THE LIMITS OF LANGUAGE

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THE LIMITS OF LANGUAGE
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• 1. PHILOSOPHY AS THERAPY
• How does Wittgenstein conceive of philosophy?
• 2. BEYOND AUGUSTINES CONCEPTION OF LANGUAGE
• What is the discontinuity between the
  Philosophical Investigations and the Tractatus?
• ETHICS AND AESTHETICS
• To what extent does Wittgenstein challenge
  reflections on values?

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1. PHILOSOPHY AS THERAPY
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LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN (1889-1951)

• BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
• 26 April 1889 born in Vienna
• 1906 finished the technical university in
  Berlin.
• 1912 starts to study philosophy in Cambridge.
• 1914-1918 involved in World War I at the
  Austrian side.
• 1921 publication of the Tractatus
  Logico-Philosophicus.
• 1920-1926 teacher at a primary school.
• 1926-1928 builds a house for his sister.
• 1929 Wittgenstein back to Cambridge.
• 1939 becomes professor.
• 29 April 1951 death.
• 1953 publication of the Philosophische
  Untersuchungen.

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WITTGENSTEIN I II

• Wittgenstein I Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
  (1921)
• Wittgenstein II Philosophische Untersuchungen
  (1953)

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STYLES OF PHILOSOPHY
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THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE

• Triggered by the Renaissance and the colonisation
  of the world.
• Phonology gt language as a system of sounds.
• Morphology gt the form of the language.
• Syntaxes gt the order of linguistic elements to a
  whole.
• Semantics gt the study of the meaning of words and
  other linguistic elements.
• Pragmatics gt the study of the use of linguistic
  elements.

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PHILOSOPHY AND LINGUISTICS

• Linguistics gt the empirical study of language.
• Philosophy gt critical reconstruction of the
  presuppositions of language.
• Linguistic turn in philosophy gt language becomes
  the tool to solve philosophical problems.
• Formal language gt mathematical logic as a tool to
  clarify philosophical problems.
• Ordinary language gt the study of the ordinary
  language as a tool to clarify philosophical
  problems.

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LANGUAGE AS MEDIUM AND OBJECT

• Philosophers saw words generally as spectacles we
  look through, not at.
• Nowadays philosophers see language not only as a
  medium, but as main object of research gt
  linguistic turn in philosophy.
• Philosophers question the meaning of concepts.

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• THE TRIANGEL OF MEANING
• MENTAL ACTIVITIES
• LANGUAGE REALITY
• Example Amsterdam is the capital of the
  Netherlands

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AN OVERVIEW OF THE THREE PARADIGMS
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SOME ISSUES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

• Language and power gt rhetoric.
• The relation between the intension and extension
  of linguistic signs gt the planet Venus as
  evening star and morning star.
• The relation between optical sensations and what
  they signify gt aspect-blindness.
• The possibility of private language.
• The possibility to liberate oneself from the
  prison we call language.

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CONFUSION

• Language is often the source of confusion and
  misunderstanding.
• Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment
  of our intelligence by means of language
  (Wittgenstein).
• Philosophy is therefore a kind of therapy.

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PHILOSOPHY AS THERAPY

• Tractatus gt philosophy ought to be scientific gt
  Philosophy concerns itself with logical forms,
  with the a priori.
• Untersuchungen gt philosophy is the study of
  language games.

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2. BEYOND AUGUSTINES CONCEPTION OF LANGUAGE
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THE PICTURE THEORY OF LANGUAGE

• Tractatus gt the theory that a proposition is a
  picture.
• Constructed around seven basic propositions,
  numbered by natural numbers, with a lot of
  paragraphs numbered by decimal expansions
• The world is all that is the case.
• What is the case a fact is the existence of
  state of affairs.
• A logical picture of facts is a thought.
• A thought is a proposition with sense.
• A proposition is a truth-function of elementary
  propositions.
• The general form of a truth-function is p, ?, N
  (?).
• What we cannot speak about we must pass over in
  silence.

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WORLD-THOUGHT-LANGUAGE

• The world is represented by thought, i.e. a
  proposition with sense.
• World, thought and proposition share the same
  logical form gt thought and proposition can be
  pictures of the facts.
• The world consists of facts, i.e. existent states
  of affairs.
• States of affairs are combinations of objects.
• The objects internal properties determine the
  possibilities of its combinations with other
  objects, i.e. its logical form.
• The totality of states of affairs (actual and
  possible) makes up the whole of reality.
• The world gt those states of affairs which exist.
• The picture is a model of reality(TLP 2.12).
• The logical structure of the picture (made up of
  elements combined in a specific way) represents
  the logical structure of the state of affairs
  which it pictures.
• Every proposition is either true or false.
• The limits of world, thought and language gt what
  can/should and cannot/ should not be said.

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IDEAL LANGUAGE

• Can we justly apply logic just as it stands
  straightaway to ordinary propositions?
• Tractatus yes gt In fact, all the propositions
  of our everyday language, just as they stand, are
  in perfect logical order (5.5563).
• A logically perfect language has rules of syntax
  which prevent nonsense, and has single symbols
  which always have a definite and unique meaning.

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THE NONSENSE OF IDEAL EXACTNESS

• The ideal exactness is senseless, because no
  statement we might analyze acutally possesses
  such precision (PI 70).
• No conceivable purpose requires it (PI 80).
• Ordinary language is in order as it is, not
  because wonderful precision an constancy lie
  beneath its surface, but because such ideal
  qualities are irrelevant to the actual purposes
  of speech.

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AUGUSTINES CONCEPTION OF LANGUAGE

• Every single word has a meaning.
• All the words are names, i.e. they stand for
  objects.
• The meaning of a word is the object for that it
  stood.
• The connection between words (names) and their
  meanings (objects) is the outcome of a ostensive
  definition that triggers a mental association
  between word and object.
• Sentences are connections of names.

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CONSEQUENCES OF AUGUSTINES CONCEPTION OF LANGUAGE

• The only function of language is to represent
  reality words refer and sentences describe.
• Because a child thinks it can make an association
  between a word and an object this implies that
  it must have already a private language to
  understand the public language.

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LANGUAGE-GAMES AND FORMS OF LIFE

• Wittgenstein relates semantics (study of the
  meaning of linguistic signs) and pragmatics (the
  study of the use of linguistic signs).
• The study of language-games and thus forms of
  life helps us to criticize Augustines conception
  of language.
• The concept of language-game addresses the
  diversity of the use of linguistic signs, and
  that they are part of an activity.
• Language games are base on rules with a
  conventional and public character.

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CONTRA METAPHYSICS

• The philosopher who believes that the essence is
  hidden from us (PI 92) that thought is a
  quasi-supernatural process (PI 93-95) whose
  secrets, tucked away in the medium of the
  understanding (PI 102) must be divined, a priori
  (PI 89,97) by the understanding, will not give
  serious consideration to the mere external
  details.
• The preconceived idea of crystalline purity can
  only be removed by turning our whole examination
  round (PI 108) gt Back to the rough ground (PI
  107).

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LOOKING FOR AN ESSENCE

• Targets of the Tractatus gt precision and
  essence.
• If there is no essence why do we use the same
  word to all these things?
• A number of philosophical problems are closely
  related to the essence issue gt questions of
  abstraction and mental representation the
  possibility of definition the distinction
  between symptoms and criteria.
• Once we observe the structure of a concept like
  language we see that phenomena have no one thing
  in common which makes us use the same word for
  all, - but that they are related to one another
  in many different ways. And it is because of this
  relationship, or these relations, that we call
  them all language (PI 65).

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FAMILY RESEMBLANCE

• A notion opposed to the idea of constant
  essences.
• Wittgenstein did not deny merely that games or
  statements have something in common.
• He wants to eliminate a priori generalizations.

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THE MOTIVE TO DISCUSS THE IDEA OF A PRIVATE
LANGUAGE

• Private language is a new notion.
• What is the motive to introduce this notion?
• A not articulated reliance on the possibility of
  a private language is arguably essential to
  mainstream epistemology, philosophy of mind and
  metaphysics from Descartes to versions of the
  representational theory of mind which became
  prominent in cognitive science.

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PRIVATE LANGUAGE

• Is not a personal code.
• Is not a language of one person.
• The individual words of his language are to
  refer to what can only be known to the person
  speaking to his immediate private sensations
  PI 243.
• One can follow a rule privately.
• A language conceived as necessarily
  comprehensible only to its single originator
  because the things define its vocabulary are
  necessarily inaccessible to others.

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PRIVATE SENSATIONS

• Basic mentalistic idea Sensations are private
  PI 248
• Mentalistic paradigm gt The mental is like a
  language it functions and has the structure of a
  language.
• Presupposition sensations are like things in a
  box.
• SPEAKER ltgt LANGUAGE ltgt LISTENER
• Thought ltgt sentence ltgt
  thought
• encoding decoding
  

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TWO ARGUMENTS AGAINST A PRIVATE LANGUAGE

• Ostensive definitions dont make sense see also
  PI 30 gt there is no possibility for corrections,
  questions and answers to exclude
  misunderstanding.
• We need criteria to talk about the rightness of
  an action gt a public control is not possible.

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S

• Let us imagine the following case. I want to
  keep a diary about the recurrence of a certain
  sensation. I will remark first of all that a
  definition of the sign cannot be formulated But
  still I can give myself a kind of ostensive
  definition. How? Can I point tot the sensation?
  Not in the ordinary sense. But I speak, or write
  the sign down, and at the same time I concentrate
  my attention on the sensation and so as it were,
  point to it inwardly. But what is this ceremony
  for? For that is all it seems to be! A definition
  surely serves to establish the meaning of a sign.
  Well that is done precisely by the concentrating
  of my attention for in this way I impress on
  myself the connexion between the sign and the
  sensation. But I impress it on myself can
  only mean this process brings it about that I
  remember the connexion right in the future. But
  in the present case I have no criterion of
  correctness. One would like to say whatever is
  going to seem right to me is right. And that only
  means that here we cant talk about right PI
  258

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3. ETHICS AND AESTHETICS
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THE GOOD LIFE

• Practical philosophy gt reflections on human
  actions and social practices.
• Wittgenstein triggers also debates about ethics
  and aesthetics.
• Wittgenstein I ethics and aesthetics cannot be
  spoken about.
• It is clear that ethics cannot be put into
  words. Ethics is transcendental. (Ethics and
  aesthetics are one and the same.) T 6.421.

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WHAT CANNOT BE SAID

• Lecture on Ethics (1929).
• Autobiographical background the struggle to be
  decent (overcoming vanity and dishonest).
• Ethics, if it is anything, is supernatural and
  our words will only express facts.
• The distinction between saying and showing gt
  beyond what can be said in sensical propositions
  there are things that can only be shown
  Tractatus 4.1212.
• Ethics is running up the limits of language,
  because of the attempt to say something that
  cannot be said.
• Two kinds of statements
• 1. Relative statements gt can be justified by
  referring to facts which inform these
  judgements.
• 2. Absolute statements gt no statement of fact
  can ever be, or imply, a judgment of absolute
  value.

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THE LANGUAGE OF ART

• It doesnt make sense to focus only on what is
  beautiful or ugly, because they are not very
  important for aesthetic judgments.
• One should not look for the essence of what is
  art, but study the family resemblances in art.
• Aesthetics cannot be based on psychological
  explanations.

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WHAT DO YOU SEE?

• TWO ANSWERS
• 1. I see that gt a description.
• 2. I see it as gt a resemblance.

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ASPECT-SEEING

• The figure can be seen under more than one
  aspect as a duck and as a rabbit.
• We see always the same line gt the picture and the
  visual impression didnt change.

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BLINDNESS

• ASPECT-BLINDNESS
• - is not insensibility to optical impressions.
• - is the inability to understand optical
  impressions gt loss of associations between
  optical sensations and what they signify.

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LIBERATION FROM THE PRISON

• Language as a prison gt we are socialized with
  specific language-games (aspect-blindness).
• Language as a means of liberation gt we can learn
  new language games gt worlddisclosure.

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HEURISTIC VALUE

• Mathematical Logic (Vienna Circle).
• Philosophy of science (Winch).
• History of science (Kuhn).
• Aesthetics (Goodman).
• Political philosophy (Pitkin).
• Philosophy of language (Searle).

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Wittgensteins works
• - On Certainty (1969) Oxford Blackwell.
• - Philosophical Investigations (1953) Oxford
  Blackwell.
• - Philosophical Remarks (1964) Oxford
  Blackwell.
• - Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, New York
  Humanities press.
• - Zettel (1967) Oxford Blackwell.
• Secondary Sources
• - Hacker, P.M.S. (1996)) Wittgensteins Place
  in Twentieth- century Analytic Philosophy,
  Oxford Blackwell.
• - Kenny, A. (1973) Wittgenstein, Cambridge
  (Mass.) Harvard University Press.
• - Monk, R. (1990) Ludwig Wittgenstein The Duty
  of Genius, New York Macmillan.