Philsophical Investigations

Beneath the differences between Wittgenstein’s Tractatus-Logico Philosophicus and his Philosophical Investigations there is a more fundamental continuity between the texts. This article relies heavily on two books, Alain Badiou’s Wittgenstein’s Anti-Philosophy and Saul Kripke’s On Rules and Private Languages.

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Saul Kripke sums up the argument in Tractatus briefly: ‘To each sentence there corresponds a (possible) fact. If such a fact obtains the sentence is true, if not false. For atomic sentences the relation between the sentence and the fact it alleges is one of simple correspondence or isomorphism. … An atomic sentence is itself a fact, putting the names in a certain relation; and it says that … the corresponding objects are in the same relation. Other sentences are … truth-functions of these.’ Kripke admits that though ‘the rough outlines are well known’, ‘in the detail the Tractatus is amongst the most difficult of philosophical works.’ If we look carefully, it is not just the detail that Kripke has neglected to include in his description of the Tractatus. We see that his account is roughly expressed by the following: ‘What is the case – a fact – is the existence of a state of affairs.’ (2). ‘In a proposition a thought finds an expression that can be perceived by the senses’ (3.1). ‘A proposition is a picture of reality’ (4.01). ‘A proposition represents the existence and non-existence of states of affairs’ (4.1). ‘A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions.’ (5). Now the devil is in the detail, but Kripke’s account in no way necessitates three of the seven fundamental logical propositions ‘The world is all that is the case’ (1). ‘Bear in mind the general form of a truth-function.(6). ‘What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence’ (7). Although there is a valid complaint that, though (6) is not necessitated by Kripke’s account it is suggested by it. Some of the ‘detail’ within (6) suggest quite different conclusions to Kripke’s own. It has been included amongst the ‘nays’ because of that. Indeed, Kripke’s account only accounts for the first half of Wittgenstein’s explanation in the preface ‘What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.’ Much of Wittgenstein’s book is passed over in silence because analytical philosophy simply cannot discuss it without some considerable embarrassment. The embarrassment is, of course, Wittgenstein’s mysticism, the irrational and pessimist Wittgenstein that appreciates Schopenhauer and the millenarian Spengler. Wittgenstein explicitly makes room for his mysticism: ‘The limits of my language are the limits of my world.’ (5.6); ‘The sense of the world must lie outside the world’ (6.41); ‘Propositions can express nothing which is higher’ (6.42); ‘God does not reveal himself in the world’ (6.432); ‘There are indeed things which cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.’ (6.522). In light of the above we can understand the enigmatic final line of the Tractatus (‘Whereof we cannot speak…’). This is not so much an attempt to dismiss the irrational and the mystical but an explicit attempt to protect it. Russell reproaches Wittgenstein for this irrational ‘excess’, ‘the totalities concerning which Mr Wittgenstein holds that it is impossible to speak logically are nevertheless thought by him to exist, and are the subject-matter of his mysticism.’ The analyst in Russell comes through ‘[abolishing the mystical] would leave untouched a very large part of Mr Wittgenstein’s theory, though possibly not the part upon which he himself would wish to lay most stress.’ This, however, moves too fast for, as Wittgenstein was no doubt aware, if you remove the mystical and its ability to ‘make itself manifest’, you lose the key part of Wittgenstein’s theory. Thus: ‘A picture cannot, however, depict its pictorial for; it displays it.’ (2.172); ‘A thought can never be anything illogical; if it were we’d have to think illogically.’ (3.03); ‘A proposition shows its sense. A proposition shows how things stand if it is true. And it says that they do so stand.’ (4.022); ‘The general propositional form is the essence of a proposition’ (5.471). Finally, ‘The propositions of logic describe the scaffolding of the world, or rather they represent it … It is clear that something about the world must be indicated by the fact that certain combinations of symbols & tautologies. This contains the decisive point. Logic is not a field wherewe express our wishes with the help of signs but rather, one where the nature of the absolutely necessary signs speak for itself.’ Every significant ‘atom’ of language in the Tractatus relies on the self-evident manifestation of its own meaning, its ability to show or display its logical form, and if you remove the ability for the mystical to make itself manifest then this too must apply to meaning itself. This leads us to the Investigations.

Philosophical Investigations

Despite the description of Tractatus that Kripke gives he has, undoubtedly, a ‘powerful philosophical intelligence’ and he very persuasively argues that the ‘sceptics paradox’ described in (201) of the Investigations is the central problem of the Investigations. ‘This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule, because every course of action can be made out to accord with the rule.’ This becomes clear if we follow Kripke’s explicit example. It is clear that I have performed a finite number of computations in the past. Suppose that 68 plus 57 is not a computation I have ever performed and both 68 and 57 are greater than any integers I have previously used in an additional computation. What if a sceptic asserts that the correct answer to the computation is, say, 5 instead of 125? They point out that in our past experience, what we called plus is fully consistent with a different operator, say quus with symbol ++, that follows the rules x++y=x+y if x,y <57, otherwise x++y=5. The sceptic’s point is that there is nothing to justify that when I said plus in the past I meant the operator + and not ++, and even if I specifically thought of, say, the mathematical definition of + each time I said ‘x plus y,’ there is nothing to justify my use of plus to mean + instead of ++ this time. Both operations are consistent with past experience and the use of one or the other is logically unjustifiable. I consider Kripke’s discussion informative and recommend anyone interested in the Investigation to read it. The key point, however, is that while the Investigations no longer maintain as the Tractatus does that ‘whatever can be said can be said clearly’ (for instance family resemblances instead of the simple correspondence between object and fact), it has very little to say about the ‘whereof we cannot speak’. The Investigations have clearly questioned the principle of the self-evident manifestation of meaning; one of the largely correct commonplaces about the Investigations suggests that Wittgenstein no longer maintains the link between logical form and language or the logic of meaning. Has Wittgenstein undergone a crisis of faith? This may be the philosophical corollary to his growing pessimism, not helped by WWII and the death of Frank Ramsey. Wittgenstein speaks: Could we not see that as the reintroduction of faith into the very act of speaking itself? This explains both the pessimism and the enduring preoccupation with solipsism. His position that the very act of speaking is to act as Kierkegaard’s soldier of faith is no easy burden to bear. It is perhaps no surprise that for all Wittgenstein’s alleged ‘behaviourism’ he is as deeply introspective as that Christian existentialist. This explains Wittgenstein’s enduring desire for the one reader who truly understands his project. The Tractatus is Wittgenstein’s first expression of a mystical faith: The fact that Wittgenstein made the Investigations ready for publication suggests that despite a very real personal crisis, there was a more mature expression of the same in the Philosophical Investigations.