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Is There a Real Definition of Logic?

Are words names of things? Aristotle's real versus nominal distinction assumes that they are. That question is the subject of this page (mostly).

In trying to revise this page, which was written a dozen years ago, I have had to try to recapture my old way of thinking, that is, of imaging language meaning. But I find I cannot do that very well now. (Much more of this page could be discarded without the loss of any worthwhile ideas. The plums are few and far between.) The discussion "The existence of concepts" comes closest to the view or account of language meaning that I was trying to combat, the view that all words are names, and the meaning of a name is the thing the name stands for, whether that thing is tangible or intangible, concrete or abstract.

Historical Nominalism

Note that was what I was calling "nominalism" is broader than the nominalism of the historical Ockhamists, because for them, in contrast e.g. to Plato, the name of a class of things, e.g. a class-word like 'man', is not the name of a general thing; rather the statement 'All men are mortal' applies to each individual man, and there is no "extra-mental" thing named 'man' ("man-ness"). In other words, in my words, for the historical nominalists the common name 'man' is a concept, i.e. a set of rules for using a word, and nothing more. In my discussion I had left the question open.

According to Ockham, Plato and Socrates are both called 'man', not because they share the same essence, but because they are more similar to one another than either is to a donkey (Frederick Copleston, History of Philosophy, Volume III, IV, 3, vi). We abstract their similarities. (The idea of abstraction -- selection and deselection of qualities -- is easily enough understood; the selection is a concept, not a thing -- until the naive imagination makes an "abstract object" of it. Then the class-name 'man' becomes the name of the assumed essence "man-ness".) (The nominalism of George Berkeley.)

A further example of realism is the twelfth century School of Chartres: objects are composed of form and matter (Aristotle); however (contra Aristotle), forms are copies of the Ideas in God, which are exemplars. Creation is the production of these copies. (Copleston, History of Philosophy, Volume II, xvi, 4-5) Saint Bonaventure (1221-1274) said that from Aristotle's "denial of the Platonic theory of ideas there followed not only the denial of creationism, but also the denial of [divine] providence". (ibid. xxv, 4)


The Laws of Logic as Laws of Thought

Is there a real definition of logic, i.e. an hypothesis about logic's essential nature, about whether, for example, the "principle of contradiction" is a law of thought, a natural law belonging to a natural science of the mind.

Laws of physics versus laws of nature

Note that if knowledge of the world is solely empirical, i.e. inductive experience only, then there are no laws of nature, only theories of physics (which are a selections of conceived facts plus an imaginative organization). A proposition that cannot be falsified by further experience, which is what a law of nature would be, belongs, not to physics, but to metaphysics. (Augustine states three propositions that can be known independently of experience of the world. So it seems that Rationalism is not logically impossible, and it might argue that there are laws of nature.)

Aristotle on Contradiction

[The principle of contradiction] is the ultimate principle governing all being and all knowledge. (Aristotle, Metaphysics 4, 3 ff. [1005b]) (Copleston, History of Philosophy, Volume I, xxix, 3)

Aristotle says that the principle of contradiction is the "most incontestable of all thoughts", and with regard to contradictions in sense (semantics), in contrast to contradictions in form (syntax), that seems to be true, for we would call anyone who denied it unreasonable, and that would not only be a characterization, it would also be a dismissal. (I must begin with that thought. "Nothing is possible prior to that; I can't give it a foundation" (PG i § 81, p. 126-127). Well, there is no foundation beneath the foundation, no bedrock beneath the bedrock.)

The principle of contradiction in meaning defines the concept 'sound reasoning'. The question 'Is the principle of contradiction sound reasoning?' is nonsense (just as is 'What if we are all madmen?') The point is this is what we call sound reasoning and that it belongs to the Western philosophical community of ideas, which is based on the Socratic method of refutation, that we hold this, and only this, way of thinking, namely logic, in the highest esteem. (Contrast this with what in E.T.A. Hoffmann's story would be called "oriental bombast", i.e. mystification by language -- posing as profundity.)

Wittgenstein held that "essence belongs to grammar [in Wittgenstein's jargon]" (PI § 371; or, in other words, that concepts define phenomena, not vice versa), i.e. to a description of our use of language, to a verbal definition (rule, convention) of the word 'logic'.

A "definition of logic" is not a statement of the essence of a mysteriously known something existing independently of man named 'logic'. But does it follow that the rules of logic, and specifically the principle of contradiction, are mere conventions? But if they are not "merely rules", what are they?

Is logic the natural science of sound reasoning?

An hypothesis about the nature of the principle of contradiction would be that it belongs to the principle's nature that the complex proposition 'p and not-p' is always false. But an hypothesis can always be falsified, and, indeed, there are examples disproving the "laws of thought" hypothesis, e.g. reasons why a contradiction in form may be true, false or simply nonsense (an undefined combination of words).

As to a "nominal definition" of logic, historically the word 'logic' has been defined as "the art of reasoning". And about the art of reasoning, we can ask whether it is an art that describes natural laws (in contrast to legislative laws or conventions) or if it is an art of some other kind. Are the traditional "three laws of logic", namely Identity, Excluded Middle, and Contradiction, natural laws that say which propositions must be false? (But is there another kind of necessity than logical necessity or deductive reason?)

Or are those "laws" instead mere conventions? But if conventions say what must be false, then why not make just this convention (cf. PG i § 82, p. 127), that contradictions -- especially contradictions in sense -- are not necessarily false? But just stating that rule doesn't tell us how to follow that rule, e.g. what becomes of discourse of reason (philosophy). So it seems that the principle of contradiction is not simply a convention. On the other hand, the expression 'natural law of reason' sounds absurd: it suggests a metaphysical mechanism.

The only thing that can put reason on trial is reason. But that cannot be done, because it would use the very standard of judgment, namely reason (even if only the principle of contradiction), it presumed to test. A hammer cannot hammer itself.


Topics on this page ...

Background: How is language with meaning distinguished from nonsense in the language of philosophical problems? That is the question of what is called logic of language in my jargon. Parts of what I have written are more mistaken than others, although they are revised from time to time.(Words that follow "Query" are Internet searches from the access logs of this site which suggested thoughts to me.)


Critical introduction to Nominalism: What is philosophy?

Note: I have used the definition of 'nominalism' suggested by Wittgenstein, namely "treating all words as names" regardless of what they are names of. That is not the word's historical meaning, however. Plato presumes that there is an essence, for example, of largeness, a common quality or nature shared by all large things. Now, if there is such an essence, where does it exist? According to Plato it exists suprasensibly, external to large things as an Absolute, Archetype or Pattern; according to other philosophers (Aristotle), however, the essence of largeness exists only in (or "internal" to) individual large things. However, regardless of where it exists, the essence of largeness is real; this is called "realism". In contrast, according to "nominalism" essences, if they exist (which is not to deny that there are similarities among the members of a class), exist only in the human mind: "largeness" is merely a name (or "nominal") from that point of view. Nominalism is historically associated with William of Ockham. Enough of that.

Nominalists make the mistake of treating all words as names, and so of not really describing their use ... (PI § 383)

According to Nominalism's account of language-meaning, all words are names or at least all nouns (nominals, substantives) are names of objects -- either tangible or abstract objects. Note: names not only of objects, but also of phenomena (although there is no word blurrier in meaning than the word 'phenomenon'). So rather than "names of objects", it should be words are names of things (as in "person, place, or thing"), the word 'thing ' being the name of our language's broadest category: Everything is something ("some thing"), including numbers, essences, ghosts, space, light, time, geometric points, and so on. But in this sense, 'thing' ≠ 'object' or 'entity'.

The word 'philosophy' seems to be the name of an intangible thing (or is it the name of a tangible thing?), an intangible thing about whose nature we are unclear. But how do we make the meaning of the name of an intangible thing clear? ("Where our language suggests [an object] and there is none: there, we would like to say, is a spirit" (PI § 36).)

Nebulosity and strange pictures. The picture of an intangible object as a ghost or shadow-like something, an intangible object -- how does one grasp (hold of the nature of) an intangible object?

The Platonic question would be: what is the common nature (or essence) named by the common name 'philosophy'? But that question is the same both for "Nominalists" (of whom the historical Socrates, according to Aristotle, is an example) and "Realists" (of whom Plato is an example), although they have different pictures of where that common nature has its existence, whether only in particulars or in a separate Absolute, Form or Archetype. How are we to discover the answer to that question? What must we examine?

Does the word 'abstraction' = 'abstract thing'? or 'abstracted thing', as in the "theory of abstraction"? (Pointing out vagueness makes whether a word is useful as a tool in our language clearer. Some words are blunt instruments striking against the understanding. For example, 'abstraction'. )

I think at this point we can see that if we are going to approach the question of what philosophy is this way, saying that 'philosophy' is the name of an abstract thing, then we are never going to answer it, because we don't even know where to begin. That seems to be the difficulty with Nominalism, if by 'Nominalism' we mean that the meaning of word is the thing the word stands for whether that thing is concrete or abstract.

Is there a difference between defining the word 'philosophy' and saying (proposing an hypothesis about) what the nature of philosophy is?

"Tangible objects". To define the word 'cow', we point to the object of the name 'cow', namely cows, examples or illustrations of cows. But by simply pointing to a cow, we do not say what its nature is; we do not state a "real definition" of the word 'cow' by pointing at cows. However, with abstract things, it does not seem that there is anything to point at (philosophy books, the words within them, pictures of philosophers? No.)

We have made no distinction between "nominal" and "real" definitions. But does that distinction exist in the case of abstract things? Or are all definitions of the names of abstract things real definitions -- i.e. hypotheses about what the nature of the abstract thing named is? If Nominalism is a correct account of the meaning of our language -- i.e. that words are names of things (objects or phenomena) and the meaning of a name is the thing the name stands for -- then it seems that they are.

And so we have Wittgenstein's counter-account, that not all nouns are names of objects (particularly not names of ghostly objects), but that the meaning of the word 'philosophy' is explained by describing its use in our language, seems to resolve nothing unless the question of whether the word 'philosophy' is not the name of a phenomenon is answered. For there may be a theory about the nature of a phenomenon, once it is identified, as there are theories about thunder. The nominal and real definitions of the word 'philosophy' are identical, if the meaning of that word is the thing the word names, namely the identity of the thing.(A possible "definition of philosophy".)

The definition I suggested, for example, that "Philosophy is thirst for knowledge and understanding in logic, ethics, and metaphysics", is both a nominal definition of the word 'philosophy' and a real definition (e.g. historiological hypothesis) of philosophy. By the word 'philosophy' we mean 'love of wisdom in logic, ethics, and metaphysics' (nominal definition) and "Philosophy is love of wisdom in logic, ethics, and metaphysics" (real definition). But it is more than that: it is also a statement of what I want and think philosophy should be: contrast how Wittgenstein limited the scope of philosophy.

Philosophy from two points of view

What is the "use in the language" (to use Wittgenstein's formula) then of the word 'philosophy'? In our language it is used to name a subject of study and an activity (namely philosophizing). That is the use of that word in the language. As to defining the subject, there is are two ways, one from the point of view of the history of philosophy, the other from the point of view of someone who philosophizes. For the latter, to describe the subject of philosophy is itself to philosophize -- because "what philosophy is", what the aim and methods of philosophy are, what logic is, what ethics is, what metaphysics is -- are themselves philosophical questions.

And to say this is to further clarify the use of the word 'philosophy' in the language, because it is not this way with any other subject, e.g. the question of "what natural science is" is not a scientific question (but instead a question in the Philosophy of Science), and the question of "what is art" is not an artistic question (but instead a question in the Philosophy of Art), even if those questions are asked by scientists and artists. But the question of "what philosophy is" is a philosophical question.

And then where is the abstract object or phenomenon, the ghost-like "thing" (as in "person, place, or thing") Nominalism suggests is named by the word 'philosophy'? Well, there isn't any. That picture simply has no application: it neither describes how we use the word 'philosophy' nor says "what philosophy is". "Abstract thing" is a false picture of language meaning.

The meaning of "abstract" terms

In sum, for a large class of cases -- namely the class of "abstract things" or "abstractions" -- i.e. non-name-of-object-or-phenomenon words -- the meaning of a word is to be found in its use in the language. (But not every word belongs to that class: When meaning is use, and when not.)


Preliminary: There are as many meanings of the word 'nonsense' as there are meanings of the word 'meaning' -- not only the meaning of 'meaning' Wittgenstein chose for his logic of language, nor its corresponding meaning of 'nonsense'.

What follows is a philosophical, not an historical discussion (historical definitions of the word 'logic'). It continues the discussions of, in Aristotle's terms, nominal versus real definitions and "Is there a real definition of philosophy?"

Nominal versus Real Definitions (Older remarks)

Nominalism -- this one "conception of meaning" (PI § 2) -- is the origin of all, or at least of much, philosophical confusion: "Words are names and the meaning of a name is the thing the name stands for", where the category 'thing' includes anything and everything. "A noun is the name of a person, place, or thing", regardless of whether that thing is a "tangible object" or an "intangible something" [spirit, ghost], a phenomenon [process], or a concept [idea, notion]. The confusion this picture of meaning causes is especially clear (or unclear) when the "thing named" is a concept, especially a concept mistaken for the name of a phenomenon or an object, e.g. "time", "mind". (The word 'love' is an example of a name of phenomena.)

The etymology of the word 'nominal': Latin 'nomen' = English 'a name'. But when we talk about a "concept" we are talking about the use of a word (ibid. § 383), and words have many other uses [tasks to perform, roles to play] in our language besides naming things.

In the words of Aristotle, a 'nominal definition' is "a set of words signifying precisely what the name signifies; for example, 'thunder' can be defined as 'noise in the clouds'."

A 'real definition', in contrast, says what the nature of the thing named is; for example, "the statement of what the nature of thunder is will be: The noise of fire being quenched in the clouds". (Anal. Post. 92b-94a)

Historical background of the distinction (Aristotle)

Essential definitions are strict definitions by genus and difference, and Aristotle considered definition as involving a process of division down to the infimae species [Anal. Post. B [= Book II, Chapter] 13 (96a20-97b)] ... Aristotle, aware that we are by no means always able to attain an essential or real definition, allows for nominal or descriptive definitions [ibid. B 8 (93a-93b20) and 10 (93b28-95a9)], even though he had no high opinion of them, regarding as he did essential definitions as the only type of definition really worthy of that name. (Copleston, A History of Philosophy: Greece and Rome (1947), II, xxviii, 3, p. 280)

If I understand Copleston's text, 'noise in the clouds' would be a "nominal or descriptive" definition, whereas 'The noise of fire being quenched in the clouds' would be an "essential or real" definition. By 'infimae species' I think is meant: the last (or, "lowest") possible division (cf. Plato's method of "definition by division" (Sophist 218c ff.)) -- i.e. the division beyond which no division is possible (What will 'possible' mean here?) because we have reached the essence of the thing -- or "that without which it would not be what it is".

Definitions by genus and difference are akin -- but not identical -- to the kind which, according to Aristotle, are the sought result of Socrates' method of definition. For example, if "Man is a rational animal" is Aristotle's "definition of Man", then animal is the genus and rational the difference: the "difference" is what distinguishes man from all other animals (which is the second part of Socratic definition), but the "genus" by itself is not the common nature of all things named by the common name 'man' (which is the first part of Socratic definition): Aristotle's definition of Man is genus plus difference: these two parts are inseparable.

The distinction, however, is of importance, since in point of fact, we have to be content, in regard to the natural objects studied by physical science, with distinctive or characteristic definitions, which even if they approach the ideal more closely than Aristotle's nominal or descriptive definition, do not actually attain it. (Copleston, op. cit., ibid.)

Do I understand what is being said here? No, not without examples. If a sheep is an example of a "natural object studied by physical science", then "the essential definition of a sheep" [whatever "sheephood" or "sheepness" is when it's at home] concerns, not our use of the word 'sheep' (which is taught and learned ostensively), but hypotheses (whether physical or metaphysical, I don't know which). In other words, the question does not belong to logic (or to philosophy, unless it is a metaphysical question [which I think it is] or unless natural philosophy [natural science] were classified as a part of philosophy, which it no longer is).

"Dimly grasped but apprehended by intuition"

What is Man? What is Socrates? And which exists? Which is reality?

If the individual cannot be defined, as Aristotle held that only the universal can be, then how is the individual known? If only Man can be defined, then how is the individual known? How is Socrates known? "A definition says what a thing is." But if Socrates cannot be defined, then how do we recognize Socrates -- what differentiates Socrates from all other men?

If Socrates and Euripides have the same essence, and if the essence of both is, as it is of all men, Rational Animal, then Socrates and Euripides are identical -- but Copleston says that they are not "numerically identical" (cf. Copleston, op. cit., II, xxix, 8, p. 308), but that in this case, if A = C and B = C, then A ≠ B.

But A = B, if A and B have the same essence, is precisely what 'identical in essence' normally means (and we aren't acquainted with any other use of that phrase: 'identical but not identical' is like Plato's the statement "Forms are non-mathematical numbers"). For what would differentiate A from B, Socrates from Euripides -- their "accidents" (but if a quality does not belong to a thing's essence, then how can that quality be defining of it)? Is it a mere accident that Socrates is a philosopher, and that Euripides is a playwright? Or do those qualities define those individual men, such that Socrates would not be what Socrates is were he not a philosopher?

Aristotle's theory doesn't have the needed specificity, because the difference (namely, Rational) is inadequate. Man is an individual, not a multitude: the individual man is irreducible (and saying that the essence of man is Rational Animal reduces what the individual is, when it says that man is really ...) It is individuality, which Aristotle does not account for, that we do have to account for if we want to know what reality is.

[Of course I say contrary things elsewhere. Or maybe apparently contrary, because there are many points of view, and Aristotle's proposition may function differently in those different contexts.]

According to Aristotle only particulars exist, and their essences exist in them, not in separately existing Platonic Forms. But where is the essence of dogs (dogness) to be found in Fido? To say that it must be there although it cannot be perceived is absurd, an example of metaphysical self-mystification. Rather, it cannot be perceived because it does not exist. Plato's Forms are objects, albeit "immaterial objects" (which is to say that they are not objects). Which would Aristotle's essence of dogs be -- an object or a phenomenon?

This is what happens in philosophy when we try to "define things" rather than words. "In philosophy we define words, not things" is the summary (slogan) I used. Otherwise we just thrash about, as Plato does when he tries to "define justice".

The individual is "apprehended by intuition"

Aristotle does indeed remark concerning individual intelligible [circles] (i.e. mathematical circles) and sensible circles (e.g. of bronze or wood) that, though they cannot be defined, they are apprehended by intuition (metà noéseos) or perception (aisthéseos); but he did not elaborate this hint or work out any theory of the intuition of the individual. (Copleston, op. cit., II, xxix, 8, p. 309)

Here Aristotle's words against Plato would apply to what he himself says, that talk of 'apprehended by intuition' and '[caught or captured by] perception' is "empty words", for no notion is more opaque than the notion 'intuition' (which is a cloudy space in which to hide ignorance, for it amounts to no more than 'guess' and thus does not serve as an explanation of anything -- i.e. it makes nothing clearer).

Grammar is a public event

Logic (of language) is one way to be interested in phenomena. It is not the only way (cf. PI § 108 [margin]). It is the way Wittgenstein chose to define the word 'meaning', in order to make the distinction between sense and nonsense objective.

The mental process of understanding is of no interest to us (any more than the mental process of an intuition). (PG II, ii, 9, p. 271; "to us" = to logic-philosophy.)

If you know by intuition, then you don't know. If you want to understand the grammar of 'intuition' ('to intuit') look at the grammar of 'guess' ('to guess') ('intuitive' = 'easy to guess'). Logic has no interest in conjured up occult processes, as e.g. "intuition", "theory of abstraction", which are metaphysical explanations of concept-formation that make it look as if we knew something that we do not know.

[Everything in metaphysics is may be and may be not? But how can the proposition 'Percepts without concepts are blind' be false, or even falsified; the proposition's negation is instead nonsense, undefined language. But does that proposition belong to metaphysics or logic? To which does a frame of reference belong? To which does a world-picture belong. The concept 'metaphysics' is hazy.]

Synonyms for not-knowing but pretending to know (The notion "intuition"). Exorcising linguistic ghosts.

If you define a thing at all, you must define it "in function of some universal characteristics possessed by the whole class"

... although knowledge of the true universal essence of a class of beings would certainly be desirable and remain the ideal, it is hardly necessary. For example, botanists can get along very well in their classification of plants without knowing the essential definition of the plants in question. It is enough for them if they can find phenomena which will suffice to delimit and define a species, irrespective of whether their real specific essence is thereby defined or not. (Copleston, op. cit., II, xxix, 5 (iii), p. 304-305)

The presumption that there is a "real essence" is superstition, and a misunderstanding: it presumes that phenomena define concepts rather than concepts define phenomena. (It presumes that percepts without concepts are not blind.) The essence of a species of plant is whatever the botanist finds useful to assign as the essence of the species; and a different essence may be assigned if a different scheme of classification is found more useful to the botanist -- a different essence, not a discovery of the real essence. There is no essence other than the essence that is assigned as part of a way of classifying plants.

It is significant that when Scholastic philosophers wish to give a definition which is representative they so often say "Man is a rational animal". They would scarcely take it upon themselves to give an essential definition of the cow or the buttercup. We frequently have to be content with what we might call the "nominal" [in name only] essence as opposed to the real essence. (ibid. p. 305)

That there be a real essence is a Platonic requirement, not the result of investigation (PI § 107), for Plato's investigations do not find essences of piety, courage, beauty, justice, knowledge or wisdom. "The essential thing about metaphysics ..." (Z § 458): it assumes that it is exploring phenomena when it is only seeking the borders of concepts that don't have definite borders, but have indefinite ones. What is philosophy -- a discussion of presumed reality (metaphysics) or an examination of our use of language (logic) -- i.e. of our concepts. If Socrates asks "what piety is", what is he asking?

Question: What is the "nominal essence" in contrast to the "real essence" when it's at home? I.e. either we know the common nature, because it is found in the facts in plain view, or we don't -- in other words, either a common name names a common nature or it doesn't: Language is answerable to us: its meaning does not live independently of us: If there is no "apparent" common nature, then there is no common nature which is the meaning of the common name (and that there is none is a fact about our language, about our concepts, not about an independent reality).

Questions about essence are questions about the meaning of words (or to use Wittgenstein's thesis: "Essence belongs to grammar" (PI § 371)). If we don't find a common nature when we investigate a concept, then we shouldn't use the word 'essence'. The word 'essence' in "nominal essence" means nothing (It is a myth created by metaphysical presumption, an imaginary entity, as real as a fairy) in Copleston's context.

Yet even in this case [of the cow or the buttercup] knowledge of some universal characteristics is necessary. For even if you cannot assign the difference of some species, yet you have got to define it, if you define at all, in function of some universal characteristics possessed by the whole class. (Copleston, op. cit., p. 305)

But on the contrary, Wittgenstein's discussion of the word 'game' makes clear that there need not -- because there is not -- be a "universal characteristic" -- a one defining thing in common -- possessed by all games. There are classes that are not defined by a universal characteristic, or in other words, there are concepts that have indefinite borders. Indeed, an examination of the facts in plain view seems to show that most things named by common names do not have common natures. Copleston's "necessary" and "got to" is a requirement he brings to the investigation, not the result of the investigation, as if he were to say: "A priori reasoning tells us that ..." rather than asking: "What does experience show us?" That is the difference between the approaches of metaphysics-philosophy (metaphysics) and logic-philosophy (logic of language) to questions of language meaning.

Is there not such a thing then as definition by examples -- indeed, is it always possible to define a word by another method (e.g. with synonyms, equivalent words)? Or are we going to say that some words "cannot be defined" because there is no common-nature definition to serve as an explanation of their meaning ? -- i.e. when is a definition (explanation of meaning) not an explanation of meaning (definition)? Definitions serve language, not metaphysical knowledge (although of course which they serve is the very question "What is philosophy?" asks).

It is as though one had a dim realization of a universal, but could not adequately define or grasp it clearly. (Copleston, op. cit., ibid.)

As though there were "an unformulated definition" (PI § 75). Well, but a definition that goes unformulated forever is no definition. The mirage of "a dim realization" arises from the assumption that there is a universal to be grasped -- why? Because "there must be"; in other words, that there is a universal is a preconception. And a false preconception -- as the facts in plain view show. Those facts, and not what Newton called "hypotheses", are the true master in philosophy: "this rule we must follow, that the argument of induction may not be evaded by hypotheses" (Rule IV of Newton's Rules for Reasoning in Philosophy). An "hypothesis" is what "a dimly realised universal that cannot be adequately defined or grasped clearly" is.

Newton's standard here is related to the standard of knowing the historical Socrates set for philosophy, namely being able to give an account of what you know to others in words that can be put to the tests of reason and experience to be agreed to or refuted in cross-questioning. If you cannot "adequately define" the universal presumed to exist, then you cannot define it because there is no universal. Period. To presume there is a universal, although you can never say what it is, is to think you know what you do not know. The Socratic standard must be upheld if the meaning of language is to be objective (verifiable) rather than a matter of mere conjecture; or, in other words, so that there be a logic of language at all.

Universal definition, in the sense of real ['real' as in 'ultimate reality'] essential definition would thus remain the ideal at any rate, even if in practice empirical science can get along without attaining the ideal, and Aristotle is of course speaking of science in its ideal type. (Copleston, ibid.)

If empirical science lacks an essential definition, that is not because it has not discovered one -- but because it has not assigned one. Concepts define phenomena, not vice versa. It may not be useful in some cases for science to close a concept's borders, and in any case, concepts are always subject to revision. An essential definition may not always be the ideal: sometimes, especially in the early stages, a working hypothesis may be the ideal.

In philosophy we should look for anessential definition when trying to define a word, not because there necessarily is one, but because there may be one, and looking for one will show whether a concept's borders are strict or indefinite. Socratic definition as a method, not as it were as ontology.

Wittgenstein does not explain concept-formation (PI II, xii, p. 230), but he doesn't produce a myth which pretends to explain it either, such as metaphysics does with the "theory of abstraction", which is a myth, for it is impossible to falsify. It substitutes imagination (fantasy) for the facts in plain view. It stands in the way of an objective (decisive, verifiable) logic of language.

Seeking knowledge of the world versus Seeking a clear view of our concepts

Aristotle is seeking knowledge of things (which, according to Bertrand Russell, is what philosophers have always done), whereas Wittgenstein is seeking clarity about language conventions (these being, on his account, the source of conceptual confusion, which is what all philosophical problems amount to).

Wittgenstein used various methods for clarifying a word's meaning (in Wittgenstein's selected sense of the word 'meaning'), e.g. to ask for the word's use in the language as if it were a workman's tool or as if it were a piece in a game (e.g. a chessman), or to ask how we learned to use the word or how we would teach someone else to use it. Another method was

... to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use. (ibid. § 116)

Of what importance is a word's "original home" if the "metaphysical use" of that word is not nonsense (mere undefined sound or marks)? When Plato talks about the soul or mind (Greek psyche) as if 'mind' were the name of an invisible object, what is served by pointing out that in that word's original home (our everyday "language game" DEF.= an activity using language that is compared to playing a game according to rules), the word 'mind' is not used as the name of an object?

'What do you have in mind?' 'I can see it with my mind's eye.' (Is 'the eye of God' the name of an object?) 'It has been weighing on my mind.' 'Keep in mind that tomorrow is Thursday.' 'I hope you don't mind.' 'A beautiful mind.' 'An untrained mind.' 'I must have been out of my mind.' 'They are of one mind.' (These are not examples of figurative uses of the word 'mind', but normal uses.)

And now the philosopher asks: 'What is the mind?' He jumps from a phenomenon, namely thought, to a word he presumes to be the name of "the organ of thought, the place where thinking goes on", namely 'the mind'. But that is jumping the grammatical track (rules are like rails); as a description of our language's grammar it is false. Nevertheless, the metaphysicist does conjure up a picture, but a picture that is the product of his imagination only, like a fairy tale, not a picture of reality. Nevertheless, it is a picture, not nonsense.

Religion teaches that the soul can exist when the body has disintegrated. Now do I understand this teaching? -- Of course I understand it -- I can imagine plenty of things in connection with it. And haven't pictures of these things been painted? And why should such a picture be only an imperfect rendering of the spoken doctrine? Why should it not do the same service as the words? And it is the service which is the point. (PI II, iv, p. 178)

Do metaphysical -- Fichte calls idealism a "speculative position"; it cannot be pictured -- and religious pictures do the same service as the words? Plato's soul isn't a miniature winged man; Plato's psyche is invisible, imperceptible, immaterial. Michelangelo didn't think that God the Father looks like the old man of the Sistine ceiling (LC ii, p. 63); the Father is invisible, imperceptible, immaterial. Well, but what service do the words do? Plato: the soul has and will after death exist independently of the body. God created man. The pictures are art; they are superfluous, not equivalent, to the words.

Is it criticism of Plato's views about the soul to point out that they are speculative? Why -- because they cannot be verified and can only be falsified by logical self-inconsistency? But the metaphysicist is already aware of this. Or why -- because the metaphysicist is deluded in believing that his imaginings are insights into ultimate reality (as e.g. especially clearly in natural theology)? But does speculation never yield insight? Insight into concept relations, certainly, but into anything else?

If, despite all this, there is a metaphysical use of language, then what is the point of Wittgenstein's project to banish metaphysics from philosophy? Or has Wittgenstein really proved that all metaphysical speculation is merely conceptual self-mystification? Russell about Wittgenstein's later philosophy: "... and its negative doctrines unfounded."

What then is Logic?

Query: logic's real definition.
Query: real definition of logic.

Does logic have an existence independent of our language? Whenever trying to define a word, "go back to first principles". First, what is the word 'logic'? It is marks on paper, spoken sounds, and therefore, second: what gives those marks and sounds meaning? According to Wittgenstein: the meaning of a word is its use in the language it belongs to (PI § 43) -- in many although not in all cases (because e.g. some words are names). But there is no "general" (ibid. § 71) = essential definition of the word 'logic', because the things we call 'logic' do not all share a defining quality or common nature. In this respect, the rules for using the word 'logic' are like the rules for using the word 'game', i.e. not strict but indefinite at the borders.

There are many meanings of the word 'meaning' -- and therefore many types of definitions. But is there a "thing" named 'logic' to offer a real definition for -- i.e. to construct an hypothesis about as Aristotle constructs for the thing named 'thunder'? There are many other types of definitions, however, that can be given for the word 'logic'. For example, we can ask for the etymology of the word 'logic'; or how the word 'logic' has been defined historically by various philosophers; or how 'logic' is defined in the textbooks found on the library shelf.

But as logic is part of philosophy, there is the history of logic and there are the views of philosophers, but there is also logic from the point of view of one who philosophizes. And so where is the essence of logic = logic's real definition to be found?

The word 'logic' as jargon

When Wittgenstein identifies logic with language meaning rather than with structure (syntax), that is not merely jargon; it is the result of an investigation. Nonetheless, since Wittgenstein's definition of the word 'grammar' is jargon, and because he uses the words 'grammar' and 'logic' interchangeably, the word 'logic' is jargon (Any revised concept is jargon).

Years ago a kind directory editor described this site as a "study of Wittgenstein's view of grammar as a tool for philosophizing", which is good -- if one knows that the word 'grammar' is jargon in Wittgenstein's philosophy. Therefore, although the meaning is the same, it could be less confusing -- by avoiding suggestions of syntax or form -- to use the characterization "a study of Wittgenstein's view of logic as a tool for philosophizing", or "a study of Wittgenstein's use of the question of language meaning in philosophy".

Is there no essence of logic?

What might be meant by the expression "real definition of a concept" other than: what do all applications of a word have in common, because what else do we mean by the word 'concept' than 'rules for the use of a word' (Well, sometimes we mean a picture or model, a conception of what a thing is or of how it works, a theory)? But many things have been called 'logic' over the centuries, and do they do not all have something in common? By some philosophers 'logic' has been applied to the subject of formal linguistic relations only, but by other philosophers it has been applied to the subject of linguistic meaning (Socrates, Plato, Wittgenstein).

As a general definition, of course, one might define the word 'logic' as "the rules or the art of reasoning". But what is the meaning of that definition? There will be different answers -- i.e. different explanations of meaning of logic DEF.= the rules or art of reasoning -- given in reply. Whether or not there is an essence of logic will depend on the one who selects what is and what isn't to be called 'logic', e.g. one possible essence would be: the rules of deductive argument.

If definition DEF.= explanation of meaning, then is this a general definition of the word 'game': "one of a collection of various human activities having various rules and, sometimes, equipment, undertaken for a variety of reasons". That isn't a definition in the Socratic sense of 'definition' because it could be applied to things that are not games (e.g. law courts).

There is more than one definition of 'definition'. The next is the third so far.

But if by 'definition' is meant 'a description of our use of a word in the language' (Wittgenstein), then the only way to define the word 'game' is to give examples of games, pointing out various similarities between the examples (which will also show that games have no one defining thing in common, no essence).

But if words do not have fixed meanings ...

Query: Wittgenstein, careless language. [The query may allude to those of Wittgenstein's students who drew the mistaken conclusion that there was no need to take much care in one's choice of words.]

If a word doesn't have an essential meaning, then how can we use it to mean anything; won't we be thwarted by vagueness? Just so. Because most words don't have essential meanings (essential definitions); it is the normal, not the exceptional case, for words not to have essential meanings, and therefore for their meaning to change from context to context. And so, not to be thwarted by ambiguity, we have to specify what we mean in each particular case by giving examples to explain what we mean. If we cannot give examples, then we ourselves do not know what we are talking about (examples are the true masters in logic of language). And sometimes we must make our own rule for the use of a word (i.e. invent jargon). We can be very specific clear about what we mean if we take the trouble.

Saying that generally words don't have fixed meanings is a caution against taking it for granted that they do -- as if a word had something [an atmosphere] called a "meaning" that it carried around with it wherever it went -- as if once one had grasped [abstracted] the essence of a word's meaning [i.e. "somehow" perceived its real definition], one no longer needed to be concerned with explaining oneself in the particular case (thus Kant's statement about examples and illustrations being unnecessary, and also the vagueness of legal language), and therefore one could make all sorts of statements about logic without explaining what one meant by the word 'logic', because of course that word had the same meaning here, there and everywhere else it appeared.

Realism versus Nominalism

Note: There is further discussion of this topic under the title "Cats and Catness", and "the essence of madness" (Polonius), and the question of universals in Mediaeval philosophy.

Nominalism contrasts with Realism, which is the idea that the word 'shape' names an invisible object called a 'concept', that shape-ness is an object that exists independently of its name (nomen). Sometimes the word 'shape' is called a "universal" or common name, in contrast to a "particular" or proper name. And so Realism is the idea that universals exist; they are not merely the names of classes or categories of things, but instead shape itself exists, not merely square, circular, and oval shapes and the like, so classified by convention.

Or again: by the word 'Realism' is meant the notion that the word 'shape' names not only a class or category of objects (e.g. square, circle, oval) but also an invisible object (Plato calls it a "Form" or "Archetype") that exists independently of that class of objects (and also independently of the human mind, which is the inventor of concepts).

So the words 'justice' and 'piety' -- or e.g. the word 'philosophy' names not only the works of such-and-such philosopher or such-and-such questions [philosophical problems], but also an indefinable something [universal] apart from the members of the category 'philosophy', and that indefinable something is the essence or Form of philosophy. And therefore the real definition of philosophy -- i.e. theory about what the nature of philosophy is -- is not a convention (as is the nominal definition of the word 'philosophy') but dictated by ultimate reality.

But what that real definition is isn't known or apparently knowable. Even if there is a cow in the pasture, an empirical investigation may not discover its essence for you -- the preconception (for it is not the result of an investigation) of Realism being that a cow must have an essence (namely cow-ness), the defining quality that all cows have in common that makes them cows.

In Plato's view, knowledge of such definitions, which would be knowledge of the Forms, Universals, Absolutes, or Archetypes, is impossible "while we keep to the body" (Phaedo 99d-100a), because the Forms do not exist in the world of sense perception (Parmenides 133c); they can only be apprehended by the soul free of its body. [That is an example of the kind of unverifiable picture that is called by the names 'speculation' and 'metaphysics'.]

If I know what I am talking about, and I may not know what I am talking about, Plato cannot have a "logic of language" -- i.e. an objective way to distinguish language with meaning from mere nonsense -- because it follows from Plato's view that, since the true or real meaning of a name is the thing it names, and since that thing is an unknowable Form, there is no way to objectively distinguish between sense and nonsense (which is, at the same time, to distinguish between truth and falsity). Meaning = truth = knowledge can be no more than "whatever seems right" -- to the philosopher (because Plato argues against Protagoras's claim that a donkey's judgment stands on the same level as his own).

What is the essence of a thing -- assuming that the thing has an essence? Because our language's common names may not correspond to the Forms. If there is a corresponding Form, then has what we say meaning? And if there is no corresponding Form, is what we say nonsense -- or fantasy? Can the existence of something named by a common name be a misconception, e.g. cats (What would it be like if all mankind were mistaken)? Whether or not a common name of our language corresponds to a Form, that is to say to reality, is unknowable in Plato's account.

Transubstantiation (Aristotle, substance, accident)

In the picture that is transubstantiation the substance is changed whereas the accidents remain unchanged. (Equivalents: 'substance' = [in Aristotle, not Plato] 'essence (that without which a thing could not be what it is)', and 'accident' = 'inessential quality' or 'attribute') The substance of the wine is changed into the blood of Christ, but the accidents of the wine are not changed, e.g. its color, acidity, scent -- i.e. the wine changes in no perceptible way.

No one has ever seen -- or indeed could see -- a bare substance, but only the qualities of the particular instance of that substance. With respect to Fluffy the cat, the essence (the sine qua non) of Fluffy is "catness". Now no one, of course, has ever seen "catness" -- that is to say, the bare essence; what we have seen, and indeed can see, are individual cats, e.g. Fluffy's eyes are blue, fur black, tail white-ringed, and so on; those qualities do not belong to the essence or substance of Fluffy: all those qualities are called 'accidents' (mere appearances but not the underlying reality): they are, as it were, "accidental" to the essence of Fluffy, which is "catness" -- i.e. those qualities can change without the essence of Fluffy changing. So it is said, but it is a strange thing to say.

The statements above belong to the view that the substance and the essence of a thing are identical; however, Plato's view is that they are not: the Platonic Forms or Archetypes exist independently of individual things (which the historical Socrates did not say and which Aristotle denies), but as to what the substance of a thing is, I don't believe Plato "thought in those terms" (If the substance of a thing is its body, then a thing's substance is inessential, at least to things with a soul). I believe -- although I don't know -- that substance and accident is Aristotle's idea only.

It's really rather difficult to talk about some "thing" no one has ever seen and which cannot be captured (You cannot isolate the substance 'catness' in a box).

Aristotle's distinction between substance and accident is an "abstraction" -- i.e. it is an example of disregarding "certain aspects of things when we work" (F.H. Bradley). But if those aspects are precisely what make Fluffy the individual cat that Fluffy is, then Fluffy is not reducible to catness. (Physics is abstraction, but to say that Eddington's elephant is reducible to the measurements that interest physics is "barbarous metaphysics"). There is no Form 'Socrates', but the essences of Socrates' various qualities are themselves Forms. Plato does not say how these combine to add up to Socrates.

The substance-accident distinction is used in the Aristotelian account -- i.e. an account that makes use of Aristotle's concepts -- that is called 'transubstantiation'. It is one possible account of the changing of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, one which is acceptable to both Catholic and Orthodox Christianity. Note, however, that transubstantiation belongs to theology, to theology making use of Aristotle's concepts 'substance' and 'accident', not to dogma; the dogma is only that the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ.

Which things have substance, and which do not?

What is the substance of a thing? Can you ask, What is the essence of substance? That is, is that combination of words nonsense?

Do only physical (Why? is there some other kind?) objects have substance, e.g. can you ask -- i.e. is this combination of words undefined -- for the substance of a phenomenon such as love or justice or a shadow? But what if, as we normally use the word 'love', there is no essence of love -- i.e. no defining quality common to all the various phenomena we call 'love'?

Is asking what the substance of something is different from asking for a Socratic definition (as Aristotle describes that to be) of that thing? Of course, if it is impossible to say -- i.e. if there is no defined technique for saying -- what "catness" is, then maybe it is also impossible to say what "love-ness" is. So it seems that Aristotle and his followers must simply presume the existence of substances, even if only for the sake of making Aristotle's substance-accident distinction.

"What is the substance of a triangle in geometry?" In this case, although a triangle in deductive plane geometry is not tangible [Note.-- The expression "geometric object" suggests a false account of the grammar of geometry's terms 'point', 'line', 'plane', 'circle', and so on], we might say that the substance of a triangle is the rules that define the word 'triangle' in geometry as there is no picture of the common nature of triangles ("triangleness").

Logic from a Metaphysical Point of View

Query: nominal and real definition of logic.
Query: nominal meaning of logic in philosophy.

If someone is convinced that something exists, is there a point in telling him that it does not exist (cf. PI § 52) -- even if you explain why it does not exist? (Geometry's points, for example. "A point DEF.= an address in the plane" -- will someone looking for an object named 'point' accept that definition?)

This is what the metaphysician wants to say about "logic", that it has both a "nominal" meaning (i.e. a more or less arbitrary verbal definition, a convention or rules for the use of a word) and a "real [or, true] meaning". We can give a nominal definition of the common name 'dog' -- if by 'nominal' here we mean: point to dogs (because we do not define the word 'dog' verbally) -- and then we can investigate dogs without any reference to the word 'dog'. But the case of words that do not name objects, there is nothing to point to, nothing to investigate independently of its "name". Of course you could say there are logic books, there is the history of the word 'logic', and there is even the stuff that I write to point to. One might form an hypothesis or real definition of logic from that. (The grammar of names of phenomena is different from names of objects; concepts define phenomena and therefore phenomena cannot be investigated apart from the concepts that set their limits. Dogs and cats do not need a box, but love and hope do.)

Phenomena are not "abstract objects" in contrast to "tangible objects". It is misleading in philosophy to use the expression 'abstract object' at all. (False grammatical analogy: if there are visible objects, then there are invisible objects. If there is a physical object dog, then there is an abstract object dogness. The word 'abstract' is not the antithesis of the word 'physical', just as the word 'part' is not the antithesis of the word 'whole'.)

What is logic? There is a word 'logic', which may be marks on paper, spoken sounds (language considered as a physical object), and then what gives a word meaning? In most cases, Wittgenstein will say: its use in the language (PI § 43).

In metaphysics we may want to say that the meaning of an "abstract object" such as logic is the thought, idea, or notion that the word 'logic' names, as if this case were very similar to the case of the word 'dog', a "physical object". And if it is our presumption (preconception) that words are names, and that the meaning of a name is the thing the word names, then of we want to know the word's meaning we are going to ask about the nature of that thing.

There really is no reason to call the word 'logic' a name at all, unless we simply mean that 'logic' is the name of a subject -- whatever that subject may be -- found in books on library shelves, taught at universities, etc.

But again, that definition of the word 'logic' isn't what metaphysics seeks, because it doesn't explain what the subject matter of logic is. That is what the metaphysician wants, to grasp the essence of logic -- purely by thinking about it (pondering). That that essence would be logic's real definition.

And that is another way to be confused. That 'logic' is not the name of an object, we may admit, but then we say: But 'logic' is the name of a subject, a phenomenon, and surely that phenomenon in some sense exists (but in which sense)? And maybe we have the picture of a cloud floating above in the sky somewhere -- i.e. an object of some kind, and we think: that object is logic itself, whatever logic itself is.

There are notes above about real definitions of the word 'philosophy'. But a more striking example is the word 'force' or 'gravity'. What is force as such? What is gravity in itself, gravity really? An "invisible something" is sought.

"Abstract objects" do not have real definitions, because 'real definition' is defined only in those cases where we can identify something independently of its name. In other words, 'real definition' only has clear meaning if it is equivalent in meaning to 'empirical proposition' or 'scientific hypothesis'. But in this context maybe there is a real definition of logic.

"Abstract objects" --i.e. 'concepts' -- have only verbal definitions, and it was methods for giving verbal definitions (explanations of meaning) that Wittgenstein wanted from philosophy, not "definitions of objects" (PI § 43).

"The existence of concepts"

Query: how does Socrates understand the nature of wisdom?

What does Socrates believe "the real nature of wisdom" to be? The query requests "a real definition of a concept" -- as if the word 'wisdom' were the name of something with an independent existence that one might have a theory about the nature of.

"What are the rules for using the word 'wisdom'?" versus "What is the nature of wisdom?" In either case we say that one is asking for "the meaning of wisdom", which is a quite confusing expression if we do not define the word 'meaning' in an objective way but leave it to whatever suggests itself to each individual.

That is the important accomplishment of Wittgenstein's logic of language, that it makes the distinction between sense and nonsense objective. In that logic, to investigate a concept is to investigate the use of words. There are no real definitions of concepts -- i.e. the combination of words 'real definition of a concept' is undefined ("mere sound without sense").

The picture we have (which does not show us how we use the word 'concept', but merely mystifies us) is that concepts are, like Plato's Forms, independent "things", perhaps on the other side of the sky, or perhaps "in our minds".

Describing the false grammatical account I wrote that our instinct, upbringing, and the form of our language, all lead us to imagine that if we are talking, and we are not talking nonsense, then we are talking about some object -- if not a visible one, then an invisible one.

Where our language suggests a body and there is none: there, we would like to say, is a spirit. (PI § 36)

What we deny is that the picture ... gives us the correct idea of the use of the word ... We say that this picture ... stands in the way of our seeing the use of the word as it is. (ibid. § 305)

A picture held us captive.... (ibid. § 115)

What we can ask is: what did Socrates understand Apollo's oracle at Delphi to mean by saying that no man is wiser than Socrates? Or, in other words, what do we mean by Socratic wisdom? Something that has nothing to do with "the nature of wisdom" -- whatever that is when it's at home -- but with a question such as: What is the nature of human life -- and in the context of that nature, how will the wise man (in contrast to the foolish man or fool) think and live (if by 'wise man' we mean 'the man who knows how human life should be conducted')?

Language is not the transparent clothing of thought. Quite the contrary, to continue with this metaphor: language is the opaque clothing of thought. Thinking is "operating with linguistic signs" (BB p. 6, 15-16), which are mere spoken sounds or marks on paper (although that is not the only thing we call 'thinking'), and again: what gives those sign meaning?

Is regarding words as names of objects the origin of all philosophical confusion?

If we find ourselves in a philosophical fog, we may think to attribute our lostness to the nebulousness of things, but our confusion is about the logic of our language. The fog can only be blown away by a correct understanding of the relation between rules of grammar and sense and nonsense.

The Socratic standard in philosophy is, in Wittgenstein's words: every explanation I can give myself I can give you too (PI § 210; cf. Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1), and if I cannot explain my words then I am talking nonsense. This would belong to a definition of 'nonsense' in my philosophy. Any other standard I would regard as intolerable there.

We have doubts about whether or not we should call anything nonsense -- because to call something nonsense sounds too final, whereas, we think, "Maybe there is something here that I am not seeing". And so we are uncertain when hearing the statements of philosophers about some "abstract idea" or other:

Wittgenstein believed he had shown that when we philosophize the distinction between a factual and a conceptual investigation is not clear to us ... (From the Introduction)

That is the first point that should be made about our uncertainty. The second is:

In a sense of 'nonsense', this language is not nonsense: it is composed of English words, each of which we know how to do things with; in this it is not like random marks of ink splashed on paper or the sounds an infant makes. But we don't know how to do anything with this combination of words, and in that sense of 'nonsense', it is nonsense. (Cf. PI § 500) ('Nonsense' and Contradiction)

Ask yourself: what is a serviceable definition of 'nonsense' for philosophy? How much vagueness is tolerable? Is it tolerable to, in the words of Pascal, mix up verbal and real definitions all over the place, without ever being clear about which is which?


Facts versus Theory in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein

Note: there is further discussion of the place of the "facts in plain view" in the logic of language.

What is common to them all? ... if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. (PI § 66)

Metaphysics and word magic ("meaning in itself")

The below query shows why the Philosophical Investigations is more difficult to understand than the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, despite the obscurity of the latter. The TLP is a traditional work of metaphysics: philosophy = speculative theory-making [e.g. The essence ("general form") of the proposition: "This is how things stand"] resulting in a collection of doctrines [Any language other than the propositions of natural science is nonsense] [That is the logic -- the real logic -- of our language].

In contrast, the Philosophical Investigations sees philosophy (conceives the project of philosophy) differently: philosophical theorizing shows only that the logic = semantic grammar of our language is misunderstood -- as Wittgenstein now defines 'meaning'. The theories we thought we were constructing were no more than "houses of cards" (PI § 118), and the only task left for philosophy is to show why this is so. "Philosophical investigations = conceptual investigations" (Z § 458), i.e. not the investigation of phenomena (speculation), but of the use of words in the language (grammar).

"What makes you think that a grammatical joke is deep?" (PI § 111)

She struggled with these questions as a Zen novice does with a koan. The latter is a seeming contradiction or impossibility, given by the Zen master so that the novice "tastes" the limitation of the rationalizing mind. A koan might be: "Picture your face before you were born." The novice is led to see the inadequacy of the human mind and the need of the Absolute -- which can only be experienced by the "heart", not grasped by the mind. (Paul Glynn, The Smile of a Ragpicker: the life of Satoko Kitahara (1992), ii, 20)

That is an example of what Wittgenstein calls "metaphysics" (whereas it is only a subset of metaphysics) -- i.e. of word-magic, namely assuming that every combination of words must have a meaning (as false analogies may suggest, e.g. that since you can picture your face before you were married, you can also picture your face before you existed). But the only "limitation of the rationalizing mind" here is the distinction between sense and nonsense (God himself can't understand nonsense -- i.e. undefined combinations of words -- because there nothing to understand).

I don't mean that some meaning can't be invented for any combination of words, only that without that ad hoc invention, limitless combinations of words are without meaning -- i.e. a normal, defined use in our language. Correct syntax is not a guarantor of meaning, or do you think every imaginable combination of words must have a meaning? That thought, that instinct to believe in word magic, is superstition.

"Take care of the sounds and the sense will take care of itself." That would only be true in a language in which following rules of syntax could not produce nonsense, which in our language it does.

Corliss: "I refuse to ever so much as even speak to him again. After the twelfth of next month, of course."

Harry to Mrs. Archer: "That's English. It must mean something." (Meet Corliss Archer, "Harry Gives Advice" (1954))

"Nice weather we had tomorrow." (Laurel and Hardy, Oliver the Eighth (1934))

What makes you think that a grammatical joke is deep? And that is the depth of philosophy. (PI § 111)

The depth of what Wittgenstein calls "philosophy", which he says is really no more than confusion over language meaning, as if that were all philosophy is!

Glynn compares 'Picture your face before you were born' to Christian paradoxes, but that comparison is false. When e.g. Jesus says to the disciples "Who is greater, the one who is served at table or the one who serves? Surely the one who is served. And yet here am I among you as the one who serves" (Luke 22.27), this asks the question How can the master be the servant? But the contrast is between this world and the kingdom of God, between earthly power and Christian love; and that is why the Lord's question is not nonsense, i.e. an undefined combination of words, because Jesus's picture of the kingdom of God is its background. Jesus's paradox is not therefore an example of a koan (as Glynn explains the meaning of that word). (And I don't think that Jesus's saying that God is a father who loves his children -- a proposition that is puzzling because it contradicts so much of our experience of this world, a proposition of which Schweitzer says that "it is not altogether easy to believe that God is the father" (I would only say about the proposition that it not a thesis to be put to the test) -- is an example of a koan either, because the language is not an undefined combination of words, or combination of words without a normal use in our language, as is e.g. 'Milk me sugar' (PI § 498).) Rather than 'Picture your face before you were born', why not 'Your picture born before you were face'? as a demonstration of "the limitation of the rationalizing mind". But this has nothing to do with "the limits of reason". Language is a tool man has invented to serve his needs and interests; it has no life of its own. (And further nonsense = undefined combinations of words.)

Family resemblances is not a theory

Query: Wittgenstein's theory of family resemblances.

Wittgenstein's metaphor is not a theory: (1) because nothing is hidden ("family resemblance", unlike e.g. the theory of abstraction, is not a claim about "the reality hidden behind the appearances"), and (2) because family resemblance is not falsifiable: "Contrary to Wittgenstein's thesis, all games really do have a common nature, an essence which everyone has overlooked until now" (like the ether of metaphysics: "Some day it may be found; one can never tell.") A statement about the facts in plain view such as "The word 'five' consists of four letters" cannot be called someone's theory about the word 'five'. (A comparison of games.)

Nor could we speak of "Wittgenstein's theory of grammar" either, because when Wittgenstein redefines the word 'grammar' (revises the concept 'grammar') he explains his meaning with a verbal not a real definition. It is not a theory that we sometimes explain the meaning of the word 'flows' by pointing at a river (G.E. Moore).

Wittgenstein doesn't conjecture about why the word 'game' has the grammar that it has; he only says that it does have that grammar. And no one will dispute what he says (any more than the result of a simple arithmetical calculation like 4 + 5 = 9); it is something we all can see (or can easily recognize if it is pointed out to us) and must admit (Z § 211; PI § 599). A rational doubt requires rational grounds.

[What would it be like if everyone were mistaken?]

Although most concepts have more or less indefinite boundaries, Wittgenstein did not say that every word must have the same grammar as the word 'game'. As to other words Wittgenstein's method was: Look and see (PI § 66).

We say that games do not all have something in common -- a characteristic that is defining in the Socratic sense: a definition that includes all A, and just as clearly excludes all non-A -- but if we can't say that as a simple assertion, true or false, then we can't make any simple assertions without it being claimed that they are theories: everything becomes theory. And that clearly can't be right. It is not correct to say every statement is theoretical -- i.e. the expression 'statement of facts' has a use; it is not nonsense. For example, that both volleyball and badminton use nets but do not use rackets is a simple statement of fact; it is not a theory.

[Goethe was speaking in a very different context.]

The word 'theory', like the word 'concept', is too vague by far (RFM vii § 45, p. 412). We have to explain what we mean by it in the particular case -- i.e. state a rule, a definition. Because that word is in practice used carelessly [thoughtlessly]. Without an assigned definition it is a too-blunt instrument. If no definition is assigned, the word 'theory' is an instrument with which to make yourself insensible, dull-witted, confused, self-mystified. It is an instrument that makes people stupid, because lacking a definition it makes thinking cloudy rather than clear. This is a case where TLP 4.112 really applies: "Without philosophy thoughts are cloudy and indistinct, opaque and blurred."

Why do we call the "theory of abstraction" a theory? Because it is an unverifiable speculation: it attempts to account for something, e.g. the concept-word (category) 'games', by describing the reality that "must" be behind that category -- i.e. what "must" be going on in the background, even though we can't [What kind of impossibility is this?] see that background. It is an example of a metaphysical theory. [By some definitions, it is not a scientific theory -- or rather, not the best kind of scientific theory -- because it is not falsifiable (although any scientific theory may be made anomaly-proof by interpreting the data to fit the theory rather than requiring the theory to fit the data).]

Query: what do you mean when we say that theories are abstractions of reality?

Theories as abstractions. If theories in the sciences are "abstractions", in what sense are they? (A theory is a way of looking at things: it always contains an element of choice: it is a selection of facts plus imagination to organize them. See also Eddington, the elephant and physics. That is an answer.)


Why are we not afraid?

There is an earlier discussion of self-reliance versus god-reliance, and also a discussion of God as a working-hypothesis and superstition.

Why are we not afraid of the natural world? For it does seem to be the condition of primitive man to be afraid of that world? Possibly because for us it is a wholly natural world in which phenomena have natural rather than supernatural causes. We ask what rather than who is the cause of natural phenomena. Europe's Age of Reason, then the Enlightenment, embodied the self-assurance that not only is man rational, but that nature also is "rational" in the sense intelligible and predictable.

In former times and among primitive peoples explanations ended with nature spirits or gods who were themselves a mystery and beyond whom lay mystery, whereas now we regard our picture of a soulless nature obeying natural laws as having the same explanatory role. Whereas in former times the unexplained or inexplicable lay all around us, the attitude towards science of our times makes it appear as if everything had been explained or surely will be. Thus our science is not a door to mystery, as was the notion 'gods'. (which was why Drury wanted "to keep wonder secure" (DW p. 114): in our times one must be reawakened to mystery.)

So people stop short at natural laws as at something unassailable, as did the ancients at God and Fate.

And they both are right and wrong. But the ancients were clearer, in so far as they recognized one clear terminus, whereas the modern system makes it appear as if everything were explained. (TLP 6.372, tr. C.K. Ogden)

Question: if we were suddenly forced to live under the most primitive conditions, were all science and technology to disappear from our life, would we not retain our "scientific world-picture": all phenomena have natural (as opposed to supernatural) explanations, our sense of "perfect intellectual security"?

Would we really not be afraid? We would not be "irrationally" afraid: there is good reason to fear being struck by lightening if you stand under tree during a thunderstorm, but your fear is not that Zeus the thunderer may target you for your wrong-doings.

But if that is so, then what of when natural science was in its early days? The "reasonableness", the calm of the ancient Athenians, or rather of the Greek Sophists and philosophers -- isn't their fearlessness much more remarkable than ours? Because, one thinks, how can ignorance of the causes of natural phenomena -- particularly the unpredictability of the weather -- not generate fear (which would be expressed in the pictures of superstition, e.g. belief in capricious nature spirits, the swelling of the sea and earthquakes -- the will of Poseidon) even among educated men? Why wasn't Socrates afraid? (Because he did not think he knew what he did not know (Plato, Apology 29a). And because of the project in philosophy of Thales of Miletus.)

Are we afraid in the dark? It is not irrational to be afraid when you feel defenseless, if you are defenseless. Nature is not always rampaging, crops not always failing. The source of our peace of mind is our belief that phenomena have natural, not supernatural, causes, not malicious spirits, not wrathful gods, capricious, judgmental beings to fear, and, what is related, our confidence in the regularity of nature? We dismiss any other world-picture as superstition.

... we cannot exclude the possibility that highly civilized peoples will become liable to [fear natural phenomenon] again, and their civilization and the knowledge of science will not protect them against this. All the same it is true enough that the spirit in which science is carried on nowadays is not compatible with fear of this kind. (CV (1998 rev. ed.) [MS 109 200: 5.11.1930]; CV (1980) p. 5)

Irrational Fears

"Do you believe in ghosts?" Martins said to me.

"Do you?"

"I do now."

"I also believe that drunk men see things -- sometimes rats, sometimes worse." (Greene, The Third Man, Chapter 12)

Do I believe in life after death, an afterlife? I don't know. (The question is not hypothetical, not a question of knowledge, and so what do we mean when we say 'I don't know'?) But I can imagine circumstances in which I would be afraid of "the departed". The pictures are there, and for me unavoidable. Does it make anything clearer to call such fears irrational (cf. the category 'superstition').

"... and not treated as a superstition"

It is true that we can compare a picture that is firmly rooted in us to a superstition, but it is equally true that we always eventually have to reach some firm ground, either a picture or something else; so that a picture which is at the root of all our thinking is to be respected and not treated as a superstition. CV p. 83, remark from 1949; cf. OC § 166)

Well, I don't think that consequent follows from the antecedent. Just because something is used as "firm ground" doesn't make it worthy of respect. All out thinking must be examined in philosophy: nothing should be allowed to escape agreement or refutation in Socratic dialog (Plato, Apology 37e-38a). An unexamined foundational proposition is no more worthy of respect than any other unexamined proposition. And you cannot dismiss this by saying that all this amounts to nothing more than "different frames of reference, different world-pictures", although there is a point to saying that.

Belief in capricious nature spirits is superstition. Seeking supernatural causes for phenomena, and turning to "God as a working-hypothesis" when you are ignorant of causes is superstition.

Is superstition worthy of a being endowed with discourse of reason? Is superstition in accord with the excellence that is proper and unique to man? Or is rationality? Man is primarily a creature of learning rather than of instinct; a life directed by instinct, which is irrational, is unworthy of man.

It took my ancestors millennia to find a way out of the darkness of ignorance and superstition, and I don't want to go back. Anyone who says it is the same here as there (Wittgenstein) is no friend of philosophy.

The Uniformity of Nature

Why do we believe in the "uniformity of nature" -- is it not because we experience the regularities of nature in our day to day life? (But then, why should one say that we "believe in" it?) Objects fall downwards with few exceptions, the water in our teapot boils when placed over a fire, bedclothes are permanently inanimate (lifeless), sparrows do not harm us, one storm is more or less like another (It belongs to the predictability of the wind that the wind is largely unpredictable, but nonetheless we are familiar with its effects) ...

If anyone said that information about the past could not convince him that something would happen in the future, I would not understand him.... If these are not grounds, then what are grounds? (PI § 481)

If someone said he did not believe these are grounds, we would say that the way that person lived showed the falseness of his assertion, because our life shows what we treat as grounds. If we had no expectations about the future based on information about the past, then how would we know how to act at all, what to do next: without the ability to predict, we would be paralyzed. An animal might be described that acts solely on instinct, but a human being is not that animal.

The cow sees and doesn't see. Without a concept it is "blind" to what it sees (unconceptualized percepts). It sees "something", but what it sees is unintelligible. And experience is no remedy for this: the creature of instinct remains blind. The limit of science is concept formation.

The Greek philosophers and Sophists did not believe that natural phenomena have supernatural causes (Plato, Phaedrus 229c-e; Herodotus, History 7.129). That is not to say that they always had an explanation for natural phenomena, but that they noted the same regularities ("uniformity") that we do. And, for some, because they believed that the gods were good, and that what is good does good and therefore is not to be feared.

"A light that shines in the darkness of fear" (Being freed from superstition)

At the time and in the place in equatorial Africa where he had his hospital, Schweitzer wrote:

For the African, Christianity is the light which shines in the darkness of fear. It assures him that he is not under the control of nature-spirits, ancestral gods, or fetishes. It testifies that no man exercises any uncanny power over another. It signifies that only God's will is sovereign in all events. (Zwischen Wasser und Urwald ["Between Water and Primeval Forest" ("On the Edge of the Primeval Forest")], quoted in Pilgrimage to Humanity (1961), tr. Stuermann, p. 12)

By 'Christianity' Schweitzer means his own understanding of that religion (in which God is known by the love we discover within the human heart, certainly not a religion in which God is identified with the values displayed by the natural world), which does not include a mind tormented by questions about whether it is among the elect or faces an eternity in Hell, or a God who is capricious, exclusivist and genocidal. Such a God would simply replace one "darkness of fear" with another.

Query: what does "superstition" mean in the Catholic Church?

SUPERSTITION: Attributing to creatures powers which belong only to God. We sin by superstition when we attribute supernatural power to the stars (astrology), amulets, charms, chain letters, chain prayers, incantations, and the like. The practice of superstition in the belief that such things have the power to control destiny is a matter of grave sin, but commonly the sin is less serious because of the ignorance, simplicity, or vague intention of the superstitious person. Likewise, traditional superstitious practices, such as throwing rice at weddings or not sitting 13 at table, may be sinful if one firmly believes that such practices influence the course of events. (A Practical Dictionary of Biblical and General Catholic Information, Chicago: Catholic Press, 1950)

Whereas other foreign missionaries were concerned with saving souls from eternal damnation", Albert Schweitzer was concerned with freeing the human mind from fear. It was fear of nature spirits, ancestors, taboos and fetchers (sorcerers) that ruled the lives of the primitive Africans he worked among. To them, Schweitzer believed, the Gospel of Jesus was a liberation from those fears: it replaced those primitive fears with a different world-picture, one in which there were no supernatural powers except those of God the father (Schweitzer did not neglect that it is not easy to believe that God is the father).

The "child of nature" is not free (He has as many responsibilities as the child of civilization: his respective responsibilities are simply in many cases different) -- above all because he lives his life in superstitious fear, whereas the child of enlightened civilization does not. There is something fundamentally wrong if we say, as Wittgenstein does, that primitive man has his "way of life" and civilized man has his "way of life" -- and that all ways of life stand on the same level and that it is impossible for the critical reason of philosophy to judge between them.

Wittgenstein's statement that a picture at the root of all our thinking should not be "treated as a superstition" may be placed in the context of the following remark.

Life can educate you to "believing in God". And experiences too are what do this ... e.g. sufferings of various sorts. And they do not show us God as a sense experience does an object, nor do they give rise to conjectures about him. Experiences, thoughts, -- life can force this concept on us.

So perhaps it is similar to the concept 'object'. (CV (1998 rev. ed.) [MS 174 1v: 1950 §§ 1-2]; cf. CV (1980) p. 86)

I do not understand this comparison of the concept 'God' to the concept 'object', unless it is that both 'objects exist' and 'God exists' are rules of grammar, which they of course are, but is that all Wittgenstein meant? But everyone uses the concept 'object', not everyone the concept 'God'. Life may force that concept on Wittgenstein, but it does not force that concept on everyone. So the similarity does not seem so great, if that is all Wittgenstein meant.

Wittgenstein: the primitive man prefers his own culture. Well, the ignorant may well cling to their ignorance, but that does not make it any less ignorance. You may as well say that a child prefers its toys (or a donkey its straw, for that matter). The primitive man does not prefer sickness to health in body. And no thoughtful man prefers ignorance to health in mind. That reason, which is the specific excellence proper to man, can and must be the thoroughgoing guide to what we believe and how we live our life is the Socratic view. Wittgenstein in important ways believed the contrary.

Query: what is the real meaning of throwing rice at a wedding?

This query embodies a grave superstition. It is the superstition of believing that there are magicians called 'scientists' who know what the "real meaning" of things is. Sigmund Freud's "interpretation of dreams" -- where A is not A but "really" B, although only the trained psychoanalyst has the magical insight which can see that -- is an example of an ideology that fosters this superstition. The analyst then persuades his patient that A is really B; he does not offer his patent a verifiable proof that A is really B. (LC p. 42-45.)

This superstition shows a philosophical naïveté, if not a thoughtless credulity. It is primitive ignorance. Another example of this superstition is asking for "the real meaning" of some custom or other, as if comparative anthropology were a magical science with magical insight. What the superstitious man never asks is: How do you verify that? Is it logically possible (i.e. is the word 'verify' defined here) for anyone to verify it? Again, you are persuaded to accept a picture of things, e.g. that Christmas and Easter are "really" about the annual death and rebirth of the natural world: fall, winter, spring, summer; an event that is celebrated in various ways in all, it is said, human cultures. The comparison is there, but A is like (and therefore that in some ways also unlike, for they are not identical) BA is B (much less A is really B).

Metaphysics, too, seeks to know the "real meaning", "the reality underlying appearances" -- "the truth hidden in the shadows, the truth behind the appearances". However, it offers rational proofs -- albeit logical deductions -- of its truth or falsity. In this it is fundamentally different from superstition.


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