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Meaning = Explanation of meaning
How you explain the meaning of a word shows what you mean by the word 'meaning'.
If you want to know how the word 'meaning' is used by a particular philosopher, ask for the way the philosopher explains the meaning of words (PI § 560). That way is a logic of language, i.e. a way of distinguishing language with meaning from meaningless combinations of words.
Most philosophers ignore this question, assuming that the meaning of a word (e.g. 'time' or 'mind') is the thing the word stands for, and that philosophy is talk about those things, not about their names.
Outline of this page ...
- The Fallacy (false presumption) of the Frameless Picture
- 'Grass is really green' (Russell). Eyes and Language
- "Concepts and Categories"
- Nets or Grids of Reference
- Kant: Categories of Thought and Reality
- "And outside the frame is (the location of) nowhere"
- Picturing the picture and the frame
- "Universal and necessary"
- Appropriate frames of reference
- Examples of Frames of Reference
- Speculation: work that does no work
- A quality of the picture or of the picture frame?
- Points of Reference and Idealism
- "And outside the frame is (the location of) nowhere"
- The possibility of metaphysics: what is the meaning of a word?, a reply to the Epilogue of Copleston's A History of Philosophy, Volume VIII
- Language meaning and metaphysics
- What can be done with language?
- Grammatical Reminders ("noumena")
- Unexemplified = Undefined
- "... a mask for lack of clarity of thought"
- George Berkeley and Immanuel Kant
- Berkeley on the reification of general terms
- Realism, idealism, and nonsense
- Logic and Metaphysics
- A "limiting concept"
- Is there nothing in the mind that was not first in the senses?
- The theory of abstract general ideas
- The meaning of 'thing-in-itself'
- Berkeley on the reification of general terms
- Aristotle and Kant: Realism versus Criticism
- Phenomenology
- The "thing-in-itself" and Idealism
- The puzzle of Idealism
- The "thing-in-itself" and Idealism
- 'There are physical objects'
- Contradiction versus First principles
- Innate Ideas
- Grammar is (like) the setup for a game (arranging the chess pieces on a chessboard)
- Grammar as instruction in the use of language
- "Idealism as a model"
- "Is there something rather than nothing?"
- Grammar as instruction in the use of language
- Phenomenology
- The two possible meanings of 'meaning' (in contrast to nonsense) according to Wittgenstein
- Is the explanation of meaning the meaning of a word?
- The common names in philosophy
- The distinction between sense and nonsense we seek must not be only verifiable, it must also be consistent with the facts in plain view
- Not two different ways of looking at the same thing?
- Does the difference lie in the picture or in different picture frames?
- Disputed facts or different verbal definitions?
- Factual Principles versus Rules for Reasoning
- "Concepts are imposed by extra-mental nature: they belong to the picture; they are not part of the picture frame" (Ockham)
- Endnotes
- Kant, geometry, philosophy, and grammar
- "Philosophical definitions" versus grammatical clarifications (Kant)
- Kant and 'grammar'
- Berkeley's Criticism of Locke's Distinction between Primary and Secondary Qualities
- Kant, geometry, philosophy, and grammar
Unclear in language = unclear in thought = not understood. The unclarity of this page can be traced to this principle of logic of language: examples determine language meaning, and truth, not unillustrated theses, which are mere combinations of words.
The Fallacy (false presumption) of a Frameless Picture
Concepts -- i.e. rules for using words -- define -- i.e. set the limits of -- phenomena, and not vice versa. Trying to find the limits of a concept (e.g. 'piety', 'mind', 'time', 'love', 'beauty'), by grasping the essence of a phenomenon is like trying to capture a cloud with a butterfly net. [The contrary view.]
It may be possible to explain the formation of the concepts of natural language (1) on the basis of the facts in plain view (which are, admittedly, the conceived facts; cf. "conceived percepts"; Goethe: "all fact is already conceived fact") (OC § 617), or (2) metaphysically (as does Plato or the theory of abstraction), but both kinds of explanation are speculative.
[The relation of the answer to the question "What is the meaning of a word?" to the possibility of metaphysics | The fundamental importance of Nominalism versus Realism: what is the relation between concepts (thought) and reality? | Aristotle versus Kant: Criticism versus Realism]
Does quality x belong to the picture or to the picture frame? Not making that distinction, but attributing to the picture what belongs to the frame, can be called the fallacy of the unframed picture (PI § 114). Just as unconceptualized sense perceptions ("percepts without concepts") are unintelligible, so pictures without picture frames are pictures without meaning.
What an animal thinks is something we cannot imagine ('logically possible' means describable). Human thought without concepts is impossible, but concepts without language appear more than possible. We see the animal's anatomy and its behavior: we make analogies ("If one sees the behavior of a living thing, one sees its soul .... We only say of a human being and what is like one that it thinks" (PI §§ 357, 360)).
Do definitions of the word 'meaning' belong to the frame or to the picture? Wittgenstein selected one meaning from among the many others in our language (one that is useful for resolving questions in philosophy by distinguishing sense from nonsense. Not every meaning of 'meaning' is). What was selected belongs to the picture, but that it was selected belongs to the frame. Therefore in this case the answer is No and Yes. (But if there is a metaphysical use of language which Wittgenstein arbitrarily rejects (by saying that this aspect of phenomena does not interest him (PI § 108)), then his selected meaning of 'meaning' clearly in that respect belongs to the frame.)
'Grass is really green' (Russell). Eyes and Language
Percepts without concepts are blind. (Kant)
One thinks that one is tracing the outline of the thing's nature over and over again, and one is merely tracing round the frame through which we look at it. (PI § 114)
For [Kant] experience is not something which is simply given; it is constructed. (Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Volume VI, XVI, 1, )
An unframed picture would be raw reality, but reality is only relatively knowable. Not that relative knowledge ("framed knowledge") isn't really knowledge. Does thing in itself = reality independent of conceptualization (independent of any frame of reference) -- or is the grammar of the words 'thing in itself' very different from the grammar of "name of object"?
The book of nature is not written in mathematics (Galileo), but it can be read in mathematics. The proposition 'Grass is green' is only true in human eyes and language; nonetheless, it is true in those eyes and language.
"Concepts and Categories"
"Concepts without percepts are empty." But we normally mean many things by the word 'concept' besides the conceptualization of a sense perception. And although the concepts of logic and speculation are without sense-perception content, they are not without meaning. But I think Kant is speaking of specific categories, e.g. the concept 'causality', saying that unless causality is applied to percepts (sense perceptions), then it is empty of content (and meaning).
"The concepts of reality, substance, causality ... lose all meaning and become empty signs of concepts, without any content, if I venture to employ them outside the field of the senses". (Critique of Pure Reason B, 707, in Copleston, History, Volume VI, XIII, 7)
[The existence (reality) of the thing-in-itself as the cause of sensation cannot be asserted without unjustified application] of the categories of causality and existence. (ibid. XVII, 6) [Because reality (existence) itself is one of the categories of sense perception], it is nonsense to talk about noumenal reality [existence]. (ibid.)
Do I understand this? No. I would say that it makes no sense (is nonsense) to say that a noumenon (or thing-in-itself) exists, as if the grammar (part of speech) of 'noumenon' were name-of-an-object of sense perception. What would it mean to say that an essentially imperceptible thing exists? With sensible things, existence is explained by a way (method) of verification -- can pointing to a deduction (e.g. B exists because A exists) do the same work of explanation? What does it mean to say that a ghost exists -- that what is visible has its source in the invisible (Hebrews 11.3)? According to Kant, is that nonsense (language without meaning) or simply unprovable?
Nets or Grids of Reference
A frame of reference provides reference points, like a Cartesian graph does; it is a way of organizing what is pictured. (Philosophical work is conceptual investigation (Z § 458). We are trying to understand our tools of thought, namely concepts.) A concept (in this context) is a way of framing a picture, as a grid or net of reference does.
"Grids, nets, concepts ..." Comparisons (similes) without illustrations produce only a wary feeling of not understanding, of blackness before the mind's eye. Therefore, as examples, the grids on atlas pages (indexed "Toronto Map 6, B5") give the elements of a picture addresses, as do the lines on a political map. But if the land is viewed from above, no lines are seen: the lines belong to the frame around or the mesh or net laid over the picture. These graphs and grids are concepts, or, in other words, rules. Relationships between elements, e.g. 'A is to the west of B', require the concepts 'element', 'point', 'location' and 'direction' and so forth. Although the relationship is a fact, the concepts used to conceive it -- in the view of nominalism and Criticism -- belong to the perceiver, not to the things perceived. And there is more than one valid (i.e. self-consistent) way of looking at things (i.e. sets of concepts to use), of organizing, of making sense of things.
Poverty in examples is poverty in understanding. Theses without examples are empty promises. (Further examples of frames.)
Obviously, conceptual investigation, i.e. making our way of thinking explicit, Wittgenstein not withstanding, is not the only thing we call philosophical work. But it is the work without which we risk creating only castles of air.
Kant: Categories of Thought and Reality
Note: I know no more about Kant than a few slogans (to which I have given my own meaning) and hearsay (lectures, histories of philosophy). As I recall, I read, or tried to read, very little of his work either at school or later. Nevertheless, Kant's effect on my thinking, however vague its connection to Kant, is deep.
According to Kant, if I understand, metaphysical knowledge -- i.e. knowledge of what is not perceptible to the senses -- is impossible because the categories of sense perception do not apply to anything except what is perceptible to the senses. In other words, if I understand, the categories 'space', 'time' and 'cause and effect' belong to the frame that conceptualizes the picture (the picture = the unconceptualized percept or thing-in-itself), and nothing can be deduced from the frame (i.e. those categories) about anything not in the picture. Why can't it? It seems the impossibility would have to be logical, not real, although "describable or indescribable" would not be the meaning of 'logical' here. Deduction and derivation from first principles: Every event has a cause; therefore .... Does "the picture" = only what is perceptible to the senses? because can what is not perceptible be framed at all? "The first principles of the perceptible are also the first principles of the imperceptible" -- would Descartes say that, and what justification would Kant have for denying it?
Kant says that the categories of sense perception he identifies belong to an inescapable way of perceiving things rather than to things as they are independently of being perceived. (The categories are a cage, just as the TLP's logic of language is. But I do not think that either cage is more than an illusion.)
We must never forget that for Kant the object must conform to the mind rather than the other way about. (Copleston, History, Volume VI, XII, 5)
Rather than 'mind' I would say Kant's 'frame of reference' (or 'conceptual frame of reference'). That is how I understand (or misunderstand) Kant, or (in either case) how I apply his idea.
By the word 'category' Kant seems to mean only categories that are both necessary and universal, i.e. categories without which he says it is impossible to perceive or reason about what is perceived. But not only the categories Kant says are essential, but all concepts belong to the frame, not to the picture framed.
"And outside the frame is (the location of) nowhere"
If we stretch a net over the picture and assign an origin point, then using the net as a Cartesian graph we can state the location (address, position) of anything in the picture. However, we cannot state the "location" of anything that is not in the picture: the word 'location' has no meaning (is undefined) "outside" the picture. The category 'location' belongs to the frame (network), but the limit of the picture is also the limit of the frame: the frame is the frame of sense perception only. There is no frame apart from the picture to give the words 'location outside the picture' meaning.
'Location' is a category that belongs to the frame, in this case the net with its Cartesian grid. Outside the netted picture is nowhere (no location for anything to be). So we cannot say what the location of anything outside the picture is, nor can we deduce that there is a place outside the picture. We cannot say that the concept or category 'location' has or must have an application outside the framed picture, because there is no such place. There is no place for God or anything else suprasensible to be located.
Picturing the picture and the frame
Rather than as a picture hanging on the wall of a gallery, the "picture", i.e. sensible reality, is better pictured as a sphere and the frame as a balloon covering the sphere. The surface of the sphere is the picture; the balloon is the frame. The circumference of the sphere is "nowhere" (as in the picture that "God is a circle the center of which is everywhere and the circumference of which is nowhere"), meaning that there is no place beyond the surface of the sphere. The frame designates the center, the origin of the Cartesian graph; there is no circumference.
"Universal and necessary"
But are there essential (universal and necessary) categories for sense perception -- i.e. or is this only a question of logical possibility (imagination), the ability to describe alternative serviceable categories? But can we describe a non-space-time sense perception, because that description would be needed to refute Kant's claim?
What is the relation between facts of nature and concept-formation? Some concepts, i.e. some frames of reference, may be more serviceable for the work we want to do than others. The various definitions of 'meaning' are again an example. As would be the concept 'weight' if the weight of things were in constant flux ("if some very general facts of nature were different from those we are used to" (PI II, xii, p. 230)). But Kant's categories are at a far higher -- indeed the highest -- level of generality: unlike other concepts, these categories are, Kant says, impossible to displace -- because they are qualities of the human mind itself.
"There is no sense perception that is not the perception of objects in space. I can't imagine the contrary" -- is that evidence that space is a "universal and necessary category" and therefore belongs to the frame rather than the picture? For if I cannot describe a "spaceless" world, then such a world is not even logically possible, and if that is so, then the proposition 'There is space' cannot be "significantly negated" (i.e. the proposition's negation is nonsense). But a proposition of fact cannot have less than two possible values: true and false. So what is the sentence 'There is space'? Here is one possibility: grammar is instruction in the rules of a game. (Of course, the proposition 'There is no space' has a normal use in the language; but it has no metaphysical use.)
Have any categories meaning independently of experience except the categories belonging to logic and mathematics? But those categories do not belong to the sensible world (the picture), but only to the human mind (which would be the frame if logic and maths were sensible). Can no reality that is sense imperceptible (i.e. outside the frame) be deduced from and known to be true without verification by sense perception (which is ex hypothesi impossible)?
Appropriate frames of reference
What is the relation between frame and picture (between concept and percept): will not a frame that is not serviceable soon be discarded: a map must make a territory navigable? For example? The concept 'meaning' again. If the concepts 'time', 'space', 'cause and effect' are serviceable -- doesn't this tell us something important about the picture-in-itself (the picture independent of any frame, if there is such a thing except as a thing abstracted) -- what would that be, that our categories of thought are "the categories of reality"? Serviceable ≠ necessary; and indeed it seems impossible to prove that an alternative set of categories might not be just as or even more serviceable.
Is Kant's approach to the categories (concepts) of sense perception psychological rather than logical (conceptual), because he speaks of "categories that belong to the essence of the human mind"? So that Kant's work is theoretical (metaphysical, speculative)? Does it really follow that because all sense perceptions are perceptions of space that therefore the category 'space' belongs to the perceiver rather than to the perceived?
To avoid the difficulties and antinomies which are involved if we hold either that space and time are independent, absolute realities or that they are real and objective properties of things, Kant suggests that they are subjective ... (Copleston, History, Volume VI, X, 4)
So long as the problem is thought to be about the things time and space rather than about the grammar of the words 'time' and 'space', the problem will be confused, unclear in meaning.
Our subject is not time and space, but the concepts 'time' and 'space', and that means the use of words; and there is no phenomenon of time, no phenomenon of space, to be interested in from various points of view (cf. PI § 108).
If 'space' belongs to our eyeglasses (PI § 103), then we should be able to take them off? But compare the concept 'object' -- why shouldn't that concept "force itself on us" (CV p. 86, remark from 1950) simply because there are objects? Cf. 'weight', 'solidity', 'liquid'. The propositions using these concepts are "the conceived facts", the facts in plain view that are known and admitted by all (Z § 211).
We can describe a world which is not made of physical objects in space, but only of interflowing liquids or a marshmallowy plenum, for example, and so can't we therefore say, "In our world there are physical objects"?
But the idealist isn't talking about the particulars of the physical world -- he is saying that there is no physical world at all. He says that only ideas exist: our concepts are not conceptualizations of noumena, i.e. of physical objects.
[But, I say, can there be this kind of disconnect between the way we live our life, ("as if there were physical objects"), and our "speculative position" or philosophy ("but there are none")?]
Examples of Frames of Reference
Someone who believes in divine providence sees the hand of God in human events. That belief is a frame of reference. It is certainly different from the way someone who does not believe in divine providence sees human events. (Different definitions of 'God' (PI § 79) are different frames of reference.) There are physicists who believe there is strict causality in nature and that "the ether" exists, whereas others do not, and so they look at and see the natural world differently. The geocentric and heliocentric models have different points of view (the earth and sun belong to the picture, but their centrality belongs to the frame). The net of reference of the unaided eye is different from the nets of the telescope and microscope. But when different definitions of 'language meaning' are used, this seems to me the best example of what I have in mind (e.g. examples are of no interest to Plato's logic of language, whereas examples are defining for Wittgenstein's logic of language, although in both definitions the examples belong to the picture, not to the frame).
Examples are hard to think of because we aren't often aware of the frames of reference we use (PI § 103: "like a pair of eyeglasses"). The duck-aspect and the rabbit-aspect of the duck-rabbit figure appears to be a clear example of a percept "given sight" (unblinded) two distinct ways -- however, does that mean that the concepts 'duck' and 'rabbit' belong to the frame rather than to the picture? Why do we want to say just the opposite? (Even to see the duck-rabbit figure as a figure, rather than as merely random marks, requires the concept 'figure' or 'image' and 'representation', etc.) Concepts belong to the frame.
Is the duck-rabbit figure "ambiguous in meaning"? Are all multi-aspect figures ambiguous? Minus vivid imagination, No, but no percept is necessarily conceptualizable by one concept only. "Ambiguous" = "Having more than one possible meaning." Is the duck-aspect a "meaning"? It is a concept, and a concept is a meaning (rule for using a word).
"But there wouldn't be a concept 'rabbit' if rabbits did not exist." That sounds plausible (OC § 617); it is only saying more than we know (metaphysics) if 'would not' is replaced with 'could not'. (The concept 'fairy' is an abstraction-composition (i.e. disassembly and rearrangement of qualities); that is why it is not necessary that fairies exist for there is to be a concept 'fairy'.)
Concepts ... are the expression of our interest, and direct our interest. (PI § 570)
A lion (ibid. II, xi, p. 223) would have different concepts from ours. Dogs smell and hear things that human beings do not; some are nearly blind. The canine frame of reference would be different from man's. Different nets capture different aspects of the picture..
Speculation: work that does no work
Is this proposition a metaphysical thesis or is it nonsense: the categories of natural language are not only categories of human perception, but also the categories of a reality independent of human perception? Is an unverifiable hypothesis (a picture that cannot be compared with what it is said to be a picture of) anything more than a possible, although idle, picture? Logically possible does not mean plausible; logical possibility can be quite fanciful. (But an idling engine (PI § 132) does no work; it does not advance knowledge.) Is 'incomparable picture' nonsense?
This or that speculation may be invalid (i.e. self-contradictory, does-not-follow, or nonsense; analogies are subject to the same tests) -- but not speculation as such. That is, unless it can be demonstrated that the application of Kant's categories (e.g. 'causality') to the imperceptible is nonsense, then metaphysical speculation (e.g. picture making) is possible. It may be dismissed as fantasy, but not as mere sound without sense.
Why do we think that time and space are features of the picture, i.e. of the world rather than of the way we perceive the world? If we say the proposition 'The world is objects in space' is a rule of grammar -- isn't that the same as saying it belongs to the frame rather than to the picture? Yes. But can't a proposition have more than one use -- can't the same proposition serve here as grammar, there as a statement of fact? (Questions that I do not see the way to answer.)
To the picture or to the picture frame?
'Are there objects?' 'Is there space?' 'Does time exist?' 'Do events have causes?' Is the answer Yes or No, or are these questions either nonsense or answered by saying that they are rules of grammar? (There are contexts, "original homes" (PI § 116) for these questions in which they have a use in the language: "Is there enough space on the shelf for the book?" "Has the storm thrown any objects onto the roadway?" "Do you have enough time for a drink?" "What caused the lights to go out?")
"The individual man is the measure or measurer of all things" (Protagoras). But aren't things as they are and don't things happen as they do regardless of anyone's judgments about them -- can't you say that common experience (common sense or the consensus of mankind) says this? Well, but the consensus also says that the proposition 'There are physical objects' states a fact and that the meaning of a word, including the words 'point' and 'time', is the thing the word stands for. (Aristotle not withstanding, the truth is very often not that of the consensus.)
Besides categories of sense perception, Kant says there are categories of thought (or, I would say, principles of investigation), e.g. "Every event has a cause" and "Ex nihilo nihil", which belong to the frame, not to the picture. And so from these principles we cannot e.g. deduce that the "picture" (the world-in-itself) had no beginning (because if there is now something, then there can never have been nothing). In other words: metaphysics is a way of thinking that mistakes the frame for the picture, the concept for the fact.
Points of Reference and Idealism
For (what I have called) logic of language, Kant's idea "thing-in-itself" is no more than recognition of a point of logic, namely (1) that the combination of words 'absolute point of reference' is undefined (That all points of reference are relative belongs to grammar as instruction in the use of our language), and (2) that man's view of reality is relative to man: the concepts that conceptualize percepts ("things-in-themselves") are, so far as we know (BB p. 45), human concepts only.
What is the grammar of the proposition 'Space and time are real (i.e. qualities of the world-in-itself)'? The question is perplexing because the proposition seems to assert that space and time belong to the picture rather than to the frame. Does that make the proposition a statement of fact, because may it not be true or false? But is it a statement of fact about your concepts, i.e. our way of organizing things, or about the world itself? (cf. 'Mirages are not real.')
Do realists hold is that there is an absolute point of reference that they can define and know? If so, for the realist in Kant's terms reality is not an unknowable reality-in-itself. For the realist, reality is knowable. Wittgenstein says, "For them it is not nonsense" (OC § 37), but I do not think he is correct. I want to say instead: they misconceive what they are doing: they imagine they are talking about reality, whereas they are only making rules for talking about it (cf. Augustine and the Trinity: these remarks are not an explanation; they are only a set rules for using the word 'God').
Grammar or Metaphysics
Nonsense is produced by trying to express by the use of language what ought to be embodied in the grammar. (PP iii, p. 312)
There is no experiential difference between realism and idealism: both are "speculative positions" (Fichte). But should we say then: both are grammars? 'Space and time are qualities of the world-in-itself, not merely categories (concepts) that organize perception.' -- Is that proposition grammar? But it makes no difference to the language games with 'space' and 'time' whether that proposition is a true or false account; the proposition is not descriptive of our use of language. It is the view from outside the game, as the philosophy of geometry is the view from outside the geometric calculus. Then is it "metalogic"? The proposition belongs neither to the setup of the game nor to instruction in the how to play the game (the use of language).
Then is it metalogic? Metaphysics? Metaphysics. "It is like a pair of glasses on our nose through which we see whatever we look at. It never occurs to us to take them off" (PI § 103) -- That is not a " grammatical remark", an "explanation of the use of language" (PP ii, p. 276) or definition; that is metaphysics, a remark about the nature of things. As is "percepts without concepts are blind".
Is the concept 'grammar' too vague by far? We need to set limits to the concept (A machine, a tool can get out of control). "In philosophy all that is not gas is grammar" (Lee, "Wittgenstein 1929-1931") is not a statement of grammar; it is a statement about what the essence of philosophy is, i.e. it is metaphysics.
Not all conceptual investigations are investigations of grammar, although all investigations of grammar are conceptual investigations. All philosophy is not grammar.
What is the meaning of a word? and the possibility of metaphysics
This is a reply to the Epilogue of Copleston's A History of Philosophy, Volume VIII: Bentham to Russell, in which he speaks of Wittgenstein and "the reform of language", namely "reformed language" versus "ordinary language". But that is a misunderstanding because there is no "ordinary language", only the normal use of words in the language.
In what way can everyday language, which is also the language of philosophy (because what other language would there be? The words of natural language do not have "technical senses" in contrast to "ordinary" senses; there is only either normal use or jargon (or nonsense)) be "reformed" and for what purpose? There are two aspects of language: syntax (structure or form) and meaning.
As to language meaning, additional rules can be made for the purpose of clarity. Concepts can be discarded, added, or revised, jargon invented. Reform of that kind is always possible ('language games' is a new concept, and examples of revised concepts are 'grammar' and 'meaning' in Wittgenstein's jargon). (Countless abstractions might also be imagined and given names, but those are not the names of new things (independent entities) to ask about the natures of.)
As to language syntax, the aim might be to reform the rules in such a way as to prevent combinations of words from being both syntactically correct and nonsense. But it seems doubtful that natural language could be reformed that way. The reform of Russell did not aim at changing the rules of syntax.
Language Meaning and Metaphysics
Is metaphysics possible? The answer is: What is the meaning of a word? If (1) the meaning of a word is the essence of the thing the word names, then we can speculate about what that essence (the true nature of the thing) is, and thus metaphysics is possible. If, however, (2) the meaning of a word is the conventions for its use, then traditional metaphysics (in contrast to what I call metaphysics) is not possible, because in that case to define a word is to state a verifiable description of the facts (i.e. rules) of language use in plain sight, not to say what the nature of the thing the word names is.
If (2) is correct, consequently, it is fruitless in philosophy to try to use a word in ways that conflict with its normal use in the language, because doing so is not to talk about the true nature of the thing the word names (the word's true "meaning"), but to talk nonsense. And to admittedly redefine a word (change the rules for its use) is to invent jargon (which according to Kant is the act of a grammarian, not of a philosopher).
When philosophers ask "what being really is", are they asking anything? It is not "ordinary language" (Copleston), but our normal use of language that we describe. And if we describe how we normally use a word, then whatever is contrary to that, if it isn't jargon, is not speculation but nonsense (i.e. an undefined word or combination of words). What kind of meaning have the words 'infinite and necessary being'? You owe us a definition of 'meaning' if you say that expression has meaning, because it is not 'meaning' = 'use in the language'.
Why is Plato not talking nonsense when he asks what the essence of man is? Because the word 'man' is an example of what we normally call a name of object, a word we define (explain the meaning of) by pointing to its bearer (PI § 43b). We don't first have to identify what thing we are talking about before we can ask what its nature is. Contrast that with words like 'justice' and 'God' which are not names of objects. Metaphysics presumes that there are also "real definitions" of "abstract terms" like those.
Although it is contrary to the normal use of the word 'mind' in the language, there is a metaphysical use of language if it is not nonsense to use the word 'mind' as the name of an invisible object that can e.g. exist independently of the body. It is possible to talk about "the mind" without discussing it metaphysically (i.e. as a suprasensible thing). But can we speak metaphysically about "geometric points"? And about gravity not as a measurement of mass and distance, but as an occult force? And yet we imagine it that way. Well, but fairy tales are not nonsense either. Then is the question, not if it can be said, but what saying it amounts to? (Cf. "time", "energy" and "force": is it possible to speak of "these" (as if the words 'time', 'energy' and 'force' were names of objects) independently of methods of measurement without talking nonsense? Is mere possibility the point, however?)
Philosophy and imagination. Wittgenstein: philosophy without speculation. Is that still philosophy?
What can be done with language?
Is an unreadable sentence merely "hard to understand", or is it nonsense unless it can be restarted in a readable way; cf. a metaphor can be restated in prose (or it is not a metaphor)? Are there limits to what can be done with language: how elastic is language; does it have a breaking point? Is that question metaphorical? (It is a variation of the question: How is language without meaning distinguished from language with meaning?)
When language "goes on holiday" from its "original home" (PI §§ 38, 116), is it nonsense, because that is what an anormal "use" of language is? Breaking the rules: either you play the game wrong, or you are not playing it at all (OC § 446). A word's normal use in the language = the normal "language game" (i.e. a use of language compared to playing a game by following rules)? Is any "use" outside that game nonsense (e.g. the bishop in checkers or the queen of spades in chess)? The thing is, of course, that unlike the words we use daily in our practical interactions with other people, the words of philosophy ("abstract terms") are not used according to strict rules (i.e. their use is much less game-like).
Reduction to Original Home
If Wittgenstein is going to reduce all philosophy to the use of words "in the language games that are their original homes" (PI § 116), saying that this is the only language with meaning, then the result for philosophy will be as barren as the philosophy of the TLP with its "The riddle does not exist" and other absurdities (above all its "meaningful language without meaning").
But are there cases where the "original home" of a particular word is not a game played according to strict (well-defined, fixed) rules? Wittgenstein points out that generally words are not used by following strict rules. Where does that leave us, i.e. sense and nonsense?
And where there are no rules, no strict definitions? There we must make rules of our own if we want to get any work, any thinking done.
Where do the limits lie to the normal language game, the normal use of the word 'time' or 'mind', because within those limits the word has meaning? And outside the word is undefined (i.e. nonsense). Philosophical problems, Wittgenstein says, have their origin in failure to understand the limits of the normal language game, i.e. to recognize the borders (and the absence of borders) of our concepts. (In most, although maybe not in all instances where Wittgenstein uses the word 'concept', that word can be defined as 'rules for the use of a word'.) For Wittgenstein words are convention- or rule-defined; that is the meaning of 'meaning' that interests him. But is it whatever interests us that sets the limits of sense and nonsense? It may define the words 'sense' and 'nonsense' as we use them.
How much of this is arbitrary, merely choice? Do we want the distinction to be objective -- for not every meaning of 'meaning' is? Does the reasonable man (the follower of Socrates in the specific excellence proper to man) choose to wander about in a philosophy of seeming?
Grammatical Reminders ("noumena")
A study of the a priori ["knowable prior to and independently of experience"] principles of the understanding shows that we know Nature only as phenomenon. But at the same time it implies that there is a noumenal reality or "supersensible reality". Understanding, however, leaves the latter completely undetermined. [With respect to] the concepts of phenomenon and noumenon in connection with the [Critique of Pure Reason], the term noumenon must be taken in its negative sense. Judgment ... represents Nature as being a phenomenal expression of noumenal reality. (Copleston, History, Volume VI, XV, 1)
Two possibilities. (1) That the expression 'thing-in-itself' (or 'noumenon') is a name that stands for a suprasensible some thing, i.e. that belongs to speculation about the reality underlying reality. (2) That the grammar of 'thing-in-itself' is the same as the grammar of 'There is no absolute point of reference', i.e. that its function in the language is not as a name, but as a grammatical reminder. (Concepts are points of reference.)
And which is it? Unless account (1) is nonsense, then it seems that metaphysics is possible as an exercise of the imagination, which is not to say as a search for knowledge. If Kant's aim is to do for philosophy what Newton did for physics (ibid. XI, 1), then mustn't Kant likewise say "And I make no hypotheses"? And is not Kant's "judgment", namely that there is a "noumenal reality", an "hypothesis"?
Unexemplified = Undefined
Examples are the true masters to follow in philosophy, that is, in logic of language (or rule-defined language meaning). The alternative is an ill-defined -- i.e. undefined -- language of imaginary essences.
I am honestly disgusted with the other way of thinking. (LC iii § 37, p. 28)
Philosophy is fought in the trenches, not in the clouds, in particular examples, not in generalities ("unidentifiable essences").
The concept 'frame of reference' is deathly vague. When defining words Aristotle warned against ambiguity, metaphor, and words that are used neither literally nor metaphorically (Topics 140a). So far I have ignored all three warnings -- and a further fourth, which Aristotle does not warn against, for I have given far too few examples to give the expression 'frame of reference' meaning.
In his History of Philosophy Copleston gives few examples, and, as with Aristotle, the absence of examples to make his meaning clear limits the understanding of his work (that and its prolixity). A worthwhile project for Professor Veatch: The Illustrated Aristotle, not illustrated with drawings but with examples. If Voltaire's Letter is correct that "Aristotle [can be] explained a thousand ways, because he is unintelligible", that is why. Examples don't simply make the meaning clearer -- they determine the meaning (for those words that don't have essential meanings, which is most words).
Language that is obscure in meaning (Why else is anything "difficult to understand"? Well, something may be difficult, but language should not be the reason why it is difficult) is not a sign of profundity; obscurity, like unreadable sentences ("professional philosophers English"), is a sign of incompetence: it is a sign of the inability of the writer to make his meaning clear, not the stupidity of his readers.
"... a mask for lack of clarity of thought"
[Copleston says that the post-Kantian idealists were not concerned about possible criticism] that their profundity and obscure language were a mask for lack of clarity of thought. (History, Volume VII, I, 1) [About Hegel's work Copleston says that] by no stretch of the imagination can The Phenomenology be described as an introduction to philosophy in the sense of a work of philosophy-without-tears [Russell used that expression to mock "ordinary language philosophy" in contrast to the language used by "educated people"; G.E. Moore wrote about Russell: "too confident of insufficient explanations as to meaning of words"; Frege about the TLP: "from the very beginning I find myself tangled in doubt as to what it is [Wittgenstein wants] to say and can make no headway with it"]. On the contrary, [The Phenomenology of Spirit] is a profound work and often extremely difficult to understand. (ibid. IX, 5)
Obscurity is not profound; it is nonsense (undefined language). Being able to talk in language that never comes comes down to earth with concrete examples and to abuse words, i.e. not use them as they are normally used because one imagines one is talking about the essences of things (as if those presumed-to-exist essences rather than conventions were the meaning of language), is not a sign of philosophical understanding, much less of wisdom (however "clever" one has to be to do it; see Copleston's rather fatuous remarks about language meaning).
George Berkeley and Immanuel Kant
To be is to be -- not perceived or conceived -- but, rather, to be is to be a conceived percept (or conceptualized sense perception). Conceived percepts are all we know about reality. Reality is reality relative to some point of reference (in this case, a concept) or other, not absolute reality, if there is such a thing (which there is not, i.e. the combination of words 'absolute point of reference' is undefined language; in our normal use of the expression, the antithesis of 'a relative perspective' is not 'absolute perspective' but instead 'a different relative perspective').
"Grass is really green" (Russell and naive realism) -- but in human eyes with the concepts 'grass' and 'green' and 'proposition of fact' ("seeing is concept-laden"), but to ask "what is it really?" is to ask a question which simply has no meaning. (This is an issue of modesty, the creator of the word 'philosopher', of not thinking you know what you don't know. That is all I want to say about this, because I think it is all we know.)
Aquinas believed that we perceive directly physical objects such as trees and tables ... that we enjoy direct access, as it were, to the world ... he did not think of ideas as a screen placed between our minds and things. (Copleston, History, Volume VI, XVII, 7)
We are told at school that what a mammal sees is different from what a reptile sees, from what an insect sees. (And from what a Martian would see.) All see reality, but all see it through their own eyes. All have knowledge of reality, but it is relative or mediated knowledge.
... a realist theory of perception, the common-sense theory that we enjoy immediate perception of the connatural objects of human cognition. (ibid.)
That there is a tree or table in reality that corresponds to our perception-conception of a tree or table -- is that "common sense"? Anyone but a philosopher would say that it is. But a philosopher is not denying the obvious, only saying that there is more to being obvious than is obvious.
George Berkeley on the reification of general terms
Further, as to all that we know and no more than we know, Berkeley can say that we do not know that there is anything that exists independently of our perceiving "it", because we have, of course, no experience of -- i.e. we do not perceive -- anything so existing. We only presume that there is such a thing, i.e. we follow the grammatical rule (rule of language meaning) that perception is perception of something, that 'perceiver' and 'perceived' are interdependent concepts (i.e. one has no meaning without the other). And further, grammatically, that an independent thing is the difference between a perception and an hallucination (and that distinction presupposes the existence of an independently existing thing; it does not, however, prove that there is such a thing).
Taking something for granted ≠ knowing it. (Berkeley)
If we discard the concept 'thing-in-itself', where does that leave us? For mustn't we then also discard the concept 'percept', again because a perception, if it is not an hallucination, is a perception of something? But that is grammar, not a statement of fact: 'a perception that is a perception of nothing' is nonsense language.
If G.E. Moore holds up his hand and says "I know that here is one hand", the mistake is that Moore (like Galileo) speaks as though he were speaking from the absolute point of view. From the human (i.e. relative) point of view, Moore's statement is either "true but trivial" (according to Veatch) or proof, say, that he speaks English (Wittgenstein). But it is not proof that Moore knows that he has hands or that physical objects exist, as if he saw reality through the absolute eye of God.
Maybe it is like this, that "I must begin with the distinction between mental (imaginary) and extra-mental (real) things; nothing is possible prior to that; I cannot give it a grammatical foundation (i.e. meaning)" (cf. PG i § 81, p. 126-127). Can the existence of extra-mental things be demonstrated? We cannot appeal to our normal use of language which assumes that things exist independently of our perceiving: normal use is only a concept (rule for using a word), not a proof (cf. Z § 223).
But can a language game (e.g. weighing things) be based on a false assumption (that some things are constant in weight) and still be playable? Is it logically possible that every experience is an hallucination ("a god who sees what we cannot see")? The grammar of 'there are extra-mental things' is the same as the grammar of 'there are things-in-themselves': these are rules, conditions for playing the game; if they are presumptions, they are grammatical presumptions, not claims to knowledge.
But can't the possibility of a language game be dependent on facts, e.g. that there are objects of constant weight? It seems "obvious" that it can:
Indeed, doesn't it seem obvious that the possibility of a language game is conditioned by certain facts? (OC § 617)
But all fact is "conceived fact", i.e. all fact is relative to the concepts that make up the frame of reference. It is not an "absolute fact" or "fact-in-itself" that there are objects of constant weight. But if that is so, why do we want to say that there are facts that are independent of perspective? "Experience proves that ..." But experience proves only within the frame of reference made of the concepts 'weight', 'object', 'constant', and so on. Or is there a picture independent of all frames, a "picture-in-itself"? The only answer is: objectivity (verifiability) is defined by the frame of reference. (It is because we never take our habitual eyeglasses off, i.e. never try to look at things through a different frame from our habitual one, that this is not clear to us. Doesn't Mercury really go round the sun? Relative to the heliocentric model, yes.)
It is like a pair of glasses on our nose through which we see whatever we look at. It never occurs to us to take them off. (PI § 103)
We live our daily lives in such arrogant confidence that "reality is confined to what is perceptible to the senses" (which is the principle of investigation of natural science allowed to become, not merely metaphysical speculation, but a world-view) that a dream in which there really are more things in heaven and earth, etc., can be terrifying. A fourth spatial dimension has meaning only as an analogy made from our three dimensions, but in a nightmare one can be trapped in a farther dimension, unable to escape, unable to breathe. "For in that sleep of death what dreams may come ..."
Realism, idealism, and nonsense
But is it an adequate answer to the skepticism of the idealist, or the assurances of the realist, to say that 'There are physical objects' is nonsense? For them after all it is not nonsense. (OC § 37)
About realists, idealists and the proposition 'Physical objects exist (or don't exist)', Wittgenstein writes: "For them it is not nonsense." It perplexes me why he says this, because if it is not nonsense for them, then it is also not nonsense for everyone else but instead a combination of words with a use in the language even if it is a made-up use for words without a normal use in our life. (But if that is so, then Wittgenstein's banishment of metaphysics appears and is arbitrary).
Logic and Metaphysics
A proper name, such as 'William', signifies a particular thing, while a general word [common name, universal] signifies indifferently a plurality of things of a certain kind ... If we once understand this, we shall be saved from hunting for mysterious entities [abstract general ideas] corresponding to general words .... if we suppose that because we can frame [a general word, e.g. 'material substance', that word] must signify an entity apart from the objects of perception, we are misled by words. [This is Berkeley's nominalism.] (Copleston, History, Volume V, XII, 2, referring to A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), Introduction no. 16)
An abstraction (the discarding of some aspects while retaining others), an abstract term, is not the name of an "abstract object". Language tempts us to reification (hypostatization) through the picture "words are names and the meaning of a name is the thing the name stands for" and "a noun is the name of a person, place, or thing".
Although, of course, Plato does not look at (conceive) the question of the meaning of common names ("abstract terms") that way: e.g. the concept 'man' is not merely notice taken of the similarities among men (as Ockham says), but 'man' is the name of the essence or archetype of man: it is what is unchanging and therefore what is absolutely real, although suprasensible.
But 'suprasensible' or 'imperceptible' means unverifiable; and that is the difference between Plato's logic of language and e.g. Wittgenstein's, or the difference between metaphysics (hypothesizing) and "facts in plain view philosophy" (if that is a philosophy and not just a logic of language).
A "Limiting Concept"
Of course the concept 'thing-in-itself' is an abstraction -- is Kant guilty then of reifying an abstraction? No, 'thing-in-itself' is only a "limiting concept" (Grenzbegriff), if I know what that means for Kant: it marks the point before which knowledge stops; it is not possible to know more. (Although, the part of speech "name of object" is a false assignment of the expression's grammar; an apt assignment would call the concept 'thing-in-itself' a reminder.)
Is there nothing in the mind that was not first in the senses?
Does Kant know that all knowledge begins in sense perception, because that proposition is not itself a sense perception, and even if it were possible to reason (for it is not obvious) to that proposition, the principle of contradiction is neither perceived nor reasoned to.
The theory of abstract general ideas
In the notebooks [Berkeley] remarks that Locke would have done better to begin his Essay with the third book. [He thought that if Locke] had begun with an examination and critique of language, he might not have fallen into his theory of abstract general ideas, which, according to Berkeley, was largely responsible for the doctrine of material substance. (Copleston, History, Volume V, XIII, 5)
We hypostatize an abstraction if we imagine the expression 'thing-in-itself' to be the name of an independently existing thing. When in our thinking we set aside some aspect of a thing (or our perception of a thing), that does not turn what remains into a separately existing thing, e.g. a material substratum (Locke) or materialism's "matter".
The grammar of 'thing-in-itself'
The "thing-in-itself" is not picturable; it is not a vague gray shape rising in a gray landscape. It is not a shadowy thing, nor an imperceptible thing that casts a shadow (Plato). The expression 'thing-in-itself ' is not the name of a thing at all. It is a grammatical shorthand, not an "extra-mental thing" category. [Background: the word 'grammar' as Wittgenstein's jargon.]
Because as we normally use the word 'matter' it contrasts, in this context, with 'mind', as 'physical' does with 'mental' -- which is not an hypothesis about what the "substance" of mind or matter is -- indeed, as we normally use language, the question 'What is matter?' is nonsense (i.e. an undefined string of words), as is 'What is the substance of the mind?'
What must be eliminated is the mistaken presumption that the proposition 'There are physical objects' or 'There is a thing-in-itself' is a statement of fact rather than a rule of grammar. The concept 'thing-in-itself' amounts to this: that there are relative points of reference only, or, in other words, 'absolute point of reference' is an undefined combination of words, i.e. nonsense. (The word 'nonsense' signifies that some combinations of words are undefined, that not everything that looks like a statement of fact is one.)
Wittgenstein seems to allow that 'There are physical objects' can be a metaphysical thesis. (I don't understand why he allows this. Because I would not expect Wittgenstein to say: although metaphysics is not a road to knowledge, it is not nonsense either. Because all he could say then would be, "and I, Wittgenstein, do not want people to metaphysically speculate.")
Describe how it would it be if there were an absolute perspective which man could discover. The limit of logical possibility -- is descriptive imagination. Metaphysical speculation is logical possibility. Speculation is concept investigation. From imagination (logical possibility) nothing real follows, but concept-formation may be made clearer by it. (Fictions.)
Aristotle and Kant (Realism versus Criticism)
From a logical viewpoint the Categories comprise the ways in which we think about things -- for instance, predicating qualities of substances -- but at the same time they are ways in which things actually exist: things are substances and actually have accidents. The Categories demand, therefore, not only a logical but also a metaphysical treatment.
Aristotle's Logic, then, must not be likened to the Transcendental Logic of Kant, since it is not concerned to isolate a priori [i.e. knowable prior to and independently of experience] forms of thought which are contributed by the mind alone in its active process of knowledge. Aristotle does not raise the "Critical Problem": he assumes a realist epistemology, and assumes that the categories of thought which we express in language, are also the objective categories of extramental reality. (Copleston, History, Volume I, XXVIII, 2)
"Things have qualities that change or can change. Not every quality of a thing is essential" (although, definition -- i.e. limit setting -- belongs to grammar; it is not necessarily imposed by phenomena. Discretion and concept-formation). Does that proposition, like the proposition 'There are objects and empty space', belong in the book "The World as I Found It" (TLP 5.631) as a very general fact of nature (PI II, xii, p. 230)?
For example, might not a fish write 'There are objects and water' in its Book? That is, in a world with different general facts of nature, mightn't it be false that there is void space? Imaginative fiction, in contrast to description of normal use in the language, is in this context "evasion by hypotheses": Imagination overriding normal use makes logic of language's verifiable distinction between sense and nonsense impossible (because no language is absolute nonsense: a use can always be imagined for it).
Is the proposition 'There are physical objects' a statement of fact -- in what context? But about the proposition '3 + 4 = 7' we don't ask in what context. Is that because 'There are physical objects' is a statement of fact about the world (extra-mental reality) and therefore can be false? Is the proposition 'There are no physical objects' false -- or is it nonsense (an undefined combination of words)?
Is the proposition 'There are substances and accidents' -- a statement about "extra-mental reality" in contrast to a "form of thought which is contributed by the mind alone" (Kant)? And the proposition 'Things change' or 'There are things that change'?
"Things are substances and actually have accidents" (Aristotle) is a rule or model of grammar: it is a way of characterizing or classifying things, not a very general statement of fact.
Professor Henry Veatch called Aristotle "the philosopher of common sense" -- is that what "There are substances with accidents" is? I can't remember the example Veatch gave of a metaphysical proposition which he said was "true though trivial", but he did say about it, "It's just common sense!" Was he mistaken? Can a sentence be both a rule of grammar and a "just common sense" statement of fact -- maybe depending on context? If a distinction is to be maintained between sense and nonsense, mustn't a verifiable distinction be made between grammatical rules and statements of fact? ("Nothing is possible prior to that. I can't give it a foundation.") If Veatch makes no such distinction, then the propositions 'There are objects', 'Two is a number' and 'Blue is a color' state extra-linguistic facts (i.e. facts about something other than the grammar of the English language), as does 'There are no round squares'.
The "Critical Problem": do we know anything more about reality than our conceived percepts? Is Aristotle's "realist epistemology" this: that man's conceived facts are nature's own truth? Russell's example of naive realism: "Grass is really green". Is the mind of man the mind of nature: is the book of nature written in a human language, e.g. the language of mathematics (Galileo)?
Berkeley: Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities is an illusion dependent "on that strange doctrine of abstract ideas" (Copleston, History, Volume V, V, 4; Principles of Human Knowledge 1, 11). And certainly, abstract ideas (i.e. "abstract objects") do not exist in our world (Plato, Parmenides 133c). There is not in this world any such thing as solidity, size or motion "in general" (largeness, quickness, solidness). Size and motion are just as dependent as color, scent and sound on the perspective of the perceiver. [Note]
Phenomenology
What the phenomenologist wants, if I understand (and I very often don't), is to have unmediated access to reality; but to perceive bare, i.e. unconceptualized, things, is an impossibility: anything so perceived would be unintelligible (the only result would be chaos; even to see shapes and colors requires the concepts 'shape' and 'color').
Further, an indescribable (i.e. cannot be put into words) reality is outside the purview (remit) of philosophy, because (Socratic) philosophy is "discourse of reason", i.e. it is essentially a use of language (discussion). If there is anything that cannot -- what kind of possibility is this? -- be put into words, then it is not a subject of philosophy (wisdom, knowledge), although its existence is.
The "thing-in-itself" and Idealism
The [idealist] transformation of the Kantian theory of knowledge into a metaphysics of reality carries with it, of course, certain important changes. For example, if with the elimination of the thing-in-itself [by Fichte] the world becomes the self-manifestation of thought or reason, the Kantian ... categories, instead of being subjective forms or conceptual moulds of the human understanding, become categories of reality; they regain an objective status. (Copleston, History, Volume VII, I, 2)
The expression 'thing-in-itself' is not the name of anything. Rather, its meaning is that: (1) all perception is concept-laden: perception is relative to a particular, but neither necessary nor exclusive, conception; and (2) any perception must, if it is not an hallucination, be the perception of something independent of the perceiver. To deny the existence of the thing-in-itself is as impossible as is to affirm the existence of the thing-in-itself: a diacritical mark cannot be pronounced; a rule of grammar is a referee, not a player.
Note that in season, without drought or disease, grass is green -- not grass appears to be green. Within our normal frame of reference, there is fact and illusion. And it is a fact that grass is green, not apparently green, but as a matter of knowable fact green. Within a frame of reference, there is no noumenon/phenomenon distinction.
The puzzle of Idealism
On the other hand, if the existence of the thing-in-itself is deniable, there is nonetheless a way, in Fichte's view, to distinguish between mental and extra-mental reality, namely: whatever is independent of my will belongs to extra-mental reality. That may be one way to make the distinction and maintain objectivity. But the criterion for making the distinction is flawed, e.g. because I can somewhat control my body and yet my body belongs to extra-mental reality, and I may not be able to control everything my imagination creates, e.g. hallucinations are independent of my will and yet they belong to mental reality only. (A basic description of consciousness, i.e. awareness.)
If the distinction between the perceiver and the perceived (which is something independent of the perceiver) is eliminated, then it seems that in idealism there would be no place for hallucination, if the individual man were the measure of all things, that is. And then there would be no distinction (difference) between truth and illusion.
Therefore, if I understand, to escape complete subjectively (solipsism) idealism requires there to be an "absolute perspective", which for Berkeley belongs to God, for Fichte, Schelling and Hegel either belongs to or is the Absolute. But the presumption of the phenomenologist doesn't reach so far as the idealist's: the former only wants to deconceptualize things -- i.e. to see without preconceptions, to experience an "unconceptualized thing". But the idealist should have no need of that: because for idealism the concepts we have belong not only to the individual human mind, but also to the supra-individual Absolute Mind. And the Absolute has no mis-conceptions, unless it can misconceive its own ideas. Which would be absurd.
It is no gain to go from an unknowable thing-in-itself to an unknowable idea-in-itself. An inscrutable idea-in-itself is no advance over an inscrutable thing-in-itself.
Comment: "the Absolute" seems an abstraction of dubious meaning. And maybe a "composition" (Boethius) as well, for consciousness is abstracted from the individual, then consciousness and universality are composed into a supra-individual Consciousness. Is this particular taking apart and putting together various elements of experience and thought nonsense? Anyway, it seems madness to hypothesize it, the creation of pure metaphysical speculation.
'There are physical objects'
The question: what is the logic of language (the verifiable distinction between sense and nonsense) here? Is the proposition 'There are no physical objects' nonsense, an undefined combination of words, or is it a false statement of fact? Does it belong to grammar (an explanation of the use of language) or to common sense -- i.e. verifiable public experience? I can describe the proposition 'There are substances and accidents' as grammar (I can explain the meaning of Aristotle's jargon). But can I describe a use for it as a statement of fact?
And its negation? The proposition 'There are no physical objects' seems related to "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Both want to wipe the slate clean. When Wittgenstein says "the language game is there -- like our life" (OC § 559), is he talking nonsense? 'There is our life.' 'There is a world: objects, space, motion, memory, ideas.'
"The language game is there -- like physical objects are there."
There is a difference between the empirical claim and the metaphysical claim. Can a sense be given to the metaphysical claim is the problem.
Here the understanding seems to run into a wall. Here, I'd say: If there is to be a distinction between sense and nonsense, we have to make a distinction between rules of grammar (definitions) and statements of (extra-linguistic) fact. The proposition 'There are round squares' is not false; it is nonsense, i.e. it is a combination of words with no normal use in the language. The contrary account -- the account that does not make that distinction -- supposes that every combination of words with the form statement-of-fact states a true or false fact. It is the absence of a logic of language, because it does not allow that some statements, rather than being true or false, may be nonsense.
"Statements of fact are informative." Can you say the proposition 'There are physical objects' is uninformative about extra-grammatical reality? What you can say is that it is not a move in any language game; as we normally use our language, it has no use in the language. Compare the proposition 'There are cats' for that may be a true or false statement about the world of experience. Can we describe a context in which the proposition -- i.e. combination of words -- 'There are physical objects' has a use? (Maybe, if there is a metaphysical use of language.) In that context it would not be nonsense.
Contradiction versus "first principles"
"I have to distinguish between the definition of a word (convention) and a statement of fact (hypothesis), as I have to distinguish between concepts (ideas) and things (objects, phenomena), and as I have to distinguish between sense and nonsense in language. Prior to that philosophy, or discourse of reason, is impossible." (cf. PG i § 81, p. 126-127) Like the principle of contradiction.
Or unlike it. For if anything might claim to be innate or knowable prior to and independently of experience ["a priori"] it is the principle of contradiction; certainly it isn't learned by experience, for as Aristotle says, all learning and knowledge presuppose it (Metaphysics 1005b (IV, 3)). Whereas in contrast, the distinction between meaning (sense and nonsense) and truth (true and false) does have to be learned, as witnessed by our presumption that all propositions are statements of fact, e.g. that 'Two is a number' is a statement of fact about two.
It is impossible for the same man at the same time to believe the same thing to be and not to be; for if a man were mistaken on this point he would have contrary opinions at the same time. It is for this reason that all who are carrying out a demonstration reduce it to [the principle of contradiction] as an ultimate belief; for this is naturally the starting-point even for all the other axioms. (ibid. tr. W.D. Ross)
I think the three distinctions (or "first principles") I mention above are axioms. And it seems correct that all assume the principle of contradiction, e.g. that the same proposition is not both true and false, both sense and nonsense, that a thing is not both a percept and a concept, at the same time and in the same sense.
The principle of contradiction was not born in the cradle of logic. It is the parent of logic.
Contradiction isn't the unique thing philosophers think it is. It isn't the only inadmissible form ... (Wittgenstein to Moore)
But that is the point, that it is not a contradiction in form (syntax) which must be rejected, but only a contradiction in sense. And Aristotle, who Wittgenstein said he had never read a word of (Recollections p. 158), says as much, emphasizing "the same thing".
Is the distinction between sense and nonsense as fundamental as the principle of contradiction? But don't we have to learn that, not only are there propositions whose meaning we do not understand, but also propositions (combinations of words) that are nonsense (mere scribble or noise)?
Innate Ideas
You cannot say that the principle of contradiction prius fuerit in sensu ("was first in the senses"), because you cannot say that the principle is or ever was in the senses (in sensu)? Why? because the claim is meaningless, an undefined combination of words.
When was Augustine's "If I doubt, I am" in the senses? The principle of contradiction is the basis of rationality (reasonableness): it is something man brings with him into the world, not something he learns in the world. If this principle were not innate to man, he would not be rational.
What would it even mean to say that the propositions of logic were -- or were not -- in the senses?
The principle of contradiction is an innate idea -- unless you are simply unwilling to call anything an innate idea. What criterion must an idea meet to be classified as innate? What would an example of an innate idea be?
If you give a dog contradictory commands it looks at you in confusion. Does that show that the dog is rational? Was the principle of contradiction first in the dog's senses?
"Nothing is known of extra-mental reality other than by sense perception"? A dog will seek out running water, avoiding drinking standing water -- is that not a priori knowledge [i.e. knowledge not based on experience] of extra-mental reality? Should instinct be called innate knowledge? A dog's thoughts are not, what man's mostly are, namely language, but a dog nonetheless has knowledge.
Grammar is (like) the setup for a game
Saying 'There are physical objects' is like putting the pieces on a chessboard (That is what grammar is); so far you are not playing the game, i.e. doing something extra-linguistic. The same applies to 'There are substances and accidents'.
Grammar is like the setup for a game -- e.g. the outlining of a court or field, the raising of nets -- in contrast to playing the game. And grammar is the game's book of rules. It is the preparation of language for use, not a use of language, the rules of the game in contrast to playing the game. (Obliquely related: PI § 108.)
Designating a gold bar in Paris as a standard of length is not taking a measurement; it is only making it possible to take measurements (by comparing things to the standard).
There are different kinds of rules in chess, different kinds of grammatical propositions, e.g. the rule to follow when moving the bishop is of a different kind from the rule for which square to place the bishop on when setting up the chessboard. Nonetheless, both these are rules of grammar = rules of the game. But placing the bishop on the board is not playing the game; it is not a move in the game; moving the bishop is. 'There are physical objects' is not a move in a (language) game; it is preparation for playing a game.
Either that or Veatch is right, but I think Veatch is wrong because he makes no distinction between statements that are and statements that are not about language: thus 'Mary has a little lamb' and 'Mary consists of four letters' are not distinguished -- because every proposition is treated as a statement of fact about the girl Mary. (What is Professor Veatch's logic of language -- how does he distinguish sense from nonsense, i.e. language with meaning from "mere sound without sense"?)
Grammar as instruction in the use of language: 'There are physical objects'
"Grammar is like the setup for a game." Or so I thought, but Wittgenstein hits the mark I missed. Grammar is instruction. A book of grammar is a book of instructions. A grammar is a book of rules. A definition is not only a description of the use of a word, it is also instruction in how to use a word, what rules to follow.
'A is a physical object' is a piece of instruction which we give only to someone who doesn't yet understand either what 'A' means, or what 'physical object' means. Thus it is instruction about the use of words, and 'physical object' is a logical concept. (Like color, quantity, ...) And that is why no such proposition as: 'There are physical objects' can be formulated. (OC § 36)
In other words, if 'meaning' is defined as 'use in the language', then the only meaning = use in the language 'There are physical objects' has is as a tool for "teaching someone the use of words". If it sounds strange to call 'physical-object word' a part of speech, remember that I used 'name-of-object word' that way. And so in sum, 'A is a physical object' is nothing more another way of stating the rule of grammar (explanation of meaning) 'The word 'A' is the name of an object' (PI § 43b).
A is a physical object. A is a sound. A is a color. A is a number. Here we are saying which part of speech the word 'A' belongs to. "There wouldn't be the same reason for distinguishing 'metal words', 'poison words', [because] 'iron is a metal', 'phosphorus is a poison'" are statements of fact, whereas "'red is a color', 'a circle is a shape'" are definitions of words (PG i § 25, p. 61). Remember the distinction between a factual and a conceptual investigation (Z § 458). That distinction, like the distinction between sense and nonsense, functions as an axiom in logic-philosophy: nothing is possible prior to it. (In these examples, a "statement of fact" is informative -- i.e. states a fact -- about something other than language.)
The proposition 'The table wobbles' might be used to define the word 'wobbles', but it might also be used to state a fact about, not wobbliness, but about the table. Is it the case with 'A is a physical object', that it might be used both in the definition of 'A' and to state a fact about A? 'An elf is not a physical object' cannot be used to state a fact about elves, but only in a definition, an explanation of the meaning or use in the language, of the word 'elf'. Can the proposition 'A rock is a physical object' be used to state a fact about rocks or only to explain the use in the language of the word 'rock'?
"Idealism as a model"
'There are physical objects' versus 'There are craters on the moon'. The first proposition, in our normal frame of reference, "cannot be significantly negated", i.e. its negation is meaningless. Are you saying, then, that idealism uses a different frame of reference, that within that frame of reference the proposition has meaning? Wittgenstein: "For them it is not nonsense" (OC § 37), although then he says that what the idealist wants to say can't be said that way: "this assertion, or its opposite, is a misfiring attempt to express what can't be expressed like that", but he doesn't say how it can be expressed.
Is idealism a speculative picture, a conception, like a diagram? "Mercury goes round the sun" is a picture, but "There are no physical objects, only ideas" is not a picture you can draw. You can speak of the "heliocentric model", but can you speak of the "idealist model"? Fichte says explicitly that idealism isn't picturable. A picture can be compared with what it is a picture of? You can't do that with the "Mercury goes round the sun" picture.
"Is there something rather than nothing?"
When I was at school (Porridgetown) one of the students wanted someone to prove to him that anything exists. 'Does anything exist?' The unclarity of the question makes answering it impossible. Although not everything that has the form of a question is a question; meaning is not guaranteed by syntax: any combination of words may be nonsense. Is the proposition 'Nothing exists' false or nonsense?
Does anything exist? What would an answer look like (What is a model, a criterion for answering that question)? Do you mean, does anything exist apart from thought, or from your own thoughts? Does anything exist -- do you include yourself in "anything"?
"Does anything at all exist?"
If outside the philosophy classroom someone asked if anything exists, we would not think he was asking for instruction in the English language. The question-sign has no normal use in the language: it is like the setup for a game: the question of whether a thing exists presupposes (not proves) that things exist (and now to ask if anything at all exists is to break the rules of the game or negate its rules; the question 'Why is there anything rather than nothing?' is based on the same fallacy, that if it makes sense to ask why a particular thing exists, it also makes sense to ask why the whole exists, if that is a fallacy, which it is unless it is metaphysics). "Horses exist. Unicorns do not exist." If a child asks if there are fairies in the forest, it is not asking us to explain the meaning of the word 'exist'. By false grammatical analogy the question 'Are there fairies?' becomes 'Is there anything at all?'
This is an example of a "metaphysical use of language" in both senses, for it is (1) unclear in meaning, and (2) asking or trying to ask about a phenomenon, namely existence, rather than about a concept ('existence') or the normal use of a word. But is (2) sense or nonsense?
The two possible meanings of 'meaning' (in contrast to 'nonsense') according to Wittgenstein
"... that this way or the other must be right", that either, as the TLP has, (1) the meaning of a word is the thing the word names (stands for), or, as the Philosophical Investigations has, (2) the meaning of a word is its use in the language, a convention, a more or less arbitrary rule.
But did Wittgenstein later mean that it was exclusively one or the other? Because although I am calling naming an object "a use of language", Wittgenstein does not, but he writes "... and the meaning of a name is sometimes explained by pointing to its bearer" (PI § 43b) -- and it may seem that 'bearer' = 'the thing the name stands for'. However, ...
'Meaning' and 'explanation of meaning' -- are these different concepts or only one concept? The meaning of a name is explained by pointing, but the thing pointed to is not the name's meaning. Pointing to Mopsy, Flopsy and Cottontail may be how we learn it use the word 'rabbit', and how we explain its meaning to others (ibid. § 208). But Mopsy, Flopsy and Cottontail are not the meaning of the word 'rabbit'. For if all rabbits were to stop existing, the word 'rabbit' would not thereby be rendered meaningless (ibid. § 40). (Although if 'meaning' = 'explanation of meaning', then the meaning of that word would change -- because the way its meaning is explained would change, as we don't explain the meaning of the word 'dodo' by pointing to examples of dodos.)
Is the explanation of meaning the meaning of a word?
Are the words 'meaning' and 'explanation of meaning' synonyms in Wittgenstein's logic of language, such that we might have the slogan, "Don't ask for the meaning -- Ask for the explanation of meaning" or "The meaning is the explanation of meaning" where 'meaning' = 'use in the language'?
Could we say that (1) "the meaning of the word 'dog' is its use in the language", and (2) its use in the language (its category of language use or "part of speech") is "name of common object", and (3) the use in the language or meaning of a common name is explained by pointing to bearers of that name? The definition "meaning = use in the language" is meant to distinguish names from words that are not names, not to destroy all distinctions.
The common names in philosophy
Are Plato's words 'justice', 'courage', 'piety', 'love', 'self-control', 'beauty', and 'wisdom' common names? By 'common name' Plato means the common nature (the defining common quality or essence) named by the common name. (As with the first account above, the common nature is thing the word names.) But what if there is no common nature -- does that mean that Plato's words are nonsense (meaningless)?
How do we explain the meaning of the word 'justice'? We talk about law or about fairness -- and we give examples to illustrate our meaning, because without examples the essential definition "Justice is correct conduct towards men" (Gorgias 507b) is too vague to provide the universal standard Plato is looking for in ethics.
The distinction between sense and nonsense we seek must not be only verifiable, it must also be consistent with the facts in plain view
Both Plato's theory of forms and the TLP make the distinction between sense and nonsense verifiable. But according to both most language is nonsense, Plato because its meaning is unknowable, the TLP because its only form of language that is not nonsense is the declarative sentence. Therefore both logics are inconsistent with the fact that natural language is not impracticable, that it is workable, functional: it allows us to get our work done. The logic of language we seek must account for that.
With respect to Plato, the reasons for rejecting the first account of language meaning (namely that the meaning of a word is the any-thing the word names) is that (1) it creates a problem but offers no solution to it (cf. BB p. 19-20), for it makes it impossible to define -- and not only apparently impossible to define -- most words of our language; (2) although it does make an objective distinction between sense and nonsense, it renders most words of our language nonsense; and (3) it is contrary to the facts in plain sight, because judged by those facts, most words do not have essential meanings but are instead only definable by giving examples (If these words have general definitions, they only serve as general orientation, e.g. 'Piety is doing one's duty towards God'.)
If the meaning of a word is presumed to be the thing the word names (and to name is to stand for), then discussions of the meanings of "abstract terms" such as 'justice' or 'goodness' are idle guesses Trying to define a phenomenon is trying to lasso a cloud: asking what the essence of a phenomenon is leads only into perplexity. (Note that if by 'abstraction' we mean a selection of data, then we should be clear about what the data selected is, or the term we are discussing is not an abstract term.)
In Wittgenstein's often demonstrable view: Philosophical investigations = conceptual investigations (Z § 458), i.e. investigations, not of "things" (phenomena), but of rules for using words based on the facts in plain view. And thus, as in the second account, "the meaning of a word is its use according to rules in the language".
Rules are guides -- but if the rules are indefinite? Non-existent rules are no more guides than non-existent (or unidentifiable, in Plato's view) essences are. That is the limitation of Wittgenstein's rule-based logic of language.
We are frequently puzzled and at a loss in obtaining clear and determined meanings of words commonly in use. (Berkeley, Philosophical Commentaries § 591; quoted in Copleston, History, Volume V, XII, 1)
Then are many "words commonly in use" without meaning? When we are puzzled, when we don't know how to go on (PI § 154), what we seek is a rule, although there may be none or we may need to make one if we wish to go on.
Should it be said that I am using a word whose meaning I don't know, and so am talking nonsense? (ibid. § 79)
Words are frequently ill-defined, unclear in meaning, especially in philosophy. That is the language we learn and are taught from infancy up. We think we make it work, nevertheless (which doesn't mean that we do).
Not two different ways of looking at the same thing?
The discussion that follows is a confused "discourse held with myself" (Antisthenes). It is confused for the same reason Plato's dialogs are inconclusive.
When in his later account of language meaning Wittgenstein says that (1) meaning is not a matter of form, but (2) of use in the language, he is stating the conclusion, not the presumption of his investigation -- it is a post-conception, not a pre-conception of the logic of our language.
"Meaning is not a matter of form" -- i.e. a function of syntax alone. If meaning were, the only nonsense would be the breaking of rules of syntax; the meaning of a name would be the thing the word named, and the meaning of a proposition would be the order in which those names and their modifiers were arranged. (Is that the TLP's account of language meaning? But the declarative form "This is how things stand" does not tell you how to distinguish between the combination of words 'The dog drinks water', which has a normal use in the language and 'Water drinks the dog', which has none.)
Two meanings of 'explanation'
An account DEF.= an explanation, but an explanation may be a description of the conceived facts or it may be a (metaphysical, i.e. suprasensible) theory. Wittgenstein's account is a description. "There are common names in our language, but the meaning of most common names is not a common nature" is an account that describes only the conceived and acknowledged facts in plain view (Z § 211; PI § 599). In contrast, Plato's account is a theory: "The meaning of a common name is the common nature it names; although the common nature is not perceptible to the senses, the soul knows the name's meaning because the soul was acquainted with that meaning when the soul existed in the realm of Ideas or Archetypes before the soul was embodied." Wittgenstein says that philosophy only describes concepts; it does not explain concept-formation. But, then, isn't Plato's Theory of Recollection philosophy? Wittgenstein could only say what he wanted philosophy (his logic-philosophy) to be, not what it is or can be.
Wittgenstein doesn't want to solve philosophical problems; he wants to explain them away as not problems at all. He does not want to answer philosophical questions. He says that a philosopher is a man with a confused mind, mystified by his own language (PI § 109). But if there is a "metaphysical use of language" (ibid. § 116), which is what Plato's Theory of Recollection is (or what else would Plato's discussions of the "soul" be?), then Wittgenstein's project in philosophy loses its point (justification).
The historical Socrates asks for an account of what you know, or think you know: "If you know something, you can explain what you know to others" (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1). If your account is unclear or self-contradictory or contrary to public experience, then you do not know what you think you know. Wittgenstein also makes a request: "The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than you know" (BB p. 45), what "anyone knows and must admit" (Z § 211). Plato, however, found the admitted facts inadequate for explaining language meaning (concept-formation), and therefore Plato presented a theory about what must be true if language is to have meaning, i.e. name real things ("the meaning of a word is the thing it names").
Does the difference lie in the picture or in different picture frames?
I have used the word 'account', by which I mean account of the facts, rather than the word 'view' or 'way of looking at things' here for clarity, because: Are there two different frames of reference here -- or are these two different accounts of what is found within the same frame? Within the same frame questions of fact can be disputed ("Is the cat in the house or the garden?" Either way the concepts in use are the same), but is that what is happening here? Or are the frames of reference of Plato (metaphysics) and Wittgenstein (logic of language) different because their principles of investigation are different? (Obviously I am asking for a definition, an explanation of meaning, the boundaries of the concept 'frame of reference'.)
That they are indeed different frames of reference I thought elsewhere, for I said that (1) although there are many meanings of 'meaning', (2) Wittgenstein chose to use only one for his logic of language -- and (3) that choice was his work's reference point (that to which everything is referred, as to a standard. Is a frame of reference, then, a standard?)
The expression 'frame of reference' is very far too vague. (Metaphors in philosophy are mostly fog.)
Disputed facts or Different verbal definitions?
And now which account, if either, is correct? Does Plato define the word 'meaning' differently from Wittgenstein, or do they merely disagree about what the meaning of language is? About the "what" of language? The word 'meaning' has no meaning apart from a definition. (The same is the case with the word 'significance'.) Is a definition a frame of reference?
Without examples, answers are only guesses. (But thinking of examples is hard work, namely thinking, and we don't want to work hard in philosophy.)
But now, obviously if Wittgenstein defines 'meaning of a word', except for names of objects, as use in the language, and Plato defines 'meaning of a word' as the suprasensible archetype the thing named by the word imitates, then they define 'meaning of a word' differently.
But is it obvious? Why do we use the same expression, namely 'meaning of a word', for both if the definitions of 'meaning of a word' are different -- for shouldn't we use different expressions? Ockham and Wittgenstein say that we call them both 'meaning' because of the similarities between them (which means not because they are identical). Which are?
Copleston writes that "language follows thought and thought follows things", from which it should follow that "things" are the cause and explanation of concept-formation, e.g. of the grammar of the word 'mind'. And so 'the word 'mind' is the name of a thing' would be a rule of grammar.
But of what kind of grammar -- of a metaphysical, i.e. an account of what is hidden from plain sight, grammar, because if that rule is not the result of false analogy and reification, then that is what it must be, because otherwise it is a false account of the normal use of the word 'mind' in our language?
Ockham thought that language is the clothing of thought about experience and thought itself, which are the foundation of all knowledge, that to perceive is simultaneously to conceive, that our concepts arise naturally from our percepts. Contra Ockham, however, false analogy and hypostatization too are foundations of thought: both arise from presuming that all words are the names of things, and thus the word 'mind' must be the name of a thing, or at least of something.
It is easy to confuse yourself with your own vocabulary, especially in philosophy where there is nothing but vocabulary (language and logic) to work with.
Factual (metaphysical) Principles versus Rules for Reasoning
If the first account above of language meaning (the meaning of a word is the thing the word names) is correct, then metaphysics -- i.e. the gaining of knowledge of reality through the investigation of our concepts is possible. This is because the concept and the thing are identical, once we have truly identified the nature of the thing the word names (the thing defines the concept: true concepts are images of real things). But if the second account of language meaning (the meaning of a word is not a thing but the rules for the word's use) is correct, then metaphysics is not possible, because then the concept defines the thing the word names (if indeed the word names anything), not vice versa, and so our investigations only trace the outline of our concept, not of a thing in itself. According to the second account the investigation of our concepts is only an investigation of our use of language.
If the first principles of Thomas Aquinas are "Archimedean" (i.e. matters of fact, not mere principles of investigation), then the existence and quality of suprasensible things like immortality and the existence of God can be deduced from them (According to Gilson, this was the view before Kant), but if they are only rules for reasoning (i.e. if they belong to the frame rather than the picture it frames), then this is not possible.
Concepts are reflections of extra-mental nature: they are imposed by the picture rather than being part of the picture frame (Ockham)
Ockham says that concepts arise naturally from sense perception ("intuition"): to perceive is simultaneously to conceive (He calls these concepts "natural signs"). But if that is so, then isn't metaphysics possible for Ockham -- because is there effectively any difference between innate first principles and "natural concepts"? If both are Archimedean (factual rather than merely methodological), then from both it should be possible to deduce things about reality, because in both cases concept-formation is imposed by reality. But Ockham says that although propositions (a word only has meaning in a proposition) based on sense perception are composed of natural concepts, they are only probable, and therefore whatever we infer from them is also only probable.
For Ockham, if metaphysics is to be knowledge of imperceptible things, its premises must be certain; but if only tautologies (i.e. propositions the negations of which are self-contradictory) are certain, then unless tautologies are informative, metaphysical knowledge is impossible. (For Ockham, concepts that do not arise from [begin in] sense perception are intra-mental only; nothing metaphysical (i.e. nothing about extra-mental, suprasensible reality) can be deduced [derived] from them.)
Ockham says that all knowledge begins in experience, i.e. sense perception, but that is a proposition that cannot be demonstrated (and does not seem to be true). But if man is a product of nature, then may not knowledge of the first principles be implanted in him by nature (like a bird's knowledge of how to build a nest or raise its young), but even if that is (or were) so, what is (or would be) the limit of the application of the first principles? Would they apply to things outside the limit of sense perception? There is no way to know, because there are two tests to truth: reason and experience; and metaphysics is pure reason only.
There really is something to what Schlegel says. In philosophy we work by guessing, and then try to make something of our guesses. But you're always guessing at the next step. Contra Schlegel, however, you don't know whether you've got anything sound until logic approves it and experience doesn't contradict it, and it strikes you as plausible.
Although that is what Kant did not want philosophy to be:
... a leap, in which one does not know where one is going to arrive, and after which, when one looks back, one does not really see the point of departure. (Kant, Nachlaß, quoted in Copleston, History, Volume VI, XVI, 1)
Endnotes
Kant, geometry, philosophy, and grammar
As Copleston describes it, if I understand, according to Kant a geometer invents his concepts independently of experience, whereas the philosopher takes his concepts from experience (and tries to them "clear, explicit and definite"). (History, Volume VI, X, 3. Kant, Enquiry into the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morals (1764), 2)
But don't the geometer and the philosopher both take and invent: both set limits to experience by means of concepts: both create abstractions (selections). The difference is that only the (borders of the) concepts invented by the philosopher to capture phenomena are open to revision by later philosophers, whereas the concepts of plane geometry are not: they are defined by strict rules (like the game of chess). On the one hand logical consistency and plausibility, and on the other logical necessity.
The geometer invents the geometrical objects he studies in the sense that they are abstractions and do not exist (lines without width, planes without depth), but it can hardly be said that triangles, lines and planes are not given to us in experience. The point of geometry was "to measure the earth" (and it is significant that there are compass and straightedge constructions in Euclid), not to create a fantasy world.
Philosophical definitions" versus grammatical clarifications (Kant)
... when philosophers construct definitions arbitrarily [i.e. when a philosopher's concepts are "not something given to him [by nature] but something which he has himself created"], these definitions are not properly speaking philosophical definitions. "Such determinations of the meaning of a word are never philosophical definitions; but if they are to be called clarifications at all, they are only grammatical clarifications." I can explain in what sense I intend to use the term ... but then I am acting as a grammarian rather than as a philosopher. (Copleston, idem. Kant, Enquiry 1, 1)
Kant and 'grammar'
Kant thus seems to say that "geometry is grammar" (cf. PI § 373: "Grammar tells what kind of object anything is"; geometry as grammar), because the geometer's concepts are "something which he has himself created". In other words, according to Kant geometric definitions (which are verbal definitions) belong to grammar. So Kant appears to have used the word 'grammar' the way Wittgenstein does, saying that explanations of verbal meaning are the work of the grammarian, which amounts to calling verbal definitions (i.e. rules or conventions for using words) "grammatical definitions". In contrast, "philosophical definitions" are real definitions of things.
Aristotle made the distinction explicit when he contrasted nominal and real definitions: "the name 'thunder' can be defined as noise in the clouds" versus "the nature of thunder is the noise of fire being quenched in the clouds". Nominal definitions belong to grammar, real definitions to philosophy.
Berkeley's Criticism of Locke's Distinction between Primary and Secondary Qualities
[LOCKE:] Some qualities are inseparable from a body, whatever changes it undergoes. A grain of wheat has solidity, extension, figure and mobility. If it is divided, each part retains these qualities. "These I call original or primary qualities of body, which I think we may observe to produce simple ideas in us, viz. solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number." Besides these primary qualities there are also secondary qualities. The latter are "nothing in the objects themselves but powers to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities". Such are colours, sounds, tastes and odours. (Copleston, History, Volume V, V, 4)
Comment: Color varies with the light, but note that extension, shape and solidity vary with temperature, as may number (a block of ice may crack into several blocks which may melt into a single body of water and evaporate. Standards can be set for what the "true" color and "true" extension are, e.g. daylight at noon, temperature at 70° Fahrenheit, 40% humidity, and so on. Further, the concept 'motion' is not absolute but relational. Foods can be identified by their taste and smell, as can the sounds of musical instruments. To make any quality objective requires only that we set a standard of measurement for it. (Frames of reference.)
Locke treats "normal conditions" or "normal circumstances" (OC §§ 27, 250) as if they were absolute.
[BERKELEY:] If, as Locke thought, the relativity of secondary qualities provides a valid argument for their subjectivity, the same sort of argument can be employed with regard to the primary qualities. Figure or shape, for example, depends on the position of the perceiver, while motion is either swift or slow, and these are relative terms. In fine, primary qualities are no more independent of perception than are secondary qualities.
It is impossible to conceive primary [qualities] entirely apart from secondary qualities. "Extension, figure, and motion, abstracted from all other qualities, are inconceivable." Extension in general and motion in general are meaningless terms, depending "on that strange doctrine of abstract ideas". (ibid. XII, 4)
"Abstract idea", like "abstract object", is the reification of abstractions (selected aspects of things). [BACK]
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