[lit-ideas] Re: Must the Word be Literate?
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:30:00 -0700
John McCreery wrote
Perhaps, again. But there is no denying that modern philosophers
ranging from Leibniz to the early Wittenstein took quite seriously the
notion that an ideal language could be constructed in which all and
only true statements about the world could be uttered.
and Donal comments
...is the idea of an "ideal language" really "rooted in quite common
earlier beliefs about primordial words": was it not, in Wittgenstein's case
anyway, rooted in the idea that there must be a logically perfect language
that could be developed or spelt out by philosophical analysis and in terms
of which we could then set a bar to measure our ordinary, natural language
against, and so engage in a process of philosophical clarification?
I can't conceive of a language 'in which all and only true statements
about the world' can be made. Any statement 'about the world' is
contingent and for any such statement it must be possible to express its
denial in the same linguistic form. Which is true is a further question
but a language in which only true statements could be made would, I
think, consist entirely of tautologies and other forms of analytically
true statements. But be that as it may.
Donal asks whether Wittgenstein's notion of an 'ideal language' was
'rooted in the idea that there must be a logically perfect language...'
Wittgenstein does not set forth nor does he endorse the idea of a
'logically perfect language.' A fortiori, he does not think that
ordinary language should be replaced by such an ideal. In the Tractatus,
'Ordinary language is perfectly in order just as it is,' although the
'tacit conventions for understanding it are enormously complicated.'
(Russell does mistakenly say in his Introduction that Wittgenstein was
in search of a 'logically perfect language.')
In the Tractatus, he separates what can be said (propositions like those
in the natural sciences) from what can't be. His purpose isn't to exalt
the former but to show how little has been accomplished when the
separation has been made: for the really important stuff, the things
that matter can't be talked about. At first, the Logical Positivists
(beginning with the members of the Vienna Circle) saw Wittgenstein as an
ally in their attempt to show that the only meaningful statements were
empirical ones, and that metaphysical statements, ethical statements,
statements about art, etc., were either nonsensical or meaningless:
'pseudo propositions,' as Ayer called them.
And for a long time, this was the received view: that Wittgenstein had
shown, or had tried to show, that only empirical propositions were
useful and important. Only in the past few decades have people realized
that Wittgenstein's message was that we cannot talk about the really
important things.
Robert Paul,
off to explicate some Oregon pinot noir,
somewhere south of Reed College
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