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Wittgenstein's Logic of Language

Chapters 1-6

Note: there are 13 chapters, divided over three Web pages. There is a Table of Contents; and an Introduction which explains the first principles of the later philosophy.

Outline of this page ...

1. Wittgenstein's Use of the Words 'Logic' and 'Grammar'

Wittgenstein compared using language to playing games where what defines a game is its rules. In his philosophy (or jargon) the study of rules is called 'logic' -- and the study of the rules of language meaning is called 'grammar'.

G.E. Moore did not find this use of the word 'grammar' clear, and so he asked Wittgenstein about it:

He said that "any explanation of the use of language" was 'grammar', but that if I explained the meaning of 'flows' by pointing at a river "we wouldn't naturally call this a 'rule of grammar'" ... that we would be using his "jargon". (Cf. PP ii, p. 276)

Everything descriptive of a "language game" is part of logic. (OC § 56) [Note 1]

To describe the logic of language, Wittgenstein made comparisons. For example, using a word is like making a move in a game, because games are played and words are used according to rules. Wittgenstein called his illustrations of this comparison "language games" (definition).

Another comparison Wittgenstein made was that words are like tools, because just as there are many kinds of work the tools in a tool chest are used to do, there are many kinds of work that words are used to do in the language.

Logic of Language

Just as we want to distinguish between truth and falsity, we want to distinguish between language with meaning and language without meaning (we don't want our philosophy to be idle talk; we want to get somewhere in our thinking). I have called the latter distinction the "logic of language". These pages are about Wittgenstein's way of making that distinction verifiable.

But basically the relation between logic and sense and nonsense is this, that when a game is played according to its rules, moves in the game make sense (rather than nonsense). And when language is used according to its rules of grammar, the language makes sense. And contrariwise, a move that breaks the rules doesn't make sense. That is the comparison Wittgenstein makes (and it depends on the rule-based meaning of 'meaning' Wittgenstein chose).

Limit to the comparison to games

The trouble with that simple summary or formula is that the concepts philosophy discusses are indefinite in meaning, or in other words, unlike the rules of most games, the rules for the use of words in philosophy aren't strict (BB p. 25). But if meaning is rule-based and there is no rule, then what becomes of the distinction between sense and nonsense? If there is no rule to break, then is there sense and nonsense in the language?

The parts of speech are both syntactic and semantic

Wittgenstein's extension of the concept 'grammar' to include whatever describes the use or meaning of words is not strange, if we recall that a word's part of speech belongs to the word's grammar. For example, the part of speech 'noun' is defined as 'the name of a person, place, or thing'. So that if we classify a particular word as a noun, we have already gone some way towards describing that word's use or meaning in the language.

In other words, 'name of a person, place, or thing' is a rule of grammar although it isn't a rule about syntax -- and therefore, if we give thought to it, we may say that Wittgenstein was using the word 'grammar' as we normally do (as at another time he told G.E. Moore he was), although Moore did not think this was true (PP ii, p. 276-277). And it's true that we don't normally call the verbal definition of a word -- e.g. by 'simile' we mean 'a comparison using like or as' -- a rule of grammar.

Schoolbook grammar does have a semantic element, but Wittgenstein calls into question schoolbook definitions, e.g. to ask whether by calling all nouns names -- whether of objects, ideas, numbers, emotions, and other "things" -- we do not cover up deep differences in the ways we use words. And so, to ask whether our schoolbook -- and the matter-of-course inferences we mistakenly draw from it -- does not lead us to misunderstand the logic of our language DEF.= how to distinguish sense from nonsense.

Misleading analogies between forms of expression

"If the word 'mind' is a noun, then the word 'mind' must be the name of some thing. As the word 'book' is the name of some thing. And so if a book is on the table, then where is the mind? And if a book is made of paper, then what is the mind made of? And if a book is written with the hand, then is thinking done with the mind?" False analogies like these are the source of much philosophical perplexity (PI § 351). [Note 1a]

Our naive, far too simple picture of language meaning follows the suggestions of syntax, allowing language forms to mislead us when we philosophize. In Wittgenstein's logic not all syntactic nouns are names. The word 'mind' is one such noun, 'time' another.

'Where does the flame of a candle go when it's blown out?' 'Where does the light go to?' ... We may say that we are led into puzzlement by an analogy which irresistibly drags us on. (BrB § 56, p. 108)

Our investigation is ... a grammatical one. Such an investigation sheds light on our problem by clearing misunderstandings away. Misunderstandings concerning the use of words, caused, among other things, by certain analogies between the forms of expression in different regions of language. (PI § 90)

Wittgenstein called attention to parts of speech ("regions of language") that are not dreamt of in elementary school grammar. The words 'book' and 'mind' are not the same part of speech in Wittgenstein's logic.

We want to establish an order in our knowledge of the use of language: an order with a particular end in view. To this end we shall constantly be giving prominence to distinctions which our ordinary forms of language easily make us overlook. (cf. ibid. § 108)

Thus Wittgenstein might have said about schoolbook grammar that --

my interest is in showing that things that look the same are really different. (cf. Recollections p. 157)

Wittgenstein's two meanings of 'grammar'

From this point on, I will use the word 'grammar' in Wittgenstein's way -- to include whatever is needed to "give an account" of the use of language (OC § 56). By 'grammar' I shall mean (1) the rules for using a sign, and also (2) the description we give of those rules. [Note 1b]

2. The False Grammatical Account

How may we account for the persistence of schoolbook grammar? Is it that as children we readily believe what all evidence suggests is not the case -- i.e. that the words 'book', 'idea', 'time' and 'elf' are all names of objects? For as children we are never given ideas or time or elves to touch or see or taste or hear or smell. Here is one possibility:

Where our language suggests a body and there is none: there, we would like to say, is a spirit. (PI § 36; cf. BB p. 47)

Take away from us the words 'idea', 'time' and 'elf', and we are left with nothing to cling to; but give us those words and we seem able to grab hold of ghosts. (At the same time, about the nature of "abstract objects", about these ghostly presences, we feel deep uncertainty.)

Instinct more than second nature

Our belief in that grammatical myth comes so naturally to us that it can be compared to instinct, to a predisposition to believe in souls (primitive man's view of causality is to ask who, not what is the cause). Should a piece of crumpled paper, forgotten to one side, suddenly begin to unfold, we immediately sense a soul as the source of the movement.

It may (or may not) be that way. But consider further. Consider that the first stories children are told are fairy tales. We are taught to imagine souls in the objects which we do see, e.g. brooms and coffeepots and stuffed animals; and we are taught to imagine objects we never see, e.g. ghosts.

But also consider this: that each of us has thoughts and self-awareness -- i.e. our own invisible but real self (the soul or mind) to which it seems we sometimes refer when we speak. (cf. PI § 358)

The Grammatical Myth

We are thus predisposed by instinct, education, and apparently by experience to suppose that if we are talking, then we are talking about some object -- if not a visible object, then an invisible object. The grammatical myth is that the essence of language is the stringing together of names.

A statement of fact is a picture of the world. A picture shows the relationships between objects: it says: This is how things stand. To the objects in the world correspond the words of the statement. The objects are the words' meanings, and the objects in relationship to one another is the meaning of the statement. (cf. TLP 2.1-2.141, 4.5)

That was Wittgenstein's earliest thought about the logic of language, and his later logic is a correction of "grave mistakes in what I wrote in that first book," he says in the Preface to his Philosophical Investigations, which he begins with a summary of Saint Augustine's picture of language --

"The meaning of a word is the thing the word names"

... the individual words in language name objects -- sentences are combinations of such names. -- In this picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: Every word has a meaning [which] is the object for which the word stands. (PI § 1; cf. TLP 3.202-3.203)

In Wittgenstein's later view, the picture of language "The meaning of a word = the thing the word names or stands for" is not a true picture of our language's grammar:

I say that this picture ... stands in the way of our seeing the use of the word as it is. (PI § 305)

Plato saw that a proposition or statement must have a verb as well as a noun (Sophist 261e-262e). But verbs can be described as names, e.g. in 'The man thinks', the verb 'thinks' as the name of the act of thinking.

But is the picture of language "Meaning = the thing named, whether concrete or abstract" saved by that Procrustean procedure? Because, despite the possibility of recasting all words as names, does that account of our language's grammar make the meaning of words clear? It's true that the name of a physical object -- not is -- but can often be explained by pointing to the bearer of the name (PI § 43b) -- what of words that are not names of physical objects (Wittgenstein's distinction), namely abstractions?

For example, according to the "Meaning = thing named" picture of language, the meaning of the word 'time' is the thing the word 'time' names -- but who knows (i.e. can put into words to be tested by cross-questioning) "what time is"? Thus that picture leads the understanding into pitch darkness here.

If our a ability to use the word 'time' is dependent on our knowledge of a thing named 'time', and if to have no such knowledge is not to know the meaning of that word, then it's perplexing that we are able to use the word 'time' without talking nonsense. Everything to do with that word should end as Plato's Socratic dialogs end, with a confession of ignorance. ("What time is it?" -- "We must conclude that none of us knows.")

But if we look, we find that we do not in fact use the word 'time' to name some thing. It is in fact a non-name noun.

How in fact is the word 'time' used in our language -- i.e. what work do we use it to do -- how is that word taught and learned? In Wittgenstein's logic of language, that use, not "the thing the word names", is the word's meaning. (There are many meanings of 'meaning' in the language, but "the thing named" is not one of them.)

"The meaning is what is taught by the explanation of meaning"

Studying the grammar of the expression 'explanation of meaning' will teach you something about the grammar of the word 'meaning' and will cure you of the temptation to look about you for some object which you might call the meaning. (BB p. 1)

How do we teach someone the meaning of a word, because that teaching is an explanation of meaning? Not all explanations are given by pointing to an object bearing a name, and pointing explanations are rarely of interest to philosophy (except for the common name), which is mostly concerned with abstractions (abstract terms, not "abstract objects" or ghosts), i.e. non-name nouns (as Plato's examples, 'justice', 'piety', 'wisdom', 'beauty', 'goodness')..

Description without imagination

It is not one thing, but a convergence of various things which may account for the persistence of elementary school grammar. Whatever the origins of our misconceptions about the grammar of our language, logic seeks to replace those misconceptions with a true account by the standard of the facts in plain view, facts that anyone can see and agree to (Z §§ 447, 211; cf. Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 14-15). Wittgenstein wants "to say no more than we know" (BB p. 45), which is what contrasts with speculation (the facts plus what we don't know).

The meaning of language is public, not hidden

We must do away with all explanation [explanation is theory, i.e. imagination added to the facts], and description [of the facts in plain view] must take its place. (PI § 109)

And what is hidden from view -- as e.g. a reality imagined to underlie the facts in plain view, invented to explain what the facts seem not to explain (e.g. about concept-formation and common names, as Plato's theory of Forms and the theory of abstraction do) -- is neither sought nor wanted by Wittgenstein's logic of language. That logic wants only a clear view of what is "open to the public" about language, its civil status (ibid. § 125) -- i.e. the conceived facts that by coincidental common consent are in plain view. [Note 1c]

What is public -- in contrast to what is hidden or private -- is objective (verifiable by anyone), and this allows Wittgenstein's logic of language to distinguish between sense (i.e. language with meaning) and nonsense (language without meaning) in an objective way; the alternative is whatever seems or doesn't seem to have meaning (ibid. § 258), which is hardly objective.

Nouns: names versus non-names

Wittgenstein suggested a different way to look at syntactic nouns, that where there are no objects to point to neither are there names. This allowed him to give a different account of the grammar of nouns from "nouns are the names of things". (Note: ostensively defined objects only, e.g. 'cow', 'cup', 'bicycle'. Excluded are what we normally call names of phenomena, e.g. 'love', 'pain', 'mind', 'nightmare', which must have their grammars explained differently from the names of objects.)

The primeval chaos (Ghosts)

We bring to the study of logic this picture of natural language: (1) we regard all nouns as names, and (2) where there is no object for the noun to name, there we feel an intangible something bears the name (PI § 36). So whoever defined 'noun' as the all-inclusive "A noun is the name of a person, place, or thing" had the same misleading picture of our language's semantic logic that we have.

A Logic of Language versus a Theory of Meaning (Plato and meaning)

It is nevertheless possible to give an account, although not a verifiable account, of our language in which all nouns are names of things. Philosophers have done this [Note 1d], and where there are no perceptible things to bear the names, they imagined spirits, as does Plato with the Theory of Forms.

"Behind the appearances"

Philosophers invented theories about a reality that can explain concept-formation (PI II, xii, p. 230) which they presumed to underlie our language [Note 1e]. They were not happy to describe no more than the facts of our language in plain view, because they did not find in those facts what they thought must be there if our discourse, and indeed philosophy itself, is not to be "mere sound without sense".

Origin of the Theory of Forms (Archetypes, Patterns)

Plato's Theory of Forms seems to have been invented to solve the perplexing problem of common names, for it seemed to Plato (Republic 596a-597b) that all things that bear the same (common) name must do so because they are imitations of an original archetype. Otherwise they would not be called by the same name. This archetype would be the "meaning" of the common name, the object of knowledge, and we must be familiar with these archetypes, because we seem to know the meanings of common names, even if we cannot put those meanings into words or draw (picture) them. Indeed, for most common names and natures -- Plato gives the examples of tables and beds -- no such archetype exists in the perceptible world, and therefore it seems that their archetypes must be imperceptible. (Plato points out the trouble with this view in Parmenides 135b-c.)

And so Wittgenstein and Plato respond to the same question, but by following different paths -- one logical, the other speculative.

"The facts in plain view"

Wittgenstein looked -- and wanted to look -- no farther than the facts in plain view, because he saw that, if the meaning of language is to be verifiable (objective in contrast to whatever seems right to each individual), it cannot lie in invisible, hidden or private things (e.g. "thought", "spirits") that cannot be called to account -- but only in what is public about language.

Wittgenstein's later work looks at those facts using his selected meaning of the word 'meaning' and "language game" simile. And because it is rule or convention based, Wittgenstein's way of looking at language makes an objective distinction between sense and nonsense possible (although not necessary). It is a logic of language because it is rule based, and rule-based because it compares language to games played according to rules.

An example of the facts in plain view is that common names do not necessarily name common natures, which Wittgenstein illustrates with the word 'game', showing that if we compare games, we find similarities or resemblances between them but no one defining quality which all have in common. Wittgenstein describes the use of the word 'game' in plain view, its grammar, rather than trying to make language conform to the preconceived requirement that the meaning of a common name must be a common nature. [Note 1f]

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

"This" is the facts in plain view which anyone can see and therefore must admit (Z § 211). For Wittgenstein philosophy (or logic-philosophy) is clarification of what is in plain sight rather than speculation about what it seems is not.

Ways of looking at things | Refutation or Rejection

Wittgenstein focused on the way words are used in the language rather than on "ideas in the mind", or on states of mind, or on the "meanings" of abstract terms philosophers imagine to be the names of things (e.g. 'justice', 'beauty'), to say that the meaning of language is found in the conventions for its use rather than in psychology or hypotheses about the nature of things.

And that was to look at language meaning differently from most other philosophers -- or to look at language meaning at all for many philosophers. Because many philosophers do not see language meaning as a problem, because in their view "thought follows things, and language follows thought" (F. Copleston); in other words, thought is about things and those things are language's meaning and the subject of philosophy.

Wittgenstein's later way of defining the word 'meaning' may not be the only serviceable way, but it does set an objective, Socratic standard, and, despite its limit, in the eyes of some it is a way out of the speculative cloud. But in the eyes of others it is not a refutation of other ways of looking at language and philosophy, but only a rejection of those ways, ways that may exist for good reasons.

A preconceived problem

And what is the alternative to that view? That Wittgenstein discovered the "true" logic of our language -- by redefining words and inventing similes (comparisons)? That he refuted the ancient Greek account? But how does one refute Plato's picture of language, namely that "The meaning of a common name is the common nature it names, regardless of whether that nature is perceptible to the senses and can be put into words or not"?

That picture cannot be refuted -- because it is founded on metaphysical principles that can neither be proved nor disproved, namely that there is an imperceptible reality, the existence of which can be deduced from what is perceptible, and that only what is unchanging is real and knowable (as Plato's Forms or Archetypes are conceived to be).

The philosopher says: "Look at things this way!" (CV p. 61, remark from 1947)

That was all Wittgenstein could do, was to say that just as the rules of a game are public, so too the conventions for language use are public, and that this view of language makes it possible for the distinction between sense and nonsense to be objective. Just as we can describe the rules of a game, we can describe the conventions of language use, and our description can be tested for truth and falsity.

A verifiable account

Wittgenstein's later method is in accord with the historical Socrates' standard in philosophy: If we know anything we can give an account of what we know to others, an account that can stand up to the tests of refutation in discussion (Memorabilia iv, 6, 1). If we cannot tell others what we know (Plato, Laches 190c), then we don't know what we are talking about. Philosophy is discourse of reason. (Cf. PI § 89)

"Grammatical fictions"

Nevertheless, if our language is looked at as Wittgenstein does -- i.e. by comparing the facts about language use in plain view to games played according to rules -- then in that limited context it is not nonsense to talk about true and false accounts of language meaning.

For example, were Wittgenstein to say that the word 'time' is not the name of an object of any kind, he would not be saying "what time is", but that the proposition 'The word 'time' is the name of an object' is a grammatical fiction, a false description of the way the word 'time' is used in our language, a false assignment of its part of speech. And to say that is to point out a possible fact about our language, not about things independent of our language (although our forms of expression do not make this clear). That is how the expression "grammatical fiction" is defined in the context of Wittgenstein's logic of language.

If I do speak of a fiction ... it is of a grammatical fiction. (PI § 307; cf. ibid. II, xi, p. 200)

And what was said about the word 'time' might also be said about the word 'mind'. However, if there is a "metaphysical use of language" (ibid. § 116; OC § 37), if metaphysics is possible, as Wittgenstein seems to say it is (PI § 108), and as Plato appears to show it is, then the "meaning of mind" will be an hypothesis about the nature of the mind or soul (psyche) as a factual rather than as a grammatical inquiry.

[Wittgenstein's logic, and metaphysics | Wittgenstein's metaphysics.]

3. The Distinction between a Sign and the Meaning of a Sign

The relation between rules of grammar and sense and nonsense (BB p. 65), is shown by this: that a sign -- a sound, an ink mark -- as such is without meaning. What gives the sign meaning?

Logic has a simple, special notation, that distinguishes between a sign (By the word 'sign' Wittgenstein means: spoken sounds, marks on paper, gestures, figures in the sand, the purely physical aspect of language -- i.e. the words, phrases, sentences, and so on, of language), and the sign's meaning.

Following the convention of Russell's On Denoting (1905), in contrast to when I use a sign (as a tool) to do some work, when I refer to a sign as a sign, I place single quotation marks [speech marks] around it (cf. PI § 37). For example: the sign 'flows' has five letters, is a word of the English language, sometimes can be defined by pointing at a river. This contrasts with e.g. "The River Ota flows into the Inland Sea" where the sign 'flows' is used in a geography textbook to state a fact about the River Ota. Likewise 'November' is longer than 'July', although July is longer than November.

In some works single quotation marks are used to mark quotations (and also e.g. to replace the word 'so-called' [scare quotes]). British writers -- including Wittgenstein's translators -- often mark signs with double quotation marks, e.g. the sign "flows". (It is necessary to look and think, because if logic's notation is not used with care, it will be just one more way to mystify yourself with language.)

In these pages I always use single quotes when I want to refer to a sign as such; I have even edited quotations from books to make them follow my practice. I do this for the sake of clarity, because an awareness of the distinction between a grammatical and a factual investigation (between definitions of words and definitions of things) is essential to Wittgenstein's logic of language.

A different convention might be made, of course. We might e.g. enclose the sign in asterisks: the word *flows* rhymes with *glows*. The important thing is to clearly mark the distinction, not how the distinction is marked.

If you are in doubt about whether to use single quotes, remember that you should be able to prefix the single quotes with an expression like 'the ink marks' or 'the sound' or 'the sign', e.g. 'Piety is doing one's duty towards God' can be restated: The word 'piety' is equivalent in meaning to the words 'doing one's duty towards God'.

The point of this notation is to force us, when we are thinking about philosophical problems, to ask whether we are using language to talk about something other than language. "Where does July come before June? In the dictionary." But it is not the month of July that comes before the month of June, but only the word 'July' that comes before the word 'June' when listed in alphabetical order.

The contrast between a game-piece and the rules governing its use

We are talking about the spatial and temporal phenomenon of language ["words and sentences in a quite common or garden-variety sense"], not about some non-spatial, non-temporal phantasm. But we talk about it as we do about the pieces in chess when we are stating the rules of the game, not describing their physical properties.

The question 'What is a word really?' is analogous to 'What is a piece in chess?' (PI § 108; cf. ibid § 120)

The "physical property" of chess is the wood (e.g.) of its pieces; that is the "spatial and temporal phenomenon" of chess. The "physical property" of language is the sounds or ink marks of its signs; that is the "spatial and temporal phenomenon" of language. In either case it is the public rules governing the use of this "physical property" (whether it is wood or ink or sounds) that logic is the study of. And thus there are no "real definitions" in logic: logic defines (i.e. states rules for the use of) words; it does not speculate about the "things" (objects, phenomena) that words are imagined by one picture of language to name.

Wittgenstein's Logic, and Metaphysics

The above is as close as Wittgenstein comes to stating the metaphysical presumptions or foundations of his later logic of language. "The language game is there -- like our life is there" (OC § 559) is not a theory about what is ultimately real, but only a decision to do no more than describe the facts given in plain view, that is, to say no more than we know (if we use the word 'know' as we normally do (PI § 246)) In other words, Wittgenstein's logic of language is not metaphysical: it is not speculation about the reality presumed to be hidden behind the conceived facts; it goes, and wants to go, no farther than those facts. It makes no hypotheses. [Note 1g]

Note.--Wittgenstein compared using words to playing games by following rules; he called these comparisons "language games". Sometimes these games describe our actual language use, as does the one alluded to here.

Things versus phenomena

Note that although all things are phenomena, not all phenomena are things. For example, there is a phenomenon called 'love', but there is no corresponding thing (object, substance) named 'love'. Compare 'light', 'time', 'sorrow'. (This is another kind of grammatical illusion, one besides false analogy, that conjures hypostatization.) From that there are mental phenomena it does not follow that there is a thing, namely "the mind", that is the source and location of these phenomena. (It doesn't not follow either.)

False analogy is helped in its mischief by the word magic that transforms other parts of speech into nouns (e.g. 'mental' into 'mind', 'thinking' into 'thought') and then asks about the nature of the things the nouns are imagined to name.

Although the meaning of the names of things, when those things are physical objects, is often explained by pointing to the objects they name, phenomena are defined by concepts -- i.e. rules for using words -- and not vice versa. It is not possible to lasso something with the consistency of a cloud, and the borders of phenomena are cloud-like, until they are defined by concepts; rules set limits.

Some names of phenomena are nebulous in meaning, however, 'love' for instance; the meaning strikes us as cloudy -- because it is cloudy. But which is responsible for that cloudiness -- our choice (for we are the ones who draw the boundaries of our concepts (Z § 259)) or human experience?

4. Wittgenstein's Meaning of 'Meaning'

A sign -- a spoken sound, a mark on paper-- as such is without meaning. What gives the sign meaning?

Wittgenstein began the Blue Book with the question "What is the meaning of a word?" (BB p. 1) We must be clear about which meaning of the word 'meaning' is the interest of Wittgenstein's logic of language. There are many meanings of 'meaning', many uses for that word in the language. Wittgenstein chose one (to use as his standard), one that allows an objective distinction to be made between sense and nonsense in philosophy.

[According to G.E. Moore's notes, Wittgenstein said] that the sense of 'meaning' of which he held these things to be true, and which was the only sense in which he intended to use the word, was only one of those in which we commonly use it ... (PP i, p. 257)

Wittgenstein's logic is a selected definition of meaning, one that is best explained by comparing using language to playing a game: If a game is played according to its rules, moves in the game have meaning; similarly, if language is used according to its rules of grammar, the language has meaning.

Logic is about only the conventional meaning of signs -- i.e. the meaning that is given when the rules (conventions, most often co-incidental) for using signs are given. This can be called a sign's "grammatical sense" (cf. PP iii, p. 312); 'sense' DEF.= 'meaning'.

Explanations of meaning

A word's grammatical meaning is given, in an especially clear way when explanations of meaning are given in the course of everyday life. E.g. the explanation of meaning of the word 'flows' given above: pointing to a river in answer to the question What do you mean by 'flows'?

Let's only bother about what's called the explanation of meaning, and let's not bother about meaning in any other sense.

An explanation of meaning is not an empirical proposition ... but a rule, a convention. (PG i § 32, p. 68-69)

Of course, an explanation of meaning may be a statement of fact ("empirical proposition") about the use of a word in the English language, but it is only the statement as grammar ("grammatical proposition") that interests logic.

"The meaning of a word is what is explained by the explanation of the meaning." -- I.e. if you want to understand the use of the word 'meaning', look for what are called 'explanations of meaning'. (PI § 560)

In most cases, a word's only meaning is an explanation of its meaning -- i.e. a description of its use in the language, because most words do not have essential definitions, and their meanings can only be explained by similarities between examples.

Verbal and ostensive explanations of meaning

Grammar describes the use of words in the language. So it has somewhat the same relation to the language as the description of a game, the rules of a game, have to the game.

Meaning, in our sense, is embodied in the explanation of meaning. By 'explanation of the meaning of a sign' we mean rules for use but above all definitions. The distinction between verbal definitions and ostensive definitions gives a rough division of these types of explanation. (PG i §§ 23-24, p. 60; cf. PI § 43)

To explain the meaning of a sign DEF.= to give an account of the sign's grammar. It is also to give an account of what you know (PI § 208). (To 'give an account of a sign's grammar' is to 'describe the sign's use in the language'.)

Endnotes Chapters 1-3

Note 1: "Any description of the use of language is logic." In Wittgenstein's remark, 'logic' = 'grammar', but only because logic = grammar: the equation is the result of Wittgenstein's later investigations, not their presumption.

[The historical meaning of the word 'logic', the Greek "maid-of-all-work" word 'logos'.] [BACK]

Note 1a: For example, if the umbrella is in the hall, then where is the concept 'umbrella'? The definition of the word 'object', as we normally use that word, is "an object is a body with an address". But then what kind of object is the concept 'umbrella' -- a bodiless ghost of no known address? (If all nouns are names of objects either concrete or abstract, then it would seem so. False analogy: since there are tangible things that bear names, then there are also intangible things that bear names; "intangible thing" = "abstract object".)

The word 'concept'

Wittgenstein revised the concept 'grammar', but without some clarification of meaning "the word 'concept' is too vague by far" (RFM (1978), vii § 45). Various things may be vaguely meant by this word, but for clarity by the word 'concept' I mean 'rules for the use of a sign', not a ghost conjured up by ink marks or sounds.

For what would we mean if we said that a concept is an abstract object or the name of an abstract object -- would we mean an intangible object, a nothing existing nowhere? (Language often suggests "pictures" to us that do not correspond to how words are used in the language. (PI § 424).)

"What is the meaning of a word?" versus "What is the nature of a thing?"

Grammatical Jokes

A serious philosophical work could be written entirely of jokes, Wittgenstein told Malcolm (Memoir (1984), p. 27-28; PI § 250), that is, of grammatical jokes (ibid. § 111). As e.g. the questions 'What are the dimensions of a geometric point?' and 'To where does time fly?' and 'What is the location of the mind?' and 'What color is the number 3?' and 'Can a shadow cast a shadow?' and 'Is gloomy weather caused by clouds and rain?' Asked as if these questions were questions of fact.

Lewis Carroll's examples of nonsense are examples of grammatical jokes. "No, no!" said the Red Queen. "Sentence first -- verdict afterwards" (Alice in Wonderland xii). Although a sentence can only come after a verdict, the rules of syntax allow the Queen to talk contrariwise. Little Bo-Peep can look for her lost sheep, but she cannot look for her lost temper (Through the Looking-Glass ix), although the rules of syntax would allow her to. [BACK]

Note 1b: In Wittgenstein's jargon, grammar DEF.= (1) rules for using language, and (2) any description of the use of language.

The meaning of a word is to be defined by the rules for its use ... 'How is the word used?' and 'What is the grammar of the word?' I shall take as being the same question. (Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1932-35, ed. Ambrose, i, 2)

That remark is dated 1932-1933 by the editor, as is the explanation of the meaning of the word 'grammar' Wittgenstein gave to G.E. Moore.

By 'grammar' we also mean instruction in the use of language, as a guide or textbook. But the instructions we are given at school are "a mass of false and far too simple ideas"; they lead us up false paths. [BACK]

Note 1c: It is "possible to be interested in a phenomenon in various ways" (PI § 108). This was Wittgenstein's way.

Why does Wittgenstein take the facts in plain view for granted? because didn't Goethe point out that "all fact is already conceived fact" (ibid. §§ 107, 103)? The question is: by whom are the facts conceived? The "conceived facts" are the facts by common consent; like social conventions, they are coincidental agreement in way of life. That is what makes the facts in plain view objective, that they, like knowledge, belong to the community (tribe) rather than to the individual; as in a court of law, "the reasonable man" is not the individual man (he is also not the irrational man). This is what Wittgenstein alludes to when he speaks of "what anyone knows and must admit" (Z § 211).

In Wittgenstein's logic of language the meaning of a word = the public rules for using the word. Were 'meaning' not defined that way, it would not be what we call objective (verifiable) (e.g. W.E. Johnson's assertion "If I say that a sentence has meaning for me, no one has the right to say it is meaningless" does not make an objective distinction between sense and nonsense).

An explanation of meaning must be a public method (technique) for using a word; it must show you -- anyone, everyone -- the way forward. (cf. Malcolm, Memoir (1984), p. 41)

That is the meaning of the word 'meaning' Wittgenstein selected out of the many in our language for his thinking in philosophy.

Note.--The expression 'conceived fact' is really a pleonasm. It does not contrast with 'unconceived fact', which is a noun that is not a name; there are no unconceived facts (or, as Berkeley could say, no percepts without concepts; "the substratum" is language conjuring, the hypostatization of an abstraction, a grammatical myth). In other words, 'unconceived fact' is not the name of some thing; "unconceived facts" are not things to exist or not exist.

[BACK]

Trying to define words by examining one's state of mind

[Philosophers think] that the nature of such things as hoping and fearing, or intending, meaning and understanding [are to] be discovered through introspection ... Wittgenstein [changes] the whole approach by saying: what these words mean shows itself in the way they are used -- the nature of understanding reveals itself in grammar ... (F. Waismann, "How I See Philosophy")

Introspection can never lead to a definition. It can only lead to a psychological statement about the introspector. (RPP i § 212; cf. PI § 316)

I might ask "What is love?" and imagine that this question can be answered by examining my own feelings when I love (as if I might thereby discover the essence of love). But, as far as language meaning goes, what is of interest is not what I or anyone else feels, but what we must do if the word 'love' is to be correctly applied to our behavior -- because it is behavior that is public and thereby objective and possible to state in rules of grammar. (Of course, 'love' is an extremely indefinite concept. Other examples would be 'fear', 'hope', and 'sadness', which are more definite.) Although that is not the whole of the answer, because the behavior must occur in particular circumstances, surroundings. [BACK]

Note 1d: That "All nouns are names (if not of perceptible then of imperceptible things)" was a requirement philosophers imposed on their investigations; it was not the result of investigation (PI § 107). Similar was requiring that there be a defining common quality or essential definition of words. [BACK]

Note 1e:: These metaphysical theories are what I think Isaac Newton called "hypotheses" and Wittgenstein "explanations". "Hypotheses non fingo". Wittgenstein did not want conjecture, but to replace that kind of explanation with description (PI § 109).

Facts that can explain concept-formation

If the formation of concepts can be explained by facts of nature, should we not be interested, not in grammar, but rather in that in nature which is the basis of grammar? (PI II, xii, p. 230)

Plato answers that indeed we ought. And he gives three examples: weighing, measuring and calculating (Euthyphro 7b-c) where meaning is objective because of the relationship between concepts and the facts in plain view (public experience). But then Plato abandons the standard of facts in plain view (Induction was the method of the historical Socrates, not Plato) other than to give two examples, namely the concepts 'clay' and 'quickness', as the model or pattern to which he wants the meaning of all common names to conform. Thus, according to Plato, the meaning of a common name is the essence of the thing it names, regardless of whether that essence can be put into words or not, i.e. is knowable or not.

Wittgenstein rejects (PI § 47), not refutes, Plato's requirement, saying that (as Plato's dialogs themselves find) most common names do not have "meanings" in Plato's sense -- i.e. that if we look at the language facts in plain view (ibid. § 246), we do not find defining common natures (but only similarities). And what the facts in plain view show is the meaning of 'meaning' that interests Wittgenstein.

The idea that ... one had to find the common element ... has not only led to no result, but also made the philosopher dismiss as irrelevant the concrete cases, which alone could have helped him to understand [our language's logic or grammar]. (BB p. 19-20)

"A requirement of the investigation, not its result" (PI § 107)

But Plato does not see this as a question of understanding language, but of knowing the nature of the things language names (to know a thing is to know its essence), and the examination of very few names yields such knowledge. But Plato does not see this fact as refutation (indeed, he might be accused of fitting the facts to the theory rather than the theory to the facts (not that this accusation would disturb Plato, because fitting the facts to the theory is Plato's stated method in philosophy)); rather, if that is what the facts suggest, then the perceptible facts are only "appearances", not the reality behind those appearances. And that reality is the meaning of 'meaning' that interests Plato. [BACK]

Note 1f: The Ockhamist view was that similarities of fact are enough to account for concept-formation, e.g. "Socrates and Plato are both called men because they are more like one another than either is like a donkey." However, that is no more a solution to Plato's preconceived problem than Wittgenstein's "family" resemblances is. [BACK]

Note 1g:

Theories not comparisons: Metaphysics vs. Logic

But when Wittgenstein says such things as that the essence of metaphysics is that "the difference between factual and conceptual investigations is not clear to it" (RPP i § 949), or that philosophy's essence is a battle against "bewitchment by means of language" (PI § 109), or that the depth of philosophy is only a "grammatical joke" (ibid. § 111), his claims are metaphysical. Because here Wittgenstein does not say that "essence belongs to grammar" (ibid. § 371) -- i.e. he is not explaining the meaning of the words 'philosophy' and 'metaphysics', but saying "what philosophy really is".

And that is not a comparison, nor is it an assigned meaning, nor a project in philosophy (It does not say what Wittgenstein wants philosophy to be rather than what it is). It is instead a generalized statement of fact -- i.e. an hypothesis. And therefore we can ask: Is the essence of philosophy really only conceptual muddles, a failure to understand the logic of our language? Because the generality of that claim is not justified by the very few examples Wittgenstein gives. (In my view Wittgenstein's theories about the origins of philosophy, falsely derive ALL from SOME. About Wittgenstein's later work Russell wrote: "and its negative doctrines unfounded.")

If philosophy does suffer from conceptual confusion, does seeing that make its problems disappear, or does that only revise our view of its problems? Socratic ethics, mankind's eternal questions, and Plato's perplexity over the essence of man, and the puzzle of common names, as well as Plato's method of grammatical tautologies in ethics -- are all these nothing more than self-mystification by means of language, and the depth of philosophy nothing more than a "grammatical joke"?

Is the whole of our philosophy determined by which meaning of the word 'meaning' we choose, on our logic of language'? I would not say that. [BACK]

5. Types of Definition

Wittgenstein's logic of language gives methods for defining any sign, by describing its use in the language. [Note 2]

Wittgenstein and Use

The explanation of the meaning explains the use of the word. The use of a word in the language is its meaning. (PG i § 23, p. 59, 60)

For a large class of cases ... the meaning of a word is its use in the language. (PI § 43. Another large class is names of objects, e.g. 'book', 'pencil', 'cow', which have their meaning explained by pointing to their bearers.)

What did Wittgenstein mean by the word 'use'? He used that word to make a comparison: we use a sign like we use a tool, e.g. a saw to saw wood, a hammer to drive a nail, a ruler to measure, the word 'hello' to greet a friend, the word 'Help!' to call for help, or the sentence 'What does this word mean?' to ask for an explanation of meaning. (ibid. §§ 11, 23; BB p. 67)

Look at the sentence [sign] as an instrument, and at its sense as its employment. (PI § 421)

Another comparison Wittgenstein made is that asking for the meaning of a word is like asking for the rules for using -- e.g. moving -- a game-piece in chess.

A meaning of a word is a type of employment of it. Because it is this we learn when the word becomes part of our language.

This is where there is a connection between the concepts 'rule' and 'meaning'. (cf. OC § 61-62)

Isn't the question 'Have these words a meaning?' similar to 'Is that a tool?' (ibid. § 351)

To ask for the meaning of a sign (or tool or game-piece) is to ask what work the sign is used to do. Greeting, calling, asking, stating a fact are examples of this work. [Note 2a]

Three types of definition (grammatical accounts)

To describe the use of a word in the language is grammar. Definitions are rules of grammar (as rules of grammar are definitions). These fall into three broad categories.

Verbal versus Real Definitions

First, there are sign-for-sign substitution rules ("verbal" or "word definitions"): these take us from a sign that we do not know how to use to a sign that we have already learned how to use, just as synonyms do. Some misunderstandings "can be removed by substituting [or replacing] one form of expression for another" (PI § 90). [Note 2b]

An Example of a Real Definition of a Natural Phenomenon

Substitution rules are often found in dictionaries -- but only where dictionaries state no more than rules for using language signs. This is not always the case.

For example, (1) "Thunder is a sound that follows a flash of lightning" is indeed a rule for applying the word 'thunder', but (2) "Thunder is a sound caused by the sudden heating and expansion of air by an electrical discharge" is an hypothesis and does not belong to the grammar of the word 'thunder' -- it is not a definition of a word, but instead a "definition of a thing".

The distinction made by Aristotle

The above definition of 'thunder' and "definition of thunder" are from Webster's New World Dictionary (2nd edition). The distinction between these two types of definitions is made by Aristotle. The first type is often called a "verbal definition", the second a "real definition" --

one kind of definition will be a statement of the meaning of the name, or of an equivalent nominal formula [Anal. Post. 93b] ... a set of words signifying precisely what [the] name signifies [92b; -- e.g.:] thunder can be defined as noise in the clouds ... [94a]

Another kind of definition is a formula exhibiting the cause of a thing's existence. [A "definition is an expression indicating the essence of a thing" (Top. 154a; tr. Pickard-Cambridge), and "to know its essential nature is ... the same as to know the cause of a thing's existence" (Anal. Post. 93a)] [e.g.] the statement of what the nature of thunder is will be The noise of fire being quenched in the clouds. [Anal. Post. 93b-94a; tr. Mure]

A Verbal Definition is not a Theory (Grammar versus hypotheses)

Aristotle's "noise in the clouds", like World's "sound that follows a flash of lightning", is a possible definition of the word 'thunder'. It is a substitution rule for the word 'thunder', not an hypothesis about thunder. So that, Anaximander could speculate that thunder is the noise of air bursting out of clouds (cf. Aristophanes, The Clouds 394), or Anaxagoras that thunder is the noise of clouds colliding, or indeed Homer could speak of "Zeus, the thunderer" -- without thereby uttering something that was without meaning for Aristotle or for us. For although having different "real definitions" or hypotheses about the nature of thunder, we have the same "verbal definition" in common: the word 'thunder' means the same as the words 'noise in the clouds'. One sign, one grammar (not one sign, five grammars), but five different hypotheses about the phenomenon called 'thunder'.

In contrast, for the expression 'will-o'-the-wisp' the dictionary cited above does make the distinction between: (1) a definition of words and (2) an hypothesis about the nature of things, namely: (1) "a shifting, elusive light seen over marshes at night" (2) "believed to be caused by the combustion of gases arising from decaying organic matter". That is the distinction between (1) verbal and (2) real definitions.

Definition in natural science, logic, and in misconceived philosophy

Natural science seeks knowledge of both things and phenomena, knowledge expressed as real definitions (hypotheses, theories), but before there can be a real definition of a phenomenon, (at a minimum, preliminary) criteria must be set to circumscribe the phenomenon (verbally define its name, because otherwise we would not know what we were talking about) -- although these criteria may be changed by further discovery and examination of the facts as research moves forward (CV p. 44, remark from 1944; cf. BB p. 25). So it might be said that natural science makes evolving real definitions of phenomena and consequently evolving definitions of the names (criteria for the identification) of phenomena. (A scientific theory about a phenomenon is a selection of data plus imagination which directs and organizes the results of research and suggests new hypotheses or refinements.)

In contrast, logic does not discover new facts and alter our concepts accordingly (ibid.); its facts are already in plain view. Logic states grammatical rules, verbal definitions only.

Philosophy, on the other hand, as some philosophers imagine it, would be a discussion of the "real definitions of abstract things", i.e. the things presumed to be named by abstract terms as e.g. 'time', 'being', 'God', 'beauty' and 'justice'. But such abstract terms are not names of things (of any kind) to make hypotheses about. [Note 3]

Grammatical rules versus statements of fact

Grammatical rules are not statements of fact; they are conventions (PG i § 32, p. 68-69). Of course, the sign 'The word 'thunder' means noise in the clouds' may be used to state a fact -- a fact about the English language, that is, not as it were a fact about thunder. It is a verbal -- in this example the report of an actual rule we follow -- definition, not an hypothesis (real definition) about thunder.

Grammatical rules can be likened to commands. We can imagine a people who give definitions -- state rules -- this way: instead of saying "This is called 'paper'", they say "Call this 'paper'!" This is noteworthy because a command does not have the form of a statement of fact, and so it is unlikely to be mistaken for one.

In logic of language or logic-philosophy (in contrast to "metaphysics-philosophy"), definition DEF.= rule of grammar -- i.e. rule for using a sign in the language -- and nothing else.

Ostensive Definitions

The second category of grammatical rules is ostensive definitions: rules for the use of a sign that are given by pointing at things. We have Wittgenstein's example above: when he points at a river to explain a meaning of the word 'flows'.

'King's College is on fire' ... How would we explain what this sentence means? [By] ostensive definitions. We would say e.g. 'this is King's College' (pointing to the building), 'this is a fire' (pointing to a fire). (cf. BB p. 37)

Note, however, that while often the meaning of a name is explained by pointing to the bearer of the name (PI § 43), the bearer of a name is not the meaning of the name; were it otherwise, if all the snow in the world melted away, the word 'snow' would have no meaning (ibid. § 40). The meaning of no word is "the thing the word stands for".

There are also non-visual ostensive definitions, e.g. for 'the sound of a clarinet' (ibid. § 78) and 'the scent of an orange'.

Not all proper names have their meaning explained by pointing to the bearer of the name. For these names Wittgenstein adapts Russell's "Theory of Descriptions" (ibid. § 79), defining the proper name of an historical or mythological person as a list, often partial, of the qualities of its bearer. For example, we don't define the name 'Socrates' by pointing to the bearer of that name but with various descriptions, e.g. 'the Athenian philosopher who was put to death in 399 B.C.' or 'the one on trial in Plato's Apology', and so on. (Of course the question may be asked: which Socrates do you mean, the historical or the literary characters in Plato and Xenophon?)

Play-acted (or demonstrative) Definitions

The third category is like the second. These rules of grammar could be called play-acted definitions. Actors might perform them on stage.

What is fear? What does 'being afraid' mean? If I wanted to define it at a single showing -- I would play-act fear. (PI II, ix, p. 188)

Play-acted definitions may be comparatively simple, as e.g. if someone sits down in a chair to explain the meaning of the phrase 'to sit down in a chair' (BB p. 24). But these rules may also be very complicated. And some emotions, dispositions and moods may be more challenging to play-act than others. What would be involved in play-acting sorrow? It might need a number of things, e.g. an object of sorrow (e.g. the death of a friend), and the appearance and behavior of sorrow (e.g. drawn face, tears, quiet, withdraw). [Note 4] Think of how complicated -- and varied -- the circumstances are in which a child learns to use a word like 'sorrow'. Or a word like 'hope'.

Caroline was expecting some one, and with anxious eagerness; for she walked up and down the room, started at every sound, looked out from the window, glanced at the clock, tried, but in vain, to work with her needle, and could hardly bear the voices of her children in their play. [Note 5]

Psychological-words are defined by patterns of behavior

But these and similar circumstances belong to the grammar of the category 'psychological words', because these circumstances belong to an explanation of the meaning = description of the use in the language of these words.

Psychological-words, e.g. 'hope', 'sadness', 'anger', 'fear', 'love', 'joy', are applied to patterns of behavior. Defining these words, which are names of phenomena, is different from defining words by pointing at objects. For example, the word 'love' is not defined by pointing to a thing named 'love'. When a mother cradles her child: you can point to the mother, and the child, the act of cradling, but not to a fourth thing named 'love'. We can point to tears, but not to a thing named 'sadness'.

The meaning of psychological language may seem hopelessly vague, conceptually nebulous, indeed unexplainable, but Wittgenstein's logic of language makes clear what to look for if we want to make a verifiable distinction between sense and nonsense, namely not to introspection or imagination ("analysis"), but to the rules found in the public facts, the facts in plain view.

Nothing belonging to the meaning of language is hidden. Meaning is public; it has to be if it is to be objective (verifiable). Use in the language is public. The word 'meaning' suggests something mysterious, whereas the words 'use' and 'tool' do not.

If here we object that "sorrow is not a mere tool, that sorrow is more than that", we are thinking that the meaning of a word is the thing the word names, confusing verbal and real definitions. Even our form of expression betrays this, because it is not sorrow but the word 'sorrow' that is a tool. Logic (grammar) defines words, not things.

Definition by equivalent words (synonyms) is very far from being the only way to explain the meaning of language; explanations of meaning may take various forms, from pointing, play-acting and describing circumstances (the setting) to mapping the moves in a language game.

The rules of syntax will not prevent vague speech; if they did, there would be none. If our aim in philosophy is understanding and knowledge (clarity), rather than continued or deepened obscurity, then we must find a different way to make meaning objective (verifiable , determinable) than rules of syntax.

"In logic we make for ourselves grammatical reminders"

Where we are puzzled in philosophy about the meaning of words, we have to remind ourselves of how we normally use those words (PI § 116), words which belong to a language we have already learned (e.g. English is our native language), because the place in our life where we normally use those words is the place where they have meaning.

But we do have to remind ourselves: a child learns to use a word, e.g. 'time' or 'sorrow', in particular circumstances, but the child is not taught to describe the circumstances in which it learns to use the word (Z § 114).

We want to understand something that is already in plain view. For this is what we seem in some sense not to understand ...

What then is time? If no one asks me about it, I know. But if someone asks me to explain it to him, I don't know. (Augustine, Confessions, xi, 17)

Something that we know when no one asks us, but no longer know when we are asked to give an account of what we know to others, is something we need to remind ourselves of. (cf. PI § 89)

The work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose. (ibid. § 127)

Time, meaning and measurement

Has the word 'time' meaning apart from how time is measured? The question 'What is the nature of time?' is without meaning because we don't use the word 'time' as a name, despite the fanciful "pictures of time" as a moving concourse or carousel which suggest that 'time' is the name of a moving thing, as days succeed days.

"Time is a measurement of charge. Other things change; time does not. The sun and the moon move, not time." That is a remark about the concept 'time', for how could it be about a thing or phenomenon named 'time'? There are things named 'clocks', but they do not measure a thing called 'time'; they are not like a yardstick that measures cloth. The meaning of the word 'time' is not explained by indicating the bearer of a name. But then how is its meaning explained to a child?

The child and Time

A child is taught to tell time, e.g. to read a clock. But is the child also taught that there is a mysterious thing named 'time' that the clock is measuring? And if the child were taught that? That mysterious "thing" would have no effect on the language game of telling time; it would be like the paper hat on the chessman's head (BB p. 65), irrelevant to the rules of the game. (Nevertheless, it would leave the child with a lifetime perplexity: What is this cloud-obscured cloudy thing (this "ghostly presence" like a phantom limb) named 'time'? In geometry children are deliberately taught that the word 'point' is the name of an object. The only effect this has is to confuse the child; it has no effect on how geometry, as a game played according to rules, is played. Wittgenstein: "In philosophy all that is not grammar is hot air" (cf. Lee, "Wittgenstein 1929-1931").)

Endnotes Chapter 5

Note 2: Wittgenstein, significantly maybe, never made this claim. Nor did he ever claim to have invented a logic of language.

I don't believe I have ever invented a line of thinking. I have always taken one over from someone else ... for my work of clarification. (CV p. 19, remark from 1931)

We are always more dogmatic, things are always more settled for us than they ever were for the philosopher himself.

Examples of where Wittgenstein's logic of language may not "give methods for defining every sign" are the ethical terms Socrates asked about and words for which there are no rules of grammar as e.g. the word 'beautiful' (A sign that can convey meaning is not nonsense, but can there be a sign that conveys meaning without following rules?) [BACK]

Note 2a:

"To give a grammatical account"

To make the general definition of 'grammar', namely "any description of the use of language", clear -- and this is the principal method of logic -- we must give examples. This is because acquiring a concept (PI § 208), learning to use a word, is rarely about identifying an essence, since most words do not have essential definitions. Which is why examples must be used in explanations of meaning. It is not for lack of a better way -- as if there really were essences but we were unable to say what they are -- but because that's just the way the concepts of natural language are. [BACK]

Note 2b:

Explanation of the meaning of the sign 'DEF.='

If I use two signs with one and the same meaning, I express this by putting between them the sign ' = ' (TLP 4.241, tr. Ogden). So ' a = b ' means that the sign ' b ' can be substituted for the sign ' a '. A definition is a rule dealing with signs. (ibid. tr. Pears, McGuinness)

In Russell's "Theory of Descriptions", when he says that the author of Waverley is identical with Scott (a is identical with b), Russell is not defining either the word 'Scott' or the phrase 'the author of Waverley'.

'Scott is the author of Waverley' is not an example of a sign-for-sign substitution rule, although Russell says that because Scott and the author of Waverley are identical, 'Scott is the author of Waverley' is identical to 'Scott is Scott' (If a is identical to b, then a can replace b).

But there is a difference between saying that the persons named are identical and saying that the signs 'Scott' and 'the author of Waverley' are identical in meaning (Russell titled his paper "On Denoting", not "On Meaning"), which they would have to be if the one could replace the other.

Verbal identity versus real identity. In Russell's example, the proposition 'Scott is the author of Waverley' is a statement of fact ("real identity"), not a rule of grammar ("verbal identity"). In this instance the Theory of Descriptions is not concerned with defining words, which is the use Wittgenstein's makes of it (in PI § 79). Using Wittgenstein's convention 'Scott' ≠ 'the author of Waverley'. (Russell and Wittgenstein also used the word 'grammar' differently from one another.) [BACK]

Note 3: Blaise Pascal points out the confusion the Rationalist philosophers caused by mixing together these two types of definition, i.e. of failing to distinguish between definitions of language-signs (verbal definitions) and hypotheses about phenomena (real definitions), e.g. with their real definitions of abstractions such as "being" and "becoming".

About the Rationalists, Wittgenstein said: "they let the words speak to them", i.e. to conjure and suggest. They do not have an objective logic of language.

Pascal uses the word 'nominal' (concerning names) rather than the word 'verbal' (concerning words), but that is to treat all words as names, which is the basic problem with nominalism.

Are there real definitions of abstractions?

Do words, specifically abstract terms, have real meanings, (real definitions)?

A word hasn't got a meaning given to it, as it were, by a power independent of us, so that there could be a kind of scientific investigation into what the word really means. A word has the meaning someone has given to it. (BB p. 28; cf. Z § 467)

How does Wittgenstein know there cannot be scientific investigations to discover the true meanings of words by answering such (syntactic) questions as 'What is love?', 'What is time?' and 'What is beauty?'

These apparent questions display the evident absurdity of imagining that "abstractions" -- i.e. nouns that are not names, but which are mistaken for the names of independent things -- have real existence. It is a move in a language game (and therefore makes sense, as Wittgenstein defines the word 'meaning') to ask for examples of acts we call 'love', but not to ask what love is, as if 'love', 'time' and 'beauty' were the names of "abstract objects" or ghostly phenomena. How do I know? How do I know that elves don't really exist? By confining myself to the facts in plain view, e.g. to how a child learns or how a child is taught to use these words. This is an investigation of concepts -- i.e. the rules for using words, e.g. 'love', 'time' -- not an investigation into the nature of things ("love", "time").

Common names of objects, e.g. 'cattle' and 'water', have scientific definitions (genera and species, chemical formulas), but those are not the natural language definitions of those words. In natural language the explanations of meaning for common names rarely state strict rules for the use in the language of those words.

Are the concepts we acquire with natural language imposed on us by nature? Do we speak as birds sing, namely by instinct?

Regardless of the origin of the conventions we follow in using language, we need not follow them blindly like "beasts wanting discourse of reason". As beings endowed with reason we are free to keep or modify the concepts we have and to discard those that are not serviceable (in a word, to be in control of language, not allowing language to be in control of us).

On the other hand, words don't just have "the meaning someone has given to them". Our language does consist of conventions -- but not always of arbitrary conventions (this is especially clear in the case of emotion-words).

It may seem that if you throw a lasso at a phenomenon, you will only lasso what is there to be caught, but the truth is that you can also lasso mirages if you do not understand the logic of language. Further, lassos are not all of the same size (one that captures a word may not capture its use in the language; one that captures a caress may not capture its meaning), and what a lasso catches may be conceptualized in as many ways as imagination and sense and nonsense allow.

Natural Language and Philosophical Logic

There is a strong relationship between the facts of experience and our concepts, but that relationship is not expressed in the natural language definitions of words, because those definitions are only rules (conventions) for using words. But it is those definitions that interest philosophical logic (i.e. thinking that has its rooted in "logic of language" or the question of how sense is to be distinguished from nonsense in philosophy) because the problems of philosophy (imagined and real) arise in natural language. (Other interests in philosophy are possible, though.)

Imagining that language has meaning independently of the community that uses it is the picture that words are names and the meaning of a word is the thing the word names, and therefore that to investigate the meaning of a word is to investigate the nature of the thing the word names. This contrasts with the "picture" -- i.e. definition of 'meaning' -- that the meaning of a word is the conventions for its use in the language. [BACK]

Note 4: To describe a language game is to describe a pattern or form of life. (PI § 19) [BACK]

Note 5: Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Stave iv. [BACK]

6. 'Grammatical Remarks'

Wittgenstein called these reminders 'grammatical remarks'. And whether they take the form we would naturally call 'rules' or not, they do the work of rules, and so they are rules -- regardless of their form. In logic, tools (i.e. signs) are defined by the work they are used to do.

The sentences 'Using a word is playing a game according to rules' and 'Using a word is using a tool to do some work' are not statements of fact, although that is their form. They are instead statements of comparison and method, and as such are neither true nor false (although statements about the limits of a comparison's application are). (Note that at times Wittgenstein appears to use the sentence 'The meaning of a word is its use in the language' as a statement of fact (PI § 43) (which maybe is verified by contrasting it with other hypotheses: do those make an objective -- and serviceable -- distinction between sense and nonsense), although at other times clearly as a selected definition of the word 'meaning', and as such neither true nor false.)

The Logic of Comparison

What Wittgenstein really said was that language is like a collection of tools: "I have often compared language to a tool chest". The command 'Look at language as if it were a collection of tools' is clearly not a statement of fact but a suggestion to make that comparison, as is 'Language is like a collection of tools'. Because anything can be compared to anything else in some way or another. That belongs to the grammar of the word 'comparison'. (That remark is an example of a grammatical remark or reminder, as are these words:)

After all, everything resembles everything else up to a point. There is a sense in which white resembles black, and hard soft, and so on ... (Plato, Protagoras 331d-e, tr. Guthrie)

A 'comparison' says that A is like B in some way, not that A is identical to B (much less that A really is B rather than itself, namely A).

The Rules of Language

Comparisons are made. A = using language is like B = playing games in the ways D and C, where C = following rules, and D = moving game-pieces (cf. language signs).

But A is not like B in that most, indeed almost all games are played according to strict rules; if there were constant disputes about the rules, people would fall out with one another and quit trying to play games. (Wittgenstein maybe used the word 'game' too broadly.)

In contrast, except in primitive language games and what is like them (e.g. life's everyday transactions), language use is not like a game played according to unambiguous rules, because most clearly in philosophy most concepts (sets of language rules) are not defined by strict boundary lines, but are more or less indefinite. (Note that, if (generally) we don't use words according to strict rules, then (generally) words as we use them don't have strict definitions. And this is reflected in dictionary definitions which tend to give only very general orientation, as e.g. Plato's definitions "Piety is correct conduct (doing one's duty) towards God, as justice is correct conduct (doing one's duty) towards men" (Gorgias 507b), which doesn't say exactly what that conduct is.) Unlike game players, language users are tolerant of indefiniteness, indeed in some contexts very tolerant.

Sometimes we unknowingly tolerate nonsense, e.g. at school in geometry with "geometric objects" (points, lines, planes), and at university in philosophy with professors who cannot speak in readable sentences.

Indefinite concepts are behind many philosophical disputes, which are mistaken for questions about things rather than questions about rules. The fundamental perplexity, the "deep disquietude" (PI § 111) that is created by this shows the importance of an understanding of the logic of language.

Limits to the comparison to tools

There is another important way in which words ("signs") are not like tools, because a hammer cannot be used to saw wood, but any given word can be assigned almost any job that can be done with language. Note also that, unlike the tools in a tool chest which may give us a clue to their use, words in a dictionary all look alike (CV p. 22).

If A is like B, then A is also unlike B is the logic of comparison. (That too is an example of a grammatical remark or reminder.)

The expression "the eye of God" is a metaphor, but the comparison isn't to a face with nose and eyebrows (LC iii, p. 71). It is true that a cat is like a dog because it has paws, but it is false that a cat is like a dog because it barks. (A false statement of fact has meaning (otherwise it would be nonsense rather than false), but it has no application to the facts.)

As signposts when lost

'Grammatical remarks' are reminders of some of a sign's grammar made for the sake of clarity, definitions (rules) given to help us go forward on our own in the particular case (PI § 151). A grammatical remark as --

an explanation [of meaning] serves to remove or to avert a misunderstanding -- one, that is, that would occur but for the explanation; not every one that I can think of.

The sign-post is in order -- if, under normal circumstances, it fulfills its purpose. (ibid. § 87)

Our aim isn't to assign definitions to words, except when necessary to resolve philosophical problems; our interest in language extends only so far as our interest in philosophy (ibid. § 109).

A grammatical remark, a rule of grammar, is a sign-post: it says how to go on when you are lost. (ibid. §§ 151, 123) (A sign-post may also warn how not to go on.)

Next chapter:

7. The Rules of the Game, as in "language game" (Comparison of using language to playing a game: the rules of the game define the game's words)

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