[lit-ideas] Wittgenstein's child I
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2013 16:56:14 +0000 (GMT)
[Split in two as earlier posting ‘as one’ did not get
through]
“What can the philosopher can learn from a child? Simplicity,
perhaps. But what kind? The kind that shows why nothing is usually lost if we
are not too precious about how we use language, and that much may be lost if we
are too precious about it.”
This post tries to develop the idea that it is central to
both the earlier and later Wittgenstein that the sense of language is never
said but can only be shown [and it is thus a kind of mirage to consider the
sense of ‘what is said’ as said or expressed by ‘what is said’ – an
illusion that arises, perhaps, because we have taken ‘what can only be shown’
for granted, or treated it as if it is somehow contained in ‘what is said’, or
because it is otherwise
inconspicuous to us].
By way of development, the key point here is to show how this
view is inextricably linked with Wittgenstein’s view of the “limits of
language” – for W, this fundamental ‘can-only-be-shown-but-not-said’
cannot be circumvented because the “limits of language” do not allow us to say
more. The central enterprise of both the early and later Wittgenstein is to
show “the logic of our language”, where this “logic” accounts for what language
has sense and what language is nonsense. But this “logic of our language” can
never escape the “limits of language”:- in particular, Wittgenstein holds that
the “limits of language”, beyond which language is not intelligible (or does
not make sense), are not “limits” that can be expressed or said in
language.
Though these limits may be shown (or may show themselves), the
view that the “limits of language” cannot be said in language [as, by analogy,
the limits of the visual field
cannot be seen] is taken to have a
radical implication:- in W’s view, what has sense within those “limits” also
cannot be expressed but can only be
shown. This radical implication is clearly drawn by Wittgenstein in the
Tractatus: its propositions, W makes
clear, say nothing with sense (though they show the truth, definitively and
unassailably); and the only propositions that say anything with sense, those of
the
natural sciences, do not say their own
sense – but rather even their sense depends on what the Tractatus seeks to show
[by way of its ‘pseudo-propositions’].
What a proposition with sense says,
according to the Tractatus, is that ‘such-and-such
is the case’. But such a proposition does not say its own sense – its sense
depends on what can only be shown, and its sense can only be shown. “The
proposition shows its sense” [TLP 4.022] – which has as its corollary that
its sense cannot be said. [As TLP 4.1212 states, “What can be shown cannot be
said”.]
This POV, based on a fundamental distinction between ‘what
can only be shown’ and ‘what can be said’ is, for W, what is most fundamental
about his Tractatus.
In this suggested interpretation, the ‘later’ Wittgenstein
radically enlarged his view of the ways language may have sense and enlarged his
view of the ‘bounds of sense’, abandoning the view that only the propositions
of natural science say anything with sense:- but he never abandoned this
fundamental POV that the sense of language can only be shown not said. And it
is this radical implication, drawn from his view as to the “limits of
language”, that underpins Wittgenstein’s consistent outlook on what
philosophers have traditionally done and typically do:- in W’s early and later
view,
philosophy as done by philosophers is typically a misconceived attempt to try
to say what cannot be said, an attempt to try to go beyond the “limits of
language” by attempting to say more than language permits, an attempt to do
something that mistakes or violates the “logic of our language”.
The proper remit for the philosopher who is not so deceived
– the philosopher like the early or later Wittgenstein – is to take some
‘philosophical’
line of thought in order to show how it does not make sense given the “logic of
our language”, a “logic” that nevertheless cannot be said but only shown. In
the view of the early Wittgenstein, the ‘philosophical’ line of thought can
never say anything with sense because
only the propositions of natural science say anything with sense; in the view
of later Wittgenstein, what the philosopher is trying to say may make sense or
may not, depending, but whether it does or not is something that can only be
shown (in which light Philosophical Investigations is an album
of sketches showing what makes sense
and what does not; like the Tractatus, PI is a book on ‘philosophical logic’,
but with a different understanding of ‘philosophical logic’ being shown)].
Here ‘what is said’ includes ‘what is signed’ or ‘what is
stated’ in language, and perhaps even ‘what is expressed’. But there is a
crucial ambiguity in all these expressions. If we take ‘what is said’ in the
sense of its content or meaning, then ‘what is said’ might appear to contain
its own sense – for that ‘what’ must have its sense to be that ‘what’. But this
is to skip to a sense of
‘what of said’ where sense is already assumed because we take the ‘what’ to
have given content and thus
given sense. What Wittgenstein is getting at requires that we do not skip to
this sense of ‘what is said’. By ‘what is said’, ‘what is signed’, ‘what is
expressed’ etc. we start first with
the sense where this ‘what’ is merely ‘encodement’ of some kind – as a physical
form by which code is encoded, which as a merely physical form lacks any sense.
The sense of what is merely encoded lies in its decoding or in its
‘decodement’.
All language is code of some kind – whether that code is
expressed by speaking, or writing etc. Whether language is spoken or written or
even gestured, it is to the
understanding of the code that we
turn when we turn to understand the language – a code that may be expressed more
or less equivalently by way of spoken
or written or even gestured ‘signs’.* But when we consider any ‘code’, we see
this term gives rise to an ambiguity similar to the ambiguity in ‘what is said’
etc. We can consider the ‘code’ either
as some mere ‘encodement’ or in terms
of its decoding or ‘decodement’: so
we can know, for example, there was a specific hieroglyph on a pyramid in terms
of its mere ‘encodement’ though we may not know how that ‘code’ is to be
decoded. The differences between spoken, written and gestured are, first and
foremost, differences in how the code is encoded. Yet these different
‘encodements’
may even give rise to a similar decoding or ‘decodement’. Certainly – as in the
case of a ‘duck-rabbit’ drawing – the same encodement may give rise to
different decodements. So (in a large class of cases but not perhaps all) the
form of ‘encodement’ may be largely inessential*
to much of the content or meaning – for we might consider that in principle
there is nothing much in any linguistic code, in terms of the content it
expresses, that cannot be encoded in many various ways i.e. that the content of
‘what is said’ is, to a large extent, inter-translatable
between different forms of code.*
*For the later Wittgenstein, this ‘inter-translatability’
may need to be qualified in various ways. For example, we might note here
something
absent from the Tractarian view of ‘sense’ – absent because his earlier view
took ‘the proposition’ as the alpha and omega of what language says with sense,
and further restricted
‘sense’ to ‘the propositions’ of the natural sciences and certain other
propositions [like tautologies] that say nothing: whereas, in his later view,
the function or use of language may ‘show
its sense’ even though that sense is not ‘propositional’ – as in the case of
wedding vows, a greeting, exclamation or joke. When we move away from a
‘propositional’
to a ‘use’ approach to sense, we might appreciate that the sense of the code
may depend to some extent on the form in which it is encoded – i.e. for
example, whether we decide to
put the code as speech, as gesture, as writing etc. may affect its sense – for
how
the sense is shown may affect the sense of what is shown, at least
in some senses of ‘sense’. Consider whether the ‘exact’ sense of
condolences would be altered if the ‘encoding’ used were spoken or written or
gestured (or even by choosing Latin or Greek rather than English): there may be
‘signs’ of condolence we might think best expressed by being spoken, others
that would be better in writing, and some best expressed by gestures (including
facial expression) – and here ‘tone’ and other subtleties may affect sense. So
the
form adopted may affect sense, and aspects of sense may not be
inter-translatable. In the case of choosing languages, there may be something
‘lost in translation’ if we try to say it in another language – and this may be
because of specific aspects of
‘sense’ that may depend on aspects of ‘use’ specific to that language: aspects
that may be ‘shown-but-not-said’ and which may be
‘lost in translation’. (Even the sound of words may affect ‘sense’.)
Such interdependence of form and content is an example of
how sense may depend on what can only be shown: for the sense (or perhaps
‘sense-content’)
may be seen to depend on (or be linked to) the form by which it is shown. But
such
a possible qualification on the inter-translatability of forms of code arises
not so much because of something intrinsic to different forms of encodement but
because of the differences of sense that attach to different forms of
encodement as we use them or as they are
decoded. Therefore, despite such a possible qualification, Wittgenstein’s
POV remains that – whatever the code – the sense of that code does not lie in
the physical form of the code adopted,
nor in anything else intrinsic to the character of the code qua ‘encodement’ –
the sense of a code
is always a matter of decoding that always goes beyond anything intrinsic to the
‘encodement’ itself. (Even where the sense may be affected by the sound of
words, e.g. in poetry, the sense given by the sound is not contained in the
sound but is a matter
of the ‘decodement’ of the sound.) In Wittgenstein’s later view, the decoding
of code may be shown not said, in
many cases, by how we use the code: but
in all cases the decoding may only be shown
not said.
(cntd. at II)
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