Wittgenstein and the Limits of Language

Hanne Appelqvist, Hanne Appelqvist

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351202657
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría filosóficas

The limit of language is one of the most pervasive notions found in Wittgenstein's work, both in his early Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and his later writings. Moreover, the idea of a limit of language is intimately related to important scholarly debates on Wittgenstein's philosophy, such as the debate between the so-called traditional and resolute interpretations, Wittgenstein's stance on transcendental idealism, and the philosophical import of Wittgenstein's latest work On Certainty.

This collection includes thirteen original essays that provide a comprehensive overview of the various ways in which Wittgenstein appeals to the limit of language at different stages of his philosophical development. The essays connect the idea of a limit of language to the most important themes discussed by Wittgenstein—his conception of logic and grammar, the method of philosophy, the nature of the subject, and the foundations of knowledge—as well as his views on ethics, aesthetics, and religion. The essays also relate Wittgenstein's thought to his contemporaries, including Carnap, Frege, Heidegger, Levinas, and Moore.

Part I
Logic, Self, and Value in Wittgenstein’s Early Philosophy

1 The Bounds of Nonsense

A. W. Moore

There is a tripartite classification that is standardly attributed to the early Wittgenstein. According to this attribution, Wittgenstein acknowledges the following three mutually disjoint categories in the Tractatus:

• thoughts;
• tautologies and contradictions;
• nonsensical pseudo-propositions.

Thoughts are propositions with a sense, in other words propositions that are bipolar, or in yet other words propositions that are not only true or false but also such that, if true, they could nevertheless have been false, while, if false, they could nevertheless have been true. (See e.g., TLP 2.2–3, 4, and 4.2.) Tautologies and contradictions are propositions without a sense. They lack a sense because they lack the bipolarity that thoughts have. Although they are true or false, the true ones, namely the tautologies, are unconditionally true, while the false ones, namely the contradictions, are unconditionally false. Their lacking a sense in this very distinctive way is registered by saying that they are senseless, but not nonsensical. (See e.g., TLP 4.46–4.4611.) Finally, there are pseudo-propositions. These are concatenations of signs that do not belong to either of the first two categories. They are neither true nor false. And, in contrast to tautologies and contradictions, they are nonsensical. (See e.g., TLP 4.1272, 5.4733, and 6.53.)

Let us call attribution of this schematism to the early Wittgenstein the Standard Account. Michael Kremer and Cora Diamond have contested it.¹ They have a rival account that differs with respect to the third category. Nowhere in the Tractatus, they urge, does Wittgenstein commit himself to the view that, just because a concatenation of signs is to be classified as a pseudo-proposition that is neither true nor false, it must also be classified as nonsensical. The most that he does is to highlight some pseudo-propositions that he takes to be nonsensical (TLP 4.1272). This allows Kremer and Diamond to credit Wittgenstein with a much more circumscribed and much less draconian conception of nonsense.

Among the pseudo-propositions that Kremer and Diamond think Wittgenstein would decline to classify as nonsensical, perhaps the most interesting and the most compelling examples are those of mathematics. These count as pseudo-propositions for Wittgenstein because he takes them to be equations and therefore, on the account of equations that he proffers in the Tractatus, representational devices that are neither true nor false (TLP 4.241ff., 5.53ff., and 6.2). He is nevertheless quite happy to acknowledge that they have a clear, codifiable, and important use (TLP 6.211ff). It follows that they have a kind of meaning, at least on a suitably generous conception of meaning.² Given this, and given that Wittgenstein nowhere explicitly classifies these pseudo-propositions as nonsensical, it seems to Kremer and Diamond a needless exegetical affront to insist that this is what he would do.

They have a point. Kremer’s and Diamond’s alternative account certainly has considerable appeal. But it does also have at least one significant pitfall that I should like to flag. If we adopt their account, we are in danger of making a mystery, or perhaps of compounding the already existing mystery, of Wittgenstein’s own avowal that the material in the Tractatus itself, or most of it anyway, is to be classified as nonsensical (TLP 6.54). For that material too has a use. It is a peculiar use, admittedly, and perhaps not one that is happily described – as I did describe the use that mathematical pseudo-propositions have – as clear and codifiable. In fact one of the main exegetical challenges confronting any student of this text is to determine how the use to which the material in it is to be put should be described. But the use in question is a use all the same. Wittgenstein has written this book with, as he indicates in his penultimate remark, a quite particular intention concerning what his readers are supposed to do with it and what they are supposed to glean from it (TLP 6.54). And if we think that he not only intends his readers to profit from the book in this way, but intends them to do so by means of the recognition of this very intention – which is not at all implausible – then we do not have to be all that Gricean³ to conclude that the material in the book just does, ipso facto, have a kind of meaning. But why then the contrast, as far as any classification as nonsense is concerned, between this material and what we find in mathematics?

I am far from suggesting that this is an insuperable objection to Kremer’s and Diamond’s account. There may well be a compelling Tractarian story to be told about how the many differences between the two cases can be marshalled to justify classifying the former, but not the latter, as nonsensical.⁴ But it would certainly make for a much easier exegetical life if, in accord with the Standard Account, we did not have to worry about telling any such story, but could simply accept those differences in their own terms and acquiesce in the idea that all this material, mathematics included, counts as nonsensical.

Which account is to be preferred, then? Perhaps neither is. Perhaps the text simply fails to settle the matter.⁵ And perhaps a principle of charity affords no help either. A principle of charity would afford help only if there were more at stake here than a boring matter of terminology, and there are grounds for thinking that, at one level, there is not. On the Standard Account, the term “nonsensical” serves as a convenient sweep-up term that acts as the adjectival counterpart to the noun “pseudo-proposition” – at least relative to a suitable domain.⁶ On Kremer’s and Diamond’s alternative account, the term “nonsensical” does additional work that allows for finer discrimination. But it would be easy enough, in the former case, to use “pseudo-propositional” instead; and it would be easy enough, in the latter case, to devise another term to do the additional work in question. And neither use of the term, let it be noted, is directly appropriated from ordinary language. Both accounts cast the term, at least to some extent, as a term of art – which indeed it is. This is sometimes denied. It is sometimes said that Wittgenstein uses “nonsensical” in the Tractatus in none other than the way in which it is ordinarily used. But insofar as there is any such thing as “the” way in which it is ordinarily used (and the same applies to “unsinnig”, the term that appears in the original German text) this is simply false – if only because it would sound entirely natural, to an untrained ear, to call a blatant contradiction “nonsensical”.

Nor, come to that, does ordinary language afford us any interesting relevant distinction between “nonsensical” and “senseless” (or between “unsinnig” and “sinnlos”). This reminds us that there is an issue about Wittgenstein’s use of the term “senseless” too. Here the Standard Account can go one of two ways. Wittgenstein may be said to reserve “senseless” for tautologies and contradictions; or he may be said to apply it to any concatenation of signs that lacks sense, including any that is to be classified as nonsensical. Kremer’s and Diamond’s account, for all I have said so far, can likewise go one of two ways. They too may say that Wittgenstein uses “senseless” in the former, narrower way; or they may say that he uses it in the latter, broader way. In fact they favour the second of these.⁷

As I have already indicated, there are grounds for thinking that not much of exegetical substance hangs on this. There are grounds, more specifically, for thinking that nothing in the Tractatus settles the matter, that nothing of significance in the book turns on the matter, and that the matter itself concerns nothing more than which of various equally serviceable, relatively technical uses Wittgenstein assigns to a couple of terms. This is not to deny that there are fascinating and important exegetical issues in the vicinity. (I hope that this chapter will itself bear witness to that.) It is not even to deny that the formulation of these issues is sensitive to the matter in hand.⁸ It is just that, if so, this is not what makes them fascinating and important.

Do similar remarks apply to Wittgenstein’s use of the term “pseudo-proposition”? Is there similar leeway in the interpretation of this term? Perhaps, on some readings of it, it denotes some concatenations of signs that lack a truth-value, on others others.⁹ Perhaps, on some readings, it extends to concatenations of signs that have a truth-value, in particular to tautologies and contradictions¹⁰ – something that is certainly the case in Wittgenstein’s pre-Tractatus notebooks (NB, 12 and 58).

It might be said, in response to this last suggestion, that here at last the Tractatus is decisive, since by the time of the book itself Wittgenstein has undeniably changed his mind and settled against the view that tautologies and contradictions are pseudo-propositions. But in response to this response, while it is clear that by the time of the Tractatus Wittgenstein classifies tautologies and contradictions as propositions (TLP 4.46ff.), and while it is also clear that this represents a change of mind – since at one point in his notebooks he explicitly denies that tautologies and contradictions are propositions (NB, 58) – what is not clear is that the change of mind is a change of mind about the status of tautologies and contradictions as pseudo-propositions. For we cannot simply take for granted that being a pseudo-proposition, on Wittgenstein’s understanding, is incompatible with being a proposition. Perhaps, in the Tractatus, tautologies and contradictions are both.

This is not an outrageous suggestion. To the extent that it is out of keeping with the way in which “pseudo-” (or “Schein” in the original German) normally functions, so be it: we can, as with “nonsensical”, treat “pseudo-proposition” as a more or less technical term. Admittedly, there are contexts in the Tractatus where it is hard to hear Wittgenstein’s use of “pseudo-”, either juxtaposed with “proposition” or juxtaposed with some other noun, as anything other than privative, for instance at 4.1272, 5.461, and 5.534. But this may be a simple matter of implicature. (There are contexts in which it is hard to hear uses of “attempted” as anything other than privative either, yet this does not gainsay the fact that being an attempted overhead bicycle kick is compatible with being an overhead bicycle kick.) Moreover, there is mathematics to be considered again. When Wittgenstein tells us that what we find in mathematics are pseudo-propositions, he does not put this by saying that the concatenations of signs that we find in mathematics are pseudo-propositions; he puts it by saying that the propositions we find there are pseudo-propositions (TLP 6.2). Unless his use of “propositions” here is simply sloppy, or unless it involves some rhetorical device,¹¹ then it indicates not only his preparedness to countenance the possibility of propositions that are also pseudo-propositions, but his outright commitment to the existence of such things.¹²

Once we have taken seriously the suggestion that, for Wittgenstein, some pseudo-propositions are propositions, it is a comparatively small step to the more radical suggestion that, for Wittgenstein, all pseudo-propositions are propositions, even the ones that he would uncontentiously classify as nonsensical. There is certainly nothing on the Standard Account to preclude saying this. In fact there is some reason to say it. For Wittgenstein does talk about nonsensical propositions (TLP 4.003 and 6.54). To be sure, we must once again allow for the possibility that this is either sloppiness or rhetoric on his part. But is there any special reason to do so? Why should the term “proposition” not be used, non-sloppily and non-rhetorically, in a broad enough way to embrace both the pseudo-propositional and (if this is different) the nonsensical? Perhaps what is required of a concatenation of signs for it to be a pseudo-proposition is, not that it should appear – that is, merely appear – to be a proposition, but that it should appear – that is, merely appear – to have a sense,¹³ or (if tautologies and contradictions do not count as pseudo-propositions) that it should appear – that is, merely appear – to have a truth-value.

Be that as it may, there is an interesting and substantive issue that has hitherto been in the background but that is now squarely in the foreground. It is an issue about the very subject matter of Kremer’s and Diamond’s quarrel with the Standard Account. What, harking back to the opening sentence of this chapter, was that tripartite classification supposed to be a classification of?¹⁴ When I characterized the first two categories, I was explicit that each consisted of propositions of some kind. But I was deliberately non-committal about whether, between them, they exhausted the propositions. When I characterized the third category, I suggested that the overall classification was a classification of concatenations of signs. But “suggested” is the operative word. And even then there was no suggestion that it was a classification of all concatenations of signs. I deliberately allowed for the possibility that there are, on the Standard Account, concatenations of signs of various kinds that do not belong to any of the three categories, hence that do not even count as pseudo-propositions – the most obvious candidates being, on the one hand, perfectly meaningful concatenations of signs to which this whole discussion appears to have no application, such as questions and commands, and, on the other hand, word salads such as “Interstellar backlash carrot”.¹⁵ Subsequently, I have been cagier still, for instance when talking about the “material” in the Tractatus. In the light of our most recent reflections, however, the caginess appears both unnecessary and easily surmountable. There is a simple answer to the question what the tripartite classification is a classification of, and hence what Kremer’s and Diamond’s quarrel with ...