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.
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