Mr. Holley Points us Toward an Interesting Paradox

Thank you, Doug, for sharing an excellent reflection on your engagement with Wittgenstein. One point in particular brought to mind a paradox of sorts in Wittgenstein’s philosophical practice – a paradox that is reminiscent of the paradox of the Tractatus (which is a text full of things that cannot be said) but that we never discussed in class.

The paradox arises as follows: As you note, his investigations are “intended to describe the various sorts of problems that arise when language is actually in use.” There are two ways in which this can be taken. In one sense, yes: the text is intended to describe the various sorts of problems that arise when we attempt to explain how language works – and explaining how language works is one way that we can use language. In another sense, however, Wittgenstein seems to say ‘no’: he gives primacy to a supposed ‘ordinary use’ that our words have and he treats philosophical explanations of those uses as themselves illegitimate in some way. Thus, he writes the following in the metaphilosophical sections:

§116: “What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.”

§120: “When I talk about language (words, sentences, etc.) I must speak the language of every day.”

§124: “Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it.”

The paradox here is that philosophers use language, but they do so in order to explain more ordinary uses of language, and it’s the way that they (philosophers) use language that causes the confusion. The paradox would then be this:

(A) The meaning of a word is its use.

(B) The use of a word clouds its meaning.

However, Wittgenstein seems to be claiming that (B) only seems true because of the misuse that philosophers make of words (as a result of grammatical error). However, misuse does not count as use; rather, ‘use’ means (for Wittgenstein) the norm that governs the use of the word; philosophers violate these words and thus cloud the meaningfulness of language. Thus, (B) is not true; it’s the misuse of language that clouds meaning, and Wittgenstein is investigating how these philosophical misuses arise.

Still, I do believe that Wittgenstein believes that this philosophical confusion has a ‘trickle down’ effect and so comes to infiltrate ordinary use of language. However, if this is so, the trick is to determine what ordinary uses (such as our tendency to refer to things in the mind) are in fact philosophically based corruptions and what uses are in fact the bedrock (cf. §217) that makes communication possible.