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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 nature of 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 by following rules. Wittgenstein called his illustrations of this comparison "language games".

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, so there are many kinds of work that words are used to do.

Logic of Language

We want to distinguish between language with meaning and language without meaning (we don't want our philosophy to be mere sound without sense). I will call this distinction the logic of language. These pages are about Wittgenstein's way of making this 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 have meaning. And when language is used according to its rules of grammar, the language has meaning. And contrariwise, a move that breaks the rules is without meaning. That is the comparison Wittgenstein makes. (Moving the bishop along a diagonal and off the board does not follow the rules of chess; it is nonsense.)

The limits of comparison

Note that unlike the rules for games, often the rules for the use of words in philosophy aren't well-defined (BB p. 25), and if there is no rule to break, then is the language nonsense? And 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).

Parts of speech are both syntactic and semantic

Wittgenstein's extension of the concept 'grammar' to include whatever is needed to describe the use or meaning of language 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 meaning or use 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.

Elementary school 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 draw from it -- does not lead us to misunderstand the logic of our language = how sense is distinguished from nonsense.

False 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, and they are not easy to sort out (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 to 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. (BB § 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 ... 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 elementary school 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 elementary school grammar? Is it that as children we readily believe what all evidence suggests is not the case -- i.e. that the words 'book', 'idea', 'mind' and 'elf' are all names of objects? For as children we are never given ideas or minds 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)

Take away from us the words 'idea', 'mind' 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 meaning of abstract terms, about the nature of "abstract objects" we feel deep uncertainty as about ghostly presences.)

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: 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 and princesses and far away and fanciful places.

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

Natural history and Grammatical myths

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: that the essence of language is the stringing together of names of objects.

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. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 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 Augustine's picture of language --

"Words are names, and the meaning of a name is the thing the name stands for"

... 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, that "picture" or idea is not a true picture of the way our language works.

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

If we are to see the grammar of our language aright, we must break with the Procrustean picture that: "All words are names and the meaning of a name is the thing the name stands for -- whether that thing is an object or a phenomenon, visible (perceptible) or invisible, concrete or abstract)."

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 seldom of concern to philosophy, which is mostly concerned with abstractions (i.e. abstract terms, not "abstract objects" or ghosts) or non-name words.

Description without Imagination

It is not one thing, but a convergence of various things ("analogies between different regions of language" among them), which may account for the persistence of elementary school grammar.

But speculation is not logic; only language facts are (Z § 447). Wittgenstein, like Socrates, wanted in philosophy "to say no more than we know" (BB p. 45), which is what 'speculation' contrasts with.

The meaning of language in philosophical logic is not something hidden

We must do away with all explanation [explanation is 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 speculated to underlie the facts in plain view, invented to explain what those facts seem not to explain (e.g. about concept-formation and common names, as Plato's theory of Forms or the theory of abstraction does) -- is not sought 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.

Wittgenstein suggested a different way to look at syntactic nouns, that where there are no objects or phenomena 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".

The primaeval chaos (Ghosts)

We begin our study of logic with this picture of natural language: (1) we regard all nouns as names, and (2) where there is no object for a 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 were no perceptible things to bear the names, they posited spirits, as does Plato with the theory of "Ideas" or "Forms".

"Behind the appearances"

Philosophers invented theories about the reality they presumed to be hidden behind our language, a reality that can explain concept-formation (PI II, xii, p. 230) [Note 1e]. (These metaphysical theories are what Isaac Newton called "hypotheses" and Wittgenstein "explanations"). 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 needs to be there if our discourse and indeed philosophy itself (Parmenides 135b-c) is not to be "mere sound without sense".

Origin of the Theory of Forms (Archetypes)

Plato's theory of Forms seems to have been invented to solve the perplexing problem of common names, for it seemed to Plato that the meaning of a common name must be the common nature (or essence) it names, that there must be common natures, even if they are imperceptible and indescribable, if sense is to be distinguished from nonsense and there is to be knowledge. And so Wittgenstein and Plato were trying to respond to the same question, but in very different ways.

"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"), it cannot lie in invisible essences or private things ("thought") that cannot be called to account -- but only in what is public about language. Wittgenstein's later work is based on those facts and on his own way of looking at things: his selected meaning of the word 'meaning' and "language game" simile.

Because it is rule or convention based, Wittgenstein's way of looking at language makes an objective distinction between sense and nonsense possible. (It is a logic of language because it is rule based, and rule based because it compares using language to playing games according to rules.)

An example of the facts in plain view is that common names do not necessarily name common natures (essences). Wittgenstein illustrates this with the word 'game', showing that if we compare games, we find similarities or resemblances between games but no one defining quality which all games have in common. Wittgenstein describes the use of the word 'game' in plain view, its grammar, rather than tries 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). Wittgenstein views philosophy as clarification of what is in plain sight rather than as speculation about what it seems is not.

Ways of looking at things | Refutation or Rejection

What Wittgenstein did was to focus on the way words are used in the language rather than on states of mind or the things that words (e.g. abstract terms like 'mind', 'justice' and 'love') are conjectured by philosophers to name, 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. This was to look at language meaning in a different way from many philosophers -- or to look at language meaning at all, for many philosophers do not see language meaning as a problem (the naive view, which has been the view of most philosophers, is that "thought follows things and language follows thought", that language is used to think about things and those things are language's meaning). But Wittgenstein's way is not the only possible way, and that is why Wittgenstein's later work is not the logic of language, but only a logic of language.

Or 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 (essence) it names, regardless of whether that nature is perceptible to the senses and can be put into words or not"? One cannot refute that picture -- 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 eternal is real and knowable.

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 way of looking at language makes the distinction between meaning and nonsense 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

This 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 other people, an account that can stand up to the tests of refutation in discussion (Xenophon, 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"

Nonetheless 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 it is not nonsense to talk about false accounts. Because then --

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

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

In the context of Wittgenstein's logic of language, the expression "grammatical fictions" is defined as above. But if there is a "metaphysical use of language" (ibid. § 116), if metaphysics is possible (ibid. § 108), then attempts will be made to treat the question of the "meaning" = hypothesis about the nature of the mind or soul (psyche) as a factual rather than as a grammatical inquiry. (Wittgenstein's logic and metaphysics and 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, which distinguishes between a sign (By the word 'sign' Wittgenstein meant: 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', but 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 things and definitions of words) 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."

The Contrast Between a Thing 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 words; it does not make hypotheses about things (objects, phenomena).

Wittgenstein's Logic and Metaphysics

That is as close as Wittgenstein comes to stating the "metaphysical presumptions" or foundations of his later logic of language. "The language game [Wittgenstein compares using words to playing a game according to rules] is there -- like our life" (OC § 559) is not an explanation, only a decision to do no more than describe the facts in plain view, that is, to say no more than we know (if we use the word 'know' as we normally do, and how else shall we use the words of our language if not the normal way? (PI § 246)) In other words Wittgenstein's logic of language is not metaphysical: it is not speculation about the nature of the things words are thought to name or the the reality presumed to be hidden behind the conceived facts. [Note 1g]

4. Wittgenstein's Meaning of 'Meaning'

A sign -- a sound, an ink mark -- 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) And we ought be clear which meaning of the word 'meaning' is the concern of Wittgenstein's logic of language. There are many meanings of 'meaning', many uses for that word in the language. Wittgenstein chose one, one that allows us to make an objective distinction 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. (Wittgenstein's old and new ways of thinking contrasted))

"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 meanings, 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). (An 'account of grammar' is a 'description of 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 grammar of the word 'object' as we normally use that word: 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.)

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). And so by the word 'concept' I mean rules for the use of a sign, not a ghost conjured up by ink marks or sounds. (The trouble with equating 'concept' with the TLP's 'symbol' or "sign with meaning" is that it suggests that meaning is the name of a thing, an aura or halo a sign carried (PI § 117) about with it regardless of context.)

For what would we mean if we said that a concept is an abstract object or the name of an abstract object -- 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 nature of a thing?" versus "What is the meaning of a word?"

Wittgenstein had several theories about the origin of philosophy, i.e. about the origin of the conceptual confusion Wittgenstein called philosophy, one of which was the analogy theory which is illustrated by the idea that if there are tangible things that bear names, then there are also intangible things that bear names (as the assumption that all words are names of things seems to require).

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 'How big is a geometric point?' and 'Where is the mind located?' and 'What color is the number 3?' and 'Can a shadow cast a shadow?' 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 meaning of the word 'grammar' Wittgenstein gave to G.E. Moore.

Grammar is instruction in the use of language, like a guidebook. But instructions and accounts may be false. [BACK]

Note 1c: It is "possible to be interested in a phenomenon in various ways" (PI § 108). This was Wittgenstein's way. Why does he take the facts in plain view for granted? for don't Kant and Goethe question doing this? The facts are the conceived facts (cf. "conceived percepts"): what "the facts in plain view" are is like knowledge: it belongs to the community rather than to the individual; "the reasonable man" is not an individual. (The standard in a law court: rules of evidence. A philosopher cannot both accept these rules as fair and reject the conceived facts they are applied to: what is reality "for all practical purposes" is reality. Wittgenstein's logic of language is not metaphysical.

(Socratic philosophy is not saying one thing in philosophy, another when confronted with life. Nor is critical philosophy: "relative but real".))

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 work in philosophy.

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)

Plato and Aristotle asked if the body and mind or the mind alone is the essence of man. But prior to that question is the question of grammar (Z § 458), of whether the part of speech of the word 'mind' is name of object. (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.) [BACK]

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

Note 1e:

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 Socrates, not of 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) Plato's requirement by pointing out that most common names simply don't 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 common natures (or elements).

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)

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 very few concrete cases yield such knowledge. But Plato does not see that fact as refutation; rather, if that is what the facts suggest, then the perceptible facts are only "appearances", not, Plato believes, the reality behind those appearances. And that reality is the meaning of 'meaning' that interests Plato. But that is not an objective meaning of 'meaning'. [BACK]

Note 1f: "Hypotheses non fingo". Wittgenstein did not want conjecture, but to replace all such "explanation" with description (PI § 109).

Ockham's view was that similarities of fact are enough to account for concept-formation, e.g. "Socrates and Plato are called men because they are more like one another than either is like a donkey." [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 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. (All Wittgenstein's theories about the origins of philosophy, falsely derive ALL from SOME in my view.)

And 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 meaning of common names, as well as Plato's method of grammar 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 philosophy really determined by which meaning of the word 'meaning' we choose, on our logic of language'? [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, the meaning of which is explained by pointing to their bearers.)

What did Wittgenstein mean by the word 'use'? He used that word to make a simile: 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 simile 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).

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) [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 lightening" 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 lightening", 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, the above dictionary does for the expression 'will-o'-the-wisp' 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.

Natural science is about real definitions of natural phenomena, and, in contrast, logic is about verbal definitions (and never real definitions). Metaphysics, on the other hand, as some philosophers use the word 'metaphysics', would be about real definitions of "abstract things", i.e. the things presumed to be named by abstract terms such as 'time', 'being', 'God', 'beauty' and 'justice'. Wittgenstein denied that there are such definitions. [Note 3]

Grammatical rules versus statements of fact

Grammatical rules are not statements of fact; they are conventions. 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.

Grammatical rules can be likened to commands. We can imagine a people who give definitions 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 is unlikely to be mistaken for one.

In logic of language or logic-philosophy (in contrast to metaphysics-philosophy), definition DEF.= rule of grammar.

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'. And for some proper names Wittgenstein followed Russell's "Theory of Descriptions" (ibid. § 79); e.g. 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 character on trial in Plato's Apology', and so on.

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 quite a number of things, e.g. there might be a history or background of the sorrow, an object of sorrow (e.g. the death of a friend), then the behavior of sorrow (e.g. drawn face, tears). [Note 4] Think of just 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

And yet 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', 'sorrow' or 'sadness', 'anger', 'fear', 'love', 'joy', name patterns of behavior which do not have defining common natures. Defining these names, which are names of phenomena, is different from defining words by pointing at objects; e.g. the word 'love' is not defined by pointing to a thing named 'love' (A mother cradles her child: one can point to the mother, and the child, the act of cradling, but not to a fourth thing named 'love').

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. Use in the language is public. The word 'meaning' suggests something mysterious, whereas the words 'use' and 'tool' do not.

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.

"... if meaning is to be objective" (verifiable , determinable), which it can be -- although it needn't be; there is nothing, certainly not rules of syntax, to stop vague speech -- and which we want it to be in philosophy: the aim of philosophy is clarity for understanding, not continued or deepened obscurity (vagueness).

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

In logic we make for ourselves grammatical reminders

Where we are puzzled in philosophy about the meaning of words, we have only to remind ourselves of how we normally use those words (PI § 116), words which belong to a language we have already learned (English e.g. 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

The word 'time' has no meaning apart from how time is measured. The question 'What is time?' is nonsense (without meaning). We simply don't use the word 'time' that way, despite the fanciful pictures of time as a moving concourse or carousel and so on suggested by misleading grammatical analogies and hypostatization. There are things named 'clocks', but there is no thing named 'time'.

Someone who protests that "time is not a mere word, but a phenomenon, the fourth dimension" is presuming that the meaning of a word is the thing the word names, that the word 'time' is the name of a thing. The picture: "thought follows things and language follows thought" (Copleston).

Or that "logic concerns itself with language, but philosophy is about reality outside language." But are there real definitions of abstract terms, hypotheses about what e.g. ideas are or time is? The word 'abstract' casts more darkness than light. In this context it contrasts with 'concrete' and says that the meaning of the word 'time' is not explained by pointing to the bearer of a name (ibid. § 43). But then how is its meaning explained?

Endnotes Chapter 5

Note 2: Wittgenstein, significantly, 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 may not "give methods for defining every sign" are Socrates' Logic of Language (ethical terms and definition) and Are there Meaningful Signs Without Grammars? (a sign that can convey meaning is not nonsense, but can there are be signs that convey 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 principal method of logic -- we must give examples. This is because acquiring a concept (PI § 208), learning a word's meaning, is rarely about identifying an essence because most words do not have essential meanings (i.e. most common names do not name defining qualities that are common to all). This is why examples must be used in explanations of meaning -- and it is not for want of a better way -- as if there really were essences but we were "unable to say what they are -- it is, rather, determined by the very nature of the concepts of our natural language. [BACK]

Note 2b: 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"), 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 did not use the word 'grammar' the same way either.) [BACK]

Note 3: Blaise Pascal, when criticizing rationalist philosophers, pointed to the confusion caused by mixing up these two types of definition, i.e. of failing to distinguish between definitions of language-signs and hypotheses about phenomena ("real definitions") or, in philosophy, between logic's verbal definitions and metaphysics' real definitions of abstractions such as "being" and "becoming". (Pascal uses the word 'nominal' (concerning names) rather than the word 'verbal' (concerning words), but there is a fundamental problem with nominalism.)

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)

Thinking that language has meaning independently of the community that uses it is related to 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. [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). And at times Wittgenstein appears to use the sentence 'The meaning of a word is its use in the language' as a statement of fact (but a statement of fact must be falsifiable, and is this?), 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 actually 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'. (And that remark is an example of a grammatical remark or reminder, as is:)

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 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.

In contrast, except in primitive language games and what is like them, language use is not like a game played according to unambiguous rules, because most concepts (sets of language rules) are not defined by strict boundary lines, but are more or less indefinite. 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 and at university in philosophy. Indefinite concepts are behind many philosophical disputes, which are mistaken for questions about things rather than questions about rules. (The fundamental perplexity ("deep disquietude" (PI § 111)) that is created shows the value of an understanding of the logic of language.)

Limit 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 (language consists of conventions, but not of mere conventions) any job that can be done with language. If A is like B, then A is also unlike B. And that too is an example of a grammatical remark. That is the logic of comparison.

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.

As signposts when lost

'Grammatical remarks' are 'reminders of some of a sign's grammar, made for the sake of clarification'. We would not naturally call them 'definitions'; perhaps we want to call them "partial definitions". But when is a definition complete? How much explanation of meaning do we need in a particular case before we are able to go forward on our own (PI § 151) to use a sign correctly? 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 define words, except when necessary to resolve philosophical problems (ibid. § 109); our interest is philosophy not lexicography. Note that, if generally we don't use words according to strict rules (BB p. 25), then words don't have strict definitions, and this is reflected in dictionary definitions of common words 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 towards men" (Gorgias 507b).

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

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