Homepage | Bibliography | "Concerning Mind and Body" - Page 1 of 2

This page looks at M. O'C. Drury's philosophy of science using the conceptual tools and the viewpoint of Wittgenstein's logic of language, and it may not be understood without first understanding that background, and it may not represent Wittgenstein's own views about its subject.

M. O'C. Drury - "Concerning Mind and Body"

Page 1: How do we normally use the word 'mind'? What is that word's antithesis?
Page 2: Where in the world is the mind? What are the various pictures of the mind suggested by that question?

What is the place of the mind in nature? If the theory of evolution is a creation of consciousness, then can consciousness be a creation of evolution? (In what follows I have used the words 'mind' and 'soul' indifferently; other synonyms would be 'spirit' and 'ghost'. What isn't addressed is the "spirit-matter distinction", for what else is meant by 'spirit' if not imperceptible matter? Because what is matter? Drury asks.)

Outline of this page ...

Part I

The Metaphysical-I and Consciousness

Go back to first principles. Every scientific hypothesis depends on data. And, whatever instruments we use to obtain these data, they are in the end dependent on the use of our senses ... The data of every natural science are data for consciousness. You cannot then bring consciousness in as one of the items of the hypothesis ... Consciousness is not just one of the [many] things we are conscious of. (M. O'C. Drury, The Danger of Words [Note 1])

These remarks have perplexed me since I first read Drury's book. What does Drury mean by 'You cannot then bring consciousness in as one of the items of the hypothesis'?

In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [TLP] Wittgenstein wrote that the observer's eye is not in the observer's own visual field (5.633); the eye is a "metaphor" for the metaphysical-I -- it does not show itself in the world. And if that is the case, then "the 'I' which is always subject and never object" (DW p. 50) cannot enter into an hypothesis -- because scientific hypotheses are concerned only with objects "in" the world.

It is no objection to say: 'Very well, the subject cannot make himself-as-subject an object in an hypothesis, but why can't he make other-people-as-subjects objects in an hypothesis?' Because "other minds" are not objects in the world either. In saying that the subject is never an object, we are saying that a subject is never an object -- i.e. the 'metaphysical-I' is not the name of any object, either when I speak of myself or when I speak of anyone else.

The metaphysical-I must not be confused with the "physiological-I" or the "psychological-I" -- i.e. the "I" with eyes and ears and its own "peculiar psychology"; those latter can be objects in hypotheses.

All these remarks belong to grammar (i.e. rules of sense and nonsense, explanation of the use of language), none to ontology. (But I cannot just assert that, since it is the very issue we have to decide.)

What does Drury mean by the word 'consciousness'?

Suppose we were to write a natural -- i.e. scientific -- history of human beings? Could there be a chapter on consciousness? Not if by 'consciousness' is meant the metaphysical-I.

But when Drury writes 'consciousness' does he mean the metaphysical-I? In a conversation with Wittgenstein (1949), Drury used the expression 'the concepts of knowledge and understanding' rather than 'consciousness':

You could say that now there has evolved a strange animal that collects other animals and puts them in [zoological] gardens. But you can't bring the concepts of knowledge and understanding into this series. They are different categories entirely. (Recollections p. 160-1)

If we speak of 'different categories', we are making a grammatical distinction, and that means a remark about sense and nonsense. Is that, however, all that Drury is making here?

Is "consciousness" or the human subject (i.e. observer) something which must stand fast in any and all observations (data collections)? We cannot question whether our eyes are functioning properly in the same investigation in which we depend on our eyes as the "tool with which we make" our observation. But we can make the proper functioning of our eyes a separate investigation. Though why can we do that? We are presupposing that we will have another tool besides our own vision by which to judge whether or not our eyes are working properly. Clearly, however, this cannot be the case with the metaphysical-I.

"The Instrument of Consciousness"

You cannot give an account of the "instrument of consciousness" without at the same time using that instrument. You cannot step back from, or, step outside, your own consciousness. Hence, consciousness is not "one of the things we are conscious of". For 'to be conscious' of something means to have stepped back from it; thus you can be conscious that e.g. your voice sounds strange to you today, but you cannot be conscious that you are conscious -- or what sense will we give those words?

All these appearances of the word 'can' should alert us. They are of course signs of logical possibility. So why then do we want to say that they are also ontological 'can's? What belongs to the facts, what to our concepts? We want to say that we are "somehow" on the border line (as in "the limits of language"). But this is wrong: the metaphysical-I is neither a something nor a nothing -- i.e. "we are only rejecting the grammar that tries to force itself on us here" (PI § 304; cf. "Both are rules of grammar").

You see, what we picture when we construct in imagination a theory of geological evolution [-- "we almost seem to feel the warmth of those sub-tropical times, and hear the wind rustling that strange foliage, and smell the putrefaction of that marshy land, and to see the play of colors as the sunlight comes streaming down through matted vegetation" -- what we imagine when we construct our picture of the Carboniferous age] is how the world would have looked to a mind capable of being a spectator of all time and all existence. So once again you can't bring consciousness in right at the end and say that it itself is the product of evolution. (DW p. 109 [108])

I think it is clear here that under 'mind' or 'consciousness' Drury includes 'tactile sense', 'hearing', 'smell', 'vision', -- though in the psychological, not physiological, sense of those words. Which opens up another approach: because our psychological vocabulary really has no place in the hypotheses of the natural sciences. (See Philosophy of Mind) Though, once again, I don't think that Drury is simply making a remark about logic; perhaps I am wrong about this.

(Remember: Drury wants to determine the limits of scientific theory, or of specific theories (e.g. the theory of evolution), and of scientific investigation.)

Drury writes above: "so once again", meaning 'therefore'. But I don't see the inference here: I don't see how 'you can't bring consciousness in right at the end and say ...' follows from the rest.

"A Category Mix-Up"

In this context does 'consciousness' contrast with 'unconsciousness' in the sense of insensibility (or "knocked over the head")? No. 'I am conscious' does not contrast with 'I am unconscious', but perhaps with 'I was unconscious'. But what does 'conscious' contrast with here? (We have to ask about the actual circumstances in which we use a word; for we cannot assume that remarks made outside those circumstances, e.g. general remarks about "consciousness", will be meaningful -- i.e. that it will be clear what they are to mean.) Drury says that it does not contrast with the following:

But what a mix up of categories here. Animal, vegetable, mineral, and -- consciousness. Don't you feel that there is something wrong about a classification like this? (DW p. 107)

If I may use a crude metaphor; I can look at any object on earth or in the sky through my telescope, except the telescope itself. (ibid. p. 71)

{Animal, vegetable, mineral, consciousness} is like the classification {Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, telescope}. (What is the point of saying that something is a "category mistake" -- in what sense can't something be put in a particular category?)

Drury is speaking against the notion "that the long centuries of evolution have at last produced a phenomenon "consciousness" which is able to understand the process from which it has arisen" (ibid. p. 107). Can you say: 'Now has evolved an animal that knows and understands', but not 'Now has evolved knowledge and understanding'? The latter sentence does not even "sound English" -- but the first is also nonsense. 'Know' and 'understand' belong to our psychological vocabulary; we do not apply them to machines, but only to souls -- i.e. human beings. 'To know', 'to understand', just as 'to collect', have behavioral criteria for their application. And hasn't also 'consciousness'? In very limited circumstances: of course -- the word is not meaningless. But is it that behavior that we are concerned with here? Whatever Drury means by 'consciousness', it is not that behavior; for he has already said that it is not problematical to call behavior -- e.g. collecting animals into zoological gardens -- the product of evolution.

Drury writes that you cannot make consciousness a member of the series of evolutions, because consciousness is as it were the instrument -- or, perhaps, frame of reference -- with which you observe the series. The eye, or, non-metaphorically: human sight, is a pre-condition for a particular type of picture-making -- so that, we cannot make human sight an object in its own type of picture. We may look at it this way: if we observed the world (universe) through a round picture frame, then we could not then attribute roundness to the world, saying: 'The world is round in shape.' Because the round border of the frame would not be an object in the world but would belong to the instrument with which we observed the world:

One thinks that one is tracing the outline of the thing's nature [when one is only] tracing around the frame through which we look at it. (PI § 114)

"Man as the Measure"

Whatever the "eye of God" sees, it is different in kind from what the human "eye" sees. Think of the Medieval painting where God is the measure of all things: there is no fore, middle, or background; after all, God would see things as they really are, e.g. buildings would not appear to become smaller as He moved away from them (cf. Plato, Republic 602c-603a). So that, when the Renaissance reintroduces perspective in painting, we call the artists "humanists", meaning that "man is the measure of all things". Our instruments of consciousness -- tactile, taste, hearing, smell, sight -- make our picture of "those sub-tropical times" possible.

A pre-historic world which was only a re-arrangement of electrons and protons would be one that we could scarcely attach much meaning to. (DW p. 109)

We don't think of our senses -- and N.B. we are using our psychological vocabulary here -- as being instruments; we take them too much for granted for that. We don't think of ourselves as making a type -- a human type -- of picture. (This is what Kant's insight about time and space amounts to: Every perception is a space-time perception; therefore, we cannot attribute time and space to reality in itself.) Though, of course, we know of no other type of picture. (There is a great temptation to say that the expression 'thing in itself' lies on the border of sense and nonsense -- since we do not define the expression by pointing to exemplars. But it is a "logical concept", like 'object', 'color', 'quantity' (OC § 36).) However, Drury is speaking of instruments more fundamental than concepts; because there are alternative concepts, but there is no alternative consciousness (i.e. 'alternative' has no sense in the latter case).

Cf. TLP 6.35b: we make a distinction between a net-work and what the net-work is used to describe. But again: Drury is speaking of something more fundamental than alternative frames of reference.

("But if these remarks are only about logic, about rules, how can they be of interest to us?" If you are perplexed about the rules of chess, you may find a discussion of those rules interesting. Besides which, there is some relation between our concepts and the things we conceive ("facts that can explain concept formation"). Though, the difficulty here is not to lose sight of that distinction.)

Is this a factual or a conceptual investigation (mistake)?

Is Drury accusing his opponents of talking nonsense -- or of saying something false? He is not putting forth a counter-argument on the factual level, not saying: they are wrong about the facts, or, they have overlooked certain facts of the case. He is not saying that 'Consciousness is a product of evolution' is false; -- but is he clearly showing that it is nonsense? And how do we show that a sentence-sign is nonsense? By showing that it has not been given a sense.

Suppose you said: 'Now has evolved an animal that asks questions about whether and how it evolved.' Drury would not allow this as being equivalent in meaning to 'Now has evolved consciousness'. For while this may be a sense we can think up to give this expression, Drury is trying to point to another aspect of grammar and sense and nonsense besides: if a sign is senseless, it is because we have not given it a sense. In refusing to give the expression a sense, Drury is not capriciously trying to exclude a combination of words from our language (PI § 500), but instead trying to show why this expression ought to be excluded from the language (as I try to do with the expression 'abstract object' in Philosophy of Mathematics) -- i.e. because it may easily lead us into confusion, may easily disguise a bit of nonsense (PI § 464). Drury's work here is philosophical in the Philosophical Investigations sense.

But I don't know that that is all that Drury is doing:

"The mind has no particular place in nature"

Consciousness is not just one of the many things we are conscious of: the mind has no particular place in nature. (DW p. 76) [Cf.:]

There is no such thing as the subject that thinks or entertains ideas.

If I wrote a book called The World as I found it ... [only] the subject ... could not be mentioned in that book. --

The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of the world.

Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be found? ... nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye.

The philosophical self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limit of the world -- not a part of it. (TLP 5.631-5.641; tr. Pears, McGuinness)

I think those are the pertinent remarks. And they are "metaphysical": i.e. it is not clear whether they are logical or ontological remarks -- that distinction is obliterated (Z § 458).

Is the statement that 'the mind has no particular place in nature' also metaphysical? Does it state a fact about minds, or is it a rule for using the word 'mind'? We might ask: does it try to state a fact about minds? If it simply means that 'consciousness' = 'mind' and that neither word is a name-of-object, then it is not perplexing. But Drury's statement may seem to imply that 'mind' is the name of a metaphysical object -- an object that is not in the world, but which nonetheless exists (The TLP's world-picture). Is this

... a misfiring attempt to express what can't be expressed like that (OC § 37)?

Is this something that is "shown", not "said"? -- But that would only mean that it is a grammatical statement (definition: rule for using language), not a statement of fact. [Note 2] ("Nonsense is produced by trying to express by the use of language what ought to [i.e. must] be embodied in the grammar." (PP iii, p. 312))

Part II

The Mind and its Place in Nature ("entering consciousness")

I want now to turn fully from Drury's fourth to his third discussion paper, "Concerning Mind and Body".

Suppose you take up such an excellent book as Ranson's Anatomy of the Nervous System ... All this can be described in positivistic language and we can if needs be verify each statement in the anatomy room. But then you find, even in Ranson, a reference to the question at what point the nerve impulse "enters" consciousness ... In everyday language if we use the word 'enter' we imply a threshold both sides of which can be observed ... But in this sense ... of 'entering', you cannot speak of anything entering consciousness. For consciousness has ... no threshold which can be observed. If it had then there would have to be a third form of consciousness which was conscious of both what was conscious and what was not yet so. This is obvious nonsense. Consciousness is not just one of the many things we are conscious of: the mind has no particular place in nature. (DW p. 75-6)

"The mind has no particular place in nature" might simply mean that, while we can speak of a place where e.g. light enters the eye, we cannot speak of 'a place where something enters the mind'. (Only a place can be entered, and 'the mind' is not the name of a place.) And that might be a purely logical -- i.e. grammatical -- remark.

Wittgenstein used the expression 'psychological parallelism' (Z § 611): you look for correlations between e.g. events in the nervous system and the testimony of a subject. And correlations are all you will ever make: it is nonsense to speak of 'tracing a mechanism between the physical and the mental'. And don't think of "action at a distance": for there is the physical on both sides of the void. But you cannot speak of 'both sides' here: there is no physical "side" and no mental "side": the physical is at hand and the mental -- does not exist, from the perspective of our physiological concepts; which is only to say that our psychological vocabulary is not a class of names.

'But doesn't the mind, then, exist?' -- (Look at the word 'mind' as a tool we use.) 'If we wrote a natural history of human beings, would we need to include an account of consciousness?' And whom would we be writing this book for (PI § 296)?

Two senses of the word 'sight'

We can indeed investigate in more and more detail the anatomy of the sense organs; but "the nature of perception", "the liaison between mind and brain", "the transition from nerve impulse to consciousness" -- investigation makes no sense here ... however much we learn concerning the physiology of the eye and optic tract this will never explain how seeing is possible ... one born blind could by reading Braille answer correctly all questions concerning the structure of the eye and the optic tract, but would never come to an understanding of what was meant by sight ... If we were to lose our sight we would indeed bemoan our fate; should we not then sometimes pause and wonder at the miracle of sight? I want to say that every time you open your eyes a miracle occurs. (DW p. 71-3)

What kind of account of "mental acts" can you give to anyone not already familiar with mental acts? How would you give anything non-human "an understanding of what was meant by sight" in Drury's sense of 'sight' (which is our psychological sense of the word)? But what is Drury's sense? Isn't it the distinction we have been making all along between physiological and psychological concepts? Shouldn't we then speak of 'physiological sight' -- i.e. "the structure of the eye and optic tract" -- versus 'psychological sight' -- i.e. ... i.e. what? (Here we may be tempted to speak of "irreducible facts of experience" -- but such "facts" do not enter into any language-game; they have no grammatical sense.)

Drury writes that he is speaking of "a simple truth". And, indeed, we want to say that sight is as fundamental as anything about being a human being could be. What is sight -- why, everyone who is not blind knows that: it is "the miracle that occurs every time you open you eyes". Why do we want to say that of course we know what Drury means? For if his meaning is a matter of course, then it ought to be easy to say what he means -- i.e. to give a grammatical explanation of his use of the word 'sight'. But is it?

What is our standard technique? We describe a language-game; we give examples of the use of a word. So then, ask how a child learns the word 'sight'. E.g. he is told: (pointing) 'See that tree over there. Go and hide behind it' (slight push in the back). This could be a piece of instruction in a first game of hide-and-seek. Things are pointed to while the child is told to look at them. (Nothing to do with introspection happens here; that is not how we learn to use the word 'sight'.)

That is a more or less plausible account of how we learn to use the word 'see'. Note that 'seeing' is a psychological concept. It is a fact (i.e. there is a very convincing correlation) that the eye is the sensory organ of sight. But it would be logically possible (i.e. it would not be nonsense to say) that a man saw with the palms of his hands (Z § 619); for our concept 'sight' is not fixed with respect to sensory organs.

But is that a grammatical explanation of Drury's use of the word 'sight'? Do we see any other way to employ our "standard technique" here? 'But if you cannot give a grammatical explanation, then isn't the sign nonsense? Isn't it a standard of logic that every explanation I can give myself I can give to others too?' But what explanation can I give myself here? Shall I close and then open my eyes -- is that suggestion too silly for words? Yet mightn't Drury tell someone who didn't understand "the miracle" to do just that? But what exactly would he be asking that person to do? What do we call 'appreciation'?

If someone does not know what the English word 'pain' means, then we would explain it to him. -- How? Perhaps ... by pricking him with a pin and saying: 'See, that's what pain is!' ... He will show by his use of the word whether he has understood our explanation or not ... (Cf. PI § 288)

The reaction we want is for the person to leap into the air, crying 'Don't do that!' -- But why do we want this reaction? We want the person to understand, not 'what the word 'pain' means', but what pain amounts to; he knows what the word 'pain' means if he uses that word correctly, and he may do that whether he has ever felt pain or not.

Could someone understand the word 'pain' who had never felt pain? -- Is experience to teach me whether this is so or not? And if we say 'A man could not imagine pain without having sometime felt it' -- how do we know? How can it be decided whether it is true? (ibid. § 315)

Is this an invitation to introspection: if we try to explain sight or color to a blind man?

The Meaning = Use in the language of the word 'red'

How do we define the color-word 'red'? "I give myself an exhibition of something only in the same way as I give one to other people" (Z § 665). What exhibition do we give? We give color samples (e.g. point to colored objects) ... and we leave it at that. We don't give exhibitions to a blind man. But suppose a child didn't understand -- what further explanation shall we give him? Children learn from our samples -- or they don't learn; explanations come to an end. When do we say that the child has understood? When we agree in the language that we and the child use, when we agree in the way we act.

'But isn't the perception, the experience of red -- isn't that the most important thing?' What do we need to know in order to answer this question?

Consider this language-game: Imagine a people who go color-blind in middle age. But the color red is of the greatest importance to these people: it is the color of their god at sunrise and sunset; so that all red objects must be treated with reverence. So that, it is the responsibility of the youth of this people to write the sign 'red' on all new red objects, so that their elders will know what's what.

Now, do we want to say that the visual experience of red is the "most important thing" about the use of the word 'red' by these sun-worshipers? No; so that, were we asking a question about logic -- or making an exclamation before?

'Inner' and 'Outer' in Philosophy

We want to say that: Drury is talking about the subjective experience of sight, not about how sight can be correlated with the body or about how it can be studied with respect to optical illusions e.g. None of that, but the fundamental, irreducible experience. We want to say: 'You know', as in 'You know what it's like to gaze at a dear child, to see the sky through winter trees. That.' Of course, 'that' points to the child and the sky and trees, not to an "inner experience". Good, there at last is the word 'inner'. Drury writes:

I am pointing out the very real dangers and confusions that the words 'outer' and 'inner' produce in philosophy. They force on us a picture of reality, of the mind and its place in nature, which is of no use at all. (DW p. 79)

Drury writes of "sides of a barrier" (ibid.). The eyelids could be pictured as such a barrier, the flash of lightening on one side -- "in the world" --, the seeing mind on the other side. Why do we want to say this? Well, lower your eyelids. See. And so we want to say that we see through our eyes (or, anyway, through those depressions in our skull). Why? Well, isn't it a fact that our sight is restricted to a particular place -- that we haven't got eyes on the sides and back of our heads?

But why do we want to say that our mind is on the other side of our eyelids? Go to the mirror; look into your eyes. Suppose you had no tactile sense whatever -- would you then have any grounds for saying where the subject is; which is body, which reflection? Why don't we see the subject when we look into our eyes in the mirror? But don't you see yourself, and aren't you the subject?

Why can't the mind see itself in the mirror? What kind of impossibility is this. We say: because the word 'mind' is not the name of anything. But then what prompted us to say that it was on the other side of the barrier of eyelids?

Why do you say that you don't see yourself in the mirror? You mean that you don't see your soul. But suppose that your body were physically turned inside out -- would that reveal your soul? And how do you know before this experiment is carried out that the answer is No? Because you "speak English" (PI § 381)? Yet you still want to say that it's a non-physical something inside your body. For you can imagine taking up life in another body or in a prosthetic body or as a disembodied spirit. And if we did not have this picture, why would the Greeks -- (e.g. Plato, Cratylus 400b, Gorgias 492e-493a) -- have said "the body a tomb" (DW p. 84) or that "the soul is imprisoned within the body" (ibid. p. 88)? Isn't it completely natural to ascribe a location to the soul -- the location of the body? (Locke: "If my body takes a carriage ride, my mind goes along with it." Well, at least my sense perceptions do; but I may well fall asleep along the way and dream that I am at home: my mind travels there, but my body doesn't go with it.)

"Disembodied Spirits" - Our Picture of the Mind (Soul)

Do we identify people with their bodies? If we are asking a logical -- i.e. grammatical -- question, the answer is yes and no. We introduce people to bodies, not as it were to souls: 'This is Mr. N.N,' we say, as people shake hands. -- But not always. I have read countless books whose authors I would not recognize if I tripped over them in my path: I have don't know what their bodies looked like, but I have been introduced to their souls. And here the word 'soul' does not suggest "a gaseous human being" -- i.e. of an object of some kind (other than perhaps a collection of books). (Plato and Aristotle: "What is the essence of man?")

But there is another sense in which we do not identify people with their bodies (And here we cannot say that the "human body is the best picture of the human soul" (PI II, vi, p. 178) either). At the end of an old Laurel and Hardy movie, Ollie is killed in a plane crash and Stanley is left alone. But one day Stanley comes across a mustached horse wearing a derby hat in a paddock; the horse speaks to him, and Stanley asks it: "Ollie, is that you?" Now this never happens, but that we easily imagine it -- and we could not imagine it at all if it were nonsense (i.e. undefined language) -- shows that we do not identify people, at least those we know well, with their bodies. And indeed none of us has difficulty imagining himself living in a different body from our own. Indeed when things go wrong, we feel "trapped in our bodies" (The picture of the body as a prison or tomb).

These are all grammatical remarks -- i.e. remarks about our concepts -- because "essence belongs to grammar" (PI § 371). For example, the Greek -- or, rather, Platonic notion -- of personal identity that does not see a body as essential to man, is grammar. Whether or not it is scientifically possible to "transplant a soul", which is the picture that no particular body is essential to man, is likewise of only grammatical interest to philosophy.

The pictures are there -- but of what philosophical interest are they? for they have no connection with the truth: they are fantasies about what reality may be, not hypotheses about what reality is (An hypothesis that is in no-wise verifiable is not an hypothesis).

Another picture: "... and still their wonder grew, that one small head could carry all that he knew." And when I first met my teacher, the one who made me want to become an educated man, I remember thinking that I wished I had a crow-bar with which to prise open his head, to release all that he knew to me.

The idea of thinking as a process in the head, in a completely enclosed space, gives him something occult. (Z §§ 605-6; Is the word 'mind' the name of some thing? or place or instrument? Is it a name at all? Cf. False grammatical analogies.)

But, then, isn't thinking occult -- i.e. hidden and mysterious? And why not say that rather than say that thinking is the most commonplace thing there could be? ("I want to say that every time ... you wake up in the morning and return to consciousness a miracle occurs" (DW p. 73). To call thinking commonplace shows neither the sense of wonder nor of awe that is the source of man's eternal questions.) But Wittgenstein writes here as a philosophical-logician: He is not looking at the "phenomenon of thinking", but at the use of a word (PI § 383). Don't confuse philosophy with the picture-making or myth-making of metaphysics or with theory-formation in natural science. Should we say that we are not interested in any cases where the word 'soul' or 'mind' plays the role of a pseudo-name? Why -- for isn't that one use made of that word?

Are our thoughts hidden?

'Aren't our thoughts hidden away in our bodies?' We very often read people's thought in their faces; and think e.g. of what a good actor can do. But what about our philosophical thoughts? You can say: 'I see that that man is pondering something'; but can you say: 'I see that that man is pondering the logic of the counterfactual conditional'? We would not know what anyone meant if he said he could see that in a man's face.

We sometimes say that "thoughts are hidden", but remember that we also write thoughts down on paper, we sketch the visions of our mind's-eye on an artist's pad, and we write down our sentiments (even in very bad poetry) -- i.e. we also sometimes say that "thoughts are hidden" (BB p. 7). We may be tempted to say that all we have done is to bring our thoughts out into the light, and so to ask: but, then, where before were our thoughts dwelling in darkness? Perhaps before they were written in a language which other people did not know, for example, I think, "Se parlassi io ad alta voce in una lingua che gli altri non conoscono, i miei pensieri sarebbero nascosti" (PI II, xi, p. 222d), or perhaps my thoughts were hidden away in a notebook inside a desk drawer -- in which latter case, there is indeed a sense for 'Where were the thoughts?' But why shouldn't I reply: 'in my head'? Isn't that what we do sometimes reply? "Heavens! you didn't put that in writing, did you?" -- "No, it was just a thought I had been turning over in my head." We allow that form of expression: 'in my head': that's what we say (Z § 223). It is only in philosophy that we draw strange conclusions from forms of expression -- instead of asking about their use (LC p. 2).

Logic of language vs. Ontology vs. Religious Point of View

I wrote above: don't confuse the logic of our language with a picture-myth about a phenomenon. But I first thought to write: don't confuse (mix up) logic and ontology. What did I mean by 'ontology'? We restrict the word 'fact' to cases where they are grounds, yet there are unverifiable statements that are statements about reality, ones I wanted to say belong to ontology, e.g. 'I have a toothache' (which it is nonsense to say 'I verify') -- or what Drury calls "simple truths" of our lives. In stating them Drury is not inventing a myth (or "putting forth a theory"). Keep things in context: isn't thinking a miracle?

Drury writes: think of Samuel Johnson when he suffered a stroke and feared that he might lose his reason (DW p. 89-90). Drury says of things like reason that they "should continue to fill us with constant amazement" (ibid. p. 128). We can look at them scientifically or logically or -- shall we say of Drury's remarks -- religiously? Is Drury speaking as a sage: "And this is wisdom"? Why not; for he is calling our attention to "simple truths", to "the common and simpler foundations of our being" (ibid. p. 74), reminding us -- not of facts in the sense of testable hypotheses -- but of some of the foundations of our lives, e.g. of "the gifts of sight, hearing", and saying: Look at these with wonder!

I would be afraid that you would try and give some sort of philosophical justification for Christian beliefs, as if some sort of proof were needed. (Recollections p. 102)

And that is not what Drury is doing here: he is speaking religiously, not theoretically.

We say 'ontology', 'foundations' -- but aren't these matters of fact? Aren't they indeed: the facts of life? "But you cannot, logically, be mistaken or even wrong about them (as is also the case with religious beliefs)." That is true: we don't know them in the sense of having compelling grounds for them; but neither do we believe them -- any more than it makes sense to say 'I believe I have a toothache'. (Should what I am calling 'facts of life' be called instead 'a way of looking at life'?)

Aren't they facts? Isn't it a fact that I exist? Don't I know that I haven't died yet? Isn't it a fact that I am sighted, have a mind, etc.?

Why do I want to say here, in the manner of Thomas Aquinas: 'not only are these rules of grammar; they are also first principles, naturally known truths, though there are no grounds for them'? For what else would Drury's "simple truths" be? But can a sign be both grammar and a statement of fact?

What would it mean for me to be wrong about [my having a mind or having consciousness] and not have any? What would it mean to say 'I am not conscious'? -- Do I know it then, and yet the statement that it is so has no purpose? (Z § 394)

Is there a grammatical category 'truisms'? 'A human being has a mind' -- is that grammar, an induced generalization? What would the opposite be like? Can we imagine a world in which only some human beings had minds, the rest were automata? 'All human beings have minds' -- is that a statement of fact? And is 'I have a mind' grammar statement of fact -- both -- or nonsense?

''I have consciousness' -- that is a statement about which no doubt is possible.' Why should that not say the same as: ''I have consciousness' is not a statement'?

What's the harm if someone says 'I have consciousness' is a statement admitting of no doubt? How do I come into conflict with him?

'Nothing is so certain as that I possess consciousness.' ... This certainty is like a mighty force whose point of application does not move, and so no work is accomplished by it. (ibid. §§ 401-2)

But this is not a statement of certainty: what I cannot (grammatically) doubt, I cannot be certain of either. If 'I do not have consciousness' is not false but nonsense, then how can 'I have consciousness' be true? This is like 'Wherever I am, I am always here' or 'Whatever time it is, it is always now' or 'Every whole is greater than its part'. What can always be uttered can never be asserted; -- i.e. it is grammar, not a statement of fact. 'The mind and its place in nature' -- all we describe is the grammar of our language; and if "we imagine its place" to be otherwise, all we imagine is a different language from ours: we give a true or a false grammatical account of our language.

In philosophy we do not draw conclusions. 'But it must be like this!' is not a philosophical statement. Philosophy only states what everyone admits. (PI § 599)

The trouble is that in this case we are all inclined to admit nonsense.

How do we want to fix the concepts 'fact', 'to know', etc. -- Which way will result in the clearest distinction of differences from similarities when we compare cases? The thing is, if we follow Wittgenstein, do we have a way to classify Drury's statements? We can say what categories they don't belong in; -- but do we need any more than that? If we say that 'mind' is not a name-of-object, etc.

We want to avoid mistaking our grammatical categories for an ontology, of mistaking our self-imposed logical limits for obligatory natural limits, such that Drury's remarks (as the TLP ones quoted above) become "nonsense", because there is no pre-established category (e.g. 'statement-of-fact') which would allow them to be made. -- This thought needs to be made clearer. The TLP remarks belong to grammar: if the metaphysical-I cannot be shown to exist in the world, it is because we ourselves have made its existence unverifiable (Z § 259) -- i.e. that's the way their author chose to fix the concept, to draw his picture. Drury's remarks, however, are more problematic: it's more like: he is pointing to the foundations -- though of our beliefs or of our concepts or of reality or ...? When he says 'Regard sight as a miracle!' what is he "pointing" to ... an inter-subjective (i.e. psychological) phenomenon?

Of course I am not denying such a familiar distinction as this. I am denying nothing. I am pointing out the real dangers and confusions that these words 'outer' and 'inner' produce in philosophy. They force on us a picture of reality, of the mind and its place in nature, which is of no use at all. (DW p. 79)

Now, Drury seems to speak here, not of the word 'mind', but of the mind. Yet that "I am denying nothing" is Wittgenstein's expression -- or is it?

Grammar (or the use of word) versus "phenomena"

For we have a definite concept of what it means to learn to know a process better.... And now the analogy ... falls to pieces. So we have to deny the as yet uncomprehended process in the as yet unexplored medium. And now it looks as if we have denied mental processes. And naturally we don't want to deny them ... -- Not at all. It is not a something but not a nothing either! ... break with the idea that language always functions in one way ... (PI §§ 308, 304)

-- I.e. since all words are names, 'mind' must be a name; but since it is not he name of a physical object, it must be the name of an intangible object (ibid. § 36) ... and 'thinking' must be the name of a process that goes on inside that intangible object. --

The impression that we wanted to deny something arises from our setting our faces against the picture of the "inner process". What we deny is that the picture of the inner process gives the correct idea of the use of the word ... Why should I deny that there is a mental process? ... If I do speak of a fiction, then it is of a grammatical fiction. (ibid. §§ 305-7)

"The mind and its place in nature." -- Is Drury making a grammatical remark when, in denial of the picture of the mind as an exclusively "inner" phenomenon, he writes?

The distinction between seeing the flash of lightening and my ... fear is not that the [lightening] lies on one side of a barrier and my [fear] on the other. For me there is no barrier between them, they are together.

A small child cannot conceal its terror, such an emotion is as much "outer" as anything seen; it is seen. (DW p. 79)

Drury is not only saying here that "an "inner process" stands in need of outward criteria" (PI § 580) or that "the psychologist observes the external reactions (the behavior) of the subject" (ibid. § 571) -- and remember: the subject's spoken (or written) testimony is external behavior; indeed, it is quite correct to say that the psychologist sees the subject's mind, that we see an author's mind in his writing, that we see people's grief in their crying) -- i.e. grammatically correct. So that, it is quite correct to say that we see the mind in the world ("The mind and its place in nature").

Consciousness in another's face. Look into someone else's face ... You see on it, in it, joy, indifference, interest, excitement, torpor and so on. The light in other people's faces.

Do you look into yourself in order to recognize the fury in his face? It is there as clearly as in your own breast. (Z § 220)

But Drury is not only saying that: he is also making a remark about our natural history, e.g. that adults do, generally, learn to conceal the emotions and thoughts that children have not learned to conceal (DW p. 79).

I want to say: an education quite different from ours might also be the foundation for quite different concepts. (Z § 387; cf. §§ 368, 380, 383)

But are these facts of our natural history or of our conceptual history? I.e. are they facts about the way we raise our children (and were ourselves raised) or about the word 'mind' and its grammar? Well, are they criteria or symptoms --? And that is the only answer you will get.

... what is in question is not symptoms, but logical criteria. That these are not always sharply differentiated does not prevent them from being differentiated.

... it is our old mistake of not testing particular cases. (ibid. §§ 466, 438)

It is our old mistake of not asking: But if the sign is just ink marks, sounds, then what gives the sign meaning? A sign that "seems to arise out of nowhere", e.g. 'I have consciousness', should not be assumed to be language; it is a sign: now, what, if anything, gives that sign meaning?

Replacing one Picture of the Mind with Another

By saying 'It is seen', is Drury altering our picture of the mind -- is he giving us a truer picture of "the mind and its place in nature"? He is giving us a picture that gives us a correct idea of the grammar of the word 'mind' (PI § 305); he is replacing a false grammatical account with a true one. But is that all? Does Drury have a "theory of mind"? Does Shakespeare? According to the latter: we do not see the child's mind (i.e. its terror); we see only the shadow of its mind.

The shadow of your sorrow hath destroy'd the shadow of your face. (Richard II iv, 1)

King Richard has been looking at his face in a mirror; and when suddenly he smashes the mirror, Bolingbroke says the above to him. 'Shadow of your sorrow' is supposed to be a metaphor, made on analogy from 'shadow of your face' (in the mirror); but it is not a metaphor -- because it is an analogy we cannot follow.

We can compare a face with its reflection in a mirror, but not a sorrowful face with the sorrow that "lies all within" (ibid.). Why "can't" we? -- Because this language is undefined: there is no technique for comparing this "picture" with what it is supposedly a picture of. It is not clear what, if anything, the word 'shadow' in 'shadow of your sorrow' is to mean here. It does not mean Richard's behavior, "these external manners of laments" (-- though that behavior is our criterion for applying the word 'sorrowful' to him --); but neither is the meaning of the word 'sorrow' some hypostatized "substance that lies all within the tortur'd soul".

'Sorrow' is not the name of something, though it is not "a nothing" either; -- i.e. recall the circumstances in which a child learns to use the word 'sorrow' (see Play-acted Definitions). Look at the word 'sorrow' as a tool that has some role in our life.

"But if you wipe away a man's tears, you do not wipe away his sorrow, anymore than you destroy his face when you destroy the mirror in which it is reflected." No, you do not wipe away his sorrow. But that analogy-making 'anymore than' is the "innocent move in the conjuring trick" (PI § 308). We do not deny that either statement is correct; what we do deny is that the one statement can be understood by analogy to the other.

Your concept is wrong. -- However, I cannot make this clear by fighting against your words, but only be trying to turn your attention away from certain expressions, illustrations, images, and towards the employment of the words. (Z § 463)

Shakespeare, no more that Drury, has a "theory of mind". What Shakespeare gives is a false grammatical account, as Drury gives a true one.

An grammatical account may be true or false. Obviously if we point to a man standing on a table and say 'This is what we call 'to sit on a chair'', we have given a false account of the way we use our English language. So that, if we define 'hypothesis' as 'a statement that can be true or false depending on the evidence', then we will say that Drury has made an hypothesis.

However, if we define 'hypothesis', as Drury does, as "models, pictures, maps" -- then Drury has not put forth a "theory of mind". For that expression implies that someone gives a general account of something imagined to be "hidden" in the evidence (as the heliocentric model is "hidden" in the observations of the night sky, or, as the theory of evolution is "hidden" in the geological formations and the fossil record, or, as electrons are "hidden" in the Wilson cloud chamber).

Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains or deduces anything. -- Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain.

In philosophy we do not draw conclusions ... Philosophy only states what everyone admits. (PI §§ 126, 599)

In a word, the logic of language is open to the public. It is a description of the facts in plain view, not theory-making about hidden, underlying realities. (See The False Grammatical Account).

"But if to invent a language-game is to make an object of comparison, then hasn't Drury made a model and, so, an hypothesis?" First, Drury has not invented a language-game; he has only described the circumstances in which we use the sign 'You see the child's terror'. And second, a language-game is not a model in the sense of an explanation, but only a model in the sense of an object of comparison: we compare actual language to it; we don't "explain" language by it. It would be false to say that: 'Drury has made a theory about the hidden mind.'

The question of "the mind and its place in nature" is a question about the grammar of the word 'mind' -- or else what would it be?

I wanted to put this picture before your eyes, and your acceptance of this picture consists in your being inclined to regard [this] case differently; that is, to compare it with this series of pictures. I have changed your way of seeing. (Z § 461)

Drury in pointing to the case of the child's terror indeed brings us to see "the mind and its place in nature" in a new (i.e. different) way. How this simple bringing forward of an everyday fact of life has changed our way of thinking is another question; we could say that our attention had been so fixed on one type of examples that we entirely overlooked other types of examples. Drury has effected the change in our view of things by making a grammatical reminder.

"But nothing was hidden from Shakespeare either." This is true; but then should we say that Shakespeare did put forth a "theory of mind"? Shakespeare only put forth a picture-grammar -- though it is a useless one. If Bolingbroke really believed that he saw only the shadow of Richard's sorrow, then why did he suppose there to be anything behind the shadow? If the mind is essentially hidden (as it is on Shakespeare's account), then how strange that anyone should ever believe in "other minds". (This is a grammatical question in the "philosophy of psychology".)

"Yes, one can make the decision to say ..." (PI § 303). Take the expression 'the metaphysical-I'. Now, is it nonsense to speak of "the I which is always subject and never object"? That, of course, depends on what we want to do with this expression-sign.

'But isn't the existence of the metaphysical-I a fact?' An analogy is made: the existence of an object is a fact. We think: to exist is to be hypothetical (i.e. verifiable). And then what about my headache? If you want to make the decision to say 'My headache is for me a non-hypothetical fact about the world', then go ahead. But simply uttering the sign 'fact' (or 'exists') does not make this case any more like e.g. 'The book is on the table'. Unlike 'Consciousness is a non-hypothetical fact' or even 'I have consciousness', 'I have a headache' has a use in our language; it is not idle, but has a job to do -- and that means it has what Wittgenstein called a 'meaning'. (Cf. BB p. 65)

... philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday. (PI § 38)

There is no way to determine whether 'I have consciousness' is sense or nonsense without our choosing a logic of language to employ.

But the temptation to want to write "The World as I found it" is very great. In it we would record all the facts about the world; and certainly we would not want to leave out our headaches -- for they belong to reality! But in logic we are not trying to consign anything to non-being. Our question is not: what exists and what does not? We are not doing ontology, but the clarification of thought (TLP 4.112). No one is banishing our headache from reality by saying that it is nonsense to call it a 'fact'. All we want to deny are false accounts of how we use the word 'fact'.

No one denies "the existence of the metaphysical-I"; what we do deny is that the metaphysical-I is anything more than one picture of "the mind and its place in nature". It is a picture-grammar, one that we may or may not in certain circumstances have a use for. When speaking of "inner pain" Wittgenstein uses the expression 'not a something, but not a nothing either' (PI § 304); this is to say that neither word is applicable. And someone will respond: "But that is a contradiction; it violates the Law of the Excluded Middle." Very well, but contradiction is a matter of linguistic form, and sense and nonsense is not a matter of form (See 'Nonsense' and Contradiction). The question is: what does Wittgenstein do with this form of expression? "We have only rejected the grammar that tries to force itself on us here." He uses it to assign the words 'inner pain' a grammatical category. And by using this formula, Wittgenstein is not trying to understand "at least in an enigma" something that is beyond understanding (Saint Augustine on the Trinitarian formula "one essence, three persons") -- namely, what "inner pain" is. The logician is simply inventing a grammatical category, saying: Look at it this way! "A nothing would serve just as well as a something about which nothing could be said" (PI § 304; in the context of grammar and sense and nonsense, we can often speak of "the fallacy of the excluded middle"). And whatever may be behind the shadow of Richard's sorrow is just such a "something".

That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of "object and designation" the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant. (ibid. § 293)

Shakespeare's picture says that the behavior (the "shadow") is irrelevant; -- but if that were so, then we would be left with a sign and no way to give it meaning.

Back to Drury. Now, Drury as was said above, is looking at mind, not only logically, but also religiously. He does not regard the notion of things beyond our understanding as a bit of self-mystification (nor did he believe that his friend Wittgenstein did -- DW p. ix). He would certainly call mind "an enigma":

Those fundamental data which we use in giving explanations: perception, memory, language, these remain for ever in the realm of the inexplicable. In an age such as this ... there is a great danger that we lose the precious gifts of wonder and gratitude for the common and simpler foundations of our being. (DW p. 74)

"The Asymptote of Psychology"

Drury says that neither we nor any subsequent generation will ever be in a position to "solve a problem" -- the relation of mind to body, the mind and its place in nature -- "to which the notion of a 'solution' does not make sense" (ibid.).

But if something is solutionless, isn't it because we ourselves have made it solutionless (cf. unverifiable -- Z § 259)? Yes, only how have we done that in this case?

Lichtenberg in one of his aphorisms says that 'Materialism is the asymptote of Psychology'. I am not sure that I understand what he meant. But I would certainly say that neuro-physiology is the asymptote of experimental psychology. The more rigorous experimental psychology becomes the more it will need to translate its finding into physiological terminology. (DW p. 53)

We cannot translate psychological terminology into physiological terminology: we cannot "solve" the mind-body problem. -- But experimental psychology can eliminate the problem. By discarding our psychological vocabulary.

The "way forward" in the science of psychology is not to investigate the relation between mind and body -- but to drop the concept 'mind' altogether. In science the concept 'mind' is no more useful than the concept 'ether'; in science both these words are idle. 'Mind' belongs to another "language-game" entirely; i.e. 'mind' is not a scientific concept. Nothing is idler than speculating in language that one does not understand.

"The mind" cannot be scientifically investigated, because 'mind' is not the name of an object. What can be investigated by science is testimony about mental phenomena; what are its relationships to activities of the body?

If we are justified to say R brain event correlates with S mental phenomenon, it is only because we have the testimony of the person whose brain we are examining that it is so; -- we have no other way to investigate mental phenomena except by comparing the testimony of a live human being with what we observe in that person's body. (That a mental phenomenon can be induced is not proof that this is also the uninduced way that the event occurs.)

"But if we drop the concept 'mind' don't we lose something we regard as essential to our humanity?" Only if science is the only way we look at things; but science is only one of the ways we look at things. I say only that the concept 'mind' should be dropped from scientific investigations; like 'consciousness', it has no role to play in them.

... a wheel that can be turned though nothing else moves with it is not part of the mechanism. (PI § 271)

That is the position of the word 'mind' in the science of psychology.

But such a psychology would not be the psychology that we want in philosophy -- or rather: that we want. It's true, however, that our language-games with the psychological words 'mind', 'thinking', etc., may someday fall into disuse and disappear -- but the human beings of that "someday" would be ones who lived very differently than we do. (Forms of life.) Our concepts make the problem solutionless. (But not as if we chose these concepts! -- (OC § 317). We were brought up in this way of life; everything else is mythology.)

"The limit of science - is concept-formation"

What does anyone mean if he speaks of the 'limits' of science or of scientific investigation? In Zamyatin's novel We (ca. 1924), when people take a space-ship to the moon, they go out on deck to smoke tobacco. But when people really did go to the moon in 1969, they did not go there on a "steamship". -- But isn't what mattered that the idea, however wrong in the details, existed? The language of the idea may be no more than suggestive -- but who can say that a scientist may not someday do something with it? It's true that going to the moon Zamyatin's way and our way are not the same, but still we find it natural to call both 'going to the moon'; the idea was realized, if not as originally imagined. At one time men dreamed of flying like birds; are we unwilling to say that that dream has not been realized, just because it takes a form that e.g. Leonardo da Vinci might not have found attractive? Perhaps it "cannot" be done that way; but should we say therefore that it cannot be done at all? I would be wary of saying that. Can a prosthetic brain be made? I have no idea. Can a prosthetic human being be made? I have no idea. (Still, we should distinguish between and between.)

Could a machine think? -- Could it be in pain? -- Well, is the human body to be called such a machine? It surely comes as close as possible to being such a machine. (PI § 359)

Those who laugh at comparing the human body to a machine (or the brain to a mechanism) should remember that any comparison we make can be laughed at; there are limits to the applicability of any simile.

When we talk about the "limits of science", we are only talking about the limits of our imagination (and of the evidence; but the evidence must be conceived in some way or another). What would be more foolish than some philosopher talking about what science can or cannot do; because this 'can' is only grammatical: scientists of course cannot do nonsense. But there are no "conceptual" limits to science; concepts are not walls --unless we see no alternative concepts. If scientists knew where science was going, they would already be there.

There are no "conceptual" limits to science; concepts are not walls -- unless we are in their grips. What remains to be said but that we are in their grips. There is some relationship, not between mind and body (the word 'mind' is not the name of anything), but between our concept 'mind' and our concept 'body'. This is the relationship we explore in philosophy.

But doesn't Drury, as it were, expose his confusion about this when he writes:

If what I have said concerning the relation of mind and body [-- i.e. that "the soul is imprisoned within the body" (p. 88) --] is the truth (and remember I have made it my principal endeavor to show that nothing in the nature of proof or reasonableness or evidence has any place here ... (DW p. 94-5)?

If it has nothing to do with "proof or reasonableness or evidence", then why call it 'possibly the truth' here or speak of 'simple truths'? This looks like: it is an hypothesis (i.e. statement of fact) and it isn't an hypothesis -- to which combination of words we have given no sense. The body as the soul's prison is nothing more or less than a picture, a logical not a factual possibility.

'What can be described (logical possibility) can happen (real possibility) too.' -- Sometimes this is true, sometimes false: not every logical possibility is a real possibility. "And you want to restrict the application of the words 'true' and 'false' to verifiable possibilities -- i.e. to testable statements of fact?" If Drury says 'the body is the soul's prison is the truth' -- what does this mean other than: for some people this picture has a role in their lives? (Wittgenstein)

If it isn't a question of grounds, why use the word 'true'? Some of Drury's "simple truths" are foundational-statements; others are ways of looking at things (See Statements-of-fact). The word 'truth' has no application to them.

What Drury gives us are not "simple truths" but pictures. And of course I too think that they are important pictures, not idle. But they are only pictures -- i.e. that is their logical category.

"Concerning Mind and Body" - Parts 3-5

Note 1: M. O'C. Drury, "Hypotheses and Philosophy" in his The Danger of Words [DW] (1973), p. 107-8. [BACK]

Note 2: Note: the remark I attribute below to Sraffa was as it happens in fact made by Frank Ramsey in his unpublished paper "General Propositions and Causality" from 1929 (after his death printed in the book The Foundations of Mathematics and other Logical Essays by Frank Plumpton Ramsey, ed. Braithwaite, preface by G.E. Moore, London 1931, p. 238) where he wrote: "[But what we can't say we can't say, and we can't whistle it either.]" What Ramsey meant by this bracketed remark, I don't know [cf. TLP 5.61d], but the meaning I have given it below is, I believe, consistent with another statement, quoted by Keynes, Ramsey made: "[If philosophy is nonsense, then we must] take seriously that it is nonsense, and not pretend, as Wittgenstein does, that it is important nonsense!" [also printed in ed. Braithwaite, p. 263, as an unpublished last paper from 1929 titled "Philosophy"] In any case, I have used Ramsey's words here in my own way, maybe giving them my own sense. [See also the limit of language according to the TLP.]

Sraffa and Wittgenstein

"If you can't say it, then you can't whistle it either." Piero Sraffa said this, or something like it, to Wittgenstein; what did he mean by it? Wittgenstein was a very skillful whistler of music, and music like poetry was, according to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, able to "show" things that the language of the natural sciences cannot "say"; according to Wittgenstein at that time: only the language of the natural sciences -- i.e. language that is a picture in the form: "This is how things stand" -- is meaningful, and every other utterance of language is nonsense. Sraffa was perhaps saying that Wittgenstein wanted to have his cake and eat it too, because "nonsense" (music, poetry) that can convey meaning is after all not nonsense (If music and poetry are nonsense then they cannot convey meaning -- even in an indirect way). That is, the Tractatus's meaning of the word 'meaning' is far too narrow: there are many more meanings of the word 'meaning' than the one logic uses; but the TLP is a "theory of meaning" not a definition of the words 'meaning' and 'nonsense'; it is itself a misunderstanding of the logic of our language.

Sraffa is also said to have made an Italian gesture and to have asked Wittgenstein what the gesture's "logical form" was. There are many such gestures; one is to run your palm down from your chin as if you were pulling at your beard: "You are making my beard grow" which means: "Come to the point [because you have been talking for so long that I my beard is growing]!" Is this gesture nonsensical? But if it is not nonsense, then it must be a statement of fact and have a "logical form", i.e. a structure that it shares with "the world" (i.e. the totality of facts, not of bare things but of things standing in relationships to one another). Now, then, what is the "meaning" of the gesture, i.e. the "fact" that it corresponds to? According to the Tractatus the command 'Come to the point!' is meaningless.

I do not, however, know if this is what Sraffa meant.

Cf. Malcolm's Memoir of Wittgenstein, 2nd ed. (1984), p. 57-58. von Wright's account of Sraffa's criticism (ibid. p. 58n3) makes no sense: because a gesture may have a "grammar" -- i.e. a correct or incorrect use (i.e. it may have a meaning). To say that, however, is very different from saying that the gesture (or any other propositional-sign) must be a picture of what it asserts -- e.g. that a gesture meaning "You are tiresome" must have the same structure [form] as the reality it alludes to. An example of that, if I understand that notion and I don't think I do, might be: "The book is to the left of the inkwell".

Examples cure abbreviation (RPP i § 38). But instead in the Tractatus [4.5] Wittgenstein had tried to "grasp the essence" (PI § 116) of the proposition ("statement of fact").

"The proposition is a model of the reality" (French court case)

The proposition is a picture of reality. The proposition is a model of the reality as we think it is. (TLP 4.01, tr. Ogden)

The word 'model' suggests Wittgenstein's statement about this idea being suggested to him by a French court case in which a scale model of the crime scene was constructed [von Wright, Biographical Sketch (1984), p. 8 [The source of the story is Wittgenstein's notebook, June 1930 (p. 8n9)]: in the model there is a correspondence between the parts of the model (the miniature houses, cars and people) and things [parts] (houses, cars, people) in the world, and the same correspondence, Wittgenstein thought, exists between the parts of a proposition and things [parts] of the world]. Now, Sraffa could make a gesture and ask what that gesture was a model of (The temptation with the word 'picture' is to imagine that a picture of the gesture would be the gesture's "logical form"; but a picture of the gesture itself does not tell you what the picture's meaning is, anymore than any other bare sign [spoken sounds, ink marks on paper, shapes or figures in the sand] would). [BACK]

Site copyright © September 1998. Please send corrections and criticism of this page to Robert [Wesley] Angelo. Last revised: 11 July 2007 : 2007-07-11

The URL of this Web page:
https://www.roangelo.net/logwitt/logwit16.html

Back to top of page

Wittgenstein's Logic of Language - Introduction and Table of Contents | Bibliography | Site Search | Site Map