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.
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