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!
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