Blog Prompt 4: Preparing to Essay the Tractatus

We have now ‘finished’ the TLP, meaning that I have introduced you to all the key ideas, and we have discussed all as thoroughly as we need to, with the exception of the subject, value, and the “Tractatus paradox.” We dealt with this vexing triad again today – and with ethical value in some detail – but there is a perhaps a bit more that needs to be said.

Before heading into the prompt, I should stress the importance of his ethical ideas for three reasons. First, they provide a line of continuity with the later work, insofar as he comes to reject the Tractarian theory (the ontology, semantics, and logic) but not his ethics. (He actually presents his ethics in ordinary language in a lecture that he gave in 1929.) Thus, while his ontology, semantics, and logic appear to fail upon critical analysis, his ethics does not fall with them. Second, his ethics, once grasped, has much to offer and even, in the context of the history of Western ethical thought, is the most compelling of the pseudo-theories that he offers in the TLP. He’s onto something. This is likely not clear from today’s class, in which I tried to hold back and let everyone grapple with things a bit; however, we can build on this in Thursday’s class. Third and finally, this is one of most intense areas of focus for most who work on the TLP today: if the say/show distinction is the central and most vexing idea in the TLP, then the implications of that for ethics is the most central and vexing aspect of that idea.

But back to the prompt: There are four general things about which you might write in your paper on the Tractatus, and they are connected to some general aims that ought to motivate your writing. Here are the four general things:

1. You might summarize the ontology, semantics, and logic – and explain why they matter, i.e., how they develop philosophy in response to the vexing (at the time) question of how language means.

2. You might focus on the exegesis of a particularly unclear – yet compelling – proposition, setting it within the context of Wittgenstein’s Tractarian theory as a whole and in particular with respect to its location in the text’s ‘architecture.’

3. You might focus on what results when the Tractarian theory is applied to one of the perennial problematic concepts of philosophy, such as causality, free will, the limits of the world, the self, or the good.

4. Finally, you might focus on what philosophy is according to the TLP – and on the status of the TLP itself.

In pursuing one of these four topic sources, you should be motivated by the following. First, can you show that you understand this text and, in particular, that you understand how philosophy operates (or at least how it operates in this seminal philosophical text)? Second, you’ll soon be dealing with Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, which responds critically to the TLP (by demolishing parts of it while making other parts stronger). Thus, do you understand it well enough to move on to a critique of it, and, further, is there some aspect of his early philosophy that you’d like to trace in his later philosophy? Third, you might be motivated by interest in some perennially problematic philosophical conception, such as the self, free will, or the good; if so, you should focus on that.

Much of what you will be doing will be essentially exegetical in nature, and your attempt to engage in exegesis (critical explanation or interpretation of a text) will be answering the basic question, Do I understand X? But keep in mind that all essays – whether in composition or philosophy or the editorial page of the newspaper – must be answering some question and must have a thesis in response to that question (and a thesis is an answer (claim) along with the main supporting reason(s)).

Be sure to bring a copy of your blog (whether on your laptop or printed) to class for discussion.

Class 9: Introducing the Say/Show Distinction

In our ninth class (on Tuesday, September 14), we finally turned to the say/show distinction, which is the central idea of the TLP and which leads to the parts of the text that readers are likely to consider the most interesting. I’d worked through much of what I’d planned to say in our ninth class in the blog that I posted the evening before class (Interlude 8.1), and we did indeed manage to work through it all in class.

I’d not planned to rehearse Class 9 too much in this blog, insofar as most of that material is in Interlude 8.1 and insofar as we went back over much of it in greater detail and depth in Class 10. (Did you notice that? Did you notice that we went over much of the same material and that we were able to go into much greater depth?) However, as I wrote the Class 9 summary, it turned into the longest post of this blog thus far. (It’s about three thousand words, or roughly ten pages.) It spells out everything that we went over in Class 9 and it does so in much detail.

We spent the start of class setting up the say/show distinction and the paradoxes it creates, especially with respect to what Wittgenstein says in the Preface and propositions 6.54 and 7. But before getting to those paradoxes (which, as of Class 10, we’ve still not really hit upon directly), we first needed to grasp what the say/show distinction is and why and how it follows from his ontology, semantics, and logic (which I’ll hereafter denote with the shorthand phrase “his Tractarian theory”). The basic idea should hopefully be clear: we can only say what is contingent (and only what is contingent can be said). We must be silent about what cannot be said. Strictly speaking then, what we have here is a sayable/unsayable distinction, but the clear suggestion is that what is unsayable – or at least some of what is unsayable – can be shown (and so it is available to us in a special way, with ‘special’ meaning ‘in a way that seems to be beyond thought, the world, and anything we might consider empirical, i.e., the realm of the sciences’).

In class, we first looked at the first half of this distinction: what can be said. What can be said is what can be pictured in a thought or proposition. Propositions say only what can be said, and what can be said are possible facts – and only possible facts can be said. Furthermore, anything that can be said can be said clearly – and one of philosophy’s tasks is to clarify what we say so that the thoughts we are expressing are perfectly clear from the perceptible signs with which we project them. Further still, all proposition essentially say the same thing: “The general form of a proposition is: This is how things stand” (4.5). Refer also to 4.022: “A proposition shows its sense. A proposition shows how things stand if it is true. And it says that they do so stand.” So propositions all essentially say, “This is the case.” And keep in mind that proposition 4.5 is the fifth and final comment on 4, which offers the definition of a thought: “A thought is a proposition with sense.” Thus, the 4s attempt to spell out what propositions are, and the final first-level comment on 4 (i.e., 4.5) gives us the general form of a proposition (which is often called, in the secondary literature, the General Form of Proposition, or GFP). The comments on 4.5 make clear that if you take all the possible elementary propositions and then connect them together in every possible way (using logical operators), you will then have all possible propositions. In other words, we have everything that can be said. And while Wittgenstein does not state it here, we can safely infer that all we now have to do in order to get a complete picture of the world is determine which of those propositions are true and which are false. When that is done, we have a complete picture of the world as it now stands.

This leads to the second half of the sayable/unsayable distinction: what cannot be said. There appear to be two kinds of things that cannot be said: the limits of the world and what is beyond the world, and this distinction between the limits of the world and what is beyond the world can be characterized as a distinction between what is senseless (sinnlos) and what is nonsense (unsinn). This distinction is made explicit at 4.4611: “Tautology and contradiction are, however, not nonsensical […].” They are, instead, merely “without sense [sinnlos]” (4.461). Thus, the distinction is this: the propositions of logic (which are all either tautologies or contradictions) are senseless propositions, and everything else is simply nonsense. But what does this mean?

First, we have to understand what it means to say that logical propositions are all senseless propositions. What he means is this.

1. There are two ways that a proposition can fail to have sense: it can be improperly formed (meaning that it is a complex proposition that is composed of simpler propositions that have been put together in ways that violate logical syntax (which is a matter of the proper application of logical operators such as conjunction, disjunction, negation, joint negation, and the conditional)) or one or more names within in can fail to have a reference (meaning that the name does not denote any object). In 6.53, Wittgenstein implies the first condition of failure and explicitly states the second. If the first is a matter of violating logical syntax, we might call the second a violation of logical semantics: semantics is the study of meaning, and logically speaking, only names have meaning. It thus makes sense that a proposition cannot have sense if some element within it has no meaning.

2. These failures might not be readily apparent. Thus, we write down or utter words and they appear to be propositions, but when we try to think their sense – when we try to picture the possible fact to which they point – we find that we are unable to do so precisely because the proposition has no sense! It only appears to be a proposition, and this is often because it is grammatically legitimate, meaning that it does not violate any rules of grammar (i.e., syntax as it is commonly understood, i.e., the rules that govern sentence structure, which allows for the creation of grammatically correct sentences that express no thought (in the Tractarian sense of what a thought is)). Wittgenstein calls these propositions “pseudo-propositions,” because they appear to be propositions (i.e., to be saying something) but they are not. They fail to say anything; i.e., they failure to picture.

3. Analysis of such pseudo-propositions will reveal two different kinds of failure. The first kind of failure happens with no violations of logical syntax or semantics: logical propositions are complex propositions formed from elementary propositions, such that each name in each proposition from which a logical proposition is built does indeed denote an object, and they are formed using only logical operators, such that they do not violate logical syntax. Thus, they are well formed and each name has a meaning. However, they are peculiar in that, in spite of being well formed and using only actual elementary propositions, they say nothing about the world: they are “without sense” and this is what they show, i.e., they show only that “they say nothing” (4.461). This is because they are either always true or always false; however, a proposition with sense must be bipoloar (it must picture a fact that can be true or false). Thus, logical propositions, in showing us only what is necessarily true or necessarily false, say nothing about the world. Instead, they “are the limiting cases – indeed the disintegration – of the combination of signs” (4.466). Thus, we find that logic “pervades the world: the limits of the world are also its limits” (5.61). Note that logic does not limit the world in the sense of imposing laws or restrictions on what is possible; rather, it shows us the limit of what is possible through tautology and contradiction. (It pervades the world in the sense that every possible fact has logical form, and each fact shows this form.)

4. This then leaves the other kind of pseudo-proposition: nonsense. Nonsense fails to have sense because it violates logical syntax (it is poorly formed) and/or semantics (one or more names in the proposition do not have meaning). The distinction between senseless and nonsense might be put this way: logical propositions say that they say nothing; nonsense, however, tries to say what cannot be said. Senseless propositions thus, in a sense, do not try to say anything, whereas nonsensical propositions try to say what cannot be said. It is clear that Wittgenstein believes that logical propositions show their senselessness and that, in showing it, they show us something about the world (its limits). However, there is debate over whether anything else can be shown.

This, then, is what it means to say that logical propositions are senseless and not nonsense.

We then (in class) raised the question of whether nonsense can show anything. This debate can be broken down into three questions (although we did not break it down like this in class): First, can what is unsayable be shown? Second, can words be used to show it? Third, can we then distinguish between ‘showing nonsense’ and ‘sheer nonsense’ (such as “dfjdofjldfjoduf”)?

These three questions about nonsense lead to three connected problems. First, it is not clear how we can show something that cannot be said. It would seem that we use words (among other things, such as music and art) to do this. However, if we focus in on the possibility that words can be used to show, we find that it is very unclear how words could do this. If words are to do this, it would seem that we would have to put words together in order to point others to something, and this suggests that we have some sense of this thing to which we are pointing them. But what sort of ‘thing’ is it and how do we come to know it? And how can we speak of a thing that cannot be said? Does not the TLP clearly suggest that Tractarian objects are the only things in reality (cf. 2.01)?

Regardless of whether the answer to that last question is ‘yes,’ it is nonetheless clear that there is something that can indeed be shown, as can be see if we turn to 6.522: “There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.” (Odgen’s translation is much closer to the original German: “There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical.” Note that what shows itself should be in the singular.) This is just one of a few places where Wittgenstein talks of unsayable things making themselves manifest, but this is the most direct statement. And this is where the debate takes off: Does he mean that no words can make them manifest – such that we should not even try – or does this leave open the possibility that certain combinations of words (such as those found in the TLP) could (for certain people and at certain times) point someone to what can only show itself but cannot be said?

Wittgenstein says that “we must be silent about it,” and Pears and McGuinness translate this as, “we must pass over [it] in silence.” The idea of “passing over it” suggests that there is something there. However, if we pass by it, and if it is unsayable, then it would seem that Wittgenstein is not saying that we must be silent even though we could say something; he clearly seems to be saying that we logically cannot say anything about it. Thus, he is either telling us what we will understand if we read the book (we will understand that, logically speaking, nothing can be said about the unsayable, and the words strung together in the TLP help us to understand this), or he is telling us that with respect to the unsayable, we make things worse if we try to use words to force it to show itself. Again, this is where debate on this issue takes off: either the silence is logical and necessary (and yet we can try to say things that make this apparent and so help others) or the silence is logical and necessary (and we just make it worse by trying to say anything about it). The existence of the TLP seems to suggest that the former is true: that yes, logically, we must be silent about everything in the TLP, but that it is nonetheless worth the effort to nonsensically talk about it. (And for those of who are paying especially careful attention, Wittgenstein uses the phrase “talk about” about half a dozen times, and he does so in ways that seem to support both sides of the debate. To “talk about” seems to be a mode of using language that does not involve picturing.)

Here, of course, I’m getting ahead of myself, because I did not introduce this debate over the essence of nonsense. Instead, we looked briefly at something that can be shown but not said: the true nature of the subject, the “I.” We thus read (in class) the passages where Wittgenstein introduces the metaphysical subject (we started at 5.6, and the subject is introduced rather enigmatically at 5.62 and directly at 5.633). Then, after we read these passages (at least, I think it was after – my memory may not be serving me well here), we turned back to how the subject (the “I,” the self) as commonly understood (in psychology and so in the natural sciences, i.e. in the world) does not exist: there is no subject in that sense; there is no subject that thinks and judges and believes. (The relevant propositions are 5.541-5.5422). We were at this point in a position to better understand this statement, insofar as the nonexistence of the subject (which I’d introduced at the end of Class 8) is a consequence of applying the Tractarian theory to the subject.

When we apply the Tractarian theory (the ontology, semantics, and logic) to the subject, we find two possibilities, both of which fail. This failure becomes apparent when we analyze pseudo-propositions made about such a subject. (It is the analysis that shows the nonexistence of the subject as commonly understood (cf. 5.5421).) Such a pseudo-proposition is, “A judges that p.” Analysis reveals that this pseudo-proposition fails to have sense for two reasons: “A” (which is supposed to ‘name’ the self) has no possible meaning (this is the point of 5.541 and 5.542), and the form of the proposition violates logical syntax (the point, I take it, of 5.5422). With respect to semantics, “A” can either be an object or a fact. However, “A” cannot be an object, because an object cannot exist outside a proposition and an object cannot be in relation to another fact or proposition; it can only be related to other objects in a fact. Furthermore, “A” cannot be a fact, because a fact cannot think or judge another fact; it can only picture another fact (hence the analytic reduction of “A judges that p” to “‘p’ says p” at 5.542). Thus, propositions (which are facts) can be related to each other only via logical operators, and facts can be related to each other in a similar fashion (when they combine in logical fashion to form more complex facts) – or when one fact is used to picture another, but this happens through an act of projecting by a subject that is, as we later learn in the 5.6s, outside (beyond) the facts that it projects and pictures. For this reason, there must be a subject of some kind, which does the projecting, but it is not an object or a fact (however complex) in this world.

Furthermore, Wittgenstein says that analysis must show that “it is impossible to judge a nonsense (an Unsinn)” (5.5422 – following Ogden’s translation, which is correct). This, in fact, leads back to the point of this whole digression: at 5.541, Wittgenstein says that it seems “possible for one proposition to occur in another in a different way,” i.e., not as a truth-basis for the more complex proposition of which it is a part. If this were true, then Wittgenstein’s account of propositions would be wrong. So how would this potential counter-example work? Like this: “A judges (or believes or thinks) that p” can be true regardless of whether p is true or false. Thus, p is part of the seemingly more complex proposition, “A believes that p,” and A can believe p whether or not p is true or false, and so the truth of p has no effect on the truth of the proposition of which it is part.

This potential counter-example to Wittgenstein’s theory is, as analysis reveals, no actual threat. We have already seen that this proposition is not an actual proposition with sense, because “A” has no meaning. However, it is also the case that there are certain instances in which “A judges that p” is not simply true or false but rather impossible, and this is when p is in fact a bit of nonsense: it is not possible to think (or judge or believe) a nonsense. Thus, if a proposition with sense must be either true or false (and possibly either), then this pseudo-proposition has no sense because it is poorly formed and presents a potentially impossible situation. And, of course, if we are playing the Tractarian game, we must grant that we cannot say that that is necessary (including what is logically impossible). Thus, this pseudo-proposition not only violates logical syntax; it seems to suggest that one could think something that is unthinkable.

So how does this lead to the idea of a metaphysical subject? It does not do so directly. After the 5.54s, Wittgenstein drops the subject and then picks it back up in a different context (the one provided by 5.6), and he does so in the context of the limits of language, not the truth-functional nature of language (which is what the 5.5s are about). But there is a subterranean link, insofar at it seems that “A” must be – even if it is not an object or fact. The link is this: the subject is a strange sort of simple (like an object, which is also simple, but in a different way) that is not in the world (whereas an object is) but that has a relation to the world as a whole and to everything in it.

We had just enough time to introduce the metaphysical subject and note that it is its world (5.63) and a limit of the world (5.632). Note that the metaphysical subject emerges only after an application of the Tractarian theory: applying the theory (which includes the ontology, semantics, and logic) to traditional philosophically problematic notions, such as the nature of the self, reveals that there is nothing where we thought that there was something. Thus, there is no self as traditionally understood. This then paves the way toward something that is non-worldly and that can make itself manifest but not be said. Wittgenstein’s applications of his theory to traditional philosophical problems and issues typically result in this: what we thought was something was nothing, and in the place of this nothing we come to see something unsayable but necessary. The problem is usually this: the ideas that cause philosophical problems are somehow necessary in any attempt to think the world, but insofar as they are necessary and not contingent, they cannot be said.

We ended class by looking at the 4.11s, which is one of the primary places where Wittgenstein talks about the essential idea of the book. There, he explains the crucial role that philosophy plays with respect to the unsayable: philosophy “will signify what cannot be said, by presenting clearly what can be said” (4.115). Through a process of analysis, philosophy clarifies thought, and that clarification is what enables the unsayable to show itself.

P.S.: One request I have for those of you who’ve read this far: After class, I typically jot down a quick outline of main points that we hit in class and the order in which we hit them. For some reason, the first point I have on the list for Class 9 is “amorphousness.” Does anyone recall – or have anything in their notes – that might make sense of this cryptic point? It’s not important; I’m just curious as to what exactly I meant by it!

Interlude 8.1: Turning to the Unsayable

We have now worked our way through the three key theories of the TLP: his ontology (logical atomism), his semantics (the picture metaphor of sense), and his logic (which is summed up in the idea that all logical propositions are senseless propositions (meaning that they are properly formed but are either always true or always false and so have no sense, i.e., depict no possible fact). We are now ready to turn to the more interesting aspects of the TLP, which make no sense without understanding this initial material. The interesting stuff can be summed up as everything that is unsayable, and so it is to the unsayable that we now turn. What follows is my own introduction to the distinction, and this retreads some of what Schroeder introduced in section 2.1, such that some of it might seem familiar. After this I will turn to Schroeder’s section 2.6 in a separate blog post.

For most who read – and especially for those who work on – the TLP, the most interesting, vexing, and central idea is the distinction between saying and showing (i.e., between what can be said and what cannot be said but only shown). It’s centrality is stressed by Wittgenstein in the Preface: “The whole sense of the book might be summed up in the following words: what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence” (and, of course, the idea of a book that is nonsense (cf. TLP 6.54) having a sense that is summed up in words that are themselves nonsense is, to say the least, vexing). This distinction between what can be said and what cannot be said stems from the principle of bipolarity: a proposition has sense and as such it has two possible values, true and false. (The ‘bi-’ is due to the two values, and the polarity is due to their being opposed (like positive and negative or north and south). A proposition is bipolar because, insofar as it has a sense, it pictures a possible state of affairs in the world, and that state may either obtain or not obtain. When Wittgenstein speaks of ‘what can be said,’ he is referring to those possible facts that can be pictured in a proposition with sense. However, it seems that some of what cannot be said – what is not a possible fact – can be “shown.” Furthermore, we do not show what can be shown; such pseudo-things “show themselves.” Propositions that attempt to say or talk about what can be shown have no sense, since they picture nothing, and Wittgenstein calls such propositions “pseudo-propositions” insofar as they appear to be propositions (with sense) but are not. There is currently a contentious debate over whether these pseudo-propositions can be distinguished from other kinds of nonsense, such that some nonsense is useful in that it shows what cannot be said while other nonsense is just pure gibberish.

The idea of the say/show distinction is developed in the comments that elucidate the first comment on proposition 4, which announces that a thought is a proposition with a sense. And keep in mind here that thoughts are propositions (with sense), such that the distinction between what can be said and what cannot be said is also a distinction between what can be thought and what cannot be thought. Thus, in the Preface, right after summing up the “whole sense of the book” as the say/show distinction, Wittgenstein then describes the aim of the book as follows: “the aim of the book is to draw a limit to thought, or rather – not to thought, but to the expression of thoughts: for in order to be able to draw a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought). It will therefore only be in language that the limit can be drawn, and what lies on the other side of the limit will simply be nonsense.” Let’s stress what he says here: the aim of the book is to draw a limit to what can be said and so to what can be thought, and what lies outside that limit is nonsense.

Setting aside the implicit argument for why this limit must be drawn in language (and not in thought), we might wonder at the implications here. If the propositions of the TLP are indeed nonsense, as he claims in 6.54, then there are no thoughts in the TLP (contrary to the explicit claims of the Preface that there are thoughts expressed here, that another can understand them, and that their truth is unassailable). If we take the say/show distinction seriously, however, we might conclude that just as there are things that cannot be said but can be shown, so there might also be things that cannot be thought but that can be intuitively grasped, especially if what can be said is presented in the right way (meaning a way that makes the logical relations among signs perfectly clear). (Also, keep in mind that he will later call the sense of the book an ethical one, such that, if the sense of the book is summed up by the say/show distinction, then this distinction is the key to the ethical sense of the book.)

But back to proposition 4 and the 4.11s. First, read the propositions that we wish to consider:

4 A thought is a proposition with a sense.

4.1 Propositions represent the existence and non-existence of states of affairs.

4.11 The totality of true propositions is the whole of natural science (or the whole corpus of the natural sciences).

4.111 Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences. (The word 'philosophy' must mean something whose place is above or below the natural sciences, not beside them.)

4.112 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. Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries.

4.1121 Psychology is no more closely related to philosophy than any other natural science. Theory of knowledge is the philosophy of psychology. Does not my study of sign-language correspond to the study of thought-processes, which philosophers used to consider so essential to the philosophy of logic? Only in most cases they got entangled in unessential psychological investigations, and with my method too there is an analogous risk.

4.1122 Darwin's theory has no more to do with philosophy than any other hypothesis in natural science.

4.113 Philosophy sets limits to the much disputed sphere of natural science.

4.114 It must set limits to what can be thought; and, in doing so, to what cannot be thought. It must set limits to what cannot be thought by working outwards through what can be thought.

4.115 It will signify what cannot be said, by presenting clearly what can be said.

4.116 Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be put into words can be put clearly.

The first comment on 4 states the bipolarity principle, and it also implies that the world (as it now stands – as all that is the case, meaning all the existing states of affairs) does not exhaust reality, which also includes possible but non-existing states of affairs (as we already know from TLP 2.06, although note that TLP 2.063 states that the sum-total of reality is the world, meaning that the world can only be determined if we know of every possible fact that it does in fact exist or not exist). The first comment on 4.1 then states that the sum-total of true propositions is nothing other than “the whole of natural science” (4.11). This then implicitly raises the question, ‘Is the way that philosophy deals with propositions the same as the way that science deals with them?’ 4.111 then infers from this that philosophy, insofar as it does not deal with which propositions are true but rather with the essence of propositions, is not a natural science.

This then raises a further question: ‘What is philosophy?’ If it is not concerned with determining which propositions are true, as science is, then it must be concerned with clarifying propositions – determining, so to speak, what exactly they say and entail, and separating out those sentences that appear to be but are in fact not propositions. Philosophy does not verify truth or how the world works; it elucidates the language with which we attempt to think the world, and in doing so it sets limits to what we can think and, by extension, to the sphere of science. It will show what cannot be said insofar as it makes clear what can be said (4.115), and everything that can be said can be said clearly (4.116). This leads to a clear inference – but one that is never stated: If philosophy can make clear everything that can be said, and if making clear everything that can be said will show what cannot be said, then philosophy can show what cannot be said. Or rather, to be more precise: since what can be shown shows itself – and it can only show itself; it cannot be shown by another – then what philosophy does is simply clear up propositions and clear out pseudo-propositions so that we have the right conditions under which what can be shown can indeed show itself.

Our next chunk of Schroeder reading takes us through his (Schroeder’s) final section on the TLP, which is on the unsayable. He divides the unsayable – “whereof one cannot speak” (TLP 7) – into five parts: (a) syntax and properties, (b) logical form, (c) solipsism, (d) ethical and aesethic value judgments, and (e) the propositions of the TLP. It is worth noting two interesting things about this division. First, Schroeder leaves out mathematics and causality. In particular, Wittgenstein claims that mathematical necessity can only be shown (not said) and that there is no causal nexus (meaning either that there is no causal necessity or that such necessity can also only be shown). This is crucial, because if one tries to find everything that connects (a)-(d) with mathematics and causality, one will find that they all deal with what is necessary. (Wittgenstein will claim that ethical value is necessary, not contingent, and ultimately that is why it cannot be said.) What is necessary cannot be said; we can only say the contingent (we can only picture possible facts that may or may not exist and need not ever exist and can, if they do exist, always change and so be otherwise). If this is so – if (a)-(d), mathematics, and causality all cannot be said because they deal with necessity and not contingency – then the implication is the TLP is showing what is necessary, and it does this by elucidating what can in fact be said and how it can be said clearly. Furthermore, the TLP thus generates the conditions under which one can properly understand and so attend to ethical value.

But let’s begin our investigation of the various ‘unsayables’ by following Schroeder and beginning with syntax and properites. That will be the next blog post.

Classes 6-8: Working Through Key Tractarian Concepts

Our last three classes have, from my perspective, gone well, insofar as we have, in each class, engaged in sustained analysis of key Tractarian concepts, and we have typically concentrated on a single crucial concept for the majority of the seventy-five minutes. Even more impressive, everyone seems to be paying attention, and questions and comments are just as frequent and useful at the end of class as at the beginning. Indeed, it always feels like we’re really ready to get into things around the fiftieth or sixtieth minute, but then, alas, class ends and you all leave. Sigh.

In summary, we focused primarily on the following in our most recent three classes: In Class 5 we focused on the second of the three proposition puzzles. The solution of the first – The Puzzle of False Propositions – was clear as a result of our work on logical atomism: propositions have sense, not meaning, and so can make sense even when false insofar as they have sense in virtue of a possible (not an actual) fact. The second puzzle is The Puzzle of Infinite Description: How can we generate infinite propositions – many of which have a new sense – with a limited set of names? This led to the question of how a name is connected to an object. There are two key aspects to that connection: the name must have the same form as the object, and a referential (denoting) connection must be made. We spent the bulk of the class wrapping our head around the idea of what the form of such a name would be: it would be a matter of combinatorial possibility. In other words, the name must be able to enter into every proposition that would be needed to describe any possible fact into which the object it names might enter. Thus, if an object was at one time part of the complex fact “Alexander the Great” and at another time part of the complex fact “this bunghole plug,” then the name must be able to enter into propositions that say those facts. But how then does a name – which is just a scribble or sound – get hooked up with an object? This is even more mysterious: it happens, Wittgenstein implies in the TLP and states explicitly in his notebooks, via a mental act of meaning the name. Class then ended. Note that we never explicitly addressed the issue of how we can understand a new sense, i.e., a proposition with sense that we have never before heard or thought. We are starting to touch on that issue now as we head into the say/show distinction in our upcoming class, Class 8.

In Class 6, we turned to The Puzzle of Propositional Form. This puzzle is what led to the so-called Picture Theory of Meaning. The puzzle is this: How can a sequence of names say anything about the world? The answer: The names have a logical form that mirrors the logical form of the objects that the proposition is saying something about, and in this fashion – in having names in a determinate logical structure – a proposition is able to picture reality. However, it is not a visual picture but a logical one. Thus, we turned our attention to the notion of logical form. We also noted the distinction between logical form (all the possible combinations of a set of objects or names) and logical structure (one actual combination from that larger set). We also managed, near the end of class, to get at the vexing issue of projection and the distinction between propositional sign, proposition, and thought – but we didn’t get too far (and we still haven’t fully addressed this issue). We ended with the issue of how the elements of thought are connected to objects. Thus, we know that an act of thought is what makes it so that an element of language (a name) connects with an object, and the name is just the perceptible sign of an element of thought. However, what hooks up an element of thought with an object, and what guarantees that their connection remains stable through time?

In Class 7 we took these issues up again, but I believe that they are still open questions for us. However, before tackling them further, we went over Wittgenstein’s logic. His account of logic approaches the connection between language and world from the ground up, so to speak: assuming that names form elementary propositions and that these in turn are combined into more complex propositions, then logic deals with the form of those propositions and the connections between them. Going over the logic as we did should either confirm for you that you have indeed been properly grasping Wittgenstein’s ontology and semantics or it should make help to make clear and weed out lingering errors. For us, the most important things to get are the idea of senseless propositions (which is what the propositions of logic are: they are well-formed but have no sense) and the implication that this view of logic has for propositional attitudes (such as belief), which do not exist. The first idea – senseless propositions – seemed relatively clear, but we ran out of time and so did not get to fully explicate why propositional attitudes do not exist and why their nonexistence means that there is no such thing as the soul or self.

Blog Prompt 3: The Picture Theory of Meaning

We’re finally well under way with the so-called Picture Theory of Meaning. The title of this theory is not Wittgenstein’s, and it is odd because (a) it’s really a theory of sense, not meaning (although it includes an account of meaning: only names can mean) and (b) he claimed that he offered no philosophical theories, theses, or dogmas. In any case, this title has stuck.

The prompts for this blog are fourfold and they are all centered on the Picture Theory of Meaning. You are free to answer whichever of these questions you chose – just one or even all of them. I recommend picking the first and then one of the fourth. First, can you summarize the theory? Second, can you explain how/why this theory arose – to what puzzle was it a response and how can it be seen as a successful response? Third, can you explain the relationship between this semantic theory and his ontology (the logical atomism): how does the former require the later, and/or how does the former stem from the later?

Fourth, you might tackle one of the puzzles that arise if one accepts the early Wittgenstein’s semantic theory. There are a few puzzles, and what follows spells out four of them. They are heavier, but those who feel comfortable with the Picture Theory of Meaning might enjoy the challenge of tackling them. Tackling them can also help you to understand the early Wittgenstein more fully; thus, understanding – not solution – is the aim of the puzzles. But the important thing is that you got at your own pace.

First, the picture theory of meaning requires what seem to be non-worldly mental acts in order to give sense to facts. As Wittgenstein says, “A propositional sign is a fact” (TLP 3.14), and, “Only facts can express a sense […]” (TLP 3.142). Thus, in order to express thoughts, we need to take facts – perceptible states of affairs in the world – and, as it were, turn them into something more than they would otherwise be. Can you wrap your head around this – and specifically why the Picture Theory of Meaning (or what we might call the Picture Metaphor of Sense) requires these strange non-worldly mental acts?

Second, what is the exact difference – and so ontological status – of propositional signs, propositions (with sense), and thoughts? Wittgenstein says that “[a] thought is a proposition with a sense” (TLP 4), that “[a] logical picture of facts is a thought” (TLP 3), and that “[i]n a proposition a thought finds an expression that can be perceived by the senses” (TLP 3.1). Things get even more mysterious when we add the first three comments on 3.1:

3.11 We use the perceptible sign of a proposition (spoken or written, etc.) as a projection of a possible situation. The method of projection is to think of the sense of the proposition.

3.12 I call the sign with which we express a thought a propositional sign. And a proposition is a propositional sign in its projective relation to the world.

3.13 A proposition, therefore, does not actually contain its sense, but does contain the possibility of expressing it.[…]

It should, in some basic prima facie way, make sense that a string of sounds or scribbles has no sense unless it is thought by someone who can think. But what then is a proposition, if it is distinct from the perceptible propositional sign and from the thought? As we know, Wittgenstein did not believe that words were necessary for thought; however, if a thought is a proposition (with sense), then are there wordless propositions? Furthermore, if the proposition is just the possibility of the expression of its sense, such that it does not “actually contain it,” does the thought differ from the proposition insofar as the thought is a proposition that actually contains its sense?

Third, there is the puzzle of the elements of thought. Thoughts picture reality, and this picturing is antecedent (in both reality and in the TLP) to what happens in language. In fact, it is thinking that makes it such that the basic elements of language, names, mean objects. But these names are just the perceptible sign of the basic elements of thought. However, what guarantees that the elements of thought have a direct one-to-one tracking correspondence to objects in reality? (Schroeder explains this issue on page 61).

Fourth, there is the puzzle of the unsayable (that which can be shown but not said), which will become more important later on but which has already been introduced in our TLP reading. There are two particular spots where we’ve hit: the 2.17s and 4.02s (quoted below). How can logical form be seen when we cannot say it or say anything sense-ful (i.e., sensical, i.e., we cannot say anything ‘meaningful’ (fact-stating)) about it? Thus, a picture “depicts” reality via a shared logical form, but it cannot depict (say or picture) its form; it can only “display” (show it). Furthermore, a proposition “shows its sense” (4.022): it does not say its sense, but it shows it – and it says that what it shows is true. How do they do this? How do we see all this? (The pertinent 2.17s and 4.02s are below.)

2.17 What a picture must have in common with reality, in order to be able to depict it--correctly or incorrectly--in the way that it does, is its pictorial form.

2.171 A picture can depict any reality whose form it has. A spatial picture can depict anything spatial, a coloured one anything coloured, etc.

2.172 A picture cannot, however, depict its pictorial form: it displays it.

4.02 We can see this from the fact that we understand the sense of a propositional sign without its having been explained to us.

4.021 A proposition is a picture of reality: for if I understand a proposition, I know the situation that it represents. And I understand the proposition without having had its sense explained to me.

4.022 A proposition shows its sense. A proposition shows how things stand if it is true. And it says that they do so stand.