WITTGENSTEIN

WITTGENSTEIN

            Ludwig Wittgenstein is one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. Following Russellian analytical intuitions and inclinations, he set off to give depth and breadth to his convictions on how this problem of language can be settled and presented a proposal on how to arrive at an ideal language, one that will take care of the pitfalls of ordinary language. This efforts yielded fruit in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) and the Philosophical Investigations (1953). These two important works contain two distinct theories of language.

            In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein set out in decimal notational formula to outline his picture theory of language. Like Russell, he held that language in its ordinary form is amorphous and indistinct. A language that is worth its name must be able to present reality rightly or wrongly. He bought Russell’s blue-print on logical atomism, the idea that the world though complex is made up of simple constituents. This provided the foundation which gave birth to the Tractatus and upon which it thrived.

            In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein begins by noting that the world is made up of facts and these facts are either simple or complex depending on whether they are analyzable inro further parts or not. In decimal notation 1.1, he avers that the world is a totality of facts, not of things. He goes on to say that all that is in the world, facts, is all that is the case. What is the case, a fact, is the existence of states of affairs. Though the facts, which make up the world appear complex, they are analyzable into what Wittgenstein calls atomic facts.

The picture theory of the Tractatus emphasizes that language is a true picture of reality. Just as a picture has all things in common with what it pictures, so does language in relation to reality. He says that what a picture has in common with what it picture is the logical form. The logical form is that unspoken, unexpressed relationship that exists between the picture (language) and what it pictures (reality). The logical form is to stand outside language to be able to picture it. A picture does not contain the picture of itself.

            Wittgenstein’s position is based on the belief that there is a one-to-one correspondence of the elements that appear in language and the facts (or state of affairs) which it pictures. This pictorial representation is for him literal. He, therefore, opines that atomic propositions picture atomic facts while complex or molecular propositions picture molecular facts. Molecular propositions are analyzable into their component elementary or atomic propositions. Elementary propositions are for him the function of molecular propositions because the truth or falsity of elementary propositions determine the truth or falsity of molecular propositions.

            An elementary proposition expresses a simple unified thought. It is made up of names or symbols or signs. A name is a simple sign or symbol which is not analyzable. Names do not picture facts. This tells us that that the pictorial function of language is done at the sentential level. The sentence has a form and a structure so does reality. It is this form and structure that sentences picture either rightly or wrongly. This further tells us that the structure of the world is the structure of language and vice versa. There is a one-to-one correspondence in the elements contained in the structures of reality and the world. Language must be able to, says Wittgenstein, picture this form and structure it correctly for it to be a true picture of reality.

            Wittgenstein seems to be influenced by Kant in the development of the picture theory of language. He moves from the pre-critical phase to the critical stage of philosophy. Like Kant, he set out to concentrate on the things that can be said. Owing to Kant’s bifurcation of the realm of phenomena and noumena, we see the world of phenomena as accessible by our cognitive structures, while the world of noumena remains forever shut from us and inaccessible. Thus, for Kant, matters transcending the experiential world should be excised from our empirical discourse.

In a similar vein, Wittgenstein holds that the picture theory of language helps us to picture reality in a literal and concrete way. Thus, it is beyond the purview of language to picture metaphysical reality. Whatever transcends the physical is not part of the world of ‘facts’ that is pictureable by language. Wittgenstein claims that language’s inability to picture these items is because they are supra-empirical and lack the structure that agrees with the structure of language. From the above, it becomes clear that what cannot be said in language is linguistically meaningless. This confers the nonsensicality character to metaphysical statements and informs Wittgenstein’s important dictum that “where-of one cannot speak, thereof, he must remain silent.” Wittgenstein believes that if we understand language pictorially, we shall deliver ourselves from the bewitchment of our intellect by false language.

David Pears expressing some discountenance for Wittgenstein’s Tractatus avers that a paradox lies lurking in his theory, namely, saying what can be said with the unsayable instrument of language, that is to say, using what cannot be said to say what can be said and what cannot be said.

Subsequently, in the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein charted a different course and begins to talk about language as playing diverse roles. Wittgenstein can be said to have moved from his linguistic conception of absolute fixity in the Tractatus, to the novel linguistic conception of relative heterogeneity in the Philosophical Investigations. For him, there are many ways of determining meaning, rather than a mono-referential path suggested by Russell. This later discovery is that language performs different functions, plays different roles, and conforms to certain rules and so on. This led him to propound a ‘use-theory of meaning’, wherein he sees meaning as derivable from the ‘use’ to which words are put. For Wittgenstein, what underlies our preference for the use of words is a background theory, out of which we are mirroring the world thereby making it possible for us to use the same words differently. He avowed that there is no fixed, holistic picture of language. All we have are series of language-games, forming their discrete wholes. Each language game has its own set of rules governing its meaningfulness. This idea of language necessitates the idea of ‘form of life’. Form of life is the characteristic that informs the norms that determine the reality of a given language game. Each language game, as a form of life, has its norms, rules, life-giving force, expectations and methods which are not also fixed in finalistic ways.

The Philosophical Investigations rejects the following about the Tractatus

Ø  The specificity of reference of names and objects

Ø  The objectivity of the form of Language

Ø  Absolute simples. Thus, what is simple is context specific.

Ø  The definiteness of the sense of a sentence

Ø  The givenness of meaning. Meaning is circumstantial

Ø  Logical compulsion in meaning determination

Ø  Certain aspects of reality are unsayable

Hence, it is what human beings say is true and false that is true and false, and how they agree in the language use that matter. Wittgenstein goes further to say that there are countless uses of what we may call symbols, words and sentences, and this multiplicity is not something fixed, given once for all; but new types of language, new language games, as we may say, come into existence, and others become obsolete and get forgotten. For Wittgenstein, the term “language-game” is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life. In other words, Wittgenstein’s submission is that what is important is to understand that meaning is language-game dependent, and as such, there is no abstract correspondence of proposition with states of affairs.

Meaning is thus context-specific, and as such, absolute meaning determination is inadmissible, and, extrapolation of meaning from one context to another is both illegitimate and a farce.