is: what supposedly lacks bipolarity? No mere sign has or lacks bipolarity. And, again, if we call something a tautology, we are taking it that the names in it have a particular use: if two occurrences of the same letter, say, are not names for the same thing, the sense cannot ‘cancel out’ as it does in a tautology. Take a typical Tractatus proposition, of the sort that appears to lack bipolarity, ‘Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions’. What use do we want to give the first word of that proposition, as it occurs there? It is hardly meant to refer to all things that look like propositions. Nor do we intend to use the word “propositions” to mean truth-functions of elementary propositions; we don’t want to use the quoted propositional sign to say that truth-functions of elementary propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions. In order to make this Tractatus proposition out as lacking bipolarity, and as not being a mere tautology, we should have to specify some other sort of use for that first word. If there is no specifiable use that we will accept as what we want there, we can recognize a kind of failure, but it is a failure to give any meaning to one of the words we are using. The idea we may have, that ‘absence of bipolarity’ might be directly available to us as we consider a proposition, comes from failure to take seriously that a sign does not itself determine a use. We have to make clear that use of the propositional sign such that we want to say: the sign used that way expresses something that is not bipolar. Before there is any attempt to apply some general doctrine about non-bipolar propositions, we’ve got to have such a proposition. But what will happen if we attempt to spell out the use we mean is that the attempt at clarification will show us that there is nothing we will accept as what we mean. The attempt at clarification has to precede the supposed application of doctrine; and, if indeed the proposition-like thing in question is philosophically problematic, what will happen is that the attempt will bring out a kind of failure to mean anything clear at all. We shall never get as far as the supposed application of doctrine. What does the work is the attention to the particular problematic sentence itself, the attempt to clarify it, and the failure of that attempt. Again: the idea we may have that such-and-such proposition is not bipolar is, itself, a 204

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symptom of not having attempted clarification. It involves an irremediably cloudy impression-of-having-a-thought, attached to a sign the use of which we are not attending to. In general: there is no description available to us, of any proposition, which will enable us to connect it with some supposed Tractatus doctrine about nonsensicality and, thereby, to deduce the nonsensicality of the proposition. We have first to attempt to clarify the use of our signs. If that attempt falters, we shall have come to see that the propositional sign in question is nonsensical. If it does not falter, then nothing else is going to show that the proposition is nonsensical. There is here no special Tractatus sense of ‘nonsensical’, only the ordinary idea of not meaning anything at all.2 Appendix to Section 2 I have given that argument in general terms, but it is meant to cover a variety of readings of the Tractatus, in which the ‘wholesale’ criticism of philosophical propositions is made to depend on this or that different supposed principle for demonstrating nonsensicality. There are, however, special points to be made about two of these ‘wholesale’ readings.

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1 First: the reading that takes the fundamental flaw of propositions identifiable as nonsense to be their violation of logical syntax. But what it means, in the Tractatus, for a language to be governed by logical syntax is for there not to occur in it the same sign for different symbols, or superficially similar signs that have different modes of signification. So, if one were to use the phrase ‘violation of logical syntax’, on the basis of the Tractatus, one could say that having distinct uses of ‘is’ (as copula and as identity-sign) constitutes a violation of logical syntax. It is then the Tractatus view that the existence in a language of such ‘violations’ makes possible fundamental philosophical confusions. But it is also clearly the Tractatus view that there is no inference from the existence of such a ‘violation’ to the nonsensicality of any particular sentence, even one involving the same sign being used in two quite different ways. No sentence can be shown to be nonsensical by supposedly containing a ‘violation of logical syntax’. This is for two reasons: (a) the general argument above, which depends on the possibility of legitimate use of any propositional sign, and (b) the absence, in the Tractatus, of any notion of ‘violation of logical syntax’ which would enable one to say that such violations do more than help us pull the wool over our own eyes. They don’t make anything nonsensical. You can refuse to be governed by logical syntax, in the sense of 3.325, and talk nothing but sense.3

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2 The reading that takes the fundamental flaw of some nonsensical propositions, including those of the Tractatus itself, to be that they contain signs the correct use of which is to signify formal concepts, and use those signs as

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proper concept-words. So (on this view) the reason it is nonsense to say ‘1 is a number’ is that the word ‘number’, a word signifying a formal concept, is used as an ordinary concept-word. And the idea is then that we can simply infer the nonsensicality of ‘1 is a number’ from a general proposition about signs for formal concepts, used as ordinary concept-words. But here it is evident that the occurrence in a propositional context of the word ‘number’, not being used in a way which would go over to a variable in a conceptual notation, is not itself a sufficient condition for the proposition as a whole to be nonsense. So, for example, it is hardly nonsense to say ‘He wanted to be waited on, but didn’t know he had to take a number’, though the word ‘number’ is there used as an ordinary concept-word for what you take from a certain machine. There is no inference from a sign’s use in some propositional context not being to signify what it signifies in some other contexts to the propositional context in question being one in which nothing is said. Such uses do constitute violations of logical syntax, but only in the sense described above, namely, that they contain a sign which is used in distinct contexts in different ways. Wittgenstein, indeed, says that ‘1 is a number’ is nonsense. But the passage in which he says this (4.1272) is condensed, and does not say how one could show someone who said ‘1 is a number’ that what he had said was nonsense. Wittgenstein is generalizing about a certain kind of philosophical confusion; one can, he thinks, show the utterers of certain sorts of confused remark that they have said nothing. But this does not mean that identifying what someone has said as a confused remark of the relevant sort is, itself, a demonstration that the remark is nonsense. The fact that such remarks can be shown to be nonsensical does not mean that there is available any special Tractatus principle which would enable one to give a direct demonstration of the nonsensicality of such propositions. To demonstrate to someone that he or she has spoken nonsense, one needs no special principles; that’s part of the point of Tractatus 6.53.

3 The Tractatus and the Big Problems I have argued that the Tractatus does not provide a general principle which can be used to demonstrate that philosophical propositions are nonsensical, and that therefore we cannot differentiate the philosophical method of the Tractatus from that of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy by reference to the place of such a general principle in the Tractatus. The Tractatus approach to philosophical confusion is, in an important sense, piecemeal; it depends essentially on enabling a person to see that the attempt to clarify the use of his or her words falters. In the attempt at clarification, one comes to be able to recognize that one has failed to say anything, that one has not given meaning to one or more of the signs one has used. Let me turn here to Philosophical Investigations §65. The person who objects to Wittgenstein’s approach in the previous 64 sections says: ‘You 206

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take the easy way out! You talk about all sorts of language-games, but have nowhere said what the essence of a language-game, and hence of language, is: what is common to all these activities, and what makes them into language or parts of language. So you let yourself off the very part of the investigation that once gave you yourself most headache, the part about the general form of propositions and of language.’ The propositions of the Tractatus which appear to be statements about the nature of language are supposed to be recognizable by us as nonsensical, and the very questions we ask in philosophy are supposed to be recognizable as not genuinely questions at all. We are, however, supposed (when we get to the end of the book) to be able to engage in philosophical clarification; this activity includes not only clarification that turns out to be successful but also attempts which fail, where the failure itself can help us to see that we had meant nothing by our words. Wittgenstein’s later criticism of his earlier thought has at its center his own reflections on how the questions which we supposedly renounce in the Tractatus, and supposedly recognize not to be questions, nevertheless shadow the kind of clarification which the Tractatus recommends. The book leaves us with a method that is in the shadow of the big questions he had been asking. The search for the essence of language is, in theory, überwunden, overcome. But it is really still with us, in an ultimately unsatisfactory, unsatisfying, conception of what it is to clarify what we say. We can see Wittgenstein, in §65 of the Investigations, to be critically engaged with a conception of the problems of philosophy, with the idea that there are certain fundamental essential problems. He took himself to have been in the grip of this idea. Although he had (at the time he finished the Tractatus) believed himself to have resolved these fundamental problems, and indeed to have shown that they were, in a sense, not questions at all, he had had a conception of clarification, of the method of philosophy, which, although he was unaware of it, was distorted by the idea of big fundamental problems. So, to understand the difference between Wittgenstein’s earlier and later thought one has to see the difference in his conception of clarification; and to understand that, one has to see how his earlier thought was in the grip of the idea of big fundamental philosophical problems, and how the later thought was meant to free us from the grip of that idea. The idea of philosophical clarification in Wittgenstein’s later thought is tied closely to his idea of how our thinking can be distorted by the conception of big essential philosophical problems, a conception which it is enormously difficult, in practice, to renounce. (Here, I’d like to clarify something about what is involved in reading the Tractatus. In reading any work of philosophy, we may operate with some distinction between what the author thought had been achieved by it and what he or she did achieve. In the case of the Tractatus, though, we need particular care in distinguishing Wittgenstein’s own conception of the 207

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Überwindung of his own propositions and what we may want to say about the achievement of that Überwindung. It may be that, as Wittgenstein understood his achievement at the time of completing the Tractatus, he took the metaphysical-seeming propositions of the work, including propositions about the essence of language, to have been completely überwunden, and to be recognizable as nonsense, plain and simple. It is entirely consistent with such a reading of what Wittgenstein took his achievement to have been at that time to hold that a metaphysical view of language had not been completely überwunden and was, indeed, reflected in the work in some way or other, for example, as I shall argue, in the conception of philosophical method with which the book leaves us. To argue that there is, in some sense, metaphysics remaining in the Tractatus is not to hold that Wittgenstein took any of his metaphysical-seeming propositions to be meant to convey some sort of metaphysical insight. I have emphasized this point because it may appear possible to infer from ‘There is something metaphysical in the Tractatus’ to ‘Not all the metaphysical-seeming propositions in the Tractatus are meant to be recognizable as plain and simple nonsense’. I have elsewhere argued for an interpretation which says that Wittgenstein did mean the metaphysicalseeming propositions, including those about the nature of language, to be recognizable as plain and simple nonsense; I am not here arguing for such a reading but only noting that they can all have been so intended, and it nevertheless be the case that the book is unwittingly metaphysical in some respect or other.)4

4 Piecemeal method and the hold of a Big Question I have argued that the Tractatus leaves us with a conception of philosophical method that in some respects resembles the ‘piecemeal’ method of the Investigations. We wait for someone to say something metaphysical; we show the person who said it that attempts at clarifying his or her use of signs reveals that some sign is not being used to mean anything. But what Wittgenstein had in mind as clarification had in it a conception of the general logical character of all thought and speaking and inferring. The propositions of the Tractatus, for example about the truth-functional character of logic, may be überwunden, but the picture of logic as having a certain general character is then present in the recommended method of the Tractatus in the way inferential relations are supposed to be treated in the clarifying of propositions. If, in the Tractatus, ‘a picture held us captive’, that captivity can be seen in the way the clarification of propositions proceeds in accordance with a model taken to have totally general applicability. The Tractatus treatment of the Big Question of the nature of language leaves behind (once the Question is supposedly shown to be not a question at all) a philosophical method that pays no attention to differences, to the complex reality of our propositions and our modes of inferring, or to the reality of our particular philosophical 208

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difficulties. The failure of the direct attack on the Big Question of the nature of language, the attack that shares with the Question a conception of the generality of the issue, can be seen (supposedly) in the persistence, in the philosophical method of clarification, of a false understanding of philosophy itself. The Big Question does not disappear; the Tractatus had only seemed to provide a route to genuine clarity. In §133 of the Investigations, Wittgenstein says that the real discovery is the one that makes it possible for philosophy no longer to be tormented by questions which bring philosophy itself into question. He says that problems are solved (difficulties eliminated), not a single problem. – How, then, is it possible for us to see philosophical problems as problems, and not in terms of a single problem? What the real discovery is, then, is what will enable us to see philosophy in that way. This leads to a question. In what way does the Investigations enable us to leave behind a captivity to the idea of the Big Question? I take this question to be vital in our attempt to see how Wittgenstein’s understanding of clarification shifts between the Tractatus and the Investigations and, hence, also vital in the reading of the Investigations itself.

5 Continuing to think Big Questions The points about philosophy that I have been discussing are already present, most of them anyway, in the notes on philosophy in Wittgenstein’s Big Typescript of 1933. The version of PI §133 in the Big Typescript lacks the Investigations remark that there is not a philosophical method, but rather methods, like different therapies (PO, p. 195). And, indeed, the chapter on philosophy in the Big Typescript itself seems to work with the idea of a single method. I don’t think that Wittgenstein became clear until somewhat later what might be a way of responding to our tendency to think in terms of Big Questions, what it might be to write a book that could show what it is to think in terms of philosophical problems, rather than of a single essential problem. He did come to believe that one should demonstrate with particular examples the usefulness of different methods, for example, of inventing language-games unlike ours in important respects. But he did not, I think, believe that there was anything that could, as it were, insulate his approach from a kind of misreading that would see the treatment of particular examples as derived from or embodying some supposed response to the Big Question of the nature of language, or the conditions of sense. Such misreadings may have various sources, but one of them is the feeling that his philosophy would lack depth or would be unsatisfying if it did not deal with some such Big Question. To see him as an important philosopher, so it may seem, we must see him as moving from one approach to the Big Question in his earlier thought to another later on, not as serious in what he says about Big Questions. So, here is a brief summary of one kind of understanding of 209

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Wittgenstein’s later thought about philosophical clarification, a summary of what I take to be a misunderstanding: Wittgenstein gives a new answer to the Big Question of the nature of language, which dictates an understanding of clarification as making plain the rules of grammar of the language-games in which we engage. We are thus (supposedly) enabled to see that we have got into our philosophical puzzlements by using words in ways that have no place in those language-games. Here, a general kind of approach to philosophical problems is established first, and in advance of its application to particular problems. It is no part of clarification (thus understood) that we should be enabled to see our problems themselves as standing on their own, to be dealt with on their own, or that indeed seeing them in that way constitutes a great part of the difficulty of responding to the problems. I am arguing for a different understanding of Wittgenstein’s later ideas about philosophical clarification, taking seriously the remark from the Big Typescript (also in Zettel), that what makes the greatest difficulty in philosophy is the kind of reordering of our understanding that enables us to see philosophy as cross-strips, each of them a whole definite piece.5 Let me try here to avoid two possible misconceptions. (1) I spoke just now of seeing our problems as, in a sense, standing on their own. I don’t mean that Wittgenstein thought of philosophical problems as having no light to shed on each other. He very definitely thought they did shed light on each other; but the question is how they do so. It is very natural for us to organize our thought about the connection of problems to each other through the idea of something both deeper and more general than the individual problems themselves. This conception is present in the Tractatus and survives the supposed Überwindung of the questions. Some or other version of it characterizes many readings of the Investigations, for example, that of Kripke, who sees the treatment of particular problems as falling out of a general treatment of Big Questions about Meaning. (2) In saying that Wittgenstein was not, in the Investigations, concerned to provide a new answer to the Big Question of the nature of language, I don’t mean that he was not concerned with the nature of language. I mean that there is a difference between seeing such a question as a Big Question and seeing it simply as a problem or rather a group of problems, philosophical problems that can be approached through the methods he had developed. The presence of some or other Big Answer in our understanding of the Investigations is responsible for a kind of incoherence in many readings. That is, we may say that Wittgenstein thought that in philosophy we need to remind the person who is confused of how we use words. And we may say that, because we are simply issuing such reminders, philosophical disputes should not arise; if they do, we can simply provide other reminders instead. But if, in our understanding of Wittgenstein, we take it that the point of the reminders is tied to an idea that we speak nonsense when we depart from the ways of using language that are in accordance with the rules of our language-games, 210

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we are making use of a general conception of language, of sense and nonsense, of the conditions of sense, which would seem to be highly disputable. So far as we ascribe to Wittgenstein a conception of clarification which is tied to some such general account of language, the fact that the bits of clarificatory discourse are not themselves interestingly disputable cannot begin to show that philosophical practice, as Wittgenstein understood it, doesn’t give rise to serious disputes. If we want at least to try to see Wittgenstein’s understanding of philosophical method as coherent, we have to see his idea that it does not give rise to serious dispute as not combinable with the intention of providing this or that Answer to a Big Question about language. The real difficulty is in not thinking Big Questions; the real discovery is how not to do it. When Wittgenstein said ‘Don’t think, look’, the hardness of looking is that of seeing the case with which we are puzzled as treatable genuinely on its own, the hardness of letting what can be said about it help, letting it satisfy us. This is at the heart of his later conception of clarification.

6 A case The authors in this volume have been asked to focus on the Investigations and related works. But we can, I think, be helped to see what Wittgenstein is doing in the examples of philosophical method which he provides in the Investigations if we consider a simple example from his actual practice with his students. Such an example may help us to see the transformation of our problems at which Wittgenstein aims: we may be able to see a problem losing its tie to Big Questions, the tie which keeps us, in our struggles with the problem, from going out the unlocked door. The example I shall consider comes from Elizabeth Anscombe’s account of how she had felt trapped by phenomenalism, and how Wittgenstein’s ‘medicine’ enabled her to see her way out of it.6 She had felt trapped by phenomenalism because she had responded strongly against a Lockean representative realism which insisted that colors as she saw them were not genuinely part of the external world. But, finding herself insisting that blue (this blue), or yellow (this), were there, out there, she was on a path that led, or seemed to, in a direction in which she did not want to go, to a reading of the world as itself made of these items that she was thus aware of, a world constructed out of the ‘this’es: out of the yellow of which she was aware as she stared at the cigarette packet in front of her, and of more things like it. We need then to imagine her, sitting in Wittgenstein’s classes, hearing his discussion of the ostensive definitions we may think we give ourselves. What he says seems to allow no place for the thises of which she is aware. If he says that words for the colors things are are public words, not words we define by concentrating on a this, then it seems that what is there, given his understanding of the world, cannot be this. But it is this, blue, or this, yellow, that 211

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is what she still wants to say is there. Take away the ostensive definition she gives herself and the thises that make, or seem to make, those definitions possible, and you take away the character of the world as she is aware of it. You take away what she wants to say is there. In response to her expression of that idea, Wittgenstein asked her to suppose that we had the word ‘painy’ as a word for the property of some surfaces.7 This ‘medicine’, Anscombe says, was effective. She did not (before or after the ‘medicine’) think of ‘blue’ as the name of this sensation that she was having; and Wittgenstein’s suggestion of a word working as a secondaryquality word for surfaces with a property through which they caused pain did not lead her to the idea that, so far as she was inclined to say ‘Blue is there’ she might equally be inclined to say ‘Painy is there’. Quite the reverse. She had no inclination to say ‘Painy is there’; and she could see the contrast clearly between a word like ‘painy’ and a color word, like ‘blue’. Before the medicine, it had seemed that, if one were dissatisfied with Lockean realism, and did not take blue-as-one-was-aware-of-it to be something internal in contrast to the ‘colorless’ external world, one would have to ask whether blueas-one-was-aware-of-it was a part of the surface of things, or one of the items out of which the external world was composed, or something else again. One would focus on what one was aware of, and ask about it. The clarity produced by Wittgenstein’s suggestion lay in the capacity of the example to make the Lockean question disappear, the question where blue, this, really is. The question arises out of a kind of unclarity. ‘Blue’ is not like ‘pain’/’painy’, but Lockean realism gets its convincingness from that contrast being out of sight. ‘Painy’, as a secondary quality word, works just fine; but it works as such a word precisely because ‘pain’ is not a word like ‘blue’ but a word for what we feel. If ‘painy’ (for surfaces) together with ‘pain’ (for what we feel when we come in contact with a painy surface) is our model of how secondary quality words work, ‘blue’ is not a secondary quality word. It appears to us, though, as we move into the Lockean quagmire, that, if there can be a word for those features of blue things that make them look the way they do to us, then what else there is to blue must be purely a sort of given. When we are gripped by this idea, there appears to be a question where blue as this-weare-aware-of really is. Anscombe rejected the idea of it as purely internal, but the only alternative (before the medicine) appeared to be that it was somehow ‘out there’. A recognition (as in Anscombe’s case) that there is no need to say ‘Painy is there’ may help reveal the contrast between ‘pain’ and ‘blue’, and the way a not-fully-thought-through analogy between the two falsifies our thought.

7 More about Anscombe’s case 1 It is clear in Anscombe’s account of the ‘medicine’ that it did not have to work. She ascribes to Wittgenstein the idea that it was the right medicine for 212

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her; it would not have been the appropriate medicine for someone who had taken ‘blue’ to be a word for a sensation, or who moved to that view in response to Wittgenstein’s suggestion. If I speak of the capacity of the example to make the Lockean problem lose its apparent inevitability, I don’t mean to suggest that it would do so for everyone. 2 Wittgenstein provides various metaphors to describe the kind of transformation of thought that can be effected by such ‘medicine’. One is the metaphor of the condensation of a cloud of philosophy into a drop of grammar. Another, already referred to, is the metaphor of seeing philosophy in cross-wise strips. I want to say more about how that metaphor connects with the Anscombe case.

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Before the ‘medicine’, Anscombe’s problem is one of philosophy’s Big Questions. It is a form of the question how our thought is able to connect with reality. She is aware of, has in her mind, this, the blue; is it or is it not there, in the world? There are various Big Answers one can give to this Question. Wittgenstein invites her to think about ‘painy’; one might ask whether it is there or not, but she has no inclination to ask or answer that question. The question she was asking, about where the blue is, loses its capacity to puzzle her, as she comes to see clearly the contrast between ‘blue’ and ‘pain’/’painy’. Her problem about color is resolved; it is at the same time seen to be one particular problem. The problem had been irresolvable when it was seen as Big Question: for that pointed her attention away from the details of the use of words. The medicine makes possible attention to details that are capable of helping her reach a satisfactory resolution of the problem; but also makes possible the re-conception of the problem as a particular problem. Wittgenstein says in §92 of Philosophical Investigations that in his investigations he is concerned with the essence of language. But he says that it is possible to be concerned with that question in different ways. There is the Big Question way, that asks ‘What is language?’, ‘What is a proposition?’; and there is an investigation which transforms such questions into cross-wise strips, which comes at them over and again from different directions, and reaches satisfaction not ‘ein für allemal’ but for the case of this and that particular problem. In reading Wittgenstein, the attempt to put together an overall account of the nature of language goes against precisely that idea of philosophical method. So I am suggesting this way of thinking of clarification, as understood in Wittgenstein’s later thought: Wittgenstein clarified part of the grammar of ‘blue’, as a way of dealing with one particular problem, where the clarification itself included allowing the problem to be seen as a particular problem. So, too, parts of the grammar of ‘proposition’ (say) or ‘language’ may be clarified, in response to particular problems, where the clarification will include allowing us to see our problem as a particular problem, not as the problem, not as an infinitely long lengthwise strip. 213

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8 Clarification of clarification In this section I want to try to clarify the conception of clarification which I have sketched by considering an example of what it is like to do something different, something which will fail to clarify by providing or attempting to provide a lengthwise strip of philosophy. Here, then, is my example. It’s meant as an example of reading Wittgenstein without taking in the significance of the contrast between lengthwise and crosswise philosophy. Wittgenstein, so it may be suggested, gives us an account of sense as constituted by grammar. Grammar is different in different language-games; so (reading Wittgenstein as holding that sense is constituted by grammar), it follows that what is said in one language-game cannot mean the same as what is said in a language-game in which the rules of grammar are somewhat different. What we might take to be a case of people within one language-game contradicting people in another cannot literally be contradiction.8 Someone who reads Wittgenstein that way thinks that we should look within particular language-games to see the sense of what is said in them, but does not think that that applies to words like ‘sense’ or ‘meaning’ or ‘contradiction’. That is, if in our ordinary talk about who means the same as someone, or about who contradicts someone, and so on, we actually accept that people whose modes of speech have different rules may mean the same, or may contradict each other, that doesn’t count. There is (supposedly) a deeper sense of meaning the same, or of contradiction, or a more literal sense. That is, if grammar constitutes sense, we can gather from that insight a more fundamental understanding of sameness and difference of sense than might be got by what would be a merely slavish adherence to the vagaries of ordinary language. Wittgenstein himself may sometimes seem to recommend such an attitude, but, in giving an account of his overall view of language, we should not follow him. But the issue here is distorted if seen in terms of whether we can be too slavish in adhering to ordinary language. Consider the ways in which people dispute, or seem to be disputing, whether Jesus is the Messiah. On the face of it, it looks as if Jews and Christians contradict each other about this. ‘Jesus is the fulfilment of these texts’, ‘Jesus is not the promised fulfilment’. Jews and Christians may point to the same texts to explain what they mean by being the Messiah, but they do not use the same criteria for settling whether someone is or isn’t the Messiah. So, if someone holds that criteria for settling an issue belong to grammar, and if grammar is supposed to constitute sense, Jews and Christians cannot mean the same by ‘Messiah’ and are not literally contradicting each other about who is Messiah. Here, the concepts of meaning and not meaning the same, and of contradicting someone, are given a comparatively simple grammar, so that whether or not two people are contradicting each other can be read off from the rules for the use of a word, 214

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here ‘Messiah’. If the rules in the respective language-games are different, the two people don’t mean the same, and aren’t contradicting each other. But Wittgenstein thought that, in philosophy, we are frequently inclined to just that sort of simplification; we don’t see how complicated the use of our words is. The way in which we learn to use expressions like ‘mean the same’ and ‘contradict’ is extremely complicated, is extremely difficult to describe; and in philosophy we may let ourselves off from seeing that complication. The case of the dispute about the Messiah is one part of the complicated story here, and should be looked at on its own. What is interesting about it is precisely that it is like some cases that we may have in the forefront of our minds when we think about whether people mean the same by their words, but unlike other cases. The complicated grammar of ‘contradict’, of the ways we use that term, includes this sort of case. If we see this case, with its resemblances and differences from other cases in which we say that such-and-such people deny what others assert, that one group contradicts the other, there is not here some further question whether Jews and Christians ‘literally’ contradict each other. If we look at the cross-strip, the uses of terms like ‘contradict’ in connection with a variety of circumstances including this particular case, the philosophical question may disappear; there would be no remaining puzzlement; we see this case in its relation to others. This isn’t to say that there is a foolproof way of achieving such a reconception of the problem, to make it become a question about the grammar of ‘contradict’ and its complications in such cases. We may go on wanting to insist (say) that there is no literal contradiction in such cases; but that insistence reflects the idea of contradiction as not something open to view. Contradiction is seen as a kind of logical doing, fundamentally as one thing which is either there or not. Whether one person is asserting that which the other is denying depends on sameness of sense, which depends upon what determines sense, about which there is a general account, to which the ways we actually use words like ‘contradict’ are irrelevant, and needn’t be attended to. The infinite lengthwise strip is, in this case, the question how sense is determined. Here the focus on a Big Question is tied to a falsification of the use of our words, of what complicated things we do with them.9 The example illustrates how Wittgenstein is concerned with ordinary language – not, that is, as a slavish devotee of leaving it as it is. Rather, the refusal to attend to what we say frequently shows a kind of misconception of our problems themselves, a misconception which keeps us turned away from the unlocked door, and which makes it impossible for us to achieve clarity. The point of attention to ordinary language is not that it is in any way sacred; rather, attention to ordinary language is capable of transforming our problems and our sense of where we are with them. I have argued that we cannot succeed in reaching genuine philosophical clarity, as Wittgenstein understands it, so long as we take philosophy, or try to, in lengthwise strips. If we are not able to transform our understanding of 215

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our problems, we are locked into unsettlable disputes. This comes out, for example, in the interminable dispute about whether a person isolated from birth could possibly have a language, and what Wittgenstein’s view of the matter is. One side holds that, so long as the speaker is conceived as using words the meanings of which are public, there is nothing in Wittgenstein that disallows the possibility of such a case, even if the speaker were isolated from birth; the other side holds that, apart from a speaker’s relations with other speakers there can be no such thing as his or her meaning anything determinate by sounds or written marks. The focus of the dispute is on a lengthwise strip of philosophy, the possibility of meaning anything by anything uttered or written. There are supposed to be general answers to that Big Question to be found in Wittgenstein; but obviously whichever Answer one chose to ascribe to him would be highly disputable. How could the question be turned into one which draws us back to crosswise strips of philosophy? What would that be like? What is the work of clarification really like here? I’ve suggested that the real work of clarification is whatever makes possible the move to the crosswise strip, the transformation of the question itself. (In this particular case, the transformation may be effected by considering in detail the character of the kind of case we are asked to imagine; for it is no good saying that we are to imagine someone whose words have ‘public’ meanings. What does the person do, what exactly (in the absence of other people) shows the shareableness of what she is doing? My word ‘tree’ has a public meaning that can be seen in how I learned it, and how I use it with other people. If we are to imagine someone who has a word supposedly meaning ‘tree’, but who has not learned words from others and who does not use the words with others, where exactly, in what she does, am I supposed to see what the shareableness of what she says comes to? To describe this in detail would be to describe a case which is, in many ways, unlike our own in what we see as showing the shareableness of what is said; so whatever we may adduce by way of resemblances, the case will be one which is connected with ours as much and as deeply by contrast as by resemblance. Such attention to the description of the case may transform the question, so it is no longer about the Conditions for Meaning Something By Our Words.)10

9 Piecemeal, piecemeal and piecemeal I gave as an example in Section 8 the case of someone who ascribes to Wittgenstein a general account of the relation between sense and grammar, and who takes it to be a consequence of the views ascribed to Wittgenstein that, if the rules of two language-games are different, the people playing one game cannot literally contradict the people playing the other game. The picture there, of contradiction as a sort of logical reality that may or may not be present, is tied in two ways to the mode of thought of the Tractatus. In the first place, the picture is present in the Tractatus, and is indeed part of what 216

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remains behind, influencing Wittgenstein’s conception of the activity of philosophical clarification, even after the problems of the book are supposedly überwunden. More significantly, though, it reflects an approach to philosophy itself that Wittgenstein came to see made impossible genuine philosophical satisfaction. At 3.3421, Wittgenstein says that particular cases have no significance for philosophy, except so far as the possibility of such-and-such individual case can open up for us something of the essence of the world. Grasping the essence of the world is, here, a matter of getting hold of a lengthwise strip. And individual cases can matter, on this understanding of philosophy, only so far as they enable us to get hold of the lengthwise strip. It’s not news that Wittgenstein took particular cases seriously in his later thought in a way he had not earlier. I don’t think it is easy to see, though, what the change actually comes to, what its significance is, and how it is connected with his changed conception of philosophy itself. It is easy to read the emphasis on attention to particulars as itself reflective of an Answer to a Big Question. We may be directed to look at the language-games we play with some word, with a view to showing us that our philosophical uses violate the rules for that word, or project the rules of one language-game into another, and so on. And that then is supposed to imply, given some general conception of meaning that we ascribe to Wittgenstein, that we had been talking nonsense. Here, attention to the particularities of this or that language-game is supposed to be the method Wittgenstein teaches us, but what is meant here by ‘attention to particulars’ has no tie to the idea that our problems can be transformed if we are able to take them as problems on their own, without connection to a Big Question. The method of attention to language-games, understood as dictated by an Answer to a Big Question, e.g. about the conditions of sense, I shall call the dogmatic method. Dogmatism enters it in two ways: it is dogmatic in its reliance on an Answer to a Big Question; it is dogmatic in its way of telling people that what they are inclined to say can be shown to be nonsensical because of the supposed failure to play the language-game right. So, I want to argue here that there are at least two piecemeal approaches that are not the later Wittgenstein’s: one is the piecemeal approach of the Tractatus, in the shadow of a picture of language arrived at by working through a Big Question, but not having got genuinely past it. The other is the piecemeal approach of the dogmatic method of languagegames, in the shadow of a different Answer to the same Big Question. At Investigations §122, Wittgenstein emphasizes the importance of finding and inventing intermediate cases. The German is Zwischenglieder and has (much more than the English) the idea of links. We want cases that link up with ours, that connect with ours but are different, and that take away from the case we are considering its capacity to send us in search of something deeper and hidden from view. The importance of language-games partly like ours, partly unlike ours, the importance of seeing our language-games as neighbored, as having nearby neighbors and neighbors very much further off, 217

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is that such neighbors let us see what we do. Wittgenstein says that what he aims at is a perspicuous presentation of the use of our words. Perspicuity here means: we can look at it, we can take it in philosophically, can find ourselves again in that use of words, can see the problem we had had as one problem, a cross-wise strip.11 Here there is the idea of a piecemeal approach which is genuinely not in the shadow of Big Questions.

10 Criss-cross philosophy In the Preface to the Investigations, Wittgenstein writes about his struggle to force his thoughts into a ‘natural order’, without breaks. He uses the first person singular in describing the struggle and his abandonment of it. He then switches to the plural when he notes that it belongs to ‘the very nature of the investigation’ that it compels us to travel over a wide field of thought criss-cross in every direction. (It wasn’t just that he hadn’t been able to do anything else.) His own struggle gives an indication of the difficulty here. He had written of the importance of philosophy in ‘crosswise strips’ as early as 1933, but the attempts he went on making to impose an order on his thoughts show there to have been a continuing tension within his understanding of his own philosophical activity.12 He had had to learn from the criss-cross character of the investigations as he was actually engaged in them and the criss-cross path that the investigations took, from the fact that crisscross was the only way that he could operate without crippling his thought, that criss-cross was not a failure or fault, not the best he could do where someone else might do better, or where there was a better that could be conceived of but that was unfortunately out of reach. He was able to break off the struggle when he saw that the idea of something better than his crisscross sketches reflected a false conception of the nature of the investigation, of what it came to to attend to particular problems, this one and that one, and what it came to to write a book that showed the progress of such an investigation. What matters – for the path of the Investigations as much as for the path of our investigations – is the kind of clarity that can come from going criss-cross. I close with a quotation from Simon Glendinning’s ‘rewriting’ of part of §133, which helps brings that out. We always say: ‘The real help here would be a map that would take us from A to B in a direct line – the one that misses out the mountains and forests.’ – Instead, I will take you another way. I have no such map and we will stick to natural paths. But we should be able to take some breaks along the way. – And one of the things we will do, each time we get going along, is (in various ways) try to rid ourselves of the idea that what we really need is a map that takes us from A to B. (Glendinning 2004: 162; cf. Glendinning 2002: 76, n. 3)13 218

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Notes 1 I wasn’t aware of the importance of this argument when I wrote Diamond (1988) or (1995). 2 Some critics of Wittgenstein suggest that he made too much of the criticical term ‘nonsensical’. But this criticism of Wittgenstein rests on the idea that he calls certain sentences nonsensical because they fail to measure up to some special standard or other. The criticism depends upon ascribing to Wittgenstein some special notion of nonsensicality, over and above the ordinary idea of having, perhaps unwittingly, failed to say anything. We can fail to think through what we take ourselves to be saying; if we had, or had tried to, we might have recognized an incoherence in our intentions. We might, e.g. not have decided whether to mean one thing or another by some word; we might have left it unsettled which meaning we wanted, although a clear look at both possibilities would have shown us we did not really want to come down for either, or for anything else. This sort of phenomenon isn’t being labelled as ‘saying nothing’ on account of some Tractatus doctrine about nonsensicality. The Tractatus point is rather that the activity of attempted philosophical clarification can reveal to us that we have got into that sort of position. 3 For a reading of the Tractatus which takes an opposed view of logical syntax, see Hacker (2003). I discuss the issues raised by Hacker in Diamond (in preparation). 4 I did not make this point sufficiently clear in Introduction II to Diamond (1991: 13–39). I did not there anticipate possible misunderstandings, and what I wrote has been taken to mean that a ‘resolute’ interpretation of the Tractatus should not be extended to (some or all of) Wittgenstein’s propositions about the nature of language. The issue of a ‘resolute’ interpretation of the book should be separated sharply from the question whether Wittgenstein had genuinely freed himself from metaphysics in his thought about language. In fact, I think that propositions like ‘Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions’ are particularly good examples of propositions we are meant to be able to recognize to be plainly nonsensical, to have no content, speakable or unspeakable. It is nevertheless arguable that they are also excellent examples of how Wittgenstein had not freed himself from a metaphysical conception of language. 5 For a very interesting treatment of the issues in this paragraph, see Schulte (2002). 6 See the ‘Introduction’ to Anscombe (1981: vii–x). 7 Compare PI §312. Here, too, Wittgenstein invites us to consider the possibility of our distinguishing certain surfaces which have patches that produce pain when we touch them. 8 The case, as I discuss it, is not meant to correspond to any specific reading, but my description was guided in some respects by Michael Forster’s reading in Forster (unpublished). 9 See also Wolfgang Freitag’s discussion of the issues here, in Freitag (B.Phil thesis, Oxford University). He takes the reflexive character of philosophy as Wittgenstein understood it to be central, where reflexivity would (in the case I was discussing) involve treating ‘same sense’, ‘contradict’ and so on, not as terms whose application was determined by a kind of meta-account but as terms of our language, like any others, the grammar of which we may need to attend to. I should also mention that the role I have given above to complicatedness is meant to pick up on ideas which are especially prominent in Wittgenstein’s Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, vol. II. I have discussed some of the issues in this paragraph in Diamond (1999) and Diamond (forthcoming).

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10 For a further discussion of the issues here, see Diamond (1989). 11 This reading of Wittgenstein on perspicuity is, in some respects, close to that of G.P. Baker, criticized by P.M.S. Hacker in Hacker (2001: 346). Hacker dismisses all such readings of Wittgenstein on perspicuity by appeal to Wittgenstein’s writings and lectures of the early 1930s. For a discussion of this view of the relevance of Wittgenstein’s thinking about method in the early 1930s to his understanding of philosophy in the Investigations, see Schulte (2002). 12 Again, see Schulte (2002) on the various strands in Wittgenstein’s conception of his ‘method’. 13 This paper was read at the conference on Wittgenstein’s later philosophical methods, in Venice in September 2002. I am very grateful for the helpful comments and discussion on that occasion. I am also grateful for comments and suggestions from James Conant.

Bibliography Anscombe, G.E.M. (1981) ‘Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind’, Collected Papers, vol. II, Oxford: Blackwell. Diamond, C. (1988) ‘Throwing Away the Ladder’, Philosophy 63 (1988), 5–27. Diamond, C. (1989) ‘Rules: Looking in the Right Place’, in D.Z. Phillips and P. Winch (eds) Wittgenstein: Attention to Particulars, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Diamond, C. (1991) The Realistic Spirit, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Diamond, C. (1995) ‘Wittgenstein, Ludwig Joseph Johann’, in J. Kim and E. Sosa (eds) A Companion to Metaphysics, Oxford: Blackwell. Diamond, C. (1999) ‘How Old are the Bones?’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supp. vol. 73, 99–134. Diamond, C. (in preparation) ‘Logical Syntax in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus’. Diamond, C. (forthcoming) ‘Wittgenstein on Religious Belief’, in D.Z. Phillips (ed.) Religion and Wittgenstein’s Legacy, Aldershot: Ashgate. Forster, M. (unpublished) ‘Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy: The Question of the “Arbitrariness” of Grammar’. Freitag, W. (unpublished) ‘Truisms and Altruisms: Some Reflections on Wittgenstein and the Private Language Argument’ (B.Phil. thesis, Oxford University). Gerrard, S. (2002) ‘One Wittgenstein’, in Erich Reck (ed.) From Frege to Wittgenstein: Perspectives on Early Analytic Philosophy, New York: Oxford University Press. Glenndinning, S. (2002) ‘Wittgenstein’s Apocalyptic Librarian’, in R. Haller and K. Puhl (eds) Wittgenstein and the Future of Philosophy. A Reassessment after 50 years/Wittgenstein und die Zukunft der Philosophie. Ein Neubewertung nach 50 Jahren, Vienna: öbv & hpt. Glenndinning, S. (2004) ‘Wittgenstein’s Nomadism’, in H. Carel and D. Gomez (eds): What Philosophy Is, London: Continuum. Hacker, P.M.S. (2001) ‘Philosophy’, in H.J. Glock (ed.) Wittgenstein: A Critical Reader, Oxford: Blackwell. Hacker, P.M.S. (2003) ‘Wittgenstein, Carnap and the New American Wittgensteinians’, Philosophical Quarterly 53, 1–23. Schulte, J. (2002) ‘Wittgenstein’s Method’, in R. Haller and K. Puhl (eds) Wittgenstein and the Future of Philosophy. A Reassessment after 50 years/Wittgenstein und die Zukunft der Philosophie. Ein Neubewertung nach 50 Jahren, Vienna: bv & hpt.

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11 ALL KINDS OF NONSENSE Hans-Johann Glock

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Throughout his career, Wittgenstein propounded two main claims concerning nonsense. First, all metaphysics is nonsensical. The proper task of philosophy is not to answer metaphysical questions by producing theses, doctrines or theories, but to show that they rest on conceptual confusions. Second, ‘the negation of an a priori proposition’, e.g. ‘7 + 5 = 12’ or ‘Some objects are red and green all over at the same time’, is not a necessarily false proposition, but a nonsensical combination of signs (see §§251–2). By the same token, the a priori or necessary propositions themselves do not exclude a genuine possibility, since in their case no such possibility can meaningfully be specified (TLP 3.03–3.05; AWL 139–40, 165–6). Instead, the later Wittgenstein argued, such propositions ban a certain combination of words as meaningless from our language. Necessary propositions are not necessary truths, but norms that exclude certain sign combinations from our language. Both of these ideas have been vigorously contested by mainstream analytic philosophers. In recent years, Wittgenstein’s conception of nonsense has also been the central focus of the proponents of a ‘New Wittgenstein’ (Creary and Read 2000). Two claims set the New Wittgensteinians apart. The first is a reading of the Tractatus. In the final sections, Wittgenstein condemns the propositions of the Tractatus itself as nonsensical (6.54–7). According to a standard interpretation, his reason was that these propositions try to express truths about the essence of language which, by Wittgenstein’s own lights, cannot be expressed in philosophical propositions, but which manifest themselves in non-philosophical propositions properly analysed. According to the New Wittgensteinians, by contrast, the Tractatus does not consist of illuminating nonsense, nonsense that vainly tries to hint at ineffable truths, but of ‘plain nonsense’ (Diamond 1991: 181; Conant 1992: 198), nonsense in the same drastic sense as gibberish like ‘ab sur ah’ or ‘piggly tiggle wiggle’. The purpose of the exercise is therapeutic. By producing such sheer nonsense, Wittgenstein tries to unmask the absurd nature of philosophy and to wean us off the temptation to engage in it. 221

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The second claim is an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s conception of nonsense. According to the New Wittgensteinians, his conception of nonsense, both early and late, was ‘austere’ rather than ‘substantial’ (Creary and Read 2000: 12–13; Diamond 1991: 111–12; 2000: 153, 165; Conant 2002: 380–3). There are two aspects to this contrast. First, according to the austere conception, nonsense is always a matter of privation. Whereas the substantial conception of nonsense allows for ‘positive nonsense’, nonsense that results from combining meaningful expressions in illegitimate ways, the austere view allows only for ‘negative nonsense’, nonsense which results from our not having assigned a meaning to expressions in a certain context. Second, the austere conception of nonsense is monistic. Whereas the substantial conception distinguishes between different types of nonsense, the austere view insists that from a philosophical or logical point of view there is only one kind of nonsense: ‘all nonsense is just nonsense’ (Diamond 2000: 165); logically or semantically speaking there is no difference between the statements of metaphysicians and the babblings of a drunkard. Finally, it should be noted that the New Wittgensteinians not only ascribe these views to Wittgenstein, they also subscribe to them. They think that the statements of the Tractatus are, indeed, nothing but plain nonsense. They also endorse the austere conception of nonsense, with its exclusive emphasis on privation and its monism. In this chapter, I explore Wittgenstein’s conception of nonsense with particular emphasis on the later work. Two ideas provide succour for the austere conception. The strong contextualism of the Tractatus according to which a word has a meaning only in the context of a proposition can be used to support the privation view. And several passages in the later work endorse a monistic conception of nonsense. Nevertheless, my account differs sharply from that of the New Wittgensteinians, both exegetically and substantially. Wittgenstein never actually used contextualism to support the privation view. On the contrary, both early and late he allowed that nonsense can result not just from failure to assign a meaning, but also from combining meaningful expressions in a way that is prohibited by the rules for the use of these expressions. Furthermore, the monistic conception of nonsense is off-set and superseded by a pluralistic one, especially in the Philosophical Investigations. More importantly, the two ideas that favour the austere conception are mistaken, and they are incompatible with some central insights of the Investigations. Strong contextualism is ruled out by Wittgenstein’s insistence that the meaning of a word is determined by its use in the language. Monism is incompatible with reductio ad absurdum arguments, including Wittgenstein’s own, but also with his recognition that there are different degrees of linguistic understanding. There are many kinds of nonsense, and one of them results from the illicit combination of meaningful words. The structure of my chapter is as follows. I shall first touch on the relation between combinatorial nonsense and contextualism. In section 2, I shall argue 222

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that the later Wittgenstein allows for combinatorial nonsense. He rejected a certain explanation of such nonsense, the ‘meaning-body’ conception, but this rejection is compatible with the idea that a string of words can be nonsense because of what its components mean. The third section tackles the question of how many kinds of nonsense there are. It explores the tension between monistic and pluralistic views in the later Wittgenstein and maintains that, by contrast to gibberish, we understand not just the syntactic construction of philosophical nonsense, but also its components. Otherwise we could not operate with latent nonsense in order to transform it into patent nonsense. What unites latent with patent nonsense is that there is, ultimately, no way of explaining it coherently. But this does not prevent us from handling such constructions in a reductio, no matter whether it occurs in mathematics or in the elenctic arguments of the Investigations. The final section raises two unresolved issues: How should we classify different types of nonsense? And how can latent nonsense feature in a reductio, given that it is incapable of being either true or false?

1 Combinatorial nonsense and contextualism Both the German Unsinn and the English ‘nonsense’ can mean at least three different things. In one sense, they apply to statements or beliefs and mean something like patently false or unreasonable. In this capacity, the term was widely used in the enlightenment, to brand superstition and religious dogma. At present, it is popular among politicians, who tend to disparage uncomfortable allegations for example as ‘absolute and utter nonsense’. I shall refer to this as absurdity. In a second sense, the term applies to actions of all sorts, including linguistic utterances, and means something like ‘obviously pointless’ or futile. I shall refer to this as futility. Both these usages retain a connection to the original meaning of Unsinn, in that a nonsensical statement or action betokens lack of sense or even sanity. In a third and historically most recent sense, the term applies to linguistic expressions or utterances and means something like ‘meaningless’ or ‘unintelligible’. I shall refer to this as linguistic nonsense or simply as nonsense. Wittgenstein seems to have been the first major thinker to link philosophy in general to linguistic nonsense in particular. Many philosophers of the past have disparaged the theories of their predecessors as false, unfounded or futile. But according to Wittgenstein metaphysical theories suffer from a more basic defect, namely that of being nonsensical. It is not just that they provide wrong answers, but that the questions they address are misguided questions to begin with, what the logical positivists later called ‘pseudo-problems’ (see §§109, 119; TLP 4.003, 3.323f.). Kant already held that many of the questions that give rise to metaphysical theories are misguided to begin with (Critique of Pure Reason B82–3). 223

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The idea that these questions are not just futile but linguistically nonsensical, however, seems to have entered Wittgenstein’s thought through Frege and Russell. Russell’s theory of types introduced a systematic dichotomy between propositions which are true or false and statements which are meaningless, although they may be impeccable as regards vocabulary and syntax. (1) The class of lions is a lion is not just obviously false, it is ‘meaningless’ or ‘nonsense’, since it predicates of a class what can only be predicated of individuals. Russell’s theory of types blocks such nonsense by prohibiting sentences which predicate of a thing of one logical type – e.g. classes – properties which can only be predicated of things of a different type – e.g. individuals. The Tractatus, for its part, rejects as nonsensical not just sentences like (1), but also Russell’s attempt to prevent such sentences by type-restrictions like (2) The class of lions is not a lion. Indeed, the famous finale condemns the propositions of the Tractatus itself as ‘nonsensical’. This is not the place to go into this extraordinary conclusion (see Hacker 2000; Glock 2004 and 1996b: 258–64, 330–6). In order to become clear about Wittgenstein’s later views on nonsense, however, we must attend to the question of whether the Tractatus allows for combinatorial nonsense. There are two arguments in favour of the view that the book only admits of negative nonsense. The first is provided by the following two passages (Diamond 1991: 196–7; Conant 2002: 404, n. 92, 411). 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 (heißt nichts) is that there is no property called ‘identical’. The sentence 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) Frege says: every legitimately formed proposition must have a sense; and I say: every possible proposition is legitimately formed, and if it lacks a sense, this can only be (my emph.) because we have given no meaning to some of its constituents. Hence ‘Socrates is identical’ means nothing (sagt nichts) because we have not given a meaning to ‘identical’ as an adjective. For if it appears as identity-sign, it symbolizes in a completely different manner and way – the signifying relation is a different one, – hence, also the symbol is entirely 224

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different in the two cases; the two symbols only accidentally share the sign. (TLP 5.4733) Contrast (3) Socrates is identical and

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(4) Socrates is identical with the husband of Xanthippe. According to our passages, that (3) ‘means nothing’ or ‘says nothing’ is exclusively due to the fact that we have failed to give ‘identical’ any adjectival meaning. Of course, we could lay down such a meaning by an ‘arbitrary determination’, stipulating, for example, that ‘identical’ is to mean ‘human’. In that case, however, in (3) and (4) the tokens of ‘identical’ symbolize in an entirely different manner; the sentences merely have a sign in common. The failure of (3) to say something is due not to the meaning ‘identical’ has in statements like (4), since there is no sign with the same meaning in those two propositions. Instead, it is due to ‘identical’ not having been assigned a meaning in (3). This, in turn, suggests that lack of sense in a propositional sign can only result from privation, from failure to assign a meaning to one of its constituents. According to the second argument, this restriction to negative nonsense is no coincidence, but explained by the contextualism shared by Frege and Wittgenstein (Diamond 1991: 98–100; Conant 2002: 398–405; Whitherspoon 2000: 321–5). In the Foundations of Arithmetic, Frege adopted a strong, restrictive form of contextualism: ‘Only in the context of a proposition do words mean something’ (1953: §62). Frege himself never adapted this context-principle to his later division of content into sense and meaning. The early Wittgenstein did just that, although it is essential to his distinction between sense and meaning that propositions do not have a meaning, and that names do not have a sense. Within these altered parameters, the Tractatus repeats Frege’s restrictive principle: ‘Only the proposition has sense. Only in the context of a proposition has a name meaning’ (3.3, see 3.314). The restrictive principle that a word has meaning only in the context of a proposition seems to clinch the case for an austere conception of nonsense. It provides the crucial premise for the following argument:

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P1 A word (name) has meaning only in the context of a proposition P2 A proposition is a sentence with a sense C No component of a sequence of signs that lacks a sense can have a meaning. 225

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The TLP is definitely committed to P2: a proposition is, by definition, a propositional sign with a sense, one that has been projected onto reality (see 3.1ff., 3.31ff., 3.5, 4). Furthermore, the argument is valid. Finally, from (C) it follows that no part of (3) has a meaning, since (3) does not have a sense. It also follows that no part of (3) could mean what it does in a meaningful proposition like (4). In the wake of Frege and Wittgenstein, the restrictive context-principle (P1) has been repeated by countless philosophers of language, Quine and Davidson pre-eminent among them. Nevertheless, it has one major shortcoming: it is wrong! Consider the following two columns: to be to have to do

to abide to arise to awake.

Two things about these words are indisputable. First, they are not part of a proposition. Second, they are neither meaningless nor nonsensical, but do have a meaning. The words in the first column are the auxiliary verbs of English, the words in the second are the first three items from the dreaded list of irregular English verbs. Next, consider the following extract from the Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary: nonsense n 1 a: words or language having no meaning or conveying no intelligible ideas b (1): language, conduct, or an idea that is absurd or contrary to good sense (2): an instance of absurd action 2 a: things of no importance or value: trifles b: affected or impudent conduct. It would be absurd to maintain that the words printed in bold at the beginning of dictionary entries are meaningless, all the more so since the text that follows specifies what they mean. These objections cannot be defused by invoking the distinction between type and token. Not only is it obvious that, for example, the type ‘to awake’ has a meaning in English, it is equally obvious that the particular token printed above is a meaningful word of English, rather than a mere scribble or collage of letters, even though it occurs on its own, outside the context of a proposition. In ordinary parlance, we ascribe meaning primarily, though not exclusively, to words. Dictionary definitions, the very paradigm of explanations of meaning, paraphrase words or phrases rather than sentences. This is no coincidence. Far from being the ‘primary vehicle of meaning’ or the ‘units of significance’, as certain contextualists have it, most sentences are complex signs. Their meaning depends on the meaning of their constituents (Dummett 1981: 3, 593; cf. Quine 1980: 38–9; Diamond 1991: 108–11). By and large, 226

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we master sentences by learning how to construct them from familiar words. Furthermore, understanding the components and mode of composition of a sentence is a necessary condition for a genuine understanding of the whole sentence, even if, as the later Wittgenstein argued, it is not always sufficient (see §§350–1; BB 105–6; RPP II §§93–4). It may be objected that my animadversions against the restrictive principle are based on our ordinary notion of meaning, whereas Frege and the Tractatus were operating with theoretical notions to which our standard criteria for meaningfulness do not apply. This response is not available to those who maintain that the Tractatus consists of plain nonsense, since such nonsense cannot constitute a theory. But Frege and Wittgenstein did operate with notions of meaning that differ from the ordinary one and are part of philosophical systems. Yet this does not make them immune to my objection. For they are also committed to claims that involve our ordinary semantic notions. Otherwise, their pronouncements would simply lack the relevance that they and their followers have attached to them. If Wittgenstein’s notions of sense and meaning were simply stipulations, his notions of senselessness and nonsensicality would be equally free-floating. In that case, his claim that philosophical propositions and questions are nonsensical because they contain words without meaning would not have to worry metaphysicians. Even if true, it would not show that these propositions and questions lacked the kind of sense that metaphysicians thought they possessed. Similarly, one cannot invoke the restrictive principle to condemn ‘identical’ in (3) as meaningless, unless that principle is based on the established notions of sense and meaning. But if we use the word ‘meaning’ ‘as it is normally used (and how else are we to use it?)’ (see §246), words can and do have a meaning outside the context of a sentence. The reason why the early Wittgenstein’s restrictive principle fails to heed this point lies indeed in his extraordinary use of the word ‘meaning’. According to the Tractatus, meaning is something possessed by ‘simple signs’ or (logically proper) ‘names’. The meaning of such a name is the (simple, unanalysable) object it stands for (3.203, 3.22). The sense of an elementary proposition is a function of its constituent names, i.e. of their meanings – the objects they represent – and of their form, their combinatorial possibilities (3.318). The flipside of this compositionalism is that the role of names is to contribute to the determination of the sense of the elementary proposition. Outside the context of a sentence, Wittgenstein seems to have held, they cannot have such a role. This line of reasoning rests on two assumptions, namely, first, that the ultimate constituents of propositions are all names and, second, that the meaning of a word is the object it stands for. Both assumptions were conclusively criticized in the Investigations (§§1–8, 40). Even if we accept them, however, the Tractatus is entitled at most to hold that names must be capable of occurring in propositions. It is not entitled to hold that they only have meaning 227

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when they actually occur in propositions, as the restrictive principle requires. Like a person, an expression can have a role without actually fulfilling that role at every given instant. The early Wittgenstein may have overlooked this fact because of an important feature of the picture theory. The picture theory conceives of propositions as a kind of picture or model. A paradigmatic example of such a model is provided by the initial inspiration for the picture theory, namely, the law-court reconstruction of traffic accidents with the aid of dolls and toy-cars (NB 29.9.14). It is, indeed, the case that the individual elements of such a model do not have what the Tractatus calls a meaning outside of the model. It is only within a particular reconstruction that a doll or toy-car has a meaning, i.e. deputizes or goes proxy for a particular person or object. Outside of such a reconstruction, for example in a box, it certainly does not represent, e.g. Ms Smith or the lorry of Mr Anderson. Words of a natural language, however, are different in this respect. Adjectives and verbs have a meaning even outside the context of a proposition. This even holds for proper names, the use of which is more flexible. They have a denotation generally, because of their role in a persisting practice, not merely on a case-by-case basis. It is not just on a particular occasion, through a fiat relating to its occurrence in a specific token-sentence, that tokens of ‘Socrates’ stand either for the Athenian philosopher or the Byzantine theologian or the Brazilian footballer. At most, it is possible to alter the denotation of proper names on a specific occasion. In the Tractatus we already find ideas that are at odds with the restrictive principle, namely its compositionalism. One understands a proposition ‘by understanding its components’, and in translation from one language into another we translate not each individual proposition but ‘the constituents of propositions’. ‘The meanings of simple signs (words) must be explained to us if we are to understand them. With propositions, however, we make ourselves understood’ (4.024–4.026). This suggests that the early Wittgenstein did not take TLP 3.3 as literally as the proponents of the austere conception suppose, and as they themselves need to do in order to construct the aforementioned argument against combinatorial nonsense. Wittgenstein’s later conception of meaning militates even more against the restrictive principle. According to the Investigations, the meaning of a word is its use. ‘For a large class of cases – though not for all – in which we employ the word “meaning” it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language’ (§43, see §30; BB 69). Alternatively, the later Wittgenstein declared that the meaning of a word is determined by its use, or by the rules for its correct use. There are important differences between these formulations, and the second one is superior (see Glock 1996a). But both concur on two points: whether a sign is meaningful depends on whether there is an established use, whether it can be employed to perform meaningful linguistic acts; and what meaning it has depends on how it can be used. For us, the 228

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crucial point is this: it is individual words and phrases rather than whole sentences that have a rule-governed use in the language. By parity of reason, it is individual words rather than whole sentences that have a meaning. The same moral emerges from the dictum ‘The meaning of a word is what is explained by the explanation of meaning’ (§560). As TLP 4.026 already recognized, we typically explain the use of individual words or phrases rather than of whole sentences. To be sure, in the Investigations Wittgenstein quotes Frege’s restrictive principle with approval ‘A word has meaning only as part of a sentence’ (PI §49). But, with occasional exceptions, Wittgenstein explains the context-principle in a non-restrictive way, one that is compatible with the idea that individual words can mean something without actually occurring in a proposition (see M 54; BT 1; PG 1, 44; cf. PR 59). What he insists on is that they must be capable of occurring in propositions. He also suggests that such occurrences of words are semantically primary in the following sense. A proposition is the minimal unit by which a move is made in the language-game: only propositions can say something. There are no half-propositions in the sense in which there is half a loaf of bread. By the same token, naming an object is no more a move in a language-game than putting a piece on the board is a move in chess. Naming alludes to a sentential context in that it is essentially a ‘preparation’ for sentential use (Waismann 1965 13–4, 199, 318–20). There is a general dependency of words on sentences in that the practice of explaining words is a preparation for their employment in sentences. On the other hand, any particular sentential employment presupposes that the component words have a meaning in advance, on account of an antecedent practice. The kernel of truth in contextualism is that the meaning of a word is determined by how it can be used within sentences. But it does not follow that the word has meaning only in the context of a sentence. On the contrary, it is the individual word which has such a use. If it is clear what role tokens of a type-word would play in a proposition, tokens of that type have a meaning, whether or not they actually fulfil that role. There is a difference between having a use in the language and being actually used on a particular occasion. There is also a difference between a word having a meaning and a sentence being used to say something. Wittgenstein was well aware of this. He distinguished sharply between meaning and sense in the Tractatus, and even in his later work he tended to speak of the Bedeutung of words and the Sinn of sentences.1 Hence, the privation conception of nonsense cannot be defended by appeal to contextualism. But perhaps it has intrinsic plausibility. One might concede that ‘Socrates’ might have a meaning outside the context of a meaningful sentence, while insisting that it lacks meaning when it occurs within the context of a nonsensical sentence like (3). One problem with this rejoinder is that it is at odds with the privation view. If in (3) ‘Socrates’ is meaningless not because we have failed to assign a meaning to it but because of its context, 229

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then its lack of meaning is not just a matter of privation, it is a matter of being in inappropriate company, just as the combinatorial view has it. Furthermore, the claim that ‘Socrates’ lacks meaning in (3) is implausible. One can establish who ‘Socrates’ stands for by consulting an encyclopaedia, and establish what the term ‘identical’ means by consulting a dictionary (Hacker 2003: 10, 20). One can also translate (in the case of ‘identical’) or transpose (in the case of ‘Socrates’) the constituents of (3) into another language. Consequently, there is no obstacle to ‘Socrates’ meaning the same in (3) as it does in (4); in both cases, it is probably the name of the snubnosed Athenian philosopher. Of course, on some occasions words might be used with a meaning that differs from their normal one. In that case, their literal meaning will differ from their speaker’s meaning, their meaning on occasion of utterance. That meaning is to be gleaned from the speaker’s explanations. For instance, if someone utters both (3) and (4), and explains the term ‘identical’ in both as meaning human, that is what he means by it. And then his utterance of (4) is nonsensical, because of the meaning he has given to ‘identical’. The explanations speakers give of their words cannot be discarded as being of merely psychological importance (cf. Diamond 1991: 99, 106). What a speaker means by a word in a specific utterance is not determined by what words or images happen to cross her mind; but it is determined by how the speaker would explain her utterance when challenged. As the later Wittgenstein realized, the proper way to avoid psychologism is not to sweep the topic of understanding and meaning something by a word under the carpet, as Frege and the Tractatus had done. Rather, it is to realize that understanding and meaning something depend not on mental accompaniments of words, but on speaker’s explanations (Glock and Preston 1995). The privation conception entails that all components of (3) are totally and equally bereft of meaning. But when we approach (3) in the spirit of the Investigations, namely by considering how we would react to it, we reach a different conclusion. If someone uttered (3), our first response would be to treat it as an incomplete sentence. We would be liable to ask ‘Identical with whom?’, precisely because ‘is identical’ is not a meaningless sign, but part of a two-place predicate. Imagine that our interlocutor responds by insisting ‘Not identical with anybody; he is just identical period!’. Being philosophers, we might then suspect that by ‘identical’ he means ‘self-identical’. If he denied this, however, we would be at a loss. The trouble with (3) concerns ‘identical’ rather than ‘Socrates’. No substitution for ‘Socrates’ would render (3) meaningful, given the literal meaning of ‘identical’. By contrast, replacing ‘identical’ by any number of one-place predicates restores sense. It is ‘identical’ rather than ‘Socrates’ that is being misused in (3), and it is the combination of ‘Socrates is’ with ‘identical’ that makes for nonsense. Once we take to heart the shortcomings of strong contextualism and the difference between literal and speaker’s meaning, the insistence that lack of 230

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sense is always the result of privation is either false or trivial. It is false if it means that none of the components of (3) have a literal meaning, and the same meaning as in (4), or that the nonsensicality of (3) cannot result from combining ‘identical’ with ‘Socrates is’. It is trivial and inconsequential if it means that we could always give a meaning to any combination of words, by assigning a new meaning to one or more of its constituents, or to the combination as a whole.

2 Combinatorial nonsense in the later work Of course, one cannot rule out that 5.473 and 5.4733 were meant to preclude combinatorial nonsense simply by noting that such a preclusion would be unwarranted. But it is clear from other passages as well as from Wittgenstein’s later comments that the Tractatus condoned combinatorial as well as negative nonsense (see Glock 1996b: 214–16, 260; Hacker 2003: 12). Even more pertinent to my present concerns is evidence from the later period, which suggests that the import of 5.473 and 5.4733 does not lie in the rejection of combinatorial nonsense. In his record of Wittgenstein’s lectures of 1930–1, G.E. Moore reports:

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Later on [Wittgenstein] said that for any sign whatever there could be a method of projection such that it makes sense, but that when he said of a particular expression ‘That means nothing’ or is ‘nonsense’, what he meant was ‘With the common method of projection that means nothing’, giving as an instance that when he called the sentence ‘It is due to human weakness that we can’t write down all the cardinal numbers’ ‘meaningless’, he meant that it is meaningless if the person who says it is using ‘due to human weakness’, as in ‘It is due to human weakness that we can’t write down a billion cardinal numbers’. (M 58) Here Wittgenstein starts out by making the point of 5.473. (3) is not ‘illegitimate in itself’, because the sign can be projected onto reality by making an appropriate stipulation. Nevertheless, (3) can be condemned as nonsense, because, in the parlance of the Tractatus, there is a common or standard method of projecting the sign onto reality. In the parlance of the later Wittgenstein, (3) is nonsense because there is a common or standard way of using ‘identical’, and in this standard way the sign cannot be meaningfully combined with ‘Socrates is . . .’. This squares well with the fact that 5.473 declares (3) meaningless on the grounds that ‘there is no property called “identical” ’, i.e. by reference to the fact that ‘identical’ is not standardly used to signify a property. A sign that has a method of projection, that is used to signify something, is a symbol. Accordingly, nonsense here results precisely 231

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from an illegitimate combination of symbols rather than from failure to assign a meaning to signs. Further confirmation for this interpretation comes from the Philosophical Remarks: The question whether philosophers have always so far spoken nonsense might be answered: No, but they have not noticed that they use a word in quite different meanings. In this sense it is not unconditionally nonsense to say that one thing is as identical as another, for somebody who has this conviction means something by the word ‘identical’ at the moment (perhaps ‘large’). But he does not know that he is here using the word in a meaning other than that in which it is used in 2 + 2 = 4. (PR 55–6) What makes a proposition like (5) Socrates is as identical as Plato nonsensical is the way in which its components are standardly used: ‘identical’ is not standardly used as a scaling adjective. By a similar token, a philosopher who utters (6) It is due to human weakness that we can’t write down all the cardinal numbers is speaking nonsense if he is thinking of human frailty, but not if he means that nothing a human being could do would count as writing down all the cardinal numbers. Far from regarding the explanations that speaker’s give of what they mean by individual words as irrelevant, Wittgenstein regarded them as crucial to establishing whether a particular utterance is nonsensical. Seen in this light, our passages do not rule out combinatorial nonsense. Rather, they anticipate an important point of the later work. Meaning can be a feature of both type-expressions and token-expressions, whether words or sentences. But making sense is a feature of token-sentences. For Wittgenstein, as for Ryle, it is uses of words on a particular occasion which have, or lack, sense. Furthermore, both were especially interested in the uses that philosophers make of words in a specific question, statement or argument. Whether an utterance makes sense, and what sense it makes, is not simply determined by the linguistic form of the sentence uttered, its constituents and mode of combination (as compositionalism implies). Instead, it depends on the circumstances under which the utterance is made, including the prior interaction between speaker and hearer (see §489, II 221; OC §§348–50, 433; AWL 21; BB 9–10; Z §328; Ryle 1961). This marks an important difference between Wittgenstein’s earlier idea of logical syntax and his later idea of grammar. Wittgenstein used ‘logical 232

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syntax’ (till 1931) and thereafter ‘grammar’ as label for the constitutive rules of a language. Furthermore, like logical syntax, the grammar of a language is a ‘system of rules for the combination of symbols’. These rules determine ‘which combinations make sense and which don’t, which are allowed and which are not allowed’, and nonsense results from transgressing them (LWL 46–17, my emph.; see Hacker 2002: 12–17). What changes is the conception of how these rules operate. Unlike logical syntax, grammar is not a comprehensive calculus of rigid and precise rules, but more akin to the rules of a loosely structured and flexible game. Some combinations of signs make sense and others don’t; yet this distinction applies not to type-combinations, but to token-combinations in a specific context of utterance. In the Investigations the term ‘rules of grammar’ and its cognates appear only rarely. Rumours to the contrary notwithstanding, however, the book does not abandon the idea of grammar as a system of constitutive rules (see §§371–3, 496–7, 558). Nor did Wittgenstein abandon the idea that these rules draw the bounds between correct and incorrect uses of words. ‘It is correct to say “I know what you are thinking” and wrong to say “I know what I am thinking” (A whole cloud of philosophy condensed into a drop of grammar.)’ Furthermore, such incorrect usage can amount to ‘philosophers’ nonsense’ (PI II 221–2). Finally, the book continues to uphold the idea that a ‘combination of words’ can fail to make sense, and that in excluding it ‘from the sphere of language’ we set limits to ‘the domain of language’ (§§498–9). It is combinations of words that make or lack sense, and whether the occurrence of a word on a particular occasion results in nonsense depends at least partly on what other words it is combined with. Proponents of austerity characterize the positive conception of nonsense they reject not just as maintaining that nonsense can result from combining expressions that are individually meaningful in an illegitimate way. They also associate it with a more specific idea. It is the claim that such combinations are nonsensical ‘because of the incompatible meanings of the words involved’, because the meanings of the parts ‘clash with one another’ and hence ‘fail to fit together so as to make sense’ (Conant 2001: 23). This is a claim that Wittgenstein would indeed reject as misguided. It amounts to the idea that behind each word there is a ‘meaning-body’, a non-linguistic entity which determines how it is to be used correctly. According to this view, a word is analogous to a single painted surface of an otherwise invisible glassbody with a certain geometrical shape, e.g. a cube or pyramid. The combinatorial possibilities of the visible surface depend on the shape of the body behind it. Similarly, we can derive the rules for the use of a word from its meaning, since the latter is a (concrete, abstract or mental) entity which determines the combinatorial possibilities of the word (PG 52–8; AWL 50–1). The meaning-body conception is definitely mistaken. The meaning of an expression is not an object associated with it. Consequently, there can be no question of combinatorial nonsense resulting from a ‘clash’ of meaning 233

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entities, whatever that metaphor might amount to. By the same token, it is at the very least misleading to suggest that combinatorial nonsense is the result of combining expressions with incompatible meanings. At the same time, it is legitimate to hold that a combination of signs may be infelicitous because of what its constituents mean. Compare (7) A ant is crawling along the floor and (8) The no it blue with Carnap’s (1959) example (9) Caesar is a prime number. In (7) there is a phonetic or morphological incompatibility between ‘a’ and ‘ant’. (8) is garbled because it combines words of the wrong syntactic category. Grammaticality is restored if we replace ‘no’ by any number of nouns and ‘it’ by the copula. By contrast, what makes the components of (9) incompatible is neither their phonetic character nor their syntactic category. Sense can be restored if we replace ‘Caesar’ by another name – e.g. ‘5’ – or ‘prime number’ by another count noun, e.g. ‘general’. Rather, (9) is nonsense because of what its components mean, because of the fact that the role of ‘Caesar’ is to refer to a person while the role of ‘is a prime number’ is to classify numbers according to their divisibility. One need not reify ‘meanings’ in order to speak about what an expression means. The ‘what’ here is not a relative pronoun, as in ‘what the expression is written on’, but an interrogative pronoun (Latin quid rather than quod ). It indirectly introduces a question, namely: ‘What does the expression mean?’. That an expression has a meaning simply means that there is an answer to this question (see Rundle 1979: §47). Some passages suggest that Wittgenstein might object even to this position. One of his criticisms of the meaning-body conception is that the rules for the use of a word do not follow from the meanings of signs, they partly constitute them. The rule of negation elimination, for example, according to which ‘p’ follows from ‘~~p’, does not follow from the meaning of ‘~’. Without that rule the sign would not have the meaning it has. And if the rule were changed, if we accepted instead ‘~~p = ~p’ the meaning of ‘~’ would change correspondingly (see 147n; PG 184; AWL 4; RFM 42, 398). Proponents of austerity might extrapolate this line of reasoning as follows. It is not the case that (9) is nonsense because of what the constituent expressions mean. On the contrary, these constituent expressions mean what they do partly because competent speakers of English reject (9) as nonsense. 234

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Unfortunately, this extrapolation misapplies an important insight. It is correct that words do not have a meaning independently of the overall use that a linguistic community makes of them. This is perfectly compatible, however, with the idea that individual uses of words can be illegitimate because of what their components mean, because of how they are standardly applied and explained. Thus, (9) is excluded by the explanations of its constituents, for example: ‘Julius Caesar’ is the name of a Roman general ‘is a prime number’ is a predicate that applies to any number that is divisible only by 1 and by itself. Wittgenstein reminded us that the meaning of a word is what the explanation of meaning explains. He also stressed that explanations of meaning are not simply certain forms of words, regarded in isolation. They are part of a whole practice. But as part of such a practice, they can preclude certain uses of words as nonsensical. Anyone who responds to the above explanations by uttering or accepting (9) will be deemed to have misunderstood these explanations. Of course, speakers of English could suddenly regard (9) as compatible with these explanations. In that case, however, they would have changed the meaning either of the components of (9), or of the components of the explanans. To acknowledge the priority of the general practice over the particular utterance is in no way to reify meanings or to accept the picture of clashing abstract entities.

3 How many kinds of nonsense?

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Both early and late Wittgenstein allowed not just bare nonsense, the uttering of signs that have no meaning in a certain language, but also combinatorial nonsense, the nonsensical combination of meaningful signs. Moreover, he was right to do so. This does not yet tell us, however, precisely what distinctions between kinds of nonsense Wittgenstein, in fact, drew or should have drawn. In the later work we encounter a tension between a monistic and a pluralistic tendency. Wittgenstein famously remarked that ‘the results of philosophy are the uncovering of one or another piece of plain (schlichten) nonsense’ (§119). But the term schlicht here need signify no more than that we are dealing with linguistic nonsense, and the passage does not address the question of how many kinds of linguistic nonsense there are. On that question, the Investigations features one explicit and well-known distinction, namely between patent and disguised nonsense.

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What I want to teach is: to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense. (§464, see §524)

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Yet another passage is at odds both with the privation view and with monism: To say ‘This combination of words makes no sense’ excludes it from the sphere of language and thereby sets limits to (umgrenzt) the domain of language. But when one draws a boundary it may be for various kinds of reason. (§499; my emphasis) On the other hand, in the ‘Yellow Book’ the same admission is followed by a qualification: The word ‘nonsense’ is used to exclude certain things, and for different reasons. But it cannot be the case that an expression is excluded and yet not quite excluded – excluded because it stands for the impossible, and not quite excluded because in excluding it we have to think the impossible. (AWL 64; my emphasis) A similar idea occurs in Investigations §500: When it is said that a sentence is senseless, it is not, as it were, its sense that is senseless. Rather, a combination of words is excluded from language, withdrawn from circulation (my emphasis). Wittgenstein was anxious to avoid the suggestion that there is a half-way house between sense and nonsense, an impossibility that can be thought or a sentence that has a sense that is senseless. In a lengthy passage from the ‘Yellow Book’ that precedes the one just quoted, this anxiety leads him to downplay the differences between kinds of nonsense. In speaking of that which is impossible it seems as though we are conceiving the inconceivable. When we say that a thing cannot be green and yellow at the same time we are excluding something, but what? Were we to find something which we described as green and yellow we would immediately say this was not an excluded case. We have not excluded any case at all, but rather the use of an expression. And what we exclude has no semblance of sense. Most of us think that there is nonsense which makes sense and nonsense which does not – that it is nonsense in a different way to say ‘This is green and yellow at the same time’ from saying ‘Ab sur ah’. But these are nonsense in the same sense, the only difference being in the jingle of the words. Rules for the use of words can exclude certain combinations, and this in two ways: (1) when what is excluded is recognized as nonsense as soon as it is heard, (2) where operations are required to enable us to recognize it as nonsense (AWL 63–4; my emphasis) 236

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Wittgenstein here denies that there is a logical difference between gibberish like (10) Ab sur ah

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and philosophically relevant nonsense like (11) This object is green and yellow all over at the same time. The only difference between patent and latent nonsense lies in the ‘jingle of words’. The former causes no confusion, whereas the latter does, since ‘operations are required to enable us to recognize it as nonsense’. This seems to support nonsense monism, according to which any distinction between types of nonsense is of merely psychological relevance. However, this monistic strand is incompatible with other aspects of Wittgenstein’s later work, and untenable in its own right. For Wittgenstein, rightly, insists that operations are required to transform latent nonsense into patent nonsense. To someone like Frege, who thinks that the meaning of a word is the object it stands for, he points out that in that case it would have to make sense for the meaning of an expression to die (§40); to someone like Russell, who holds that the object of a desire is whatever removes the desire, he points out that in that case ‘if I wanted to eat an apple, and someone punched me in the stomach taking away my appetite, then it was this punch that I originally wanted’ (PR 64; see PI §440). In this way, it is shown that apparently intelligible questions and statements have implications that are absurd and literally unintelligible, like ‘the question of whether the Good is more or less identical than the Beautiful’ (TLP 4.003). The trouble is, we cannot operate on or with mere gibberish. If Wittgenstein genuinely denied that there is a difference between philosophical nonsense and gibberish, he would undermine his own procedure. He would also remove the possibility of making sense of reductio ad absurdum arguments and indirect proofs. In the indirect proof that 2 is irrational, we reduce to absurdity, i.e. contradiction, the assumption that 2 = p/q. If there were no difference between that assumption and ‘Ab sur ah’ such a reductio would be impossible. And as Quine wryly observed, this would surely be a reductio ad absurdum of the idea that the negation of a necessary proposition is nonsensical rather than merely false (1980: 5). In so far as Wittgenstein balked at drawing a distinction, he fell prey to his own rhetoric. In the quotation above, he suggests that a sentence that is nonsensical without being mere gibberish would have to have a sense that is senseless, or to express a thought, albeit an impossible or senseless one (similarly Diamond 1991: 3, 31; Conant 2001: 21–2). Now, plenty of philosophers would accept that one can think the impossible. They hold, contrary to Wittgenstein, that one can think that not p, where p is a necessary proposition, 237

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simply because the negation of a necessary proposition is false rather than nonsensical. To my knowledge, however, no philosopher has ever maintained that there are sentences that have a ‘senseless’ or ‘nonsensical’ sense, or express an ‘impossible’ or ‘senseless’ thought. And for good reasons, since these ideas are patently incoherent. But Wittgenstein was simply wrong, if he believed that a pluralistic conception of nonsense is committed to such incoherence. When it is said that (11) is nonsense of a different kind from (10), this only means that in certain respects it is part of the English language. Unlike (10), we understand (11) in certain respects. We can specify, for example, what these sentences are about. But we fail when we try to explicate them fully, notably when we try to specify what would have to be the case for them to be true or to explain them in a way that avoids absurd consequences. Monists are wont to protest that any such difference must be merely psychological, a matter of the things we associate with different forms of words (Diamond 1991: 107; Creary and Read 2000: 12–3). There is no doubt that (11) is more prone to conjure up specific mental images or phrases than (10). But this is not the only contrast. The more important difference lies in what we can do with these locutions. This difference is neither merely psychological nor merely pragmatic, as contemporary formal semanticists might insist. At least by the lights of the later Wittgenstein, it is a difference of philosophical (logical or semantic) import. He would certainly insist that what we are able to do with an expression is no more irrelevant to its meaning or grammar than how we explain and understand it. In fact, there is a close connection between linguistic nonsense on the one hand, explanation and understanding on the other. After all, linguistic nonsense must, strictly speaking, defy both, at least ultimately. Wittgenstein appreciated this connection (§513). For this reason, a logico-semantic distinction between different types of nonsense is required by Wittgenstein’s own insight that there are different degrees and types of understanding. Just like ‘making sense’, ‘being unintelligible’ and ‘understanding’ have ‘different senses in different cases’ (PO 66–7). One explicit attempt to distinguish between types of understanding features in Waismann’s Principles of Linguistic Philosophy, which lists various ways in which understanding may break down (347). I I I I I

cannot cannot cannot cannot cannot

understand understand understand understand understand

you, you, you, you, you,

you must speak louder that is sheer nonsense I don’t speak German that was too complicated to follow I can’t see why you want . . .

I want to introduce a more elaborate list, one which combines Wittgensteinian ideas with more recent distinctions (drawn in Künne 1983: 196–202). We can distinguish at least the following levels of understanding: 238

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Perceptual understanding: This is achieved once we have grasped the sign, in the idiom of the Tractatus. If we have understood perceptually, we won’t need to say things like ‘Speak louder please, we can’t understand you’. Even gibberish like (11) can satisfy this requirement. Recognition of a language: This is something that we can do as soon as we recognize words as hailing from a particular language, even if we cannot make out a sentence, as in garbled sequences like (9). Once this is possible, we can also translate the sequence, at least into languages with a similar morphology. Recognition of a sentence structure: This is something we can do in the case of Carnap’s example, and of the notorious semantic anomaly devised by Chomsky. (12) Colourless green ideas sleep furiously. Because of their syntactic structure, we can report such sentences not just in direct speech, but also in indirect speech.2 We can, answer questions as to case, tense, and number. Where appropriate, we can transform such sentences from the active into the passive voice and vice versa. We can specify particular rules that have been violated. By the same token, in some cases, such as (13) Augustine is my favourite paint, we can conjecture that they result from a (typographic or acoustic) slip rather than from semantic confusion. Understanding of potential sense: This is the understanding we have of, e.g. ‘Old men and women went to the bank’. What we require to understand the utterance is not linguistic instruction, but disambiguation of lexical and structural ambiguities. Understanding of actualized sense: this is achieved on removal of the ambiguities, e.g. once we are told that the utterance means that old men and old women went to the river bank. Understanding of what is said: Such understanding differs from the understanding of actualized sense in the case of indexical utterances like ‘You’ve lost something’ or ‘Today is Monday’. What we need to know here concerns not the sense of the type-sentence, but the conditions of utterance of specific tokens. Understanding of illocutionary force: We may understand what is said by ‘I’ll be back’, without yet knowing whether it is, for example, a conversational flourish, a prediction, a promise or a threat. Understanding of conversational implicatures: This kind of understanding is absent in the case of the novice academic who fails to spot that in 239

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a reference for a Ph.D. candidate, the sentence ‘He turns his essays in on time’ does not count as a recommendation. Such a novice might, for example, say to the referee ‘I cannot understand you, I don’t see why you write . . .’. Understanding of implications: Holistic thinkers, including Wittgenstein and Davidson, have maintained or implied that one cannot understand a sentence, or entertain the thought it expresses, without understanding all of its logical and conceptual implications. In my view, this is an exaggeration. Someone can understand a statement, at least up to a certain point, without understanding all of its indefinitely many consequences (Glock 2003: ch. 9). One of the features that sets latent nonsense apart is that we fail to appreciate their patently nonsensical or absurd implications. Aesthetic understanding: One basic criterion for understanding a linguistic expression is the ability to explain or paraphrase it. As Wittgenstein pointed out, however, this ability is not sufficient for understanding a work of art. For example, someone who understands a poem will not just be able to paraphrase expressions occurring in it, but also to say why they cannot be replaced by a paraphrase in this context. In this respect, understanding a poem involves a higher degree of linguistic understanding (§§522–35; PG 69; M 105). Aetiological understanding: Wittgenstein was keen to pinpoint the sources of the errors he diagnosed, and he detected various similarities between his philosophical therapy and psychoanalysis. Freud sought to discover the Sinn im Unsinn, the rationale behind the apparent nonsense of jokes, dreams and psycho-pathologies, and Wittgenstein tried to do something similar for philosophical confusions. Against correlating nonsense and understanding, it might be held that we can understand (13), even though it clearly violates semantic rules. But what we understand in such cases is what the speaker meant to say, not what he actually said. On the other hand, it is true that utterances may defy understanding in some respects without amounting to nonsense, for example utterances that defy perceptual understanding or understanding of conversational implicatures. Still, there is some correlation between types and degrees of understanding and types and degrees of nonsense. As we have seen, there are numerous differences between the various linguistic misfits we have encountered. What holds them together is not that they defy thinkability or imaginability, at least according to Wittgenstein (§§511–7). Rather, it is that they cannot be explained coherently. Ultimately, the attempt to explicate even the most latent piece of linguistic nonsense fails. We cannot coherently specify what it would be for 2 to be a ratio of two natural numbers, or what it would be for sentences to be names. Yet explanations and understanding can fail at different points and for different reasons. 240

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The pluralistic strand in the later work takes these lesson to heart. Vis-àvis sentences like ‘Two colours are in the same place at the same time’, Wittgenstein writes: ‘It sounds English, or German, etc., all right’ (BB 55, my emphasis). With respect to more latent nonsense he advisedly made further concessions. ‘But in a fairy tale, the pot too can see and hear!’ (Certainly; but it can also talk.) ‘But the fairy tale only invents what is not the case: it does not talk nonsense’. – It is not as simple as that. Is it false or nonsensical to say that a pot talks? Have we a clear picture of the circumstances in which we should say of a pot that it talked? (Even a nonsense-poem is not nonsense in the same way as the babbling of a child.) (PI §282; my emphasis) This passage implies that there are at least three different types of nonsense: the kind exemplified by the babbling of a child; the kind exemplified by a nonsense-poem like Carroll’s ‘The Hunting of the Snark’; and the kind exemplified by the statement that a pot talks. In §348 we read: ‘These deaf-mutes have learned only a gesture-language, but each of them talks to himself inwardly in a vocal language.’ – Now, don’t you understand that? – . . . I do not know whether I am to say I understand it or I don’t understand it. I might answer, ‘It’s an English sentence; apparently quite in order – that is, until one wants to do something with it; it has a connection with other sentences which makes it difficult for us to say that nobody really knows what it tells us; but everyone who has not become calloused by doing philosophy notices that there is something wrong here’. In this passage, Wittgenstein definitely allows for a distinction between philosopher’s nonsense and gibberish. His answer to the interlocutor’s question grants that: (14) These deaf-mutes have learned only a gesture-language, but each of them talks to himself inwardly in a vocal language. • • •

is an English sentence has connections with other English sentences to that extent at least can be understood.

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To be sure, according to Wittgenstein there is something wrong with this sentence. It sounds ‘queer’ (PI II p. 174). But what is wrong with it can only be brought out because it has certain connections with other sentences. Only in this way is it possible to transform latent into patent nonsense. 241

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In yet another passage, Wittgenstein explicitly links intelligibility with explicability, and suggests that there are degrees of both. Our understanding of the question ‘Does 7777 occur in the expansion of ␲?’ reaches ‘just so far’ as our explanations of that question (§516).

4 Remaining problems It emerges that the austere conception of nonsense is untenable both as an interpretation of Wittgenstein and in its own right. At the same time there are exegetical and substantive difficulties for the emerging picture. Let me mention two areas. First, while Wittgenstein accepted that latent philosophical nonsense results from the violation of rules, he resisted the idea that the infringed rules are more fundamental or essential to language than those violated by patent nonsense (see M 69–70; LWL 97–8; BT 413). He was also suspicious of the weaker claim that philosophical nonsense like (11) or semantic anomalies like (12) violate rules of a different, namely semantic, kind from those violated by garbled sequences like (8). The classic division of semiotics into syntax, semantics and pragmatics would be anathema to Wittgenstein. One cannot distinguish between syntactic and semantic rules on the grounds of whether they merely regulate the relations between signs or link signs to the world, if the meaning of an expression is not an object in the world but depends on its use, including its combinatorial possibilities. It is also problematic to separate syntax and semantics on the grounds that the former classifies parts of speech exclusively on the basis of distribution, i.e. of whether they can be substituted for one another in a given context (see Lyons 1981: ch. 4.4). For substitutability is subject to the proviso that the result is an English sentence. Yet this is precisely what is in question with respect to semantic anomalies. As mentioned above, for Wittgenstein, a sentence is the smallest linguistic unit which can be used to perform a complete linguistic act. But it is at least arguable that so-called semantic anomalies fail to meet this standard. Chomskians ignore the fact that there is no uncontested criterion by which semantic anomalies amount to a sentence. On the other hand, consider Waismann’s example (15) London is north-east of the South Pole (1964: 136) It is plausible to hold that no claim is made by this statement, that it does not amount to a ‘move in the language-game’. Yet Wittgenstein tended to underestimate our intuitions of grammaticality, the difference which the grammatical ‘jingle’ of cases like (15) makes to their role in our language, e.g. with respect to indirect speech. (15) also nicely illustrates that there is a continuum of cases between patent nonsense and latent nonsense of a 242

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philosophical kind. It requires some reflection on our geographic concepts to tell why (15) is nonsensical, and even more elaborate reflection to establish what, if anything, is wrong with (14). The second area is the operations by which Wittgenstein promises to unmask philosophical nonsense and, in particular, to transform latent into patent nonsense. The established model of reductio ad absurdum treats the process as one of deriving a contradiction from a hypothesis. This model fits indirect proofs in mathematics and some reductio arguments in philosophy. But it creates problems for Wittgenstein. For one thing, he himself regarded contradictions, e.g. statements of the form ‘p & ~p’ as senseless rather than nonsensical (TLP 4.46ff.). Following that lead, one might distinguish those reductios that derive a contradiction from a hypothesis from those which transform a latent nonsense into patent nonsense, something that literally defies comprehension. The second problem concerns this process of transformation. Logical relations are standardly defined in terms of truth and falsehood. By contrast, linguistic nonsense is supposed to fail the test of ‘truth-aptness’, of being even in the running for truth or falsehood. This problem might be solved by conceiving of logical relations in broader terms, e.g. in terms of what a claim commits one to. But there remains the question of how we should characterize logical operations that lead from something that is intelligible up to a point to something that literally defies understanding. In order to do so, it seems that we must abandon or modify another standard assumption (see Baier 1966: 521), namely that everything that stands in logical relations with something meaningful is itself meaningful. Such a modification is also required by another feature of Wittgenstein’s later work. He is committed to the idea that (16) Nothing can be north-east of the North Pole or the South Pole

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is meaningful, a grammatical proposition that expresses a linguistic rule, in spite of the fact that its function is to exclude utterances like (15) as nonsensical. This is not the place to resolve these difficult issues. My aim was to show that some distinctions between kinds of nonsense are imperative. They are essential not just if we are to understand nonsense as a linguistic phenomenon in its own right, but also if we are to fathom the two links that interested Wittgenstein, namely, with metaphysics on the one hand, with logical necessity and impossibility on the other.3

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Proponents of restrictive contextualism have suggested that one can only identify the meaning of a word when it occurs within the context of a sentence that has a sense (Diamond 1991: 30–1, 100–1; Creary and Reed 2000: 7, 14; Conant 2002: 384–5, 398), but this is once more based on the assumption that

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the meaning of a word consists in its actual contribution to the sense of a sentence in which it occurs. That assumption does not even hold for the meaning a tokenword has on a given occasion of utterance, since that meaning is to be cleansed from the speaker’s explanations. It certainly does not hold for the literal or conventional meaning of a type-word. The latter depends not on the occurrence of a token in a particular sentence, but on its ‘use in the language’ (§43), on the role tokens can play within various contexts. The New Wittgensteinians purport to accept that the meaning of a word is its use in the language, yet ignore that this is incompatible with the restrictive contextualism they rely on. They also regard the contextualism of Frege and the Tractatus as inferior to the contextualism they ascribe to the later Wittgenstein. According to this position, even a sentence is not enough to endow a word with meaning, since ‘the minimum unit of linguistic significance is properly the whole language-game’ (Read 2000: 76). Far from solving the problems that bedevil restrictive contextualism, however, this exacerbates them, since it imposes even stronger and less plausible conditions on an expression being meaningful. Indeed, to ascribe linguistic meaning to a whole language-game makes no sense, and amounts to a confusion of the bearers of meaning (primarily words and phrases) and the source of that meaning (the use of these words in a practice that may be more or less extensive). The only viable option is to acknowledge that words have a meaning outside the context of a sentence (Read 2000: 77). But this simply removes the crucial premise for the standard argument against combinatorial nonsense. Diamond (2000: 151, 161) argues that, if a grammatically well-formed sentence ‘p’ is nonsense, then so is ‘A thinks that/says that p’. But we can certainly say ‘Berkeley believed that to be is to be perceived’ and ‘Hegel wrote that the True is the Whole’. And if we say such things, what we say appears to be both meaningful and true. I am grateful to Rhodes University, South Africa, for awarding me a Hugh-leMay research fellowship that enabled me to write this chapter, and to the department of philosophy at Rhodes for their generous hospitality. For comments on previous versions I should like to thank Peter Hacker, John Hyman and Daniel Whiting, as well as audiences at Grahamstown, Venice and Southampton.

Bibliography Baier, A. (1966) ‘nonsense’, in P. Edwards (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 5, London: Macmillan. Carnap, R. (1959) ‘The Elimination of Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language’, in A.J. Ayer (ed.) Logical Positivism, Glencoe: Free Press. Conant, J. (1992) ‘Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein and Nonsense’, in T. Cohen, P. Guyer and H. Putnam (eds) Pursuits of Reason, Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press. –––– (2001) ‘Two Conceptions of Die Überwinding der Metaphysik’, in T. McCarthy and S.C. Stidd (eds) Wittgenstein in America, New York: Oxford University Press. –––– (2002) ‘The Method of the Tractatus’, in E. Reck (ed.) From Frege to Wittgenstein, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Creary, A. and Read, R. (eds) (2000) The New Wittgenstein, London: Routledge. Diamond, C. (1991) The Realistic Spirit, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. –––– (2000) ‘Ethics, Imagination and the Method of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus’, in Creary and Read (eds) The New Wittgenstein, London: Routledge. Dummett, M. (1981 ) Frege: Philosophy of Language, London: Duckworth.

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Frege, G. (1953) The Foundations of Arithmetic, Oxford: Blackwell. Glock, H.J. (1996a) ‘Abusing Use’, Dialectica 50: 205–23. –––– (1996b) A Wittgenstein Dictionary, Blackwell: Oxford. –––– (2003) Quine and Davidson on Language, Thought and Reality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. –––– (2004) ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’, in J. Shand (ed.) The Central Works of Philosophy, vol. 4, London: Acumen. –––– and Preston, J.M. (1995) ‘Externalism and First Person Authority’, The Monist 78: 515–34. Hacker, P.M.S. (2000) ‘Was he Trying to Whistle it?’, in Creary and Read (eds). –––– (2003) ‘Wittgenstein, Carnap and the New American Wittgensteinians’, The Philosophical Quarterly 53: 1–23. Künne, W. (1983) Abstrakte Gegenstände, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Lyons, J. (1981) Semantics, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Quine, W.V. (1980) From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Read, R. (2000) ‘What “There can be no Such Thing as Meaning Anything by a Word” Could Possibly Mean’, in A. Creary and R. Read (eds), The New Wittgenstein, London: Routledge. Ryle, G. (1961) ‘Use, Usage and Meaning’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. 35: 223–42. Rundle, B. (1979) Grammar in Philosophy, Oxford: Clarendon. Waismann, F. (1965) The Principles of Linguistic Philosophy, London: Macmillan. Whitherspoon, E. (2000) ‘Conceptions of Nonsense in Carnap and Wittgenstein’, in Creary and Read (eds).

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12 A PICTURE HELD ME CAPTIVE Stuart G. Shanker

1 Introduction The editors of this volume presented me with the perfect opportunity to reflect on a picture that had long held me captive. I was invited to comment on the passage, ‘Concepts lead us to make investigations; are the expression of our interest, and direct our interest’ (PI §570). To illustrate what he has in mind here, Wittgenstein goes on to express his famous lament: ‘Misleading parallel: psychology treats of processes in the psychical sphere, as does physics in the physical’ (PI §571). The latter is an argument that I had looked at closely ten years ago, in ‘Wittgenstein versus Russell on the Analysis of Mind’ (Shanker 1993). In this article I sought to document the extent to which Wittgenstein’s attack on psychophysical parallelism may have been inspired by his reading of Russell’s Analysis of Mind. My greatest problem at the time, however, was that, much as I resonated with the conclusion that it is ‘perfectly possible that certain psychological phenomena cannot be investigated physiologically, because physiologically nothing corresponds to them’ (RPPI §904), I was deeply troubled by the analogy with which Wittgenstein sought to illustrate this point. I ultimately decided to deal with this difficulty by side-stepping it, but the problem continued to niggle away at me for years. For it is one thing to say that the attack on psychophysical parallelism is all about the confusions that result when psychological concepts are construed in the same way as physical, but quite another to say that: The case would be like the following – certain kinds of plants multiply by seed, so that a seed always produces a plant of the same kind as that from which it was produced – but nothing in the seed corresponds to the plant which comes from it; so that it is impossible to infer the properties or structure of the plant from those of the seed that it comes out of – this can only be done from the history 246

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of the seed. So an organism might come into being even out of something quite amorphous, as it were causelessly; and there is no reason why this should not really hold for our thoughts, and hence for our talking and writing. (RPPI §903; cf. Z §608) But how could a plant ever come into being out of something quite amorphous and, as it were, causelessly? How could one deny that the properties or structure of a plant is somehow contained within its seed: doesn’t this go against everything we have learnt about DNA? And if the analogy is poor, then what does this say about the argument itself? It’s one thing to warn against trying to measure seeing, hearing, thinking, feeling, etc. in the same way that one measures electricity; but couldn’t one, nonetheless, still argue that our higher capacities are contained within some sort of ‘seed’? Isn’t that precisely the whole point of the Genome Project? Clearly, the implications of Wittgenstein’s argument go far beyond exposing the limitations of Russell’s view of psychological causality or Köhler’s attempt to account for experimental psychology’s lack of progress by suggesting that the science was still in its infancy. The seed analogy was first articulated in modern times, not by a geneticist, but by the great seventeenth-century Cartesian, Nicholas Malebranche, who argued:

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We may say that all plants are in a smaller form in their germs. By examining the germ of a tulip bulb with a simple magnifying glass or even with the naked eye, we discover very easily the different parts of the tulip. It does not seem unreasonable to say that there are infinite trees inside one single germ, since the germ contains not only the tree but also its seed, that is to say, another germ, and Nature only makes these little trees develop. We can also think of animals in this way. We can see in the germ of a fresh egg that has not yet been incubated a small chick that may be entirely formed. We can see frogs inside the frog’s eggs, and still other animals will be seen in their seed when we have sufficient skill and experience to discover them. . . . Perhaps all the bodies of men and animals born until the end of times were created at the creation of the world, which is to say that the females of the first animals may have been created containing all the animals of the same species that they have begotten and that are to be begotten in the future. (Malebranche 1674; quoted in Pinto-Correia 1997: 19)

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Malebranche’s Search after Truth was enormously influential at the time, going through several reprintings and widely translated. It helped lay the foundation for the preformationist theory of development and even for the

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emergence of Deism. More importantly, for present purposes, is that it also laid the foundation for the determinist theory of the mind. According to the latter, what holds true for physical organisms, including the human body, also applies to the human mind. Just as the body is composed of a number of organs, each of them contained within some ‘germ’, so, too, the mind is composed of a number of autonomous ‘faculties’, each of them growing out of some embryonic germ. Of course, a proper environment may be necessary to nourish each faculty – an assumption that some philosophers were more than happy to put to the test! But the actual structure of the faculty, the way that it works, was thought to be contained within its germ. Eventually ‘genes’ replaced ‘germs’ in the modern version of this nativist doctrine. The most famous expression of this determinist outlook is undoubtedly Chomsky’s claim that language literally grows in a child’s mind in the same way that a physical organ grows. Indeed, Chomsky argued that the idea that a child learns language is one of the great confusions that was perpetuated by empiricist philosophers (see Chomsky 1980). Rather, language maturates, according to Chomsky, in the same way that other biological phenomena maturate. On this view, gene–environment interaction amounts to a form of potentiation: ‘Language acquisition is a matter of growth and maturation of relatively fixed capacities, under appropriate external conditions. The form of the language that is acquired is largely determined by internal factors’ (Chomsky 1966: 65). That is, just as the seed must be watered and fed in order for the plant to reach its full potential, so, too, a child must be exposed to the ‘right’ kind of caregiving environment in order to allow for the information which is stored within the ‘language gene(s)’ to be activated. Herein lies the reason why generativism so swiftly assimilated the idea that ‘The functioning of the language capacity is . . . optimal at a certain “critical period” of intellectual development’ (ibid.). For, like a seed, it seemed straightforward to assume that the linguistic ‘information’ that is ‘encoded’ in the genes can only be released at specific junctures in the maturational process, the timing of which is, itself, directed by the genes (see Lenneberg 1967; Shanker 2002). And why not? After all, when we look at language development it does, indeed, seem that children ‘acquire language like clockwork. Whether a baby is born in Stockholm, Tokyo, Zimbabwe or Seattle, at 3 months of age, a typically developing infant will coo. At about 7 months the baby will babble. By their first birthday, infants will have produced their first words, and by 18 months, 2-word combinations. Children of all cultures know enough about language to carry on an intricate conversation by 3 years of age’ (Kuhl and Meltzoff 1997: 7). And the reason why we see this regularity is said to be because the development of language is ‘under maturational control’: i.e. neurobiologically determined by ‘unitary timing constraints’ (Petitto 1997: 248

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51). To be sure, how we speak may be a function of the particular languaculture in which we are raised; but why shouldn’t the fact that we speak be determined by genetic factors that were naturally selected some time during the Pleistocene? Chomsky himself made much of the fact that his theory marked a return to seventeenth-century ideas, and in this respect he was certainly right (see Chomsky 1966); for his argument does, indeed, conform to the preformationist principles outlined by Malebranche. One could, of course, construe such constancy as a reflection of the intransigence of the problems involved. Or one might see this continuity as a reflection of the power of the determinist picture that has held science captive.

2 Dynamic systems theory As it happens, Wittgenstein’s argument has received its strongest support from, of all places, molecular biology itself; for recent discoveries in genetics have put considerable pressure on the determinist picture of genes. According to classical Mendelian theory, each of the observable characters in a pea plant must be represented within by some unobservable store of information which determined that trait. Since these characters are discrete, their causes must, likewise, be discrete. From these premises it seems to follow, ineluctably, that the hidden determinants of these traits are genes: i.e. genes are seen as direct determiners of phenotypic characters on a one-to-one basis. It turns out, however, that Mendelian ratios are a very special case: one in which environmental factors are kept to an absolute minimum. As a result of McClintock’s discovery that the genome is fluid rather than stable, we now know that, not just the expression of genes, but even the actual DNA sequence can be modified by developmental processes (see Rose 1997). Thus, in order to understand the origin of any phenotype in an organism you have to study its development. For the phenotypic expression of a gene may vary over a wide range depending on the environment in which it is expressed. Hence, developmental outcome is essentially unpredictable, as the parameters of a developmental system in a nonlaboratory setting will always vary, and can even vary in highly controlled settings. For example, on 20 April 1998, scientists in New York, Oregon and Alberta ran the same battery of tests on inbred mice. Somewhat surprisingly, despite the most stringent efforts to conduct the tests under identical conditions, the mice in Edmonton confidently sped through the mazes, while the mice in Portland and New York cowered anxiously in corners and narrow passages. Thus, the study shows that we have to be very cautious before we conclude that a certain gene causes a certain behaviour; for the most subtle of environmental factors – such as handling, air quality, chemicals in the water, and even the appearance and smell of the lab technicians – can have a profound effect on the behaviour of genetically identical mice (Crabbe et al. 1999). 249

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In our own work with children with biological challenges who are on a trajectory leading towards autism, we have found that environmental contingencies can have an enormous effect on their development. For example, a child with a severe auditory-processing problem, who doesn’t understand most of what is said to him, may experience even greater problems with interaction. To such a child, ‘the world may be a hostile place, filled with sounds that make demands on him but to which he can’t respond. He may come to feel shut out from the world of people, or, worse, people may seem frightening, always yelling because he is so often angering and disappointing them’ (Greenspan et al. 1998: 42). If the caregiver doesn’t employ communicational techniques which cater to and help the child overcome his biological impairments, he is most likely to adopt behaviours that will only exacerbate his communicational problems. What is most striking is how, by tailoring one’s interactional behaviours to suit the child’s sensory strengths and weaknesses, the child can make enormous gains in his emotional, social, and linguistic development (see Greenspan and Shanker 2004). According to genetic determinism, genes set the potential or limits for human development. But genes can only express themselves in the context of their micro- and macro-environments. Therefore, to understand the full possibilities for any gene would require having that gene operate in an infinite number of environments. Since this is a theoretical impossibility, it is impossible to know at any moment in time whether the gene or the environment it operates in is placing constraints on or directing the expression. While it is commonplace to think of a gene’s chemical structure as defining its potential, as long as that chemical structure must be in partnership with other biological and non-biological systems for expression, the definition of the original structure can only be understood within the context of these dynamic partnerships. Therefore, genes and environment are locked into a neverending dance, where each one’s movement depends and relates to all the other factors of the developmental system. To those who would still argue that genes set the potential or limits of human development, it is salutary to consider the famous example of a particular gene for plant growth. Obviously for different soils we may get different heights in the plant. If the tallest we’re able to get is six feet, it is easy to imagine one saying that six feet represents the genetic potential of that plant. But suppose we plant that same seed in Martian soil with a space probe and discover that it grows to twelve feet: we then have to revise our definition of the ‘genetic potential’ of that gene. The point is that, unless we could establish the infinite number of possible environments, it is impossible to talk about the predefined potential or limitations inherent in any particular gene. To be sure, according to our current knowledge, it may well be the case that, in certain environments, certain genes will produce such-and-such a trait. A case in point would be haemophilia. Obviously, attempts will be made 250

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to alter the expression of the gene in question, either through altering the immediate biological environment in which the haemophilia gene expresses itself, as we have done for foetal ketonuria, or by altering the genetic structure itself through emerging technologies using viruses, etc. Still, the ability to alter the genetic structure itself also emphasizes the importance of the environment, and there are islands of evidence that the environment alters genetic structure more rapidly and regularly than we have thought in the past. The important lesson to be learned from all this is that genes are not the autonomous causal agents envisaged by classical genetic determinism but, rather, are ‘cooperative players in a complex hierarchical web of regulation’ (Richardson 1998: 53). Genes are part of a developmental system that, in addition to the genes, is composed of chromosomes, nuclei, cytoplasm, tissue, organism, and the various levels of the external environment. While structural genes code for proteins, up to 90 per cent of genes are regulatory genes which influence the expression of structural genes. But gene expression is more than just the result of a complex intra-genetic process; for genes are just as susceptible as other components of the system to influences from other levels during epigenesis. In fact, gene expression is modified at several levels during epigenesis: by other genes in the genome; by the cellular environment; by the extracellular environment; and by the external environment. Thus, far from being determined by some sort of ‘master genetic blueprint’, gene expression is a function of multi-directional co-actions between the various levels of a complex developmental system (see Gottlieb 1997; Fox Keller 2000). Genes do not, therefore, produce differentiated phenotypic traits by themselves; even paradigm ‘fixed traits’ (e.g. eye colour) are not solely caused by genes but, rather, are a consequence of horizontal and vertical co-actions among the various levels of a developmental system. For ‘at each level of the developmental system, the effect of any level of influence is dependent on the rest of the system, making all factors potentially interdependent and mutually constraining’ (Gottlieb et al. 1998: 260). But the upshot of this argument is not that gene–environment interaction is vastly more complicated than the heritability equation (H × E) assumes; it is that ‘The minimum unit for developmental analysis must be the developmental system, comprised of both the organism and the set of physical, biological, and social factors with which it interacts over the course of development’ (ibid.). As far as this last set of factors is concerned, all sorts of studies have confirmed the importance of the environment on ontogeny: e.g. the effects of social interactions, day length, or temperature on normal phenotypic traits such as coloration, sex, or seasonal polyphenisms. In the case of humans, the presence of teratogens and electrical fields has alarmingly demonstrated the potential influence of environmental factors on foetal and neonatal development. We have also learnt how something as basic as social interaction 251

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can cause hormones to be secreted which result in the activation of DNA transcription inside the cell nucleus (see Rose; 1997, van der Weele 1999). And our knowledge of the formative role which dyadic interaction plays on an infant’s neurobiological development is growing by leaps and bounds (see Schore 1994; Shanker and Taylor 2001). If one simply considers the effect of social changes on nutrition, or on family structure, or on caregiving practices, one can easily appreciate why it is that the role of genetic factors can only be understood within the context of the society in which a child develops. If we apply this developmental systems perspective to the issue of human capacities we can see how, as important as biological factors are in the explanation of a child’s ability to learn how to V-y, they are not the full story, nor even the ‘main protagonists’ in the story; for the child’s physical and social environment are no less crucial to the child’s development of a ‘species-typical’ capacity. Indeed, even to phrase the issue in this manner is misleading, insofar as it might encourage the view that development is the outcome of ‘Biological × Environmental’ factors. But the various elements of the developmental manifold are so intimately and intricately interconnected that they cannot be meaningfully separated out in any crude quantitative manner. Rather, all of the factors in this complex matrix interact with, and are modified by, the others, so that the child’s ability to V-y emerges in a way that is similar to the emergence of a new compound from a chemical reaction, and not to the way a computer program processes data. In place of the linear, simple cause–effect models that obtain on the maturational view of complex behaviours, therefore, we must look for bi-directional, context-sensitive, systems-oriented approaches to development. Language provides us with a paradigmatic illustration. On the one hand, a child who suffers severe left cortical damage at birth may, but need not necessarily, experience problems developing language skills. More typically, it is the child who experiences prolonged hearing problems as the result of untreated ear infections who has the most trouble developing language skills. On the other hand, a child with no brain damage and no recent episodes of otitis media, but who is deprived of normal interaction with a primary caregiver, or whose only exposure to language is listening to the radio or television, will typically experience profound difficulty developing normal linguistic skills. Moreover, we are only just beginning to understand the effects on the child’s neurobiological development of being raised in a socially impoverished environment (see Schore 1994). Thus, rather than look at language development – or any aspect of a child’s development – in terms of a genetically determined ‘neural seed’ that needs the appropriate ‘input’ during a ‘critical period’ in order to function properly, we are learning how all of the levels involved in the child’s caregiving interact in the emergence of her complex skills and abilities (see Greenspan and Shanker 2004). 252

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3 The real nature of reductionism The more I have learned about dynamic systems theory, the more I have marveled at Wittgenstein’s prescience. For the dynamic systems view of development represents exactly the sort of emphasis on the formative role of complex co-regulated interactions, and the intrinsic connection between social enculturation and, e.g. cognitive, linguistic, and emotional development which Wittgenstein explored throughout his later writings on the philosophy of psychology (see Shanker and King 2002). Furthermore, I have come to recognize the profound relevance to determinist thinking of Wittgenstein’s remark that: ‘the action of a machine – I might say at first – seems to be there in it from the start. What does that mean? If we know the machine, everything else – i.e. its movement – seems to be already completely determined’ (PI §193). For the genotypic view that our most distinctive skills and abilities were naturally selected some time in the Pleistocene entails that we do not actually learn how to do things like walk, or talk, or even think. Rather, these are conceived as a form of instinct: i.e. behaviours that are biologically ‘pre-wired’ and that unfold in fixed sequences as the nervous system develops. But perhaps most fundamentally, I have begun to appreciate why Wittgenstein insisted that his discussion of psychological causality opens one door while shutting another. The latter remark is an allusion to an exchange recorded in the Geach lectures, in which Wittgenstein seeks to help his students grasp the deeper implications of his attack on psychophysical parallelism: Wittgenstein: We needn’t believe in any causal connection between the state of the brain and the thought you think; so that theoretically a perfect physiologist could diagnose your thought. Is this obscurantism? Jackson: I think so. After all, we’ve had a lot of success with other cases, and isn’t there reason to expect more? Wittgenstein: What was the point of my saying ‘we needn’t believe . . .’? Geach: As against people – like Lord Russell – who say there MUST be a microscopic difference between brains if A knows French and B doesn’t. Wittgenstein: And why does it look obscurantist? Jackson: Because of part-successes. Geach: Because you seem to be bringing in a soul. Wittgenstein: A mysterious connection via the soul? Nothing of the kind. Any change in the concept of causality is a very important change. So my saying ‘It needn’t be’ opens a door as well a shutting one. (LPP 100f.) 253

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The crux of this argument is, of course, that by ‘shutting the door’ on psychophysical parallelism, we can proceed towards a completely different understanding of psychological causality: one that is categorially, not incrementally different from physical causality. Wittgenstein surveyed several different ways in which we speak about ‘psychological causation’ throughout his later writings. For example, he talks about discovering the causes of one’s thoughts by searching through one’s memories and associations; or the causes of one’s sensations and perceptual experiences; the causes of different kinds of associations; the explanation of a behaviour that can be seen to be against the agent’s will, intentions, desires etc.; the cause of actions that an agent cannot justify and perhaps not even explain; actions which, unbeknownst to the agent, can be influenced or manipulated; and the range of behaviours that are misleadingly grouped together as ‘automatic actions’ (e.g. responding unconsciously to verbal or bodily cues). Nor should we suppose that we could definitively enumerate the various uses of ‘psychological cause’; for Freud is said to have discovered a new means of representation (AWL 40). That is, our views of psychological explanation are constantly advancing as gifted scientists discover fertile new points of view. The fact remains, however, that there seems to be something unsatisfying about this argument, as can be seen in his students’ reactions and, indeed, in my own; for while citing relevant ‘associations and memories’ may tell me that my previous experience caused my present, it does not tell me how. But the upshot of the discussion of psychological causation is that the ‘how’ driving one here is the result of philosophical confusion: of misguidedly applying a physiological paradigm to psychological questions. This yearning for a physiological substratum will only disappear once one recognizes that the various kinds of explanation of human behaviour proposed in the different branches of psychology are not in some sense partial, awaiting a neurophysiological foundation. That is, they are not like the precursors of modern astrophysics that were superseded by deeper theoretical explanations of the movement of bodies but, rather, like new schools of art that enable us to view human behaviour from a completely different perspective. In viewing human behaviour from a different perspective, one is actually transforming human nature; for in this case, esse est percipi. Of course, the proponents of eliminative materialism have made exactly the same claim; but were they ever to be successful, it would only be at the price of stripping human nature of its highest attributes. But rather than trying to show that the human being is just a machine whose higher capacities are determined in advance, the goal of psychology should, according to Wittgenstein, be to enrich our views of human nature. That is, psychology must strive to develop concepts that will expand our mental vision, not constrict it. Chomsky’s theory of language acquisition provides us with a perfect illustration of this point. To begin with, all of the aspects of learning how to do things with words, of becoming a member of a languacultural community, 254

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are dismissed as paralinguistic, nonlinguistic, or pragmatic ‘accompaniments’ of language acquisition. The ultimate problem with such a theory is that it impoverishes our understanding of the nature of language: and, thence, of language development, as can be seen in the research that was conducted under the aegis of this theory. For generative psycholinguistics proceeded by focusing on structural elements – which themselves are an artefact of the theory (see Taylor 1997) – such as a child’s acquisition of morpho-syntactic constructions, and ignoring the complex emotional, social and communicative factors involved in a child’s ‘languacultural development’ (see Shanker and Taylor 2001). That is, the key to the paradigm was to reduce the complexity of a child’s language development in such a way as to fit the model. This is precisely the point that Wittgenstein highlights in the 1946 lecture quoted above, where he concludes: There was an idea that Newtonian mechanics MUST explain everything; and that it must be founded on principles that, so to say, would be sensible laws for a Creator to make (Laws of Minimum This, of Conservation of That). Why this idea? ‘Because everything pointed to it.’ Everything? No, only everything that they concentrated on. So it isn’t (as Lord Russell might say) that everything points to the existence of a trace of French in the brain; only everything of the things that fill his mental vision. (LPP 101)

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It is this last line that holds the key to PI §570. Wittgenstein constantly seeks to show us how to expand our mental vision and, more fundamentally, why this is so difficult to do. For concepts are not simply a form of spectacle through which we view reality; concepts are fundamentally bound up with effects, often in ways that inhibit philosophical reflection. In my own case, the very fact that extensive exegetical research had failed, as far as the analogy at RPPI §903 was concerned, to provide me with a sense of philosophical peace, was an indication of the extent to which my thinking was being constrained by the determinist picture that is endemic to western thinking about the mind. Only now are we beginning to recognize and thus overthrow the power of this concept.1

Note 1

I am grateful to Barbara King for her very useful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Bibliography Chomsky, N. (1966) Cartesian linguistics. New York: Harper & Row. Chomsky, N. (1980) Rules and representations. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Crabbe, J.C., Wahlsten, D. and Dudek, B.C. (1999) ‘Genetics of mouse behavior: Interactions with lab environment’. Science 284: 1670–4. Fox Keller, Evelyn (2000) The century of the gene. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gottlieb, G. (1997) Synthesizing nature-nurture: Prenatal roots of instinctive behavior. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Gottlieb, G., Wahlsten, D. and Lickliter, R. (1998) ‘The significance of biology for human development: A developmental psychobiological systems view’, in R. Lerner (ed.), Handbook of Child Psychology, Vol. 1, Theory: 233–73. New York: Wiley. Greenspan, S.I. with Wieder, S. and Simons, R. (1998) The child with special needs. Reading, MA.: Addison-Wesley. Greenspan, S.I. and Shanker, S.G. (2004) The first idea: How symbols, language and intelligence evolved in early primates and humans. New York: Perseus/Da Capo. Kuhl, P.K., and Meltzoff, A.N. (1997) ‘Evolution, nativism and learning in the development of language and speech’, in M. Gopnik (ed.), The inheritance and innateness of grammars: 7–44. New York: Oxford University Press. Lenneberg, E.H. (1967) Biological foundations of language. New York: Wiley. Malebranche, N. (1674) De la recherché de la verité; quoted in C. Pinto-Correia, The Ovary of Eve. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Petitto, L. (1997) ‘In the beginning: On the genetic and environmental factors that make early language acquisition possible’, in M. Gopnik (ed.), The inheritance and innateness of grammars: 45–69. New York: Oxford University Press. Richardson, K. (1998) The origins of human potential: Evolution, development and psychology. London: Routledge. Rose, S. (1997) Lifelines: Biology beyond determinism. New York: Oxford University Press. Schore, A.N. (1994) Affect regulation and origin of the self: The neurobiology of emotional development. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Shanker, S.G. (1993) ‘Wittgenstein versus Russell on the analysis of mind’, in Andrew Irvine and Gary Wedekind (eds), Russell and the rise of analytic philosophy, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Shanker, S. (2001) ‘What a child knows when she knows what a name is: The noncartesian view of language acquisition’, Current Anthropology, 42: 481–513. Shanker, S.G. (2002) ‘The generativist-interactionist debate over specific language impairment: Psycholinguistics at a crossroads’, American Journal of Psychology, 115 (3): 415–50. Shanker, S. and King, B. (2003) ‘The emergence of a new paradigm in ape language research’, Target Article, Brain and Behavioral Sciences 25: 605–26. Shanker, S.G., and Taylor, T. (2001) ‘The house that Bruner built’, in D. Bakhurst and S. Shanker (eds), Language, culture, self: The philosophical psychology of Jerome Bruner. London: Sage. Taylor, T.J. (1997) Theorizing language: Analysis, normativity, rhetoric, history. Oxford: Pergamon Press. van der Weele, C. (1999) Images of development: Environmental causes in ontogeny. New York: State University of New York Press.

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algebraic formulae 87, 99, 100, 140–1 analogies 11, 17–18, 132; misunderstandings caused by 81, 129–30; psychophysical parallelism 246–7 analytic philosophy 22, 185 Anscombe, G.E.M.: problem with colours 211–13; translation of PI 22–3, 28–9, 49, 51, 97, 106, 108 a posteriori 5–6, 128 a priori 115–16, 128, 185, 221; order of things 4, 5, 9, 14, 15–16, 19 Aquinas, St Thomas 58 argument from illusion 121–3 arguments 173–4, 174, 175–6, 182; W’s use of 54–6, 133, 185, 198 Aristotle 176 atomism 3, 13, 58 Augustine, St 68, 75, 128, 129; Confessions 22, 57, 74, 177 Augustinian picture of language 3, 22–3, 57, 136, 149; and meaning 23–4, 101, 103, 155, 186 autism 250 autonomous thoughts 88–107 passim, 109, 112–13, 113–14, 120–1, 122–4; in discussion of reading 91–5, 97, 114–20 Ayer, A: J 122, 123, 190 Beck, Aaron T.: cognitive therapy 86, 89–91, 103, 112–13, 114 beliefs 89, 90–1, 103, 124, 223 Berkeley, George 187, 199n The Big Typescript 3, 8, 13, 25, 182, 209

biological clock 193 Blue Book 38n, 148, 165, 174 Bouwsma, O.K. 165 brain: identity theory 191 Brown Book 38n, 148–9, 151, 174 builders see language-games: builders calculus 7, 13, 18 Cambridge University 8 Carnap, R. 239 causal theory of perception 190 causality see psychological causality causation: Hume’s theory 191 chess 150 children: biological development 250; emergence of abilities 252; languagegames 34; theory of language development 248–9, 255 Chomsky, Noam 239, 248, 249, 254–5 clarification 129, 133, 201, 213–16; contrast between Tractatus and PI 201–6, 207, 209–11, 213, 216–17 clarity 69, 78, 79, 84–5, 131, 164–5, 201, 215 classes: language 33–4; and meaning 54–6, 228 clinical psychology 88; see also cognitive therapy cognitive functions 19 cognitive habits 120, 124–5; see also autonomous thoughts cognitive therapy: A.T. Beck 86, 89–91, 103, 112–13, 114; relevance to W’s philosophy 120, 121–4

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colours 11, 12, 15, 31, 58; Anscombe’s problem with 211–13; languagegames 152 combinatorial nonsense: and contextualism 223, 223–31; in W’s later work 231–5 common sense 107, 108, 112 community: rule-following 134, 135–6 comparisons see objects of comparison complexes: and simples 3, 47 concepts 70, 88, 131, 161, 180; and effects 246, 255; non-mathematical 137 conceptual analysis 185 Confessions (Augustine) 22, 57, 74, 177 connections/connecting links 59, 131, 147, 149, 217 context: language and meaning 31–2, 32, 54–5 context-sensitive activities 95–6, 98 contextualism: and nonsense 222, 223–31 contradictions 202, 204, 214–15, 243; in W’s thinking 68–9, 106–7 controlled thoughts/reflections 88, 96–7, 99, 101, 107 conventions 15 copying (texts or figures) 91–2, 95, 98, 99, 119 correspondence theory of truth 187 criss-cross philosophy 133, 147, 151, 154, 155, 215, 216, 218 cube 86, 93, 98, 143–4, 145 cultures 14 Davidson, D. 226 deduction 175, 184 deductive arguments 190–1, 193–4 degenerate language 32, 33–5, 36 demonstratives 52–3, 57, 60, 61 depth grammar 7, 13, 77, 194–5 Descartes, René 122, 185, 187, 190, 199n; Cartesian quest for natures 9 description 45, 65, 127, 128–9, 129, 183; Russell’s theory 6, 188–9 desire 78–9, 93 determinism: genetic theory 249, 250, 251; theory of mind 248–9, 255; and W’s discussion of psychological causality 253

diagnosis: character of PI 38 to 64 sequence 44–5, 50–4, 54–6, 56–61; and therapy 42–4, 54, 108–9, 197 diagnostic theories 68, 196–8 diary 132; private sensation language 153–4, 161–2 ‘Dictation to Moore’ 4 direct realism 188 diseases of the intellect 107, 108, 163 disquietudes 77, 151–2, 153 DNA 247, 249 dogmatism 14, 65, 217 dynamic systems theory 249–52, 253 elements 47–8; see also primary elements emotional disorders: cognitive approach 89–91 empiricism: British 58; classical 9; theories 187, 189, 190 enlightenment (eighteenth-century) 16 environment 249, 250–2 essence 69, 76–7, 78, 130–1, 180; hiddenness 76, 77, 80, 84 evil 68 Excalibur argument 46–8, 49, 50, 52, 60 explanation: and nonsense 238, 240; as purpose of theory 189, 190; W’s opposition to 45, 65, 66, 127, 183, 198 facts 6, 13, 45 family resemblance concepts 4, 19; counter-concept 72–3; language and proposition 18, 69, 71, 72–3, 79 feelings see pathological feelings/ habits First Cause argument (Aquinas) 58 folk psychology 188 forms of language 77, 81; see also primitive forms of language forms of life 29–30 Frege, Gottlob 13, 22, 224, 225–6, 227, 229, 237 Freud, Sigmund 197–8, 254 Frühfassung 86, 102, 106, 118 Geach lectures 253–4

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generality 23, 196–7, 198, 208–9 genetics: determinism 248, 250, 251; dynamic systems theory 249–52 Genome Project 247 Gerrard, Steven 201 Glendinning, Simon 218 Glock, H-J. 149 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 10, 149 Goldfarb, Warren 201 grammar: act of reading 116; clarification 213; landscape of 150, 151; in language-games 214–15; of philosophy 66, 129–32, 180, 184; W’s later idea of 232–3; see also depth grammar; logical or grammatical determination; surface grammar grammatical investigation 75–8, 81, 83, 87, 129–30, 196 Grice, H.P. 190 groundless vision 123, 124, 125 guidance/being guided 97, 109–12, 111, 164 Hacker, Peter 63, 155, 173, 175 haemophilia 250–1 Hallett, Garth 173 hiddenness: aspects of philosophy 69, 107–8, 177; of essence 76, 77, 80, 84; posited in theories 189, 192, 196–7 Hume, David 146n, 191 hypotheses 68, 243; and theory 189, 192 idealism 173–4, 175 ideal language: as form of representation 18; misunderstanding role of 14–16, 17; prototypes in W’s earlier thought 10–13; subliming 80–2, 83 ideal names 9, 14 identity theory (Smart) 191 illness: philosophical questions compared to 49, 86, 88, 124, 132, 197 imagination 130–1, 179–80 Inner Object Picture 155–62 intentionality 7

introspection 159, 162, 196, 197 intuition 137; see also philosophical intuitions irony 25, 36 Kandinsky, Wassily 8 Kant, Immanuel 19, 223 knowledge: concept 184–5; conditions 192–3; a priori 128, 185; theories 187, 190 Köhler, Wolfgang 247 Kripke, Saul 133–5, 210 Künne, W. 238 language: acquisition and development 248–9, 254–5; context 31–2, 32, 54–5; differences between earlier and later approaches 4, 18–19, 184, 186–7, 207–8, 232–3; essence of 23, 31, 69, 76, 80–1, 208, 213; meaning 23, 24–5, 191–2; and philosophical method 66, 67, 77–8, 108, 175, 180; pictures 36, 97, 186, 191–2; sublimation of 13, 59–60, 70–3; Tractatus 5–6, 7, 8–10, 13, 14–16, 189, 192–3, 216–17; see also Augustinian picture of language; ideal language; primitive forms of language; Private Language Discussion language-games 13, 26–36, 69, 136, 182, 210–11; builders 26–7, 30–1, 32–3, 51–2, 149, 161; grammar rules 214–15, 216, 217–18; names 51–2; as objects of comparison 179; synoptic representation 148–50, 151 Locke, John 187, 196, 199n logic: conception of in PI 70–4, 77; Tractatus vision 4–7, 11, 12, 14, 124, 189, 193, 208; W’s reorientation of ideas 17–19 logical compulsion 97, 105–6, 145 logical or grammatical determination 96, 106–7 logical syntax 232–3; violation of 202, 205–6, 242 logical truths 7, 10 Logik, Sprache, Philosophie (Waismann) 149

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McClintock, Barbara 249 machine: action of 98, 253; symbolism 87, 120 Malcolm, Norman 30 Malebranche, Nicholas 247–8, 249 Manichean view 68, 76 maps 150–1, 218 mathematical facts 124 meaning: concept 7, 24; diagnosis 50–5, 58, 59, 110–11; empiricist theory 187; language 23, 24–5, 180, 191–2; names 50–2, 55–6, 227–8; signs 231–2; Tractatus theory 189, 226–8, 229; and use of words 129, 143–5, 155, 186–7, 226–8; W’s later conception 228–31; see also use theory of meaning meaning-body conception 101, 103, 104, 107, 223, 233–5 means of representation 118–19 Mendelian theory 249 Meno (Plato) 195 mental events 99, 100–1, 103–4, 110, 115, 118, 120 mental processes 142, 178, 196, 198 Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 226 metaphilosophy 181, 182 metaphors 71, 148, 213 metaphysical theory: Inner Object Picture 155, 160; as nonsensical 221, 223; in PI 38 to 64 sequence 44–50 passim, 56–61 passim; W’s impact on 19, 128 metaphysical vision: Tractatus 5, 124, 189, 208 metapsychology 7 methodology see philosophical methodology Mill, J.S. 191 mind: determinist theory 248–9, 255; identity theory 191 Mind (periodical) 165 misunderstandings 49–50, 66, 81, 113, 129, 135, 196 models: language 27, 31, 35–6; meaning of words 143–4; objects of comparison 65; propositions 9–10

Moore, G.E. 231 moral philosophy: and philosophical therapy 43 Nachlass 176 names 4, 7, 8, 10, 13; and demonstratives 52–3; language-games 51–2; and meaning 50–2, 55–6, 227–8; metaphysical theory 44–5, 46, 47, 49, 50–2, 60; and words 49, 59, 70–1, 186; W’s later concept 10–11; see also ideal names; proper names; real names natural science: difference with philosophy 74, 128, 184, 185; eighteenth-century culture 16; propositions 174, 177, 202; theories 187–8, 189, 193 need 4, 17, 78–9, 83 negation: N-operator 11, 13; in W’s conception of philosophizing 68–9, 175 negative arguments 198 negative nonsense 221, 222, 224–5, 231 New Wittgensteinians 221–2, 244n Nietzsche, Friedrich 166 nonsense 221–3; austere conception 25, 222, 228, 233, 242; and contextualism 223–31; different kinds 235–42; monistic view 235–7, 238; pluralistic view 235–6, 238, 241; privation view 222, 229–31, 236; propositions 201, 202–3, 204, 205–6, 207; results of philosophy as 67, 69, 108, 112, 175, 217, 223–7, 242–3; talking 94, 96, 210–11; and understanding 238–40 Notebooks 4–5, 7 number series 86, 96, 97, 99–101, 110; rule-following 136–40 objects: Excalibur argument 47; and words 59, 104, 155, 186, 187; in W’s earlier thought 13, 189; see also simples/simple objects objects of comparison 35, 65, 179 On Certainty 182 order of things 5, 6–7, 14, 15–16, 19 ostensive definition 58, 180, 198, 211–12

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pain 38, 152, 157–8, 198, 212, 213 paradigms see models paradox: Plato’s 195; rule-following 134–5 Passions of the Soul (Descartes) 187 pathological feelings/habits 90–1, 108–9, 121 perception: causal theory 190; representational theory 121–2, 188 perspicuity 218 phenomenalism 121–4, 211 philosophical confusion 50, 82, 151, 179–80, 196–7, 206, 254 Philosophical Delusion and its Therapy (Fischer) 121 philosophical intuitions 122–3 Philosophical Investigations: dialogues with interlocutor 34, 44–5, 51–4 passim, 67–8, 93, 137–40 passim, 152, 153, 163, 164–5, 202; example of W’s method 211–13; form and presentation 133; odd features 88; opening sections 22, 36; reflections on Tractatus 3–4, 165; relationship between first and second sections 23–4; rhetorical strategy 68–9; style 166–7; W’s self-criticism 164–5 philosophical methodology: conception of in PI 64–7, 74–5, 78, 79, 86–8, 127–8, 133, 174–5, 177–8; conception of in Tractatus 3, 174, 175, 181, 208–9; W’s reorientation 3–4, 19, 129–30 philosophical problems: approach to in PI 127, 131–2, 164–5, 183, 201, 202, 209–10, 218; approach to in Tractatus 3, 133, 202–6, 208–9, 210; and bewilderment 74–5, 78, 82; characterizing the nature of philosophy 79–80, 81–2, 128–9; on reading 118; therapeutic approach 42, 86, 107–9, 124–5, 131–2, 136, 175–6; and truisms 179 philosophical reflection 108, 113, 125, 195–6 Philosophical Remarks 232 philosophical remarks 163, 166, 198 philosophical statements 154, 173, 178–9, 180–2; truth as ‘open to view’ 195–6

Eine philosophische Betrachtung 25 Philosophische Grammatik 25 philosophy: difference between earlier and later approaches 180–1, 201–6, 207, 209, 217; as grammatical investigation 75–8, 81, 83, 87, 129–30, 196; hidden aspects 107–8; meaning and uses of the word 184–5; nature of 63–7, 81–2, 127–32, 173–82, 195–6; negative tasks 68–9, 175; as poetry 165–7; study of 165; traditional 76, 77–8, 78, 84; unfamiliarity of W’s aims and rationale 132–3; W’s aims and claims for 65–7, 69, 74–5, 79, 107–13, 141; W’s reorientation of idea of 3–4, 8, 19, 124–5, 129–30 pictures: language 36, 97, 186, 191–2, 196; propositions in W’s earlier thought 6, 7, 8, 9–10, 11–12, 14–15, 124, 185, 208, 228; and understanding words 97, 98–9, 131, 144–5, 179–80; see also Augustinian picture of language; Inner Object Picture Plato 101–2, 177, 187, 195; Theaetetus 44–5, 46, 47, 48, 60–1 poetry 165–7 pointing (gesture) 48, 52, 59, 60, 61 popular science 164 possibility 98 Preisendanz, Karl: translation of Theaetetus 60–1 presuppositions 6–7 primary elements 44–5, 48, 60–1 primitive forms of language 24–30, 31, 33, 34–5, 36, 148 Principles of Human Knowledge (Berkeley) 187 Private Language Discussion 135, 151, 152–4, 175, 176, 180; Inner Object Picture 155–62; structure and presentation 163; underlying picture 154–5 proper names 3, 9 properties 4–5, 7, 47–8 propositions 49, 67, 69, 174, 175, 181, 182; as pictures 4–5, 6, 7, 8, 9–10, 11–12, 14–15, 124, 185, 228; sublimation of 10–11, 13, 14;

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‘wholesale’ criticism of 202–6; see also pseudo-propositions prototypes 10–13 pseudo-propositions 175–6, 178 psychoanalysis 132, 197–8 psychological causality 247, 253–4 psychological compulsion 145 psychology: intentionality of language 7; philosophy of 253; see also cognitive therapy; folk psychology psychophysical parallelism 246–8, 253–4 public language 152, 211, 216 puzzlement/puzzles 28, 46, 56, 108, 130; about our grasp of words 141–5, 215; generated by cognitive habits 95, 99–100, 101, 107, 113, 113–14 Quine, Willard Van Orman 226, 237 reading 86, 91–5, 95, 97, 115–20 passim real names 5–6, 9, 14; PI 38 to 64 sequence 46, 47, 49, 52, 56, 57, 60 reductio ad absurdam arguments 176, 222, 237, 243 reflection see controlled thoughts/reflections; philosophical reflection Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology 32, 246–7 reminders 21, 177, 178, 187, 197, 210–11 representational forms 7, 8–10, 14–16, 18, 19; see also means of representation; synoptic representation representational theory 121–2, 188, 211 Rhees, Rush 30, 31 rule-following 127, 133–5, 145–6, 198; clarification 129; treatment of problem 136–46 rules of grammar 233 Russell, Bertrand 22, 60, 165, 196, 237; analysis of mind 246, 247, 253; theory of descriptions without identity 6, 188–9; theory of types 224 Ryle, Gilbert 165, 232

scepticism 134–5 Schiller, J.C.F. von 10 Schlick, Moritz 8 seed analogy 246–8 semiotics 242 sensations: Inner Object Picture 155–62; mind/brain identity theory 191; private 152–4, 157 sense: as constituted by grammar 214–15; determinacy of in W’s earlier thought 3, 12–13, 18, 186, 189, 229; making 232 sense-data 121–2, 123, 188 senselessness 237–8, 243 sentences 49–50, 184, 186, 227, 229 Shanker, S.G. 246 signs: language-games 51, 52, 136; meaning 231–2; nonsense 205–6, 221; reading 86, 115, 120; understanding 141–2 similes 10, 11, 14, 17, 166–7 ‘simple’: W’s use of word 25–6 simple ideas 9, 58 simples/simple objects 6, 9, 56, 189; and complexes 3, 47 simplicity: hidden aspects of things 107–8; primary elements in PI 38 to 64 sequence 44–5, 46, 47–8 simplification: synoptic representation 150–1 Smart, J.J.C. 191 social interaction: and development 251–2, 255 solipsism 173, 176 ‘Some Remarks on Logical Form’ 5–6 speaking: reading 117, 118, 119; talking 57–8 Spengler, Oswald 14, 15 states of affairs 6, 9, 11, 12 sublime/sublimation: concept of the ideal 13, 80–2; everyday use of words 78; of language 13, 59–60, 70–3; logic 4, 71–2, 73–4; in traditional philosophy 84–5; W’s early vision of the order of things 6–7, 10–11, 12, 14, 16 surface grammar 6, 194–5, 198 symbols 231–2 synoptic representation 147–8; language-games 148–50, 151, 162; simplification 150–1

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tautologies 5, 10, 33, 202, 204 Theaetetus (Plato) 44–5, 46, 47, 48, 60–1 theory 185; and deductive argument 189–91; diluted sense of 186–9, 196; as proposal 191–2; what lies ‘open to view’ 192–6, 197; W’s rejection of 45–6, 49, 125, 127–8, 183–4, 192 therapy: character of PI 38 to 64 sequence 44–5, 54–6; philosophical 42–3; Wittgensteinian methods 42, 43–4, 54, 79, 86, 88, 107–21 passim, 124–5, 132, 163, 197; see also cognitive therapy theses 87, 107, 128, 176 thinking/thoughts 88–9, 178, 179, 254; see also autonomous thoughts; controlled thoughts/reflections Thomas Aquinas see Aquinas, St Thomas Tractatus logico-philosophicus: abandoning vision of 8, 125; conception of philosophical method 3–4, 174, 175, 181, 208–9; contextualism and nonsense 222, 224–8, 229–30; contrast with PI in idea of clarification 201–6, 207, 208–9, 216–17; forms of representation 14–16; logic 4, 5, 7, 14, 124, 189; nonsense 221, 222, 224–8, 231; propositions 9–10, 11, 124, 174, 175, 201, 202–6, 207, 207–8; reflected upon in PI 3–4, 67, 165, 185; theory of meaning and language 186, 189, 192–3, 197 truisms 177, 179, 193 truth-functions 6, 11, 204, 208 truths: derived from intuitions 123; established 190; as ‘open to view’ 187, 192–6, 197; Tractatus 7, 10; see also correspondence theory of truth types: Russell’s theory 224

understanding 7, 87, 112, 118, 179; different kinds 238–40; signs 141–2; sudden 86–7, 99–101, 101–2; words 102–7, 110–11, 115, 141–5, 196 Urfassung 26, 38n, 108 urge 17, 108, 110, 112 use theory of meaning 54–6, 102, 104, 129, 228–9 van Gogh, Vincent 8 Waismann, Friedrich 149, 176, 180, 181, 238, 242 Wittgenstein, Ludwig: awareness of shortcomings of PI 163–4; hopes for his work 165; intellectual temperament 163; on philosophy as poetic 165–7; writing style 166–7 Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Kripke) 133–5 ‘Wittgenstein’s Builders’ (Rhees) 30 wonder 101–2, 103, 106, 107, 110–11 words: Augustinian picture of language 23, 186; meaning 50, 54–5, 58, 102–3, 110–11, 143–5, 180, 226–8, 235; names 49, 59, 70–1; objects 59, 104, 155, 186, 186–7; pictures 97, 98–9; public meanings 152, 211, 216; reading 97, 115; speaking/pronouncing 57–8, 117, 118, 119; understanding 102–7, 110–11, 115, 141–5, 196; use 78, 102, 104–7, 129, 130–1, 141, 194–5, 228–9, 232 world view 6, 13, 14, 124 ‘Yellow Book’ 236 Zettel 32 Zwischenfassung 87, 95

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