Abstract
Regrettably, Wittgenstein did not consider the possibility that his early effort was both significant and a failure. So he replaced its content with its approach: the concern of philosophy is (not with thought but) with language, questioning whether a sentence has truth-value before questioning whether it is true. To view Wittgenstein’s work as philosophy of life is to admit defeat. The paradox of analysis is satisfactorily answerable, providing scope to the techniques of Wittgenstein and of his followers. The most ambitious example of this is logical atomism. It failed. Mature Wittgenstein offered examples of techniques for analysing sentences; it is questionable.
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Notes
- 1.
This ignores almost all the smaller philosophical schools with the exception of the critical rationalists. It is the only school to have taken the cudgels against Wittgenstein’s heritage (Popper [1935] 1959 , Preface to the English Translation). Likewise, this pays little attention to the existentialist aspect of analytic philosophy and the Kafkaesque ideas to find in Wittgenstein and even in Quine (Stroud 1995; Williams 2004) .
- 2.
Hostility to scientism is the last reason for the ascription of any anti-science attitude – regardless of any attitude to scientism.
- 3.
Russell’s letter to Popper of 12 November 1946 (Grattan-Guinness 1992, 15) may support this reading.
- 4.
This is hard to uphold. Indeed, on occasion Wittgenstein deviated from it too (Monk 1990; 2012, 313) .
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
The “Vienna Circle” deemed reasonable the cost of getting rid of metaphysics. Carnap 1937 pretended that no cost was involved: he altered Wittgenstein’s system by admitting Russell’s three criticisms of it. (He accepted the quantifiers, infinity and the meta-language.) He thus tacitly denied that this invalidates the achievement. At least he realized that his alterations required of him to alter the concept of metaphysics. This he did: all traditional metaphysical systems confuse words and things, he said. Even proverbially pedantic Quine who considered this idea admirable admitted that it is a failure. Carnap’s characterization holds for Pythagoreanism but not for classical atomism (Popper ([1935] 1959, §85) . Carnap dismissed Popper’s criticism by declaring that he had no objection to atomism, overlooking its status as a metaphysical system contrary to his view.
- 8.
Wittgenstein showed bad faith here. Since he and Russell went over the manuscript of the book together, his attitude to Russell’s Introduction was odd and required explanation. It deserves mention though that he would have preferrred to have his book published without Russell’s Introduction (but not enough to use his wealth to procure publication).
- 9.
Black 1971 , 23ff.
- 10.
Russell 1940, 327: “The operation by which, from the examination of a whole W, we arrive at ‘P is a part of W’ is called ‘analysis’.”
- 11.
“A bad philosopher is like a slum landlord. It is my job to put him out of business”. Fann 1967 , 69; Rhees, 1984, xv, 117; Canfield 1986 , 102; Hallett 1991 , 125; Edmonds and Eidinow 2001 , xx; Nielsen and Phillips 2005 , 15; McGuinness 2012 , 314. This way Wittgenstein explained his hostility to certain metaphysicians. Yet his demarcation of metaphysics did not gain general approval. He slightly ameliorated his hostility when he allowed for (sincere and unpretentious) metaphysical poetry. This made Carnap replace “meaning” with “cognitive meaning”.
- 12.
This is not to claim understanding of Wittgenstein on commonsense. He seems to have included in it Spengler’s historicism (Klagge 2010) ; alternatively, he might have included in it Tolstoy’s historicism. Neither version is commonsensical. Nor is it scientific. Hence, it is metaphysical (Berlin 1955) .
- 13.
Scientific researchers would love to know what question is answerable. This is context-dependent, and even obviously so. This and the idea that science can grow by criticizing commonsense, Russell observed, demand a revision of analytic philosophy.
- 14.
This is not very accurate, since anti-metaphysics is ubiquitous and prevalent.
- 15.
Russell’s view of commonsense was scientifically informed and fallibilist. He was thus a terrific analyst.
- 16.
TLP, §6.53: “The right method of philosophy would really be to say nothing … except natural science … and then, whenever someone else wants to say something metaphysical …” it should be debunked.
- 17.
Ryle said repeatedly, there is too much discussion about philosophy and not enough doing philosophy. This amounts to the imposition of his agenda. Fortunately, as editor of Mind he was liberal.
- 18.
Jack London reports in his 1908 dystopia The Iron Heel the (future) refutation of Berkeley’s idealism. This is a conjecture, of course. Conjectures about future conjectures are absurd (Popper 1957 , Preface).
- 19.
The notoriously superficial rationalism of early-stage analytic philosophy masks the mysticism popular at the time that served as a replacement of the lost faith and as means for secularizing the philosophy of life. This is the root of the popularity among intellectuals then of superficial philosophies like those of Nietzsche and of Tolstoy . Compare on it critical Schwartz 2006 and apologetic Putnam 2008.
- 20.
- 21.
Evidently, Wittgenstein’s view of therapy is irrefutable. Viewed as compulsory, it is deplorable.
- 22.
Many a language analyst is captive of Bacon’s immature view that there is no admiration in dissent.
- 23.
- 24.
This view of Wittgenstein as a metaphysician of sorts is now quasi-official.
- 25.
Russell began the trend in his 1905 “On Denoting”, where he opposed Frege’s theory of meaning as he (rightly or not, opinions differ) considered it metaphysical, the admission of Plato’s Heaven. Wittgenstein explained his own rejection of this move of Frege (PI, §58) but he also cast his net much wider (PI, §116), declaring his program thus: “we bring back the words from their metaphysical to their everyday use”.
- 26.
Whether Wittgenstein was a rationalist is under dispute (Glock 2001, 195–7). Glock deemed Wittgenstein only partly a rationalist. Some view his philosophy as concerned with reason. Bennett 1989 opens his discussion with the suggestion that Wittgenstein’s project is very ambitious as its subject is rationality. Grice 2001 , 5 says, Wittgenstein “aims at the clarification of the notion of reason or rationality”. Føllesdal 1996 conclusion subjects analytic philosophy to rational debates, which is very nice, of course.
- 27.
Carnap won praise for his having changed his views openly while admitting error. Not here, though.
- 28.
TLP, §4.111: “(The word ‘philosophy’ must mean something whose place is above or below the natural sciences, not beside them.)” This argument is question begging.
- 29.
This my conjecture explains Wittgenstein’s return to philosophy upon having heard Brouwer lecture on finitist mathematics, as well as his determined refusal to express a detailed opinion on his early views. It also explains the surreptitious nature of his changes of opinions. Rodych 1999 , 174 discussed his altered view of sense, no less.
- 30.
- 31.
Agassi and Wettersten 1980 ; Agassi 2013, 211 (§14.14). Stroll (1994) defends Wittgenstein’s reliance on commonsense, as advocating ideas too vague to be refutable. Popper 1945 , Ch. 25, note 26 responded to this, saying “Irrefutability is not a virtue”. Thus, modern commonsense is superior to traditional commonsense.
- 32.
Agassi 1975 , Ch. 15: Partial Knowledge, 346–9.
- 33.
Austin 1956 , “Plea for Excuses” defended the authority of all commonsense ideas thus:
our common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connexions they have found worth marking, in the lifetimes of many generations: these surely are likely to be more numerous, more sound, since they have stood up to the long test of the survival of the fittest, and more subtle, at least in all ordinary and reasonably practical matters, than any that you or I are likely to think up in our armchairs of an afternoon-the most favoured alternative method.
This is standard, insipid conservatism in a new garb: it justifies every conceivable long-accepted traditional atrocity.
- 34.
Moore 1953 . Ch. II, 28–40; O’Connor 2012 , 95.
- 35.
Chapman 2009 , 200.
- 36.
Schilpp 1963 , 23. Carnap stood up valiantly against the tide of McCarthyism .
- 37.
Hempel depicted the hostility of the “Vienna Circle” to religion as an asset only orally: in the session in his honor at the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division 1983 Boston meeting.
- 38.
Cavell 1962 , 1976, Chapter 2: “The availability of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy”.
- 39.
Mates 1964 . Gellner [1959] 2005 , Schlagel 1974 and Uschanov 2002 offered the same criticism in a less complementary assessments. Freeman Dyson went furthest: Wittgenstein’s refusal to discuss his first book made Dyson pronounce him a charlatan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byi3vOnVodQ
- 40.
Joad 1950 censured “logical” positivism as moral indifference, using as evidence Ayer’s emotivism (Ayer 1936, 109). The ensuing angry response presented Ayer as a concerned citizen – as if Joad was attacking Ayer’s conduct rather than his views (Royall 1952) . Ayer’s philosophy of life is very nice; his project was to reconcile it with analytic philosophy. He finally admitted defeat by despairing of analytic philosophy and returning to classical empiricism in the eve of his life.
- 41.
As Monk 1990 , 471–2 notes, Wittgenstein disapproved of Russell’s philosophy of life but avoided arguing with him. Monk 1990, 243 reports that Wittgenstein disappointed members of the “Vienna Circle” when they expected him to give a lecture: he faced the wall and read to them a text of Rabindranath Tagore .
- 42.
- 43.
The paradigm case is that of Thomas Hobbes who at age 40 noticed Euclid for the first time and expressed incredulity before he was convinced (Grant 1990, 148) .
- 44.
Mature Wittgenstein did not say what statement is scientific. Proops 2001 , 392 cites him to say that his not having given any example for a scientific statement is a defect. Tejedor 2011 , 22 disagrees: “That we do not have access to any examples of these elementary propositions should not hinder our ability to acknowledge that they are essential to the concept of proposition to work.” Young Wittgenstein’s elementary propositions do not exist, she adds. Not so: he said his elementary propositions are scientific observation reports; and these abound. Like other conventionalists, he viewed scientific theory as means for arranging them simply (TLP, §§6.341–2). Like Mach and Russell, he viewed them as reporting sensations. Anscombe 1957 , 25–8 used his refusal to explain as an obvious refutation of Popper’s reading of him. Her comment amounts to debunking Wittgenstein (Hintikka 1996, 127, 174) and it should therefore be ignored as a slip. Popper’s reading now prevails (Hintikka 1996, 126–7) for want of an alternative. Biletzki 2003 , 53ff. admits this (reluctantly and tacitly). Neurath’s protocol sentence are intentionally vague about all this. The relatively atomic propositions of Popper [1935] 1959 §28 are distinctly realistic, e.g., the 4-co-ordinates of a planet plus its luminosity, or as the trail of an electron-path in a bubble chamber. Kraft [1952] 2015 rightly reports that Popper introduces “observation” as an undefined concept.
- 45.
Linsky 1967, 49–56, 122. French et al. 1979 , 14, 37, 109. This is the perennial discussion on verbal determination. This discussion began in antiquity; it is still going strong. The example cited here is from Solomon Maimon . He threw doubt on Kant’s doctrine of the categories. He was thus a pioneer in the study of ranges or scopes of variables, to use current terminology. The last word on this is the opening sentence of Hintikka 1997 of which he was very proud : “The scopes of quantifiers and of other logically active expressions are one of the most important determinants of the logical form of the sentences of both formal and natural languages.” Hintikka says, this item still suffers neglect. This renders incomplete all proofs in the analytic literature. The reason for this is the Tarski-Quine non-synonymy. In the traditional example, “foot” as in descriptions of animals and in geography (foothill) have different ranges. Even the same word may have different context-dependent ranges: the same quality considered sinful in Christian texts and laudable in modern texts have different ranges, not to mention the name of the color red and the many other uses of the same word. Hence, the theory of possible worlds is plainly deceptive (Hintikka 1967; Linsky 1977, Ch. 7).
- 46.
Even were the analytic school of philosophy right in all of its claims, its conceit that it has won the competition with all other schools, a conceit that began with TLP, is somewhat questionable. The most obvious examples of this conceit is the way analytic philosophers dismiss critics. See below.
- 47.
- 48.
Waismann 1956 , §§VI, VII: “What do you find in reading Ryle or Wittgenstein? Lots of examples with little or no logical bone in between. Why so many examples?” “There is something deeply exciting about philosophy, a fact not intelligible on such a negative account.” Wittgenstein answered this question: he had only examples to offer, he said, not any articulated theory.
- 49.
It is not clear whether these two categories are coextensive. For more confusions about Ryle’s views, see Julia Tanney , Stanford Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Art. Ryle. For more confusions about Carnap’s view see Bar-Hillel 1950 . If philosophy is therapy, then it has generated iatrogenic diseases galore.
- 50.
A survey is wanting of the views about the demarcation of metaphysics or of philosophical illusions. The disagreement between Wittgenstein and Carnap stands out. Yet even that is unclear. A passage from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (§392) seems in accord with Carnap: “analysis oscillates between natural science and grammar”. Still, whereas Wittgenstein deemed this marginal, Carnap deemed it standard. A comprehensive study on the contrast between Wittgenstein and Carnap is wanting.
- 51.
For the removal of defensiveness from a text, a simple technique is readily available: find the criticism that its author is trying to overcome and explain the situation regardless of agreement or disagreement with its author. Example: Imre Lakatos took the latest definition of the polyhedron and showed that each of the abstruse qualifications in that definition comes to block a criticism of the major theorem about it (the Descartes-Euler theorem). The result is his exciting 1970 Proofs and refutations.
- 52.
Bacon 1620 , II, Aph. 19 suggest that induction is not a valid inference but an act of a new intuitive insight, a mystic union (in mediaeval parlance, “putting the understanding and nature on a par”).
- 53.
Russell began his research towards logical atomism before Wittgenstein appeared. That doctrine has a few versions (Russell [1959] 1996, 84; Ayer 1971 , 54). Beaney 1998 , 465 says, “Wittgenstein’s logical atomism is … subtler than Russell’s”, namely, the one that Russell 1914 ascribed to Wittgenstein. See Pears 1985 , esp. xv. Popper [1935] 1959 , §38 relativized version of it has rendered them all obsolete – since they aimed at certitude and he aimed at describing extant scientific practice.
- 54.
Russell 1918, 520: “all the names that it [logical atomism] would use would be private to that speaker and could not enter into the language of another speaker.” Wittgenstein agreed: private language is impossible.
- 55.
This seems a redundancy, except that Wittgenstein offered an interesting insight into conventionalism: “But what does characterize the picture is that it can be described completely by a particular net with a particular size of mesh” (TLP, 6.342).
- 56.
The view of the sweet triangle as ungrammatical depends on the meaning of “grammar” to which I come soon. It does not appear in traditional grammar texts, as these are patched-up Aristotelian messes. Already Frege changed grammar and inaugurated the distinction between semantics and syntax. Yet his prime student Carnap ignored semantics until Tarski appeared on the scene (Coffa 1991, 283) .
- 57.
PI, §110: “this proves to be a superstition (not a mistake!), itself produced by grammatical illusions.” Hence, superstitions are meaningless. Lerner 1994 and Richter 2004, 168 note that elsewhere Wittgenstein diagnosed superstitions differently. This is not surprising: as superstitions come in all shapes and colors, all of Wittgenstein’s ideas of them are too narrow. See next note.
- 58.
Are myths erroneous? Are superstitions? Are myths superstitions? As anthropologists disagree on this (Jarvie and Agassi 1967) , what should philosophers do? On the status of magic systems, Peter Winch read Wittgenstein as a relativist. Quine’s Foreword to Hallen and Sodipo [1986] 1997 offers a different view on the place of languages in magic systems. The paucity of analytic discussion on magic is intriguing.
- 59.
Of course, this matters for one who hopes to use grammar as means for barring metaphysics. This requires speaking of syntax and of semantics separately, not of the (Aristotelian) traditional grammar that conflates them (Bar-Am 2008, 103) .
- 60.
Should grammarians begin discussing language synchronically or diachronically, ontogenetically or phylogenetically? All options are agenda, each with some measure of success, and all need unification.
- 61.
No doubt, this success is largely due to Quine’s superb 1940 Mathematical Logic.
- 62.
There are objections to this assertion, of course, I do not know how weighty (Agassi 2006, 264) .
- 63.
There may be a tacit agreement for pretense: a reference may be vague on the tacit agreement to leave it vague in (self-) deceit. The easiest is the misuse of the definite article (its use with no specification). All one can do against it is to advise friends to ignore systematically vague discourse (Bar-Hillel 1962).
- 64.
The variety of versions of realism (Niiniluoto 1999, 13) troubles some and (rightly) delights others.
- 65.
Ordinary members of Shakespeare’s original audience could not fully comprehend his rich language, yet they did so well enough to keep him employed. The same goes for nonsense verse. Today linguists agree that natural languages are flexible enough to consider grammatical all sufficiently comprehensible expressions.
- 66.
Stroud 1965 , 504 observes that Wittgenstein’s examples seldom illustrate what he said they do.
- 67.
This is true of much sociology of the Frankfurt School. Metaphysician Hegel asserted that no one had understood him. Heinrich Heine found this ludicrous. Wittgenstein came close. Niels Bohr used to repeat the Jewish anti-cabbalist joke: what the audience do not understand are secrets and what even the speaker does not understand are secrets of secrets.
- 68.
Anscombe rightly presented Wittgenstein’s idea as his demand to limit metaphysical thinking to wordless thinking. In TLP, §5.61 he spoke of logic as the limit of the world. In PI, §§22, 341, 523, and esp. §527 he sought to look at sentences not for their content but for their music. This may throw new light on his picture theory of language.
- 69.
- 70.
This is the chief activity in introductory modern-logic classes, in disregard for Quine’s doubts.
- 71.
Not quite. A well-formed sentence with an empty name (“Pegasus ”), Wittgenstein seems to have decreed meaningless (PI, §§131–3 and p. 217). A well-formed formula with an empty name display partial meaning (or a variety of kinds of nonsense: beware of the Jabberwocky!). No a priori considerations can make a name show whether it is vacuous or not; this may but need not refute the show itself system of young Wittgenstein.
- 72.
Russell’s theory of definite descriptions is different, as it renders false any assertion about a non-object. Science agrees: it declares refuted a theory that uses significantly a seemingly empty noun (“the center of the universe”; “phlogiston”). The most famous book in the analytic tradition on naming, Kripke 1972 , Abstract (cf. PI, §453; Agassi 1995b, 245), is evasive:
Some topics essential to a full presentation of the viewpoint argued here, especially that of existence statements and empty names, had to be omitted altogether.
“For philosophical problems arise when language idles” (PI, §38). Why Wittgenstein found this objectionable he did not say: he too used metaphors to evade tough questions (Weiler 1961, 207) .
- 73.
This debate has lost its punch, however, as the following observation of Hintikka 1996 , 94, won popularity: Wittgenstein adhered only to the letter of his first book, as he altered his reading of it.
- 74.
Russell’s stratification of sets blocks his paradox. His theory of types introduced it axiomatically rather than as rules of syntax. The same holds for the standard presentation of the Zermelo-Fraenkel system. The difference was not clear between the two ways of formal presentation; Skolem-Lövenheim theorem illustrates its significance (Carnap 1937, §71 d–e). Some intuitionists insist on the priority of rules. Most mathematicians are reluctant to discuss them. Gödel expected mathematicians to subdue this reluctance to allow for non-standard arithmetic. He was disappointed: two axiomatic proper alternatives appeared soon to replace Robinson’s rules. Paul Cohen’s earlier technique of forcing that he used for proving the independence of Cantor’s continuum hypothesis had a similar fate (Weaver 2014). All this requires additions to classical symbolic logic; even the Principia then is a mere historical monument.
- 75.
Young Wittgenstein declared rules meaningless since it is possible to disobey them (TLP, §§6.42–6.423); mature Wittgenstein disagreed (PI, §345): a never-obeyed rule does not deserve the name of a rule.
- 76.
Wittgenstein gave up the picture of language of his Tractatus. His Investigations included “more under logic than most people” allow: it includes a “world picture”, a “common conceptual framework” (Wang 1991, 233–4) , thus smuggling commonsense metaphysics into logic. To allow for this, his Investigations “does not develop any alternative picture of language” (Williams 2004, 5) .
- 77.
This is not to endorse the demand to prove anti-metaphysics. Knowing the reason for it is helpful, though, since they were reasonable and significant although they are so no longer. For, the traditional hostility to metaphysics rested on Bacon’s doctrine of prejudice. Philosophers from Kant to Mach and Husserl did not bother to justify their hostility to it. Wittgenstein justified it, saying, metaphysics deprives thinkers of their peace of mind. No one takes this seriously, not even the advocates of the New Wittgenstein theory that (rightly) considers therapy his central concern.
- 78.
Carnap 1956 , last two sentences:
Views vary a great deal as to the probability and even the possibility of such a development; and many will especially oppose, with either scientific or metaphysical arguments … the possibility of the last step, the assertion of physicalism.… My personal impression, in view of the progress made within the last decades … is that the whole development … seems today much more probable and much less remote in time than it appeared even thirty years ago.
- 79.
Warnock 2013 , 5–7, recognized philosophical problems as “general questions” on the “disputed frontiers between language and formal logic”, 155; he rejected the dismissal of all metaphysics, 160–1. Early in the day, he discusses (Warnock 1950) the status of singular abstract terms like the North Pole (that Quine 1947 found uninteresting). This raises the task of correlating the old-style conceptual analysis with the new-style analysis of statements and their corresponding ideas about metaphysics.
- 80.
This ascription is more social than intellectual. It illustrates the difficulty involved in the task of discussing ideas in isolation from their social habitat – a task that tradition since Descartes considered imperative. It is still advisable to perform it as best possible, even though this is never fully performable and hence it is always somewhat questionable and given to alternative readings. For example, it is advisable to read Heidegger on the supposition that his Nazi affiliation is irrelevant to it, and then to refute this supposition, which is not too difficult. To refuse to acknowledge this refutation is to raise suspicion of bad faith.
- 81.
Approximation to the truth poses very interesting metaphysical problems. Wittgenstein took it as utterly unproblematic (PI, §§38, 81, 130). Incidentally, he took usage to approximate at times sense and at times intended sense – in accord with Russell’s initial (1905) analysis. That analysis approximates the concept of approximation to the ideal comprehensive truth that Einstein developed and that Russell soon adopted wholeheartedly. Popper later developed the theory – his (qualitative) theory of verisimilitude.
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Agassi, J. (2018). Background. In: Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. Synthese Library, vol 401. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00117-9_1
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