[lit-ideas] Re: Wittgenstein the positivist
- From: Robert.Paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Robert Paul)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: 06 Apr 2004 20:20:33 PDT
Donal wrote:
Popper in 'Objective Knowledge' p.321, "Comments on Tarski's Theory of
Truth",
"In vol.2 of the same _Enclyclopedia*_ we are told that it is implicit in the
later writings of Wittgenstein 'that a concept is vacuous if there is no
criterion for its application'.
"The term 'positivism' has many meanings, but this (Wittgensteinian) thesis
that 'a concept is vacuous if there is no criterion for its application'
seems to me to express the very heart of positivistic tendencies. (The idea
is very close to Hume). If this interpretation of positivism is accepted,
then positivism is refuted by the modern development of logic, and especially
by Tarski's theory of truth, which contains the _theorem_:for sufficiently
rich languages, there can be no general criterion of truth."
* before some wag inquires whether this was the Encyclopedia Brittannica For
Children, it was the The Encyclopedia Of Philosophy
Not only are these comments of some interest given Robert Paul's claim that W
was no positivist, they may be seen against a background where it is unclear
W ever understood Tarski's and Godel's work properly (see eg. Monk, p.295).
If W did not, these figures might be added to figures like Darwin whose work
was of great importance for Popper's thought but whose work Wittgenstein
seems to have had understood little of. Consider W's thesis at TLP 4.1122
whose truth perhaps [merits?] discussion in a separate thread, and other adverse
remarks re Darwin's theory.
Donal
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Donal (I think this is how it goes) quoting Popper citing the Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, writes that '[i]n vol. 2 of the same _[Encyclopedia]*_ we are told
that it is implicit in the later writings of Wittgenstein 'that a concept is
vacuous if there is no criterion for its application'. [Although Donal assures
us that the work cited isn't the Encyclopedia of Philosophy for Little Folk** he
does not tell us which of the several works by that name Popper had in mind. I
suspect that it might be the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Paul Edwards,
which did indeed appear in two volumes, in 1967.]
The entries in _this_ Encyclopedia are by various authors, and it would help to
know _which_ of them wrote what Popper cites (paraphrases?) here. One can
perhaps see how a hasty reading of the Investigations (which could go proxy for
most of Wittgenstein's later thought) might lead one to say something as muddled
as this. However, in the Investigations, criteria for the 'application of
concepts' is not discussed. What is discussed is the need for 'outward criteria'
for inner processes; criteria for saying that a pupil knows how to go on in
continuing a mathematical series, criteria for the 'mastery of a technique, and
so on. I say, 'and so on,' because the word 'kriterium' is used in a number of
different, although perhaps related, contexts. In fact, there is no talk of
'vacuous concepts' in the whole of Wittgenstein's post-1931 philosophy. (I'll
bet.)
I'm not sure what to make of the claim that Wittgenstein was a closet Logical
Positivist in the later writings. (I'll try to say more about 'Positivism' and
the Tractatus in another post.) One would like to be charitable--but still...
Two things: in the Investigations, Wittgenstein talks of the variously many,
variously diverse uses of language (from forming and testing a hypothesis to
telling jokes to 'asking, thanking, greeting, cursing, praying'--Investigations
23 ). Moreover, in that work he repeatedly talks of his former delusion that
logic had a kind of 'crystalline purity' (which it had in the Tractatus, where
what supported language was something like the logic of Principia Mathematica),
and tries to show what was _wrong_ with that conception of language.
These concerns are central to the Investigations; neither of them can be found
in any version of (Logical) Positivism the world has yet seen. In LP, there is
the notion that to be meaningful, a proposition must be, or at least in
principle be, empirically verifiable. In the Investigations, to be meaningful, a
word or an expression must have a use within a particular language game, or in a
set of language games. In LP, there is no room for the notion that 'Ow!'
'Water!' 'Away!' and 'Help!' e.g. have 'a meaning.'
In LP, which keeps pining for a logically perfect language, there is no place
for a concept with vague boundaries. Here, LP follows Frege's pronouncement, in
Section 56 of the Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, that a concept without
determinate boundaries is not only useless, but is a concept in name only, of no
use to logic or to mathematics. In the Investigations (sections 71 and 77,
especially) he attacks this Fregean requirement, and tries to give examples of
the usefulness of concepts with 'blurred edges' and indefinite boundaries. Here
he rejects not only Frege, but the Tractatus view that the sense of a
proposition must be determinite. Once again, there is a clear conflict between
his later views and anything that can be found in the thought and writing the
Logical Positivists.
As early as 1930, when Wittgenstein's thoughts were in transition and extremely
confused, he was beginning to question the assurance with which he dealt with
certain problems in the Tractatus, and by 1932, his thoughts had almost entirely
shifted away from anything _resembling_ a principle of verification--not that
any such principle was actually present in the Tractatus in any event.
How his alleged defective understanding of the work of Godel and Tarski is at
all relevant to any of this needs to be pointed out. The Tractatus was published
in 1922, although it was written several years earlier. Godel's 'uber formal
unentscheidbare Satze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme,' was
published in 1931. If there are other works of Godel which he might have ignored
(where--in the Tractatus?) the ought to be mentioned and their relevance
explained. To say that Wittgenstein may not have understood his work 'properly'
tells us nothing whatsoever.
I have no idea what general point Donal is trying to make. Was Wittgenstein a
''Positivist'? One has but to open one's eyes to see that he was not. Even the
Positivists realized eventually he wasn't. Then why try to make him one? What
ever turns on it? Nothing apparently but to make sense of some third-hand
remarks of Popper's.
Robert Paul
The Reed Institute
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**By 'Little Folk' I mean children, not _the_ Little Folk.
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