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Logic at Sea

We continue with preliminary and later logic of language remarks. What does it mean? the expression 'logic of our language' is Wittgenstein's, but in my jargon it means: an answer to the question of how sense (or, language with meaning) is distinguished from nonsense in the discussion of philosophy.

Is there common ground in philosophy? The philosopher says: Look at things my way! Common names in Plato and Wittgenstein: essence versus myriad resemblances. A concept, namely 'God', whose unclarity seems not to be a blunder.

Topics on this page ...

• Missing the point | Perpetuating the old way of thinking
  • Why read Plato's dialogs?
    • About common names (Plato, Wittgenstein)
      • Rejection of common ground (Wittgenstein, Plato)
        • Essence versus "myriad resemblances"
• The Relationship between logic and grammar
  • Must it be possible to show both ends of an analogy?
  • Form of words versus meaning (Wittgenstein's criticism of current logic)
  • Shadow reality ("gold mountain", "round square")
  • Query: What question has no answer?
• Hypotheses in historiography (critical theology)
• Something even metaphysics cannot offer an hypothesis to explain
• "The death of God" - What does it mean? (Bonhoeffer)
  • Is anything essential to the concept 'God'? (The "Theory of Descriptions": The concept 'God' is various concepts)
    • A concept whose unclarity seems not to be a blunder

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Missing the point | Perpetuating the old way of thinking

Wittgenstein: "A philosopher says: Look at things this way!" (cf. CV p. 61, remark from 1947) But we may be unwilling to set aside the old way. And yet the old way must be set aside for a time -- We must be willing to suffer a Gestalt shift if we are to understand a way of thinking different from our own in philosophy.

"Look at this through the eyes of Plato! See the question of the meaning of a common name -- which, if it is not a common nature named by the common name, is indeed perplexing -- in Plato's way."

Why read Plato's dialogs?

Query: what are the three possibilities that Socrates gives for what might be meant by giving an account?

Note: The following remarks are not apropos of Theaetetus 201b-210a (q.v.), but of our use of the method of the historical Socrates (in contrast to the literary Socrates of Plato).

Is there an essence of 'giving an account', or does the meaning of the word 'account' vary from kind of case to kind of case?

Socrates held that if a man knows anything, he can give an account of what he knows to others. (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1; cf. PI §§ 210, 208)

We ask for a speculative theory of "giving an account" (or, "explaining what we think we know") where we ought to ask for examples of "language games" (activities with language following more or less strict rules (PI § 23)) where an account is given. We ask for the essence of accounts where we should ask: What are the rules of this or that particular type of activity? Because the meaning of 'giving an account of what you know' in a particular activity (e.g. gardening, mathematics, religion, ethics) is shown by the rules of that activity. (Examples are the true master in philosophy.)

The kind of account is the kind of language game. (cf. PI II, xi, p. 224)

We must take care not to describe only activities (Wittgenstein's "games") that are done following strict rules, because these are not typical of our use of language (BB p. 25). On the other hand, it may be that only activities with strict rules are what we mean by 'giving an account of what you know'. (Knowledge belongs to the community: our concept 'knowledge'.)

About common names (Plato, Wittgenstein)

In Wittgenstein's view, we must abandon our preconception (or, presumption) that a common name must have an essence as its definition. That notion has always been, not the result of investigation, but a requirement that philosophers have imposed on their investigations (PI § 107), Socrates in ethics only, Plato with respect to all common names.

Our presumption that there must be a general definition of a common name belongs to a theory of language meaning (a preconceived picture of how it seems things must be) -- rather than a logic of language, i.e. a description of what we find when we look (a picture of how things are in contrast to how it seems they ought to be).

Plato often only shows us what we do not find when we look, but he never draws the apparent conclusion that this is because it is not there to be found, but instead assumes that what we are looking for is invisible (imperceptible).

When a "may be" becomes a "must be", that is akin to madness. (The limit of metaphysics in my view.)

In my opinion, which may be very mistaken, those who read Plato in the way of the query above -- (cf. those who ask for the various "definitions of piety" Plato suggests in the Euthyphro) -- read him wrongly, because that is not what there is to be learned from Plato, and it simply perpetuates the old way of doing philosophy -- i.e. of not distinguishing conceptual from factual investigations, ignoring the basic (underlying) question of to objectively distinguish between sense and nonsense.

"What is an account according to Plato?" Cf. "What is piety?" These questions are asked as if we were talking about the nature of some invisible entity or phenomenon; contrast that with "What is the meaning of the word 'piety'?" which asks for a description of the use of a word in the language. In other words, it is the difference between asking for a definition of some nebulous "thing" and asking for a definition of a word; the difference of a metaphysical hypothesis versus concept [or, rules for using language] clarification.

Is it not possible to do philosophy the way Plato does, asking "What is justice?", "What is beauty?", "What is courage?", and so on? Which do you want from philosophy -- inconclusive speculation based on preconceptions, always unclear about just what we are speculating about -- or a descriptive logic of language that brings clarity to vagueness (nebulosity, cloudiness), although at the abandonment of preconceived ideas?

Does Wittgenstein have an alternative to the theory that the meaning of a common name is the common nature it names -- "family resemblance" (PI § 67), maybe? No, that is the rejection of the theory, but it is not an alternative theory, but only the result of an empirical investigation, a description of what we find if we look: Wittgenstein's remarks about the common name 'game' offer evidence that the meaning of the word 'game' is not a common nature it names -- i.e. he points to an anomaly. And an anomaly disproves a theory. Plato, like Socrates, however, responds to anomalies, by revising his original thesis or by taking up a new thesis; but unlike Socrates (and Wittgenstein) who use induction to define common names, Plato draws his theses from preconceptions.

As to Wittgenstein's various theories about the source of man's philosophical problems, such as "A metaphysical question is always in appearance a factual one, although the problem is a conceptual one" (RPP i § 949) -- the word 'always' indicates a theory (generalizations are theories) -- if you want to treat those as hypotheses, then you can falsify an hypothesis by finding anomalies. But you ought to do that on Wittgenstein's terms -- i.e. using the meaning of 'meaning' Wittgenstein himself used in his investigations.

Rejection of common ground

But then are we criticising Plato on Plato's own terms? Wittgenstein is rejecting metaphysical speculation in favor of what is publicly verifiable: description of the facts in plain view only replaces speculative explanation about what is not in plain view -- even if the facts in plain view seem inadequate to our preconceived ideas. Plato's "the meaning of a common name is the common nature it names" is speculative explanation (cf. the theory of abstraction); in contrast, Wittgenstein's myriad resemblances is description. So, no we are not criticising Plato on Plato's own terms: rather, Wittgenstein is rejecting Plato's method ("Plato's terms"). They are playing different "games", i.e. following different rules (standards), in philosophy.

Speculative explanation (metaphysics) tries to make the world conform to our expectations.

Query: Which philosopher compared the similarities among games to the resemblances among the members of a family?

... although Wittgenstein never said how to distinguish one family from another family (his metaphor is stillborn). Nor did Wittgenstein say "for example", for he gives no other examples than the word 'game'.

Query: list of philosophers and their definitions of philosophy.

Why shouldn't the concept 'philosophy' be just as unbounded as many another concept? Why do we expect there to be a general definition (that is not too general to be useful) and think that if we can't state one, then we don't know what we are talking about? It just seems to us that there must be a general definition (essence) of philosophy; for how could it be otherwise?

Or do you think Socrates was a fool? If the meaning of a common name is not a common nature it names -- then Plato asks, "what is to become of philosophy?" (cf. Parmenides 135c) What becomes of rational discourse if the common names we use are vaguely defined (which is the same as undefined to Plato) -- i.e. if we don't know exactly what we are talking about, babbling on like madmen?

Essence versus Myriad resemblances

"What becomes of philosophy, of knowledge in ethics, if we do not know the essence of a moral virtue?" If I do not know what the essence of justice is, but can only point to myriad resemblances, how can I be sure that I will not be mislead by resemblances and do an injustice? And what goes for justice, goes for piety, courage, and the rest of the moral virtues. An essence is a sure standard of judgment (Euthyphro 6d-7c), whereas mere resemblances are uncertain ground.

Wittgenstein does not respond to this question; consideration of it does not even find a place in his philosophy. Indeed, neither does ethics, which, according to Wittgenstein, is not rational. Wittgenstein would never have asked the question of what the excellence that is proper and unique to man is, much less answer that it is rational moral virtue. Wittgenstein has nothing to say to Socrates and to Plato beyond: stop asking for what is plainly not there to be found [although Plato was to become disillusioned with Socratic essences himself (Philebus 13e-14a, Sophist 216a)].

Query: remembering, true meaning of meaning.

Recollection. Well of course, and I had not thought of that. The meaning of a word is the Form it names, a Form the soul knew before the soul was entombed in the body, and while in the body recollects. Also, for Plato the word 'meaning' itself must be the name of a Form -- i.e. there must be an essence of meaning (if 'meaning' is indeed the name of a Form). But I don't know where, if anywhere, Plato presents a thesis about meaning and tries to refute it, which was his method.

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The Relationship between logic and grammar

Query: statements that don't make sense but do grammatically.

If syntax "makes sense" it is because a combination of words is consistent with the rules of syntax (e.g. Noun + verb = sentence, e.g. 'Theaetetus flies'), but if the combination of words is normally -- (for we can always invent a meaning for any combination of words, but if we do that we are not describing normal usage) -- undefined in meaning (e.g. 'Porridge wonders'), then it does not "make sense".

Russell's "philosophical grammar" presumes to recasts the syntax of a proposition so as to show the proposition's true meaning (but it does not), but natural language-meaning is not a function of syntax, regardless of how the language's syntax is recast, but of use in the language; were this not true, then syntax could not create nonsense. In the context of language meaning, syntax does not "make sense".

By both the words 'logic' and 'grammar' we mean "rules of the game". In our language, there are rules of form (syntax) and rules of meaning (definition) ... but to what do the rules of meaning belong? As Wittgenstein defined the words 'grammar' and 'logic', namely as everything that describes the use of language, to both grammar and logic, as does syntax.

Form of words versus meaning (Wittgenstein's criticism)

If I had to say what is the main mistake made by philosophers of the present generation, including Moore, I would say that it is that when language is looked at, what is looked at is the form of words and not the use made of the form of words. (LC p. 2)

The use in the language (PI § 43) of the form of language is its meaning (in Wittgenstein's logic of language). (The form in contrast to the form's meaning. The form (syntax) is merely spoken sounds or marks on paper -- what gives the form meaning?)

In contrast to Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell did mean form when he contrasted the "philosophical grammar" (or, logical form) of a proposition with the apparent grammar of the proposition (as we normally write that proposition on paper or speak it aloud). Russell uses the word 'grammar' the way we are taught to use it at school; it is not a jargon-word in his philosophy. (The "apparent grammar" of a proposition is the syntax in common use; but the apparent syntax may be misleading: e.g. 'Where is the mind?' is not a question about the location of anything; cf. 'Where is the book?')

Thus if for Russell it is the grammatical form (misleading syntax) versus the logical form (correct syntax), for Wittgenstein it is the grammatical form, i.e. syntax, versus the "grammatical" meaning (remembering that 'grammar' is a jargon-word for Wittgenstein, equivalent to 'semantic grammar').

Shadow reality ("gold mountain", "round square")

The proposition 'The square circle or round square does not exist'. The proposition 'The square circle or round square does exist' -- is it nonsense? because 'square circle' or 'round square' is nonsense (an undefined combination of words). Whereas the proposition 'The gold mountain exists' is false, not nonsense.

'There is a square circle or round square' -- is that proposition false, or a nonsense combination of words? 'The combination of words 'square circle' or 'round square' has no defined use in the language' is a rule of grammar, a fact about words of our language, not a fact about the world independent of language. But 'There is no gold mountain' states a fact about the world.

Russell: my form of expression, which I am calling 'philosophical grammar', does not make it appear that an x must have some kind of existence -- for otherwise we could not deny that it the value of x exists: "I must first imagine x to exist and then negate the proposition that it exists". This suggests the picture of a shadow world, populated with gold mountains and square circles and round squares-- i.e. populated with falsehoods, and nonsense combinations of words. The last remark shows the absurdity of the shadow reality picture.

Why Wittgenstein wrote, "Russell's merit is to have shown that the apparent logical form of the proposition need not be its real form" (TLP 4.0031, tr. Ogden), I don't know (cf. Sophist 237a). Only someone who has been in the grips (the "mustness") of a picture can feel the merit of being released from it. Someone who has always regarded the picture as foolishness cannot (It is Wittgenstein's concept 'grammar', not Russell's "philosophical grammar", that makes that picture folly).

Query: what question has no answer?

Presumably: Why?

Is it like this -- we follow an analogy (grammatical)? We ask, Why does this happen?, Why that?, and then we prescind from these parts to ask about the whole: Why does anything happen at all?)

We ask, Why is there this?, Why that?, and then, Why is there anything at all rather than nothing at all?

But what makes sense (i.e. is defined language) to ask about a part, may not make sense (be defined language) to ask about the whole.

Is that all it is? Why, what more do you want there to be?

The "questions without answers" are all like that, that we couldn't say what kind of answer we are seeking with those questions, what an answer to those questions would look like. (Or maybe you could say that the word 'answer' is undefined with respect to man's eternal questions.)

"The riddle doesn't exist." It is merely an undefined combination of words -- i.e. nonsense...... That it sounds absurd doesn't mean that it is false. I.e.: to dismiss is not to refute. "There is something problematical about existence per se" -- but just try to say what. "There should be nothing, because -- because why?" -- has that sense if applied to the whole?

[Is "The riddle exists" philosophy that has been "recovered"? But there are two parts to lost and found: what was not lost cannot be found. And for the Greeks there may not have been anything -- fate a puzzle, yes, but existence per se a puzzle, no -- to lose: you cannot stop asking a type of question if you have never asked it.)]

Query: Gorgias, the best way to rid ourselves of false belief.

Is to put our beliefs to the test -- i.e. to refute and be refuted in Socratic dialog; and that is why I request critical comments about these pages (which no one sends), for as Plato's Socrates says: it is more useful [beneficial] to me to be refuted (and so discontinue in my ignorance) than to have my thoughts [propositions] affirmed (Gorgias 457e-458b; cf. Sophist 230b-d). Mistakes make you think and revise; affirmations don't.

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Hypotheses in historiography (critical theology)

Query: Albert Schweitzer, Jesus never existed.

That was Bruno Bauer's conclusion (shared by some later biblical scholars). But although the hypothesis that Jesus never existed resolves some difficulties -- e.g. why there is no historical record of his existence apart from the Synoptic Gospels -- it also creates many difficulties, more difficulties than it solves.

Schweitzer speaks of "scientific" historiography, by which I think he means: a critical study of documents that tries to develop an hypothesis that can explain the data -- i.e. give a self-consistent account that (1) resolves more difficulties than it creates, and that (2) is independent of religious doctrine (as e.g. "faith seeking understanding" in Karl Barth). (Cf. the distinctions between natural and divine theology and between natural and supernatural explanations of events. In both cases the former would be the "scientific".)

At the end of the chapter "The Debate about the Historicity of Jesus" Schweitzer writes:

we must conclude that the supposition that Jesus did exist is exceedingly likely, whereas its converse is exceedingly unlikely. (The Quest of the Historical Jesus (2001 ed.), p. 436, tr. Cupitt)

But Schweitzer also writes, that by the standard of "strict scientific thought":

Every historical assertion depending upon evidence from the past which is no longer directly verifiable must ultimately remain an hypothesis.

To assert that the historicity or unhistoricity of Jesus has been proved ... means no more than that according to the available evidence the one is very probable whereas the other is not (ibid. p. 401-402).

[Question: what does Schweitzer mean by 'directly verifiable'? I think, Athens' Parthenon is, whereas the sculpture of Three Graces supposedly carved by Socrates, is not. Courts of law recognize documents only as proof of their own existence, not of anything claimed in the documents.]

Schweitzer asks what reason would the Apostle Paul have had for choosing a common-place -- or even a mythical rabbi (i.e. someone who had never existed) -- to base his own life, religion, theology on? Cf. Plato and Xenophon: they turn Socrates into a literary character, but nonetheless behind those characters is a far-from-common-place historical personality. Was Jesus not also such a personality? Stories are told for many reasons, but that the whole of the New Testament is nothing but stories based on a non-existent man's life and thought -- i.e. that nothing in the Synoptic Gospels is history rather than mythology -- does seem implausible.

That we find it implausible is proof of nothing except the way we are inclined to think. (Remember that the whole of the Pentateuch is mythology -- or do you really imagine that once upon a time there was a Moses, a Noah, an Abraham.)

The question: What would the hypothesis that Jesus never existed make clearer? versus What would the hypothesis that Jesus never existed make even more perplexing?

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Something even metaphysics cannot offer an hypothesis to explain

Query: how does a sentence give meaning with all of the words in it?

So, then, philosophy begins in wonder? This phenomenon is puzzling: how is it that we are able to combine words into a sentence to convey new meaning with it, for we have not been taught to use every combination of words we read or speak. That this ability also allows us to construct a lot of nonsense is also puzzling. (Analogies and syntax.)

I don't understand the query: because I can't imagine what type of answer it is seeking. Maybe the query is only seeking the rules by which parts of speech are combined to make sentences: noun + verb = sentence, as in Plato, and these can be described (not every question is a philosophical question). But, on the other hand, as an expression of astonishment at the how-ness of natural language, the query is philosophical -- and that is how I will see it.

And seen that way the query suggests that something mysterious is happening -- as indeed it is; the phenomenon of human thought, e.g. the fact that human beings are able to work with open-bordered concepts, should fill us with wonder (This is Drury's idea).

Logic only describes the rules of the game ("as in language game"), to the extent that any exist, not how it is possible for man to use such a natural language. Something like that would be the response to the query.

"How?" Drury: you are asking for an explanation where the very notion of an explanation makes no sense (DW p. 92, 76). Neither God nor even metaphysicians can understand nonsense, i.e. undefined combinations of words (PI § 500). And that is what the question "How?" is here.

Even metaphysics can "make no hypothesis" in such a case.

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"The death of God" -- What does it mean?

Note: there is a later discussion of this subject: The death of concepts.

If I understand Bonhoeffer, the sense in which you could apply to him the expression 'God is dead' is in the sense that John's Gospel and Letters speaks of, namely, "No one has ever seen God. It is only the Son who is closest to the Father's heart who has made Him known." But, question: what has Jesus made known to us -- if we only know about God through him, then what do we know about God?

I think that it is in this sense that Bonhoeffer speaks of Christianity as a loss of God -- i.e. of "the religious God" or the God of what Bonhoeffer calls "religion" or "religions", as the "God of power and might" of the Catholic Mass. I think that it is any claim to know that God that Bonhoeffer says Christianity does not make.

That is suggested to me both by the Letters and Papers from Prison and by excerpts from a sermon Bonhoeffer gave to the German parish in Barcelona dated 9.9.1928:

With that the difference between Christianity and religions is clear ... here is the cross, there [in "religions"] the crown, here [in "religions"] God, there [in Christianity] man ... [Comment: I believe that by the word 'man' here Bonhoeffer means "the cross of Christ"] ... what is hardest of all to bear ... is having to renounce ... God himself ... (Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer [1967], various translators (1970), p. 80 [p. 80])

Note: all words in brackets were placed there by me, not by Bethge or his translator. The "here" and "there" is my reading of the text.

Comparison to Schweitzer

Although Schweitzer does not speak of renouncing "God as a working-hypothesis", there is a slight comparison to be made here to Schweitzer's idea that Christianity chooses to be an ethical rather than an explanatory religion. For although that is a very different distinction, nonetheless in both cases there is renunciation of any understanding of the God of Nature or "religious God" in Bonhoeffer's words, which I imagine is what most people take 'God the Father' to mean.

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Is anything essential (sine qua non) to the concept 'God'?

Note: I have many times before tried to describe (i.e. to give an account of what I know to myself and to others, which, if I do know something, I must be able to do) our concept 'God', something which is not at all easy to do. The following account is different from earlier ones. (Related: The limit of a concept revision.)

Query: Bonhoeffer, God does not exist.

No, according to Bonhoeffer, only "God the working-hypothesis" does not, so to speak, exist (because that God is not needed to explain natural phenomena, which can be accounted for by natural causes). -- But that is only one part of our concept 'God'. Or, in other words, that is only one picture among many others that we attach to the word 'God'.

Question: But do all those pictures belong essentially to our held-in-common grammar for the word 'God'? Could we say that whether or not a picture belongs to the grammar of the word 'God' depends on which particular picture of God (meaning of the word 'God') we are examining? (The concept 'God' and the Theory of Descriptions.)

Does e.g. the picture "God the Creator" belong essentially to our concept 'God', to the grammar of our word 'God'? But not everyone who uses the word 'God' "seriously" (RPP i § 213) has a place for that picture in his life -- i.e. his life may or may not be guided by that particular picture. But does that aspect -- i.e. conceptual fluidity, in this case the variable boundaries of the concept 'God' -- belong essentially to the grammar of the word 'God'? It seems so. (Note that the concept 'God' is fluid not only with respect to extension but also with respect to intention -- i.e. it cannot only be extended outwards; its boundaries can also be contracted inwards.)

(Which should that concept be characterized as: multifarious or protean?)

But can we say, therefore, that someone for whom the picture "God the Creator" is a religious guide to life uses the word 'God' differently from someone for whom it is not a guide? "Say what you choose, so long as it does not prevent you from seeing the facts [of our actual use of language]" (PI § 79).

Where unclarity seems not to be a blunder

The way you use the word 'God' shows not whom you mean -- but instead what you mean. (CV p. 50 [MS 132 8: 11.9.1946])

But 'what you mean by the word' = 'the grammar of the word as you use that word' -- and you yourself may not know what that grammar is (if 'to know' means 'to be able to give an account of what you know to others"). And what anyone means may be varied. Again, Wittgenstein says 'shows' because it may not be clear to the person what he or she really does mean. -- Which is another strange feature of this "language game", that being unclear is not a blunder; cf. "I believe that God cannot be defined". I wrote that in philosophy we define words, not "things", but in philosophy of religion do we even define words?

The remarks above might be about either the grammar of the word 'God' or the grammar of the word 'grammar'.

[Related: Is the concept 'God' intentionally wobbly (PI § 79), or is the concept's wobble dictated by the nature of our existence, i.e. by its how-ness?]

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Logic at Sea

If I do not record my thoughts about philosophy when first they occur to me, I will lose them. I will not remember them tomorrow.

An explorer sails into waters he does not recognize and comes to an island he does not recognize, and he believes that he has discovered a new island, only to find that he has only rediscovered it. Because when he looks in his ship's logs, he finds that he has already been to the island and has already done a better survey of the island than his present one. But all that, he has forgotten. And so my new ideas are very often only my old ideas, and not too often better thought. And now after many years, it seems that I shall never return to the condition of my young mind.

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