John Wonderlich Philosophy 457 Dr. Jacquette 3/16/00 Midterm Paper Wittgenstein’s Implicit Reactions to the Complications of Analyzing Instrumentalism as Self-Referential
In his Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein discards his earlier theory of meaning from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and presents a collection of numbered paragraphs, dealing with different aspects of meaning and language use. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein sought to define the necessary conditions for the existence determinate meaning in speech acts, and renounce uses of language which do not meet his criteria for sensical expression. Where the Tractatus utilizes a systematically numbered exposition of individual organized points in order to restrict language use, the Investigations handles various topics in close, sometimes haphazard succession in order to illuminate the advantages of understanding language as an essentially socially functional tool. In the midst of this exposition Wittgenstein makes several perplexing comments about the proper function of philosophy. These comments can challenge any coherent interpretation of Wittgenstein’s philosophical project in the Investigations. An analysis of the complications of any purely praxeological view of language will show some strategies Wittgenstein may have employed in the Investigations, and, consequently, seemingly disparate features of his instrumentalism will gain important roles for Wittgenstein as he carefully assigns philosophy the task of ensuring the proper use of language. In order to aptly comprehend the motivations behind Wittgenstein’s maneuvers in assigning philosophy this role, a generalized framework of praxeological understandings of language, constructed with an understanding of Wittgenstein’s instrumentalism specifically, must first be analyzed, in order to highlight the possible complications of such theories.
According to an instrumentalist view of language, meaning and expression are both learned through and ontically contingent on a functional social context. Words and expressions are learned and used in social contexts to some essentially social end, and cease to be meaningful when considered independently of the environment for which they are formed. Wittgenstein first introduces his functional account of language in paragraph eleven of the Investigations: 11. Think of the tools in a tool-box: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screw-driver, a rule, a glue-pot, glue, nails and screws.-The functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects. (And in both cases there are similarities.) Of course, what confuses us is the uniform appearance of words when we hear them spoken or meet them in script and print. For their application is not presented to us so clearly. Especially when we are doing philosophy!
Here Wittgenstein explicitly affirms the diverse functions language can meaningfully serve. He does not, however, affirm that philosophy’s role is so potentially diverse. He asserts only that philosophy’s “application” is not clearly presented. This view of language is directly opposed to the Picture Theory of Meaning of his Tractatus. According to this theory, a meaningful statement necessarily represents a discrete conjunction of atomic facts. Whether these facts obtain determines the truth-value of the statement, since all meaningful (and determinately truth-valued) statements correlate directly to a possible state of affairs in logical space. He writes in 2.1515 of the Tractatus, “The representing relation consists of the coordination of the elements of the picture and the things,” and in 2.21, “The picture agrees with reality or not; it is right or wrong, true or false.” The Picture Theory of Meaning permits only expressions that represent states of affairs, and, consequently, their sense corresponds to whether they represent of a possible state of affairs, and their truth-value relies on whether the represented atomic facts obtain. The logical and deductive starting point of the Tractatus is the assumption that determinate meaning necessarily exists in language. An instrumentalist view of language would value this sort of a transcendental evaluation of determinate meaning only in that some social function and context apparently arose that provided for the creation of the Tractatus. The instrumentalist
characterizes all of language use, including that of philosophical projects, as contingent upon the social context, which allowed for its creation. One common consequence of this characterization is that the sense of a socially defined statement relies upon the social acceptance of the expression as sensical. Instead of truth and sense relying on some correspondence to logical space and the obtaining of atomic facts, they are contingent on general social acceptance. Pragmatic accounts of language do very well in dispelling the difficulties inherent in a theory relying on correspondence and representation. Instead of pessimistically evaluating most language use as nonsensical, they refer evaluative judgments to an intersubjective realm of common sense acceptance and adherence to social criteria. This understanding of meaning is frequently used to promote the ideals of a democratic state, especially with Richard Rorty, citing the subjective nature of truth and the primacy of individual experience to some correspondence to objective reality as reasons for a society taking all individual perspectives into account in constructing societies and legislature. These appeals to the fundamentally individual nature of experience and meaning are threatened, however, by some implicit features of pragmatic accounts of language. In characterizing language as based on social context, instrumentalist views fail to take into account the use of the language used in so characterizing language. When meaning and language are based on functional social contexts, then the pragmatic theory is itself evidence of the self-referential nature of these social contexts. Those contexts, which initially give rise to functional language use, must also be given credit for the projects that characterize them. The same contexts responsible for the ostensibly subjective and individual experience of the pragmatists, in view of including in the pragmatic characterization that characterization itself, must now be reanalyzed. If social contexts have begotten projects that seek to characterize themselves, a dialectical progression may be identified within this newly identified process of social contexts abstracting outside themselves, requesting that they themselves be analyzed. One could speculate that careful examination could show that a common direction may be identified
within this recursive abstraction, and some of the individual nature of pragmatism’s initial conclusions may be lost. This prospective complication of instrumentalist characterizations of language may pose a problem for the individualistic subjective politics of Rorty. The primacy of the individual’s subjective experience may be lost to a shared direction. This shared orientation exists not in the everyday use of language, but in the analysis of philosophies that strive to use language characterizing the language that is contingent on social context. The functionally social, not representative use of language, once the mainstay of the individualist, could elucidate a common direction, whose telos could be restored as objective, or at least, intersubjectively respected truth, and not the reconciliation of necessary individual difference. This critique would present a problem for Wittgenstein if he had defined his project as a search for truth, but the way he chooses to explain the function of his philosophy shows how he avoids these consequences of characterizing language, and the manner in which he avoids these problems illuminates the centrality of certain facets of his instrumentalism. This is not to say that Wittgenstein avoids or is unaware of the problems inherent in setting of into metaphilosophy, on the contrary he has almost a nagging preoccupation with defining the scope of his philosophical project. A reader of the Tractatus would surely misunderstand the intentions of the text if Wittgenstein had not included his explanation of his project in the book. In the penultimate statement of the Tractatus, he writes: 6.54 My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.
This explication did not, however, qualify as metaphilosophy according to his earlier models of sense, since this, and all the other statements of the Tractatus have been disqualified as nonsense.
These qualifying remarks continue as Wittgenstein gives philosophy a specific duty in the Investigations. He writes: 124. Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot give it any foundation either. It leaves everything as it is. It also leaves mathematics as it is, and no mathematical discovery can advance it. A “leading problem of mathematical logic” is for us a problem of mathematics like any other. 125. It is the business of philosophy, not to resolve a contradiction by means of a mathematical or logico-mathematical discovery, but to make it possible for us to get a clear view of the state of mathematics that troubles us: the state of affairs before the contradiction is resolved. (And this does not mean that one is sidesteppping a difficulty.) 127. The work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose.
These passages make clear the new place of philosophy for Wittgenstein in the Investigations. Philosophy has a function, like any other useful language utility, and performs that function in making clear the status of the situations from which confusion arises. Wittgenstein sees these ‘purposeful reminders’ as the check on language’s capacity, helping to show the boundaries of correct usage by showing how language use begins, with his discussions of language games, or simplified functional social contexts. This explanation, however, cannot sufficiently explain Wittgenstein’s place for philosophy as only language’s usage elucidator. Complications arise if this is all Wittgenstein offers in defense of his instrumentalism. First, he apparently has some latent concerns about using language to characterize language. This is apparent in both the frequency of his qualifying statements about philosophy and in his example in paragraph 121 of the Investigations: 121. One might think: if philosophy speaks of the use of the word “philosophy” there must be a second-order philosophy. But it is not so: it is, rather, like the case of orthography, which deals with the word “orthography” without then being second-order.
This seems to be a feeble defense of his lack of interest in metaphilosophy. He attempts to show another instance where a word applies to itself without becoming a second-order term. The difficulty with his example arises in the wording of the first sentence. In defending second order
philosophy, we refer to the “use” of the word “philosophy,” whereas orthography is limited to references to features of the physical word “orthography.” Since philosophy can apply to the use of the term “philosophy,” there can be second order philosophy, which Wittgenstein does utilize when he asserts that philosophy’s purpose is “To shew the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.” Irrespective of the status of Wittgenstein’s claims about whether he engages in metaphilosophy, the problem still exists as to how philosophy can elucidate language, as his definition explains. If philosophy for Wittgenstein does “assemble reminders” and “get a clear view,” by what criteria does it do so? Allowing Wittgenstein’s characterization of language as sometimes erring, and his understanding of philosophy as elucidating the nature of these occasional errors, how can the language of philosophy lay claim to any certainty without throwing into doubt language’s proclivity for going “on holiday,” as he discusses in paragraph 38 of the Investigations? This tension between the fallible nature of language and philosophy’s reliable reminders can be reconciled with a better understanding of Wittgenstein’s concept of criteria. The reliability of philosophy as compared to normal language has traditionally been ascribed to philosophy’s adherence to reason as a means to effectively reach truth. This explanation does not fit with Wittgenstein’s understanding of language in the Investigations, since meaning does not come from a correspondence or representation relationship with objective reality, but from a relationship with an organized society. The relationship between individuals’ assertions (or philosophical reminders) and society is controlled by criteria. In paragraph 692 of the Investigations, he writes: 692. Is it correct for someone to say: “When I gave you this rule, I meant you to .....in this case”? Even if he did not think of this case at all as he gave the rule? Of course it is correct. For “to mean it” did not mean: to think of it. But now the problem is: how are we to judge whether someone meant such-and-such?-The fact that he has, for example, mastered a particular technique in arithmetic and algebra, and that he taught someone else the expansion of a series in the usual way, is such a criterion.
In this example, Wittgenstein explains some criteria for accepting someone’s understanding of a specific procedure. That the individual has learned the technique, or perhaps taught another the
technique is sufficient to conclude that he knows it. This example shows how Wittgenstein sees public criteria monitoring the acceptability of assertions or theories. Similarly, the rationale of Wittgenstein’s philosophy as being a reliable source for a language, which is notably unreliable, comes from the public criteria for philosophy. In this way Wittgenstein grounds common sense and the reliability of his philosophy in the social criteria of proper use. This would explain why, in the Investigations, philosophy is not allowed to add anything new, but to simply elucidate. If philosophy were to do anything else, to add something new to the world, no public criteria would apply, and there could be no judgment of the applicability of the philosophical assertions. One might object to this explanation of Wittgenstein’s justification of philosophy’s ability to elucidate common language by retorting that there are many types of criteria, and that they are relative to one’s culture, age, or even technical field. To this objection one could summon Wittgenstein’s concept of the “form of life,” which is made up of the language games and activities of a culture. He writes in paragraph 23, “Here 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.” To the objection that a large group of people might object to a philosophical statement that Wittgenstein’s twentieth century readers accept, Wittgenstein would probably admit its complete possibility and make room for this fact by reference to his concept of forms of life. It is with this sort of Wittgensteinian assertion in mind that Stanley Cavell, in his commentary The Claim of Reason, writes that, “For all Wittgenstein’s claims about what we say, he is always at the same time aware that others might not agree, that a given person or group (a “tribe”) might not share our criteria.” He goes on to quote Wittgenstein, “One human being can be a complete enigma to another.” With this apparent tolerance for differing criteria in mind, one final question remains to be answered about criteria and Wittgenstein’s views of philosophy. If criteria are relative to the form of life in which they arise, has Wittgenstein in his Investigations defected from the form of life where metaphilosophy and recursive theories of analysis do have public criteria? Perhaps
that is the heart of his later project. Instead of using philosophy to create new abstruse forms of life, he seems to defend a simpler outlook, one where philosophy sticks to regular language that has explanations that do “come to an end somewhere.�