Introduction
The Philosophical Investigations of Ludwig Wittgenstein.
|
Aphorism 89-100 from
Wittgenstein's Philosophical
Investigations
with commentary on the right by
Lois Shawver
Wittgenstein:
(Emphasis in bold is inserted by Shawver to
enhance commentary.) |
Shawver commentary
and supplementary
notes: |
| 89. These considerations bring us up to the problem: In what sense is
logic something sublime?
For there seemed to pertain to logic a peculiar depth
-a universal
significance. Logic lay, it seemed, at the
bottom of all the
sciences.-- For logical investigation
explores the nature of all
things. It seeks to see to the bottom of things and is not meant to
concern itself whether what actually happens is this or that.
|
In 89, The question is: How did we come to believe
that logic is sublime? Why do we think that it is sublime?
The people of our culture have believed that logic is sublime for a
long, long time. (SUPPLEMENTARY
ARTICLE) Since Aristotle, at least, philosophers have
been inspired with the idea that logic is something something lofty and,
if followed carefully, can lead us to a more accurate understanding.
In fact, thinking this way, it seems if we could only get logic right,
define things precisely enough, then we could make sense of all
things.
|
--It [logic] takes its rise, not from an interest-- in the facts of
nature, nor from a need to grasp cause connexions: but from an urge to
understand the basis, or essence,
of everything empirical. Not,
however, as if to this end we had to hunt out new facts; it is, rather, of
the essence of
our investigation that we do not seek to learn anything
new
by it. We want to understand something that is
already in plain view. For this is what we seem in some sense not
to understand. |
This glorification of logic emerges, not from our need
to grasp particular connections, (such as what specifically causes what),
but a desire to find a key that will open up the secrets of the world for
us, make it all make sense. The quest is not to uncover something new
detail, but to understand something that is already before us, but
confuses us because its mysteries are somehow veiled.
|
| Augustine says in the Confessions "quid est ergo tempus? si nemo ex me
quaerat scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio".
|
this translates as: "What therefore is time? If
you
don't ask me, I know - if you ask me, I don't know." In other
words, the loftiness of logic is something we understand until we
are asked about it. Then, suddenly, we see how confusing it is to
us. |
-This could not be said about a question of natural science
("What
is the specific gravity of hydrogen?" for instance).
Something that we
know when no one asks us, but no longer know when we are supposed to give
an
account of it, is something that we need to remind ourselves
of. (An it is obviously something
of which for some reason it is
difficult to remind oneself.) |
There are many scientific problems that we either know
the answers to or we don't. But there are other thngs we to
undestand so well we take our knowledge for granted, until we are
asked. Then, we are puzzled. It is as though we know the
answer but can't quite remember what it is and need to be reminded.
|
90. We feel as if we had to penetrate phenomena: our
investigation, however, is directed not towards phenomena, but,
as one might say, towards the 'possibilities' of phenomena.
|
When we feel that logic is lofty, we feel as though we
had to penetrate the mysteries of what is before us with the power of
logic, but we do not actually look at what we are studying in order to try
to do this. We simply think about things, or study them, in our
"logical" reflection.
We might ask about our subject, for example, in relationship to certain
possibilities. If time is the subject of our study, we might
ponder, for example, if time would continue to exist if the world stopped
turning.
|
We remind ourselves, that is to say, of the kind of statement
that we make about phenomena.
|
Using logic, we try to recall things about our
subject. We might say to ourselves, for example, that, "time
seems to pass more quickly when you're busy." And we would ask
ourselves, "What does that mean about time?" This kind of logical
reflection, then, is more reflective than observational. |
Thus Augustine recalls to mind the different statements that are made
about the duration, past present or
future, of events. (These are, of
course, not philosophical statements about time, the past, the present and
the
future.)
Our investigation is therefore a grammatical one. Such an investigation
sheds light on our problem by clearing
misunderstandings away.
|
So our investigation is not based on observations of
new data. Instead, it is a study of the things we say or have said
about this subject. Our purpose is to clear away certain
misunderstandings that seem to block clarity about whatever interests
us. This means that our study is a grammatical one in the sense that
we might ponder the meaning of certain terms, or the connection between
different terms, and remind ourselves of the criteria for different
application of these terms. If we wanted to know what time is, we
might remind ourselves of the way we name time differently in different
time zones, for example. |
Misunderstandings concerning the use of words, caused, among other
things, by certain analogies between the forms of expression in different
regions of language.
|
Many of our misunderstandings result from the fact
that there are superficial similarities between different regions of
language. If I say "love" when I am scoring tennis, this does not
mean the same thing as when I speak endearingly. These things
continuously confuse us.
supplementary
note |
-Some of them [misunderstandings] can be removed by substituting one
form of expression for another; this may be called an "analysis" of our
forms of expression, for the process is sometimes like one of taking a
thing apart.
|
Some of this confusion can be removed by replacing
words with other words that seem less confusing. "Love" we might
say, "means zero" so instead of saying the score 30-love. We might
say that the score is 30-zero, in order to be less confused and
confusing. There are many multiple uses of most terms that get
confused this way, and we are scarcely aware of them. When we do
study them, unravel the equivocations, this we might call
"analysis." |
| 91. But now it may come to look as if there were
something like a final analysis of our forms of language, and so a single
completely resolved form of every expression. That is, as if our usual
forms of expression were, essentially, unanalysed; as if there were
something hidden in them that had to be brought to light. When this is
done the expression is completely clarified and our problem
solved. |
When we analyze the equivocations, straighten things
out, it sometimes begins to appear as though we could finally get a
picture of the accurate meaning, that we could invent, even, ways of
talking that allowed tus o speak in ways that are completely clear, so
that the problem
at hand is solved.
|
It can also be put like this: we eliminate misunderstandings by making
our expressions more exact; but now it may look as if we were moving
towards a particular state, a
state of complete exactness; and as if
this were the real goal of our investigation.
|
When we are mystified like this, we think we can find
a way to put things that will eliminate all misunderstandings. It
will just require, so we think, more exactness. It even seems that
exactness, not clarity, is the real goal of our investigation.
Somehow we have become infatuated with the idea that exactness will bring
us closer to a final picture of the hidden mysteries around us. |
| 92. This finds expression in questions as to the essence of language,
of propositions, of thought. |
Our infatuation with exactness shows itself when
philosophers ask about the essence of language in that they often strive
for more exactness. |
--For if we too in these investigations are trying to understand the
essence of language -- its function, its
structure, --yet this is not
what those questions have in view. |
It may seem that this is what we, in this book, are
trying to do as well. But the questions we ask are different.
|
For they see in the essence, not something that already
lies open
to view and that becomes surveyable by a rearrangement, but something that
lies beneath the surface. Something that lies within, which we see when we
look into the thing, and which an analysis digs out. |
We need to use different metaphors for their questions
and for ours. While they are seeking something deeper that will be
unveiled as the mystery structure of language, we are seeking something
that might be clear to us by a certain rearrangement of the details. |
'The essence is hidden from us': this is the form our problem
now assumes. We ask: "What is language?",
"What is a
proposition?" And the answer to these questions is to be given once for
all; and independently
of any future experience.
|
If we are in their frame of reference, and we ask
questions about the essence of things, we look for answers that can be
given now and for all time, regardless of what happens in the
future. After all, the essence of language cannot change. If
langauge has an essence, so they think, it exists everywhere and whenever
langauge exists. Not so for us. We will look at changeable
aspects of language that happen to create patterns during our cultural
experience. For example, whereas they will look for what "truth"
really is, apart from any true statement, we will be inspired to notice
the ways in which this term is used in our culture and in particular
language games and practices. |
One person might say "A proposition is the most
ordinary thing in
the world" and another: "A proposition -
that's something very queer!"
--And the latter is unable simply to look and see how propositions really
work. The forms that we use in expressing ourselves about
propositions
and thought stand in his way. |
When they are looking for essences they do not look at
the way the statements actually work and how we use them. They look
for something hidden from us. We look
for something we can watch
and see.
|
Why do we say a proposition is something remarkable? On the one hand,
because of the enormous importance attaching to it. (And that is
correct). On the other hand this, together with a misunderstanding of the
logic of language, seduces us into thinking that something extraordinary,
something unique, must be achieved by propositions.
|
When this logic of propositions seems remarkable, it
is for two reasons. One I endorse: There is much importance
attaching to language, and why and how that is so is worthy of our
reflection. The second reason we think logic is remarkable is that
we are seduced by certain illusions that tell us that language is alien to
other things in the world. We will find the distinction between
language and non-language quite blurry. Our culture tends to
polarize the world, mistakenly I feel, into language and not-language,
failing to see that the distinction is not so complete as we at first
think. |
-- A misunderstanding makes it look to us as if a propositions
did something queer.
|
Our recognition of the importance of language, plus
our having been seduced into seeing it as something completely different
from non-language, makes language propositions (statements) seem very odd,
indeed. |
| 94. 'A proposition is a queer thing!' Here we have in
germ the subliming
of our whole account of logic. |
This "subliming" of our logic is a way of seducing
ourselves into this mystification that treats logic as something quite
mystical. |
The tendency to assume a pure intermediary between the propositional
signs and the facts. Or even to try to
purify, to sublime, the signs
themselves.
|
When we sublime the logic of our langauge in this way,
we turn it into a kind of ghost which is seems to work as an intermediary
between the statements we make and the words we say. We try to get
rid of the words (signs) themself and stare at the essence, this
linguistic ghost,
so to speak, that connects our words with the facts
they are meant to portray. |
-For our forms of expression prevent us in all sorts of ways from
seeing that nothing out of the ordinary is
involved, by sending us in
pursuit of chimeras.
|
Seduced by the ghost of language into seeing
apparitions between words and things (into seeing "selves" "minds"
"schizophrenia" as things, for example) we are distracted and do not
notice the ordinary that is involved. |
95. "Thought must be something unique". When we say,
and mean, that such-and-such is the case, we -- and our meaning-- do not
stop anywhere short of the fact;
but we mean: this-is-so. But this
paradox (which has the form of a truism) can also be expressed in this
way: Thought can be of what is not the case.
|
95 begins with LW talking indirectly about the fly-bottle/
That is, he is exploring the cultural thoughts that weave together and
block our path out of the fly-bottle.
Here, at the source of this impasse, we find ourselves saying things like,
"Thought must be something unique". This is not an innocent
statement. It represents our willingness to imagine "thought" as
something mysterious and beyond explanation at the same time that that we
look for explanation. This is a path into thinking of language as
tied to metaphysical mysteries such as Platonic forms. supplemental
article.
Here is my paraphrase of the last part of this aphorism:
When I
say, "This is a cup." my words seem to point directly to this cup. I
am pointing right to it. My words don't fall short of the cup
and point just to a concept. This is a cup, I say. It is
so.
But words can only point to what is true? Isn't this a
truism? If I say "This is a flower" and it is really a cup
before us, then my words are not really pointing to anything. That
is fine. My words are just pretending that there is a flower
there. I can't really point to what is not here.
Or can I? If I look for my cup and find a bare shelf and say,
"My cup is not here", aren't I pointing to its absence? And how is
this different from looking at the bare shelf and saying, "The
flower is not here?" What would be different about the shelf and
what I point to in the two cases? It must be that there is something
else that I am pointing to other than the cup itself.
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96. Other illusions come from various quarters to attach themselves to
the special one spoken of here. Thought, language, now appear to us as the
unique correlate, picture, of the world. These concepts proposition,
language, thought, world, stand in line one behind the other, each
equivalent to each. (But what are these words to be used for now? The
language-game in which they are to be applied is missing.)
|
I point here to this bare shelf and say, "The cup is
not here", but what am I pointing to? I might say, perhaps I am
pointing to the thought of the-cup-that-is-not-here? Or if not the
thought, then to the proposition "This is a cup" or to the web of language
that reflects this meaning, or to the
"world" (as LW used the term in
the Tractatus when he said in the beginning "The World is all that is the
case). These are all more or less synonyms. As soon as you
knock one down, I have a backup concept that stands between the word and
the fact. These words may look a little different to you, but they
function in the same way. They are place holders that I use to talk
about these ghostly Platonic images as i think about my difficulties in
explaining the way langauge seems to me to work.
Is that any better?
By having a string of abstract concepts we construct in order to have
something to point to, we create a mysterious object of meaning that
language seems to address. It suddenly appears, when we are pointing
to that thought, whatever that should mean.Then, language begins to appear
to be something remarkabe, almost magical.
|
97. Thought is surrounded by a halo. --Its essence, logic,
present an order, in fact the a priori order of the world:
that is,
the order of possibilities, which must be common to both world and
thought. But this order, it seems, must
be utterly simple. It is prior
to a experience, must run through all experience; no empirical cloudiness
or
uncertainty can be allowed to affect it --It must rather be of the
purest crystal. But this crystal does not appear as an
abstraction; but as something concrete, indeed, as the most concrete,
as it were the hardest thing there is (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus No.
5.5563).
|
In this aporia,
it seems, that thought is surrounded by a kind of halo. This halo of
thought is "essence" or "logic", and this logical-essence-halo seems to
hold the world in some kind of order, to organize it. Without that
organizing halo the world would appear chaotic. But this organizing
halo must be completely simple, perfect in someway. It would not
work for this metaphysical-halo of essences to
have something confused
about it, something fuzzy. And, we must have this organizing
principle prior to our being able to make sense of anything. Without
this organizing principle, all if confusion.
|
We are under the illusion that what is peculiar, profound, essential,
in our investigation, resides in its trying to grasp the incomparable
essence of language. That is, the
order existing between the concepts
of proposition, word, proof, truth, experience, and so on. This order is a
super-order between --so to speak-- super-concepts. Whereas, of
course, if the words "language", "experience",
"world", have a use, it
must be as humble a one as that of the words "table", "lamp", "door". |
And, so, in this state of mystification we are under
the illusion that there is some essence of langauge, some magical essence,
and that we are trying to grasp this essence, which is just beyond our
grasp. This essence consists in the organizing principles, concrete
almost, ghostlike organizing principles. And these appear to be
permanent fixtures in the world. How can they change, we say in our
illusions, they are the principles that control the world of human
understanding? See #91
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98. On the one hand it is clear that every sentence in our language is
in order as it is'. That is to say, we are not striving after an ideal, as
if our ordinary vague sentences had not yet got a quite unexceptionable
sense, and a perfect language awaited construction by us.-- On the other
hand it seems clear that where there is sense there must be perfect order.
So there must be perfect order even in the vaguest sentence.
|
But there is aporia while in this mystification,
because, for
example, we know that it is a bit odd to say that we can
point to nothing, and yet it seems we can. It seems with my
concepts, I can point to the fact that John is not in his seat. I
see the seat empty. How can I do that? Then, noticing this
aporia and we think that the problem is
that the language that we use
is not quite perfect enough, so we want to make it more perfect, more
exact. This perfect language awaits our construction. What
will it be like? Well, it seems, it will be much like the one we
have, only more exact, more perfect. Thinking like this,
we say
to ourself that the organizing principle that controls everything is there
even in the fuzzy imperfect principle, but still, things do not quite work
correctly. The organizing principle is perfect, we just have a
language that is an imperfect picture of it. There are a few flaws,
and we must figure them out and fix them. |
99. The sense of a sentence --one would like to say-- may, of course,
leave this or that open, but the sentence must nevertheless have a
definite sense. An indefinite sense-- that would really not be a sense at
all. --This is like: An indefinite boundary is not really a boundary at
all. Here
one thinks perhaps: if I say "I have locked the man up fast
in the room --there is only one door left open"-- then I simply haven't
locked him in at all; his being locked in is a sham. One would be inclined
to say here: "You haven't done anything at all". An enclosure with a hole
in it
is as good as none. --But is that true?
|
In this perfect language, that, in our mystification
it seems we must construct (if we are to gain any clarity) we may, of
course, allow for a sentence to have some flexibility. We might have
a structure like, "The book is on the table" that could be adapted to "The
pen is on the table." But, it seems, there must be something quite
definite in the
boundaries of it all. We can't have the basic
rules be flexible. If I leave any of the basic rules flexible, it
seems, I might as well not have any rules at all. (Think how this
relates to Lyotard and his notion that we negotiate the basic rules of our
language in paralogy. We can say, now, in our postmodernism, "This
is what I mean by X" and, sometimes, people can follow us.) |
100. "But still, it isn't a game, if there is some vagueness in the
rules". -- But does this prevent its being a game? --
"Perhaps you'll
call it a game, but at any rate it certainly isn't a perfect game." This
means: it has impurities, and what I am interested in at present is the
pure article.
-But I want to say: we misunderstand the role of the ideal in our
language. That is to say: we too should call it a game, only we are
dazzled by the ideal and therefore fail to see the actual use of the word
"game" clearly. |
And so, let me ask you, must there be exact rules in
order for us to have a "game"? Or is this just an illusion of our
logocentrism? The mystified voice responds, well, you can call this
game without precise rules a game if you wish, but it is not a perfect
game. But, now, as I think through this, finding my way out of the
fly bottle, Wittgenstein says, I want to say that we misunderstand
the nature of our task here. We are far too dazzled by the dream
that increased precision will show us clarity to see any other prospects
clearly.. |
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First Page
Table of Contents
Shawver Commentary
Aphorisms
Index Page
1-10
11-20
21-30
31-38
39-50
51-59
60-64
65-69
70-75
76-80
81-88
89-100
Reference
Extended Look at 43
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