Class 26: The First Argument Set (Semantic Norms)

We spent the first part of class going over the first conflation/paradox argument set. The first conflation argument is §22 (although it follows directly from the variations of language-game §2 that we find in §§19-21, and so it can be seen as a sophisticated version of the conflation that is first found in the Builders Game) and the first paradox argument is at §95 (The Paradox of Thought). In the second half of the class we then finished up the sections on reading in order to set up the second argument set (the second conflation is at §193 and the paradox is at §201), and we here moved quickly over some key points in the mid-§§170s and the §§180s. We’ll spend our next class (on Tue Nov 16) going over the second set (and thus our reading is §§183-243), which will bring us up to the brink of the third paradox argument (although its accompanying conflation argument is back at §48).

Our primary aim in the first half of class was to understand the nature of both the conflations and paradoxes with which Wittgenstein deals. His ‘conflation arguments’ and ‘paradox arguments’ are arguments against a specific misconception (which we can also call a preconceived idea, a bewitching picture, or an erroneous assumption) that causes philosophical problems and yet leads to a philosophical theory. In the conflation argument, he argues against the misconception by showing that it results from a conflation (whether it’s a matter of conflating part with whole or means of representation with what is represented; as Williams puts it, it is a matter of conflating “normative and nonnormative features” (15)). Wittgenstein is aware that the conflation argument is unlikely to work on its own to change the thought of his interlocutor, insofar as the person bewitched by a certain philosophical picture will be highly tolerant of contradiction and paradox: the bewitched person is led not to give up their conflation or to see it but rather to “refine his [or her] theorizing” (Williams 15). Thus, after tracing out the way in which the conflation leads one to be tolerant in this fashion (this is the process of cognitive therapy), Wittgenstein finally brings us around to the central paradox that the interlocutor tolerates and that causes him/her so much trouble. This paradox arises from a truism that, however, is in direct contradiction with a truth generated by the conflation. Ideally, one would at this point realize that the proper response to the paradox is to give up the pseudo-truth stemming from the conflation. Depending on how one looks at things, Wittgenstein then moves on to a new target or to the same target in a different arena of philosophical concern (as if his opponent does not really admit defeat but retreats to a different area of philosophy).

We sought to develop our sense of the conflation and paradox arguments by looking at the first set, and I wanted us to be especially on guard for the way in which language (surface grammar) itself plays a role in generating the conflation and consequent paradox (a conflation and paradox that can be ‘healed’ by attending to depth grammar, or grammar in the philosophical sense of the term). In the first argument set, we are dealing with semantic norms – norms that govern our sense of the language-reality relationship. We will move from a misunderstanding of those norms to the Paradox of Thought. In the process, we see the shift from Referentialism to Mentalism, insofar as we move from the idea that an object constitutes the meaning of a word to the idea that the meaning of what we say is a matter of something in the mind, whether we characterize that something in terms of what the mind does (mental acts or processes) or things in the mind (on the one hand, we have mental states or habits or dispositions, if we focus of the quality of the mind; on the other hand, if we focus on the ‘things’ in it, we have grammar, rules, and formulas, all of which are kinds of norms that govern our use of language). Thus, we move from the idea that meaning is a matter of reference (of objects in the world) to the idea that meaning is a matter of the mental (of something in the mind). Indeed, the second conflation/paradox set stems from a misunderstanding of norms, insofar as we are tempted to think that our ability (and desire and intention) to follow a norm is enabled by an act of interpretation (such that I am able to follow a norm only if I interpret it correctly). This will, as we’ll see next week, lead to problems (and we set this conflation and paradox up very quickly at the end of class; the conflation is set up in §§193-94 and the paradox in §§201-02).

But back to the argument over semantic norms and the first set of arguments: We actually saw the move from referentialism and objects to mentalism and something in the mind in the Tractatus, insofar as the Tractarian thinker moves from objects to sense in showing (and, really, explaining) how meaning works. This was because of the Puzzle of False Propositions that a strong referentialist faces. Strong referentialism would endorse the claim that both words and sentences mean via reference: objects are the meanings of words and existing facts are the meaning of sentences. This is a problem insofar as we clearly do talk meaningfully about things that do not exist. With respect to words, we can avoid this problem by restricting what can be named to simples. Thus, most physical objects, which can be destroyed, are actually complex (and so are facts, not objects); most words, insofar as they appear to name objects that are not actually objects (because they can be destroyed), are not actually logical names but are instead disguised propositions. However, even if we restrict the possible meaning of a word/name to simple objects, we still have the problem of sentences, which can refer to nonexisting facts and make sense (whether the sentence is true but the fact no longer exists or whether the sentence is simply false).

The solution the Puzzle of False Propositions – and so the solution to the question/problem of the distinction between true and false statements – is the idea of sense: what we say has sense insofar as it pictures a possible state of affairs. However, there is a possible problem here, insofar as the meaning (not the reference but the significance, or Bedeutung) of what we say is now tied not to something out in the world but rather to a sense in the mind. What I say or write – the perceivable sounds or signs that I utter or mark – has meaning not insofar as it refers to a fact but only insofar as it expresses a sense, and that sense is not in the world but in the mind of the one who expresses it. This sense, then, does the valuable work of meaning, and I can mean something (i.e., my sentence can convey something) insofar as I mean something (i.e., insofar as I intend to convey that sense). Now, the truth or falsity of my sentence – which was originally the puzzling thing – becomes irrelevant; all sentences have, in the language of the TLP, “equal value,” and whether they are true or false is, from the viewpoint of philosophy, not of interest (and is of interest only to natural scientists). In terms of what makes the sentence meaningful, then, its actual truth or falsity is meaningless (although it must potentially be the one or the other, but which it is no longer matters). Thus, the Picture Theory of Sense does not explain the puzzling nature of truth and falsity but rather makes the actual truth or falsity nonexistent from the perspective of the proposition: the proposition (to anthropomorphize for a moment) does not care and cannot know whether it is actually true or false.

More to come …

Class 25: Meaning Via Meaning

Schroeder begins his discussion of the “meaning of meaning” with the fact that the early Wittgenstein was not interested in the link between language and world because he saw it as “psychological,” which meant that it was of no interest to philosophy. In saying that the link was psychological, what Schroeder is referring to is the fact that, for the early Wittgenstein, the neurological mechanisms by which we gather up sensory information, process it, and then convert it into words (spoken or written) is something that the natural sciences investigate. However, keep in mind that there is also a metaphysical aspect to the language-world relation, insofar as the subject that projects thoughts is not a psychological self but a metaphysical one. Thus, while I cannot experience the world or talk about it without a body, there is something that goes on here that is not a part of this world. Note also that it might be more proper here to speak of the relationship between thought and language rather than language and world: what is at issue is how what I think is converted into signs that make sense to others.

Insofar as the early Wittgenstein had a view of the relationship between intrinsically meaningless signs and significant signs, it could be phrased (following Schroeder) as follows: A sentence has meaning via an act of meaning. A clearer way to put this would be to say that a sequence of uttered sounds/words has significance (Bedeutung, which means ‘meaning’ in the sense of what a sentence conveys) only insofar as those uttered words are accompanied by (and one might add ‘generate in someone else’) a mental act of representation (meinen, which means ‘to mean’ in the sense of ‘to intend’). We encountered this idea in the TLP in the following way: even if my ordinary language words are vague, the thought/picture that I have in mind when I utter them (and so what I intend by them) is not vague. Thus, we see here in the TLP the “temptation to invoke a mental act of meaning something (meinen) as part of a preconceived view of how language works” (146).

Schroeder notes that this preconceived idea (of a mental mechanism that enables language to mean) is only implicit in the TLP, and it functions primarily to deter the early Wittgenstein from looking carefully at the issue (since he dismisses mental processes as a matter for the sciences to investigate). However, the PI makes this consequence of the TLP explicit insofar as the PI carries out the consequences of the TLP and investigates the origins of its ideas more fully. This idea of a mental mechanism is what in particular leads to most of the central problems investigated by Wittgenstein in the PI. (And keep in mind my claim that he makes this the target of his investigations most explicitly in §134. Schroeder gives five examples of the problems to which the Mentalist Thesis leads (the five are listed below, and the two-part Mentalist Theory of Meaning (to which the Mentalist Thesis leads) is below that), and the only one that precedes §134 is the one found in the first section, which in a sense introduces this central theme of the entire text.)

Schroeder introduces five problems to which this preconception about the relationship between mental acts and language leads (a preconception that I am calling The Mentalist Theory of Meaning).

1. We take ostension to be possible only if there is a mental act of meaning what is pointed to when the word is said (§§1, 28). In other words, we take the introduction of a word to depend “on what one meant when giving the explanation” of the word.

2. When applied to subjective experiences (my own idiosyncratic sense of things, such as how a thing tastes, which I often cannot put into words: “I am aware of what I mean [experience] – this – but I cannot communicate it to anybody else (cf. PI §276)” (146)), this leads to the problem of a private language (as it suggests that I could name an experience that only I have, such that the meaning of my word is incomprehensible to everyone else). This leads to the Private Language Argument (PTA) at §§243-315.

3. This temptation in initiate situations (i.e., the temptation to explain the meaning of words in terms of mental acts) is applied in situations of mastery, too: any use of language depends upon an act of meaning, because I can say words without meaning them, and so when I say them and do in fact mean them, it seems that there must be something in us with which the words are linked. (Schroeder refers us to §507.)

4. Our intention (what we mean to say) can precede what we say, leading us to conclude that the meaning of what we say “is present in our mind” as we say it – and as something separate from what is said but which gives life (i.e., meaning) to what is said (cf. §334) (147).

5. When we teach someone a mathematical formula, we intend that the formula be applied the same way at every step, making it seem as if “our meaning [something such as a formula or order or rule] can invest our words with a determinacy stretching to infinity.” (Cf. §188.)

Schroeder presents the two theses that are at work in this temptation; the two theses together generate what we’ll call The Mentalist Theory of Meaning:

(1) Meaning (Bedeutung) is determined, or brought about, through meaning it.

(2) Meaning something (meinen) is a mental process. (147) (The Mentalist Thesis is (2))

As Schroeder notes, (1) depends on (2), insofar as, if I am to bring about significance through intention, then “it must be possible to mean [i.e., intend or think] something independent of any already established linguistic content” (147). What Schroeder says by way of explanation of this may be unclear, but the upshot is this: It may seem completely obvious to one that we can mean or think things independently of words; however, Wittgenstein is claiming that such a process would actually be incredibly strange. What would it be like to form a thought (a meaning; an intention) outside of words? It would, Schroeder suggests, be “like forming sounds, or humming a tune, in one’s mind: a psychological process that could occur even if no linguistic practices and conventions existed.” However, are we in fact familiar with such a process? Wittgenstein would say “no,” and so he tries to turn us continuously to (a) the fact that there is no such process and (b) that meaning happens otherwise. As Schroeder sums it up, he wishes to show us that “meaning something is not a mental process.” This, I think, is the fundamental point that Wittgenstein is trying to make in the PI, but it is a point that it is easy to both unintentionally evade and misunderstand.

Stepping away from Schroeder for a moment, we can note the following implication: If Wittgenstein is correct, then language works very differently than we think – and it shapes us in a much more fundamental way than we think. For starters, he is – as in the TLP – arguing (or at least implying) that there can be no thought outside of language. This leads to the following argument:

Premise 1: There is no thought outside of language.

Premise 2: The bulk of our sense of self is found and formed within thought.

Conclusion 1: The bulk of our sense of self is found and formed within language. (P1 + P2)

Premise 3: Language precedes my thought (and makes it possible).

Conclusion 2: The bulk of our sense of self is found and formed within something that precedes us. (C1 + P3)

In other words, that part of ourselves in which we might be tempted to locate our uniqueness and autonomy is in fact shaped by and dependent upon a set of conventions over which we have little control. The only way for us to gain some sense autonomy within the realm of language is to at the least become more aware of how language works. If we do that, then we can begin to use language in order to more fully express who we are (and can more fully recognize the attempts of others to do the same). The shift, then, that would occur in seeing language more clearly is a shift in which I go from having my sense of self determined by linguistic convention to one of displaying my sense of self through language. (I believe that Nietzsche essentially endorses a similar move.)

Back to Schroeder: Schroeder then (at the bottom of 147) begins one of two attempts to look at what the mental process of ‘meaning something’ outside of language could possibly be. He will look first at directing one’s attention and then at the supposed presence of a mental image. Both fail, and the failure points the way toward Wittgenstein’s belief that “what a person means will simply be what [the words s/he is using mean] under the circumstances [in which they are used]” (150). But we’ll look at this portion of 4.2.f later.

Class 24: Moving to Conflation and Paradox

We spent the bulk of class going over a new handout that should, I hope, help us as we move into the final weeks of the class (we have three and a half weeks of class left, or seven more meetings). The primary aim of the handout was/is threefold: it will help us keep track of (and helped us to review) important concepts, terms, moves, and structures within the text as we move forward; it will help to introduce us to the tricky features of the actual arguments that Wittgenstein is making; and it will provide us with a more systematic method for reading the text. The opening sections of the handout served largely as a review, but we eventually moved into new material. Or rather, it was material I had introduced during the three class periods that served as an introduction to the PI, but we were not then ready to make much sense of some of that material until we’d become familiar with the text.

The crucial new material centers in the handout centers on the structure of the arguments that Wittgenstein is making in four areas of philosophical concern. Each area of concern deals with a norm of some kind – semantic, practical, epistemic, and ontological – and each norm is ultimately (Wittgenstein argues) a linguistic one. As always, Wittgenstein does not argue in a traditional or academic manner; instead, he makes claims and offers descriptions and thought experiments and imagined dialogue. However, we will try to translate, as it were, what he is doing into more accessible terms. Thus, we can see him as engaging in the following complex argumentative structure with respect to problems that arise with each kind of norm. First, he argues that the problem stems from a conflation, the end result of which is that some part of something is taken as the essence of that something. Thus, for instance, we take some part of language (such a true/false assertions) and then universalize that one feature of language, meaning that we treat it as the essential feature of language, i.e., as that which makes any use of language “language.” This conflation is grounded in – or becomes – a preconception that bewitches it, and because of our belief in it, we tolerate contradiction and paradox. The assumption (never fully spelled out or justified by Wittgenstein) is that it is in some sense bad and irrational to tolerate contradiction and paradox. However, Wittgenstein must then argue directly against the paradox, too, since the argument against the conflation did not do the trick. The result is that he engages in a form of cognitive therapy: assuming that the conflating picture is a deep-seated part of our thought (a habit) that creeps up everywhere and whether we want it to or not, we then have to repeatedly present ourselves with new questions from different angles so that we can see how and where it pops up – and then refute the conflated idea in the light of day (so to speak). Since the habit is ingrained, one instance of this is not sufficient; it must be done repeatedly, and trying to do so repeatedly can show how easily the ingrained habit of thought can persist and how readily it can derail clear thinking.

(We’ve have yet to look at how this toleration of paradox takes place, but for those who wish to start thinking about it, you can look at §§352-56, in which he blames a misapplication of the law of the excluded middle. Basically, the conflating assumption sets up an either/or dilemma (such as ‘either any given piece of language use must refer or it does not refer (and so is nonsense)’). A paradox arises when it seems that, for instance, a piece of language does not refer and yet clearly is meaningful (So we have: ‘It is true that meaningful language must refer. This piece of language does not refer. Yet this piece of language must refer. And yet it doesn’t. Argh – we’re caught in a dilemma!’). Take the command “Stop!”: the perplexed philosopher will oscillate back and forth, unable to find a way to account for the meaningfulness of this bit of language while the conflating idea is in place. S/he sees no third option (namely, the possibility that this bit of language is meaningful but does not refer).)

At the end of class, we looked at the first conflation, which is semantic in nature and which is laid out (according to Meredith Williams) most fully in §22. We read through this section and I translated the English into (hopefully) more accessible English (meaning more Tractarian-like English) as we went along. In what follows, I have written the entire section out, with my comments placed in brackets (which are the common means of marking off outside insertions within a quote). The conflation is two-fold: the philosopher conflates one part of language for all of language (which is the first fold); however, this happens because of a conflation of the means of representation with what is represented (which is the second fold). In other words, the particular surface features of the language we tend to use (including not just grammar (in the ordinary sense of syntax – Wittgenstein at §664 calls syntactic grammar “surface grammar,” which misleads us with respect to the “deep grammar” that governs the use of a word) but also the particular ways of speaking toward which we tend even when other syntactically legitimate ways of speaking are available) mislead us into making the conflation, because we take some aspect of the means by which speak to say something essential about what we are speaking about. However, what we are speaking about is often very different (contrary to the Tractarian assumption of logical isomorphism) from the means by which we talk about it.

"22. Frege’s opinion that every assertion [read: proposition] contains an assumption [read: sense], which is the thing asserted [read: projected], really rests on the possibility, found in our language, of writing every assertoric sentence [read: every sentence that expresses a thought, i.e., every proposition with sense] in the form “It is asserted that such-and-such is the case” [which is, in Tractarian terms, is “I think that such-and-such is the case,” and “such-and-such is the case” is the General Form of Proposition]. – But “that such-and-such is the case” is not a sentence in our language – it is not yet a move in the language game. [In other words, if all I say is “Such and such is the case,” then I have not really said anything – unless context makes it clear what this “move” means, but it would then be a “move” (a use of language that is meaningful and that accomplishes something) only because of the context in which it is said, such that its meaning would depend on other sentences and on a non-linguistic background.] And if I write, not “It is asserted that …”, but “It is asserted: such-and-such is the case,” the words “It is asserted” simply become superfluous. [In other words, I can write this sentence in two ways, linking “It is asserted” and “such-and-such is the case” with either a colon or the word “that.” The difference might seem trivial, but Wittgenstein is suggesting that it is not only not trivial but is in fact a central cause of the conflation error that we make: we tend to think of the “It is asserted” – or the “I think,” in Tractarian terms – as an essential part of the sentence, but it only looks that way because of the convention of writing or saying “I think/believe that ….” However, our grammar in fact allows (via the colon) for us to write this assertoric sentence in a different way – a way that makes the superfluity of part of the sentence clearer – but we tend not to write it that way. At the same time, we taken the way that we do normally write it as reflective of some deeper truth about language, which is what he is trying to show in the rest of this section and the PI as a whole. Note also that the “It is asserted” drops out in the same way that the “I think” drops out in the TLP, but it does so for very different reasons and with very different consequences.]

"We might very well also write every assertion in the form of a question followed by an affirmative expression: for instance, “Is it raining? Yes!” Would this show that every assertion contained a question? [Note here the similarity to the issues raised and method used in §134, which is the first section after the metaphilosophical remarks and is the section in which he finally begins to move away from rebuttal of the Tractatus in order to focus more fully on the new problems with which he is concerned. Those problems were, as you can hopefully see just in this section, already rehearsed in §§1-108, but the primary focus in these first 108 sections is the rebuttal of the TLP. The conflation and paradox arguments for the violation of semantic norms are in the first 108 sections mainly because these are the only sorts of norms with which the TLP dealt. Because of the way that the Tractarian theory drew a limit to what can be said (and so to what the self can be), he largely ignored the other areas of concern, although the Tractarian theory, if followed out more fully, clearly seems to have implications that lead to violations in the other three areas of normative concern (practice, epistemology, and what we might call ‘internal ontology,’ or the ontology of those states, process, feelings, and thoughts that we ‘find’ when we look ‘inside’ ourselves). As for this second paragraph of §22, Wittgenstein is primarily trying to show that it is possible that some other convention for making assertions could have arisen. He is also showing that one could assume that every assertion contains a question and then ‘analyze’ every assertion down into a question and an affirmation. However, to do that would be silly: it would be to make an unwarranted assumption and to then, on the basis of that assumption, not analyze the sentence but instead create two somewhat different sentences. This is what the PI Wittgenstein believes the TLP Wittgenstein did.]

"Of course, one has the right to use an assertion sign [a symbol that basically shows that I judge the content of the assertion to be true] in contrast with a question-mark, [there should not be a colon here, and so I’ve removed it] for example, or if one wants to distinguish an assertion from a fiction or an assumption. [This is a rare use in the PI of an essentially moral term: “right.” Wittgenstein here seems to mean that there is nothing stopping one from doing these things in order to accomplish some purpose: there is no law against it (in nature of society or grammar). However, the implication is that one is free to do many other things, to, such that it is a problem if one exerts one’s ‘grammatical rights’ and uses an assertion sign but then tries to impose this use on all other possible uses of language. The attempt to impose it – to claim that one has gotten at the essence of language with the use of the assertion sign – rests on a mistake, which helps to explain why it is illegitimate.] It is a mistake only if one thinks that the assertion consists of two acts, entertaining and asserting (assigning a truth-value, or something of the kind) [or, in Tractarian terms, thinking and then projecting via a propositional sign: to entertain is to think (one can think something without thinking that it is true) and to assert is to say something that one actually believes] and that in performing these acts we follow the sentence sign by sign roughly as we sing from sheet music [which is what the early Wittgenstein suggests that we do – and can do because of the underlying shared logical form of thoughts and their various sensible expressions; cf. 4.01s for the music references]. Reading the written sentence loudly or softly is indeed comparable to singing from sheet music, but ‘meaning [Meinen]’ (thinking) the sentence that is read is not. [This anticipates the account of reading in §§156-78 and in particular the definition of reading as converting signs into sounds. It also anticipates one of the things that we noted as we worked through those sections: there seems to be something different going one when one thinks what one reads as opposed to merely converting the signs into sounds. Furthermore (and we did not get into this yet, since we have not yet worked our way to the sections on ‘being guided by’), when we read, the thought does not ‘come to us’ sign by sign but rather more holistically, implying that there is not a shared logical form between what we read and what we think (let alone the world that we then think about).]

"The Fregean assertion sign marks the beginning of a sentence. [In other words, it shows the reader that what follows is a whole sentence and not just a part of it; thus, it really would serve only as a convention for marking boundaries between distinct sentences so that they are easier to read. In doing this, it would be like a period (which comes at the end of a sentence but which serves the same function.] So its function is like that of the full stop. It distinguishes the whole period from a clause within the period. If I hear someone say “it’s raining”, but do not know whether I have heard the beginning and end of the period, then so far this sentence fails to convey anything to me [or more literally (with respect to the German) ‘then so far this sentence is not for me a means of understanding [Verständigung, which can also mean ‘agreement’ or ‘communication]’]."

To sum up: Frege – and the early Wittgenstein – thought that they had discovered something essential about language, but really they had mistaken a particular conventional way of speaking for the essence of language. The later Wittgenstein argues that this is the case (that a conflation had occurred in the thinking of Frege and his earlier self, who was heavily influence by Frege), but he knows that someone in the grip of an idea will not be refuted simply by having their conflation – and the true nature of what they are conflating – pointed out to them. Such a person will persist in holding onto this conflation, even when it leads to vexing paradoxes.

Another way of putting the conflation is as follows: Logical notation gives us a means of representing (some of) the things that we say; we then conflate that means of representing what we say (exemplified in what the early W called a “proposition”) with the reality of what we say, i.e., of how language works. The notation is, in a sense, an attempt to make clear the norms that govern our linguistic practice, but the problem is that these norms are conflated with moves within that practice (Williams 7): we think that this talk of norms actually says something meaningful, when in fact talk norms are a precondition of playing a language game but not themselves moves within a language game. I might even reflect on the norms that govern language, but that does not (so Wittgenstein seems to claim) accomplish any purpose within any ‘game’ in which language is used in life. (Note here that one might argue that the PI is in fact very purpose-driven, such that talk of norms could, in a different sense, be a move in a language game).

We reinforce a conflated idea whenever it guides our use of and approach to language. Thus, whenever a Tractarian goes to analyze something, he is further reinforcing his conviction that an ideal exactness must be out there in reality; without that conviction, he would never be motivated to logically analyze a sentence; the analysis must then either build the ideal exactness out of limited material or it will seem as if there is nothing there.

So that’s the conflation. We then get to the paradox at §95: “‘Thinking must be something unique.’ When we say, mean [meinen], that such-and-such is the case, then, with what we mean, we do not stop anywhere short of the fact, but mean: such-and-such – is – thus-and-so. – But this paradox (which indeed has the form of a truism) can also be expressed in this way: one can think what is not the case.”

I’ll leave off at this point, but note two things. First, note that we have the idea of a unique mental process, which is what we get again with reading (in §§165-167). Second, as §§94 and 96 (the sections surrounding §95) make clear, the Picture Theory of Meaning is invoked to get around this paradox, but it only in fact digs us deeper into the problem (and so we try to get out of the snare of the paradox only to find it tighten).

Words: 2,853