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The place of examples in logic of language

Isaac Newton wrote that experiments are the only masters in natural science ("the true masters to follow in physics"). Here I say that examples are the only masters in philosophy.

Examples are explanations of meaning, rules of grammar, definitions. Why are examples essential to Wittgenstein's later distinction between sense and nonsense? Because most words do not have general (essential) definitions, and therefore examples must be used to explain their meaning or use in the language. (Sometimes the meaning = the explanation of meaning.)

A child's natural response when asked for the meaning of a word is to say, "Oh, that's like when ..." The child points to examples from our life (as does Euthyphro with his first answer to Socrates). The child, unlike its teachers who (like Plato) demand general definitions, has understood the logic of our language (i.e. how language with meaning is, as a matter of fact, distinguished from language without meaning).

Preface: The topic of this page is very important, because it stands at the foundation of the logic of language, quite contrary to the view of Socrates in ethics and Plato in metaphysics.

Definition by giving examples ("enumeration") is the norm, not the exception; it is not a deficient (imperfect) or inferior way to define words (PI § 71). The insistence on general definitions shows that the logic of our language is not understood.

Note: in Wittgenstein's later jargon, the word 'grammar' means "any description of the use of language" including of the rules of language-meaning (sense and nonsense).


Outline of this page ...

Note: a discussion of historical examples of logic (Aristotle's term logic, the propositional logic of the Greek Stoics, the mathematical logic of Frege and Russell) is found elsewhere.


Examples as samples of the use of a word

About Wittgenstein's discussion of games and "family likenesses". If while pointing I state the rule This and this and this and the like are called 'games', I have given three samples of what are called 'games' in English. The samples serve as explanations of meaning, but not as models or formulas -- because the word 'game' is not defined by a common nature or essence. (In contrast, if I define the word 'simile' as a comparison using the words 'as' or 'like', that is an example of an essence that serves as a model.)

I might also point out similarities between the sample games: A is like B in such-and-such ways. The rule 'and the like' means: now you are to identify similar things that are called 'games' for yourself.

But if anyone has not yet got the concepts, I shall teach him to use the words by means of examples and by practice. -- And when I do this I do not communicate less to him than I know myself. (PI § 208)

"By practice", i.e. by practical instruction or practicing: Now you point out other games. I observe the child and correct the child if it goes wrong. Here the phrase 'have the concept' means 'have learned the rules of the game (as in "language game") for using a particular word'.

The word 'concept' is not an allusion to "ideas in the mind", although the child's mind is shown by what the child does. What the child has learned or not learned is shown by what the child does when we say: "Now you go on." The child's understanding is a public act. Nothing is hidden: grammar is open to the public.

Every explanation [of the concept] which I can give myself I give [the child] too. (ibid. § 210)

"This and similar things are called 'games'." And do we know any more about it ourselves? Is it only other people we cannot tell exactly what a game is? (ibid. § 69)

The "Theory of Abstraction"

And this is just how one might explain to someone what a game is. One gives examples and intends them to be taken in a particular way. -- I do not, however, mean that he is supposed to see in those examples that common thing which I -- for some reason -- was unable to express; but he is now to employ those examples in a particular way.

Here giving examples is not an indirect means of explaining -- in default of a better one. (PI § 71)

And even where there are general (or essential or common nature) definitions, these too "can be misunderstood" (ibid.) as they tend to be too general to serve as clear rules (guides) of grammar (e.g. Logic is the art of reasoning), and we are dependent on examples and the general rule "... and other things like this" (ibid. §§ 292, 139). In other words, Wittgenstein's example of the grammar of the word 'game' is not an anomaly; natural language concepts normally have indefinite boundaries.

The point is that this is how we play the game. (I mean the language game with the word 'game'.) (ibid. § 71)

Wittgenstein does not often speculate about how we learn concepts (PI § 244 is an exception) -- i.e. about how we learn to use the common names in our language -- which is what the Theory of Abstraction does; it is a speculative explanation: "We abstract from our perceptions what it is that all games have in common -- the essence of games ... although we are unable to say (put into words) what it is that all games have in common." The acceptance of this unverifiable theory -- which is based on the presumption that (1) the meaning of a word is the thing the word stands for, and that (2) the meaning of a common name is the common nature (or essence) of the things it names -- is the basic source of philosophical confusion, because it suggests that a word retains its meaning when removed from its "original home in the language" (PI § 116), and therefore that philosophical problems don't concern the grammar of words but instead the things the words name. (Wittgenstein's reply was "On the contrary ...")

[Note that it should follow from the theory of abstraction that by 'an abstraction' or 'an abstract object' we mean an essence and nothing else (cf. "something conceived in abstractions"), but that is not in fact the way we normally use those words, which is fairly horrific.]

The act of seeing an indescribable -- i.e. one that cannot be put into words -- common nature might be called "unconscious induction", except that Socratic induction is rational (philosophy is discourse of reason), and what cannot be put into words is not rational. But it may seem that a hidden process of abstraction is nonetheless de facto -- although all that is in fact de facto is that our language has common names: any theory (speculative metaphysics) that attempts to explain that fact is not itself the fact but only imagination added to the fact. Beyond the fact that we use common names -- we know nothing: speculation is not knowledge; the children of imagination are not knowledge; speculation is not "speculative knowledge". (Speculation is about what we do not know, and not to think you know what you don't know is what Socrates identified as philosophical wisdom.)

[Plato's "Theory of Recollection", namely that the soul is born into the body already knowing the common natures (Forms, Archetypes, Patterns) named by common names, is not more metaphysical than the theory of abstraction. And neither picture is better than the Socratic I don't know. "Somehow, who knows how." -- That we use common names is a fact, but no facts necessarily account for concept-formation (i.e. Why does our language have just these concepts and not some other?) Wittgenstein's "family resemblances" is not an explanation of the phenomenon of common names, but only an after-the-fact comparison, e.g. between the similarities between games and the similarities between facial features of the members of a human family.

The ordinary, everyday concepts of our natural language were not invented by our times; their origin belongs to our lost natural history. We acquired them in childhood from those who had acquired them in their childhoods.]

The necessity of examples

I do not think that Kant would have written that examples are unnecessary if he had not assumed that we "somehow" abstract the essential meaning of words, after which examples and illustrations are no longer needed because we can then understand the language without them (because meaning = essence remains unchanged despite any changes in context). In contrast, Wittgenstein simply pointed to -- i.e. described by means of examples -- a fact in pubic view, namely that what we call 'games' do not have an essence or "one defining thing in common". He did not try to explain concept-formation here.

What does it mean to know what a game is? What does it mean, to know it and not be able to say it? Is this knowledge somehow equivalent to an unformulated definition? So that if it were formulated I would be able to recognize it as the expression of my knowledge?

Isn't my knowledge, my concept of a game, completely expressed in the explanations that I could give? (PI § 75)

Any such unformulated definition would say: "This is the essence of games", either (1) as if an essence existed which had earlier gone unnoticed -- i.e. as if it were not the case that all the facts about what we call games are already in plain view (facts, like knowledge and language-meaning, are public), because nothing is hidden: it is not a theory that there is no essence of games -- or (2), given the fact that games do not all have something in common (except the fact that we call them all 'games'), such a definition would be a redefinition of the word 'game', giving sharp boundaries to a concept which in actual practice has indefinite boundaries ("Is a child skipping rope playing a game?" )

Note that even if we limited our concept 'game' to include only those games that do have something defining in common, as e.g. "Henceforth, only activities with playing cards [card games] are to be called games", that would not meet Socrates' second criteria for a definition, as e.g. if men drew cards to see which among them would be executed ("The Tenth Man"), they would not be playing a game and yet theirs would be an activity with playing cards.

Grammar only describes things we do with language. It doesn't say how it is possible for us to do those things

Philosophy, if it is not to be Procrustean fantasy, must describe the world as our investigations find it: it must be the result of our investigations, not a preconception (PI § 107).

Grammar does not tell us how language must be constructed ... in order to have such-and-such an effect on human beings. It only describes and in no way explains the use of signs. (ibid. § 496)

Grammar does not explain concept-formation. For example, the question "If the word 'game' does not name a common nature, then how is it possible for us to learn to call so many different kinds of things by that name and even to identify new activities as games?" is not a question answered by grammar. Logic of language, which Wittgenstein identifies with semantic grammar, only says that a concept exists, not how it is possible or why it exists.

Wittgenstein's later philosophy is a work of clarification, not of plausible-theory making. Logic "makes no hypotheses" about the "[really real] reality behind the appearances", as the metaphysics of the pre-Socratics and Plato's theory of Forms did, and as the theory of abstraction does.

Normally our concepts -- i.e. rules for using words, as e.g. the concept 'game' DEF.= rules for using the word 'game' -- do not designate essences. For the most part, our natural language's grammar is Protean rather than Procrustean. That is why we must explain the meaning of words by using examples.


Logic of language's method of verification

That is not the only use made of examples -- i.e. to teach the meaning of common names.

The "and similar things" is normally implicit: normally as children we learn groups of things named by common names. Is that not what happens in the case of games and dogs? What we are taught does not explicitly point beyond itself.

According to strict rules

In contrast, on a assembly line one machine may be used by an instructor to show which step in the assembly a group of workers is to take. The machines to be assembled are identical, and the step is the same for every machine. The machine the instructor uses is an example which does not point beyond itself: there is no "This and similar things" in this case because all the things, i.e. machines, are identical. The example machine is used as a model; it does the same work as an essential definition (rule of grammar) in language.

Assembly line work is an example of a "game" played according to the strict rules. The rule 'and so on' has no place in that game.

"Hypotheses are contraband in logic"

The myth of the unformulated definition and the myth of mysterious abstraction are examples of Isaac Newton's "hypotheses".

When someone says, "I cannot define the word 'x' but I would recognize a definition of 'x' if I saw one", this person is presuming that 'x' must have an essential definition that simply hasn't be formulated (PI § 75), a verbal formula like the all-too general definitions found in dictionaries. Plato's general definition of 'piety', namely 'correct conduct towards God' (Gorgias 507b) doesn't tell you how to conduct yourself piously (Euthyphro 6d-7d). It is an essential definition that is too general to do more than point you in the right general direction. The definition 'Justice is doing one's duty towards men' (Gorgias ibid.) is the same.

But in most cases, that there is an "unformulated definition" is fantasy, as the facts in public and plain view show (This method of verification is the difference between fantasy and truth (Z § 259)). Most words are defined -- and, if we are to describe their actual use in the language, can only be defined -- (If a word does not designate an essence, there cannot be an essential definition of that word) -- by means of examples. And the only guide for further applying the words is by resemblance to the examples.

The general darkness

We are deceived by the seeming ease with which definitions are understood by grown-ups. The grown-up has learned to use many, many words, and learned many parts of speech, patterns, techniques of definition -- but what the child learns when it learns language-meaning is not easy to learn. What it does not ("somehow" most magically) learn is an unformulated general definition that we would all recognize if we saw or heard it, a definition we would all agree to and be unable to refute in discussion (PI § 69).

Why do we presume that language meaning is general rather than particular. Maybe from what we are taught at school and have suggested to us by dictionaries, maybe from instinct, we presume that the meaning of a sign must be an essence the sign names, a kind of spirit that accompanies the sign, for we feel that we know the meaning even though we cannot put what we know into words. And therefore we look for an essence. But we find none.

And we think our limited understanding is responsible for the cloudiness (the nebulosity) of our thinking. The work we expect our language to do, it does not do. And so we feel lost, at the mercy of unaccountable concepts. And our philosophy dwells in darkness, vagueness, unclarity (a darkness I think Wittgenstein's logic of language is an antidote for).

Most of our natural language concepts do not have definite limits and maybe they would be less useful to us if they had (concept fluidity). But there is competition between, on the one hand, extensiveness (flexibility), and on the other, clarity and the danger of obscurity.

"The meaning is the context"

Really, when we recognize that the meaning of a word is different in different contexts, that should cure us of our lazy presumption that words must have essential meanings -- because essences can't change (an essence can neither be augmented nor reduced), and therefore if the meaning of a word can be changed by context, that word does not have an essential meaning (This is not like the word 'court' in 'law court' and 'tennis court', but like the word 'measure' in 'measure temperature' and 'measure time'). And that doesn't make that word meaningless, unless 'meaning' DEF.= 'essence', which it doesn't -- because words with a use in our language are not meaningless, not as normally use the word 'meaning'.

Definition and "family resemblances"

Imagine that we only ever defined words by means of picture books, catalogs of examples: Here are examples, and they and their like are called 'x'. But could we then say: "These examples form a family, and now follow resemblances between these family members to apply the word 'x' to new things"? -- I.e. is there such a thing as "definition by family resemblances"? and is that our normal way of defining words?

Family resemblances = Similarities (nothing more)

Does the addition of the word 'family' make anything clearer, given that Wittgenstein does not say how one family is to be distinguished from another? If we spoke of anything here, it would be of "definition by similarity" -- but only if Wittgenstein uses it to suggest no more than a different possibility from "definition by essence".

The danger is that the word 'family' may make us think we know more than we know (as if 'family' were another name for 'essence'), and thinking one knows what one doesn't know is the original sin in philosophy (Plato, Apology 21d, 22e). I would use the expression "myriad similarities" instead.


Examples give the meaning

Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, writes that --

Examples and illustrations ... are necessary only from a popular point of view. Such assistance is not required by genuine students of the science. (Axviii-Axix; tr. Kemp Smith)

But on the contrary, examples don't clarify the language's meaning -- they give the language meaning. That is why we cannot simply state a rule without explaining how it is to be followed (PG i § 82, p. 127). And metaphysical propositions are well-compared in this respect to rules of grammar. Kant's proposition 'Percepts without concepts are blind; concepts without percepts are empty' is an example of this. The proposition 'Percepts without concepts are not blind' is not a true or false statement of fact; it is simply an undefined combination of words (nonsense language). When we say, "I can't imagine the opposite", it is because we see that a grammatical investigation is being confused with a factual one, i.e. that the question of a sign's meaning is being confused with the question of whether the sign is true or false (Unless a sign has meaning it cannot have truth or falsity).

'I can't imagine the opposite' doesn't mean: my powers of imagination are unequal to the task. These words are a defence against something whose form makes it look like an empirical proposition, but which is really a grammatical one. (PI § 251)

A "grammatical question" is a question about the meaning of a proposition -- (In Wittgenstein's jargon 'grammar' means"any description of the use of language") -- whereas an "empirical question" is a question about the truth or falsity of a proposition.

Nonsense is produced by trying to express by the use of language what ought to be embodied in the grammar. (PP iii, p. 312)

The rules of grammar are the rules of the game (as in "language game"). The philosopher thinks that he is playing the game ("use of language"), whereas he is breaking its rules ("ought to be embodied in the grammar"), and the result is either nonsense or language that needs to have its meaning explained -- i.e. how the new rules of the game are to be followed needs to be made clear. That is the work of examples (OC § 139).

A word is defined by the examples that are given

If someone asks: "What do you mean by '[cultural] deterioration'?" I describe, give examples. 'Deterioration' gets its sense from the examples I can give. (LC p. 10, 10n2)

That is how a definition of the word 'deterioration' is given. Examples -- i.e. sample applications -- give the meaning because: the meaning is the application (application DEF.= use in the language). Examples belong to grammar; examples are rules of grammar when that is how they are used, even if they do not have the form of rules.

Of any general or vague remark it can be asked: As exemplified by what? That is a grammatical question, a request for an explanation of meaning.

Without "examples and illustrations", no one can know what a philosopher is talking about, or if indeed he clearly knows. The same is the case with the TLP. The examples and illustrations that readers invent for themselves determine the sense of what they read. Hence, many "interpretations".

*

Examples cure abbreviation

Wittgenstein told Drury in 1949 --

Broad was quite right when he said of the Tractatus that it was highly syncopated. Every sentence in the Tractatus should be seen as the heading of a chapter, needing further exposition. My present style is quite different; I am trying to avoid that error. (Recollections p. 159)

'Syncopated' here means 'abbreviated' or 'cut short'. Indeed the text of the TLP, which was written during the First World War, was so "concise" that in 1929 its author told Frank Ramsey that he had forgotten what he had meant by some of its statements (PP i, p. 253). At the time he spoke to Drury, Wittgenstein was writing in everyday language with lots of examples. This is fundamental to his later philosophy.

The basic evil of Russell's logic, as also of mine in the Tractatus, is that what a proposition is, is illustrated by a few commonplace examples, and then pre-supposed as understood in full generality. (RPP i § 38)

But the giving of examples comes to an end

How can [the student] know how he is to continue a pattern by himself -- whatever instruction you give him? -- Well, how do I know? -- If that means "have I reasons?" the answer is: my reasons will soon give out. And then I shall act, without reasons.

... in words according to rules. For even so you would have to apply the rule in the particular case without guidance. (PI §§ 211, 292)

To which Kant could reply: "So you must admit that. My books were not written for backward students; only backward students need instruction with examples and illustrations."

The question is what instruction is necessary from the grammatical point of view, not from the point of view of the quickness or dedication of the student. How much "examples and illustrations" is enough? Until "Now I can go on for myself" (ibid. § 151) to an understanding of the philosopher's own ideas -- instead of to more of my own inventions?

"If a man knows anything, he can explain what he knows to others" (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1). And so students are tested after instruction (This also tests the instructions).

Examples "complete the meaning"

Goethe said something like "incompleteness fosters creation". Goethe looks at the ruins in Rome and "completes" them in his imagination. So too, most philosophy books, particularly those as "syncopated" as the TLP, foster creation. The examples the reader creates "complete" the book.

Did a completed book already exist before the reader created a completion for it? Was the book an actual or a faux ruin like a garden folly? And if the author doesn't remember what he meant by what he wrote -- must it nonetheless have had a meaning when he wrote it?

Philosophers often act like little children who scribble some marks on paper and then ask the grown-up, "What does this mean?" (cf. CV p. 17, remark from 1931)

It is often as if philosophers asked their readers to complete their books for them, like children asking adults to assign a meaning to what they themselves have scribbled.

On the other hand, why do we read a philosopher's book?

This takes us to the question of what we as individuals want from philosophy. That may tell us what we want examples (i.e. explanations of meaning) for. My own interest in philosophy is in philosophy itself, not in history or scholarship. It is my own philosophy that concerns me -- and my interest in the work of philosophers doesn't go much further than their usefulness to my own thinking about philosophical questions. (To that end, whether in logic, ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of religion or philosophy of science, the thinkers I have found most useful have been, in more or less equal measure, Socrates, Plato, Kant, Schweitzer, Wittgenstein, and Drury. Logic of language both is and isn't the foundation of my thinking about philosophy.)

I would not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking. But, if possible, to stimulate someone to thoughts of his own. (Preface, PI p. vi)

Working in philosophy ... is really more a working on oneself. On one's own interpretation. On one's way of seeing things.... (CV p. 16, remark from 1931)

If we took a [philosophical] book seriously, [Wittgenstein] would say, it ought to puzzle us so much that we would throw it across the room and think about the problem for ourselves. (Britton, "Portrait of a Philosopher", 1955)

Examples solve puzzles

G.E. Moore: philosophy begins for me in the strange things philosophers say. Moore had a profound capacity for puzzlement, something a student of philosophy must also have.

I think very well of [Wittgenstein] indeed. Because at my lectures he looks puzzled, and nobody else ever looks puzzled. (Moore to Bertrand Russell)

About Wittgenstein and Goethe

Brian McGuinness: "To say what Wittgenstein thought was important about Goethe would be to say what Wittgenstein thought was important about life." Full Stop, a one-line telegram. Explain yourself -- i.e. give examples -- is the only response. (McGuinness's biography is also "highly syncopated".) In the case of Goethe, McGuinness's often telegram-like style is a roadblock to understanding the symbol that Goethe is for native German-language speakers: I cannot even offer examples to "complete" McGuinness's statement, i.e. to give it a clear meaning ... unless Albert Schweitzer's view of Goethe is one, although I don't know if that was Wittgenstein's view as well.


Clarify the meaning = Give the meaning

Is there a difference between making the sense of a text clear and giving the text a sense? Not a poetry text which we may accept for its suggestiveness despite its unclarity or vagueness, but a philosophical text -- don't we demand that a philosophical text have a clear meaning (We don't want either nonsense or foolishness for our philosophy -- that's the point of the Socratic test of cross-questioning for sense and nonsense and for truth and falsity, to distinguish between what you know and what you only think you know but do not)?

When we can say "Now I can go on (PI § 151) by myself because now I understand the author's vocabulary and method" -- is that when the meaning of the text is clear? But if someone else "understands" differently -- i.e. assigns a meaning ("interpretation") to the text that is different, what then? Wittgenstein above: "'Deterioration' gets its sense from the examples I can give." Different examples may give different meanings to the word.

To give an account of what you know (Socrates, Wittgenstein) is to give examples to explain the meaning of your thesis, either to have it agreed to or refuted -- and your defense will only be as good as your examples are good, i.e. whether they allow us to reach a conclusion about which we have no more cross-questions for today.

If it is correct that "Wittgenstein, like Socrates, wants an account of what you know" (I don't know who first said this; it is not my own idea), then the difference is what they do with your account, the conclusions they draw or don't draw from your examples. (I tried to contrast Socrates' logic of language with Wittgenstein's.)

For example, when Plato's Euthyphro tries to explain "what piety is", Socrates responds that he is not seeking particular examples of pious acts, but an absolute standard (a defining common nature or essential definition). How would Wittgenstein respond to Euthyphro's answer? (I wrote some thoughts some about defining the word 'piety', but I wonder if a definition patterned on Russell's theory of descriptions (PI § 79) wouldn't be the most the helpful.)


Examples and philosophy

If a philosopher wrote a book about examples, what would be most remarkable about the book would be that there would not be any examples in it.

Fictitious etymology for the word 'ex-ample': out of the many. "Out of the many examples I could cite ..." But can I or anyone else cite many examples, because we are not taught to do that at school? Philosophy requires lots of imagination, not only to imagine examples but also to invent counter-examples (cf. CV p. 72). When you can invent many examples, then you know your way around our concepts (our language) (PI § 123).

"Everything that can be put into words" cannot only "be put clearly" (TLP 4.116) -- it can also be put simply ("a simple story in words of one syllable"), if not briefly. And "every explanation I can give myself I can give you too" (PI § 210). Those are fundamental principles (propositions, for they might be false) of logic-philosophy, as is "Nothing makes thoughts clearer or better explains the meaning of language than examples."

Symbols of Philosophy

The words "Know thyself" and "Nothing too much" were inscribed inside Apollo's temple at Delphi. What is their meaning? That is something we must reason out if we are to understand, as Socrates had to reason out the meaning of the oracle's words to Chaerephon, "No man is wiser than Socrates". The precepts at Delphi are "riddling ... after the manner of poets" (Republic 332b-c, tr. Shorey). For the Greeks, if man knows himself, he knows the specific excellence that is proper to man and to himself as an individual, and to live in accord with that excellence is the good for man. According to Socrates, the natural excellence ("virtue") proper to man is reason, and therefore the good for man is rational moral virtue, i.e. proper conduct towards God (piety) and towards man (justness), as tested by reason and experience. Apollo was the god of everything rational and therefore of philosophy.

Is the Sphinx a symbol of philosophy? It may be in various ways, both ancient and ... ancient. Because the Sphinx asked riddles, although they were not questions without answers (as are the eternal riddles of our existence). Was Plato's question about whether moral virtue is one or many sphinx-like -- because the Sphinx poses riddles with solutions not easily found? Plato's question is conceptual rather than factual -- it was thus not a riddle easily solved so long as philosophers thought it was a question about reality rather than about man's way of organizing his own thinking about things.

Wittgenstein's later work was not intended to pose questions without answers. "I want to get something done," he told Drury. But "getting things done" is only half of even Wittgenstein's austere later philosophy: "The riddle" is there whether we talk about it or not. (The answer is as silent as the Sahara's sphinx.)

Riddles avoided or revised?

Avoiding a sphinxian riddle, for example the riddle of concept-formation and common names, as Wittgenstein appears to do (PI § 65), as if saying -- "Let's simply not take the road to Thebes" -- is not solving one. But Wittgenstein's reason for not taking that road is that the riddle is not solved by taking as granted that the meaning of a common name is the common nature the common name names (BB p. 19-20) -- because that is a false picture of language meaning.

The presumption's posited common natures have no more reality than ghosts (Parmenides 133c), i.e. they are not fact but speculation (like Plato's ghostly Forms). If the solution to the riddle presumes those ghosts, then the riddle is unsolvable, but should that presumption be made?

"The riddle you are posing, dear Sphinx, is unsolvable in the form you pose it" -- but revising that form, to ask about the use in the language rather than about the "meaning" of common names, is the solution to the riddle. Wittgenstein's method is to replace speculation with "saying no more than we know" (BB p. 45) and he applies that method to this riddle. [Asylums of ignorance -- the limits of Wittgenstein.]

Likewise, there is a solution to the oracle of Apollo's paradox riddle that "[1] No man is wiser than Socrates", but [2] "Of all men living Socrates is the most wise". But it is not found in the wisdom of Socrates, because Socrates is without wisdom. And so maybe the Sphinx is a symbol, or rather various symbols, of philosophy, for there are also man's eternal questions without answers, which are riddles without solutions.

Life presents us with nothing but riddles, Watson, and the greatest of these is only answered at death, if at all. (Sherlock Holmes)

The questions we cannot answer are the questions we most want the answer to

As it happens that is not a quotation found in Arthur Conan Doyle's stories; rather, it seems to be my conflated memory of several texts, the principal of which (I think) are:

"Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons with the greatest for the last." (The Adventure of the Red Circle)

"What is the meaning of it, Watson?... What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever." (The Adventure of the Cardboard Box)

Surely those are the questions philosophy most wants the answers to, not to the questions of logic of language.

Philosophy would be panoptic, although philosophers are not

Polyphemus, whether of solitary view or blind, is not a symbol of philosophy. Or perhaps the Cyclops is, if unwillingly. "Is my understanding only blindness to my own lack of understanding? It often seems so to me" (OC § 418). Seeming is not being (PI § 258), but often we see no alternative way, and that type of blindness in philosophy is worse than seeing nothing at all (Apology 22d-e).

A hidden metaphor

Another metaphor for philosophy is maybe the children's game "hide and seek". A ghost seems hidden in our language and we go to seek the ghost out.

Grammatical false analogies (PI § 90) conjure up a spirit to be the meaning of a name (ibid. § 36), a meaning that is hidden from us that we must seek out. Something like this metaphor is Wittgenstein's later view of philosophy (ibid. § 109).


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