1 Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Contribution to the Philosophical Discourse on Language Onyenuru Okechukwu. P. (OP). Student of Dominican Institute, Samanda, Ibadan, Nigeria. An unpublished work written: February 08, 2014. [email protected] 1.0. Introduction The one unquestionable task of philosophy is search for the truth. In philosophy, we struggle to discern ourselves and the universe, reality and existence, knowledge and beliefs, reason and reasoning, meaning and value of actions and objects. In all of these quests, truth is being sought, tirelessly too. In this activity, we strive to come in contact with reality on one hand, and on the other hand to present it the way it is, with minimal adulteration. Different epochs of philosophical thoughts can be characterised by peculiar prevalent methods of arriving at this curious quest. The modern period can boast of its peculiar methods such as rationalism, empiricism, idealism, scientism and the likes.1 These methods all cannot be right at the same time. Surely not! More pressing to the later modern philosophers2 was the claims of idealism that posits a seamless harmony between thought and object. For the idealist, reality consists in thought and object bound in a stringent coherent unity. What idealism claims as knowledge was for the more materialistic modern thinkers, a misrepresentation of reality, because what the idealists affirm is merely the content of the mind rather than the content of the world. Beginning with Bertrand Russell and G. E Moore, attempts were made to correct this purported erroneous pattern of thought, which culminated in the founding of the Analytic School. Language was the key to clearing the cobwebs of philosophical issues. The disingenuous character of language was the true cause of philosophical disputes. If language can be penetrated to reveal its content, then 1 Cf. Scotus Roger, The Short History of Modern Philosophy (London: Routledge Press, 1981), p. 21-23 2 I use the term late modern philosophers to mean philosophers who lived within the 18th and 19th centuries. 2 philosophy would have one less problem. This gave birth to the discipline of philosophy of language. This essay shall explore Wittgenstein’s approach to solving the perennial problem of philosophy in two of his works: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations. We will attempt a retrieval of the thoughts of Wittgenstein in his most famous work. Prior to this, we shall take a cursory look at the historical events that influenced of his works and finally highlight his contribution to the next generation of philosophers. 2.0. Wittgenstein’s Background Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann, the Austrian-British philosopher, was born in Vienna in 1889, the youngest of a family of 10. A descent of a Jewish father and a Roman Catholic mother, Wittgenstein was educated at home until his fourteenth birthday, during this period he developed interest in engineering. He moved on to study mechanical engineering at the Technische Hochschule at Charlottenburg in Berlin for two years, and later at the University of Manchester.3 Wittgenstein’s interest began to shift from engineering to pure mathematics and then to philosophical foundation of mathematics when he was had stumbled upon the book of Bertrand Russell- Principles of mathematics.4 In this book Russell, while grappling with the problem of language, tries to prove that the foundation of every language is rooted in mathematics, and so a quest in the understanding language required that the philosopher investigate into the principles of mathematics. In 1912, he enrolled in Trinity College to study philosophy under Russell, but in 1913, Wittgenstein went into seclusion in Norway. When the First World War broke out, Wittgenstein enlisted as a volunteer in the Austrian Army. During these years, he committed himself to putting down his perplexing thought. They are what have come down to us as the Tractatus Logico Philisophicus. 3.0. The Tractatus Logico Philisophicus (Early Wittgenstein) The Tractatus is a short, cryptic and enigmatic work of extreme originality. It is constructed around seven foundational propositions numbered 1-7, with all other paragraphs numbered by 3 Cf. Kenny Anthony, A New History of Western Philosophy, Vol. 4. (Oxford: Claredon Press, 2007), p. 72 4 Norman Malcolm “Wittgenstein, Ludwig Josef Johann”, Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd edition. Ed. Donald M. Borchert, 1967 p. 800 3 decimal expansions of each foundational proposition. The seven statements capture everything that he wishes to say, but since they are quite abstract, other propositions shed light on them. 1. The world is all that is the case. 2. What is the case (a fact) is the existence of atomic facts. 3. A logical picture of the facts is the thought. 4 The thought is the significant proposition. 5 A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions. (An elementary proposition is a truth function itself.) 6 The general form of a truth-function is [p, E, N (E)]. This is the general form of a proposition. 7 Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silence. From the outset, Wittgenstein clearly states what his aim is which is to “deal with the problem of philosophy and show...., that the reason why these problems are posed is that logic of our language is misunderstood.”5 Thus in addressing the central problem of philosophy as regards the world, thought and language, he posits that the solution to this dilemma lies in logic, and the nature of representation. For Wittgenstein, the task of philosophy is and should be directed to “the logical clarification of thought,” 6 which makes it an activity rather than a discipline. Thoughts are contents of the mind and are built upon language. Language on its part has an underlying logical structure, so that an understanding of the relationship between these variables show the limit of what can clearly and meaningfully be said.7 This was contrary to Russell’s earlier position that mathematics carries us beyond what is human into the realm of absolute reality where all truth can be grasped, to which not only the actual world, but every possible world must conform.8 Russels postulation implies that truth is to be built upon mathematical principles, which alone exposes or clarifies 5 Wittgenstein Lugwig, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus (1921). Tranl. By G. E. M. Anscombe. (West Sussex: Blackwell Publishing) 2009. p. 2 6 Cf. Ibid., 4.112 7 Cf. Grayling A. C, Wittgenstein, A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 18 8 Copleston Vol VIII p. 438 4 proposition. Although both of them agreed to the basic problem of philosophy, Wittgenstein proved in the Tractatus that mathematical principles can be reducible to logic in the sense that the number theory (Arithmetic) can be reduced to propositions containing only logical concepts such as variables, predicates, constants and quantifiers.9Thus mathematical logic rather than mathematics is the perfect language for analysing language of ordinary discourse. For it captures reality formally without emotions, vagueness and ambiguities. This idea was adopted by Russell and Frege, but Wittgenstein was to take a step further by positing that the idea that logic is the essential framework to all the thought goes along with the idea that there is a perfect logical order in the propositions of ordinary language. This position does not merely have a theoretical status, but the status of prescription of how a language in which thoughts are expressed must be.10 3.1. Picture Theory of Meaning The major theme of the Tractatus is the picture theory of meaning. When we communicate what we perceive to be true about the way the world is, we do this in a language. So there is a connection between our thought, language of communication and the world. This is what the picture theory of meaning seeks to establish. When we experience the world, it becomes part of our reservoir of consciousness. When we wish then to communicate this knowledge to others, we conceive this idea in thought, and thought is built upon language and conversely, language is composed of propositions which when spoken is understood by the hearer. Wittgenstein claims that because every proposition carries a truth function (they can either be true or false11), language claims are logical. Thoughts are logical pictures of fact12 and the world is a totality of facts.13 Since thoughts are propositions that make sense, language consists of propositions which are perceptible expressions of thought and are thus a picture of reality14. When I hear or see a proposition expressed in a language, it is for me a perceptible expression of the thought of someone else. Its meaning however lies in its (the expression) ability to convey 9 Stroll Avrum, Twentieth Century Analytic Philosophy, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000) p. 11 10 Cf. Mcginn Marie, Elucidating the Tractatus (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 2006), p. 91 11 Wittgenstein Lugwig, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus (1921). Tranl. By G. E. M. Anscombe. (West Sussex: Blackwell Publishing) 2009. No. 4.06 12 Ibid., 3. 13 Ibid. 1.1 14 Ibid. 4.01 5 the picture of reality in the speaker or writer’s mind into mine not just as words, ideas or concepts but as pictures. This picture is either true or false depending on whether or not it is able to present the facts of the reality the way they are. This is the logical relationship of language thought, and the world. Propositions are made in a language and each language is composed of words which are not merely jumbled-up, but must stand “in a determinate relation to one another.”15 Words that make propositions correspond to objects in reality,16 not by naming them, but acting as signs representing them.17 Propositions picture reality in the sense that their elements (words) depict or identify that there are objects in the world, and the arrangement of the elements make perspicuous description of the state of affairs of these objects.18 Wittgenstein refers to the content of propositional sign as simple signs19 or names.20 And a name means an object.