(contd. from I) To some, this might seem to go without saying (or showing). But, for Wittgenstein, it is something philosophers are apt to overlook and, as a result, to adopt a misleading picture of language; and this misleading picture of language may lead to a vain kind of philosophising. As with the ambiguity of ‘what is said’ noted above, we can obscure the truth – viz. that all code stands in need of decoding – by thinking of the code in terms where its decoding is already given:– so it might seem as if the sense of the code – the way it is decoded, or interpreted – is given by the code as encoded. It might seem as if the code expresses its own sense: but this is only true if we take it as already decoded – as un-decoded code, the code expresses no sense. So this appearance is a mirage: in truth, any code stands in need of being decoded because there is nothing intrinsic to it as ‘encodement’ that determines how it is to be decoded. This mirage may become clear if we consider a code – like hieroglyphics – with which we are unfamiliar: where we can know the ‘encodement’ without knowing its ‘decodement’. It is perhaps our deep familiarity with certain codes that helps produce the mirage that the code expresses, says or contains its own decoded sense. A great deal of PI seeks to show this mirage for what it is. Wittgenstein does so by stating points that show this, but also by trying to get us to reconsider familiar ‘code’ in some unfamiliar setting or to consider some unfamiliar ‘code’ in some familiar setting. For Wittgenstein, this mirage is perhaps central to the illusions of philosophers who may delude themselves that they have found a point within language to say something (e.g. by way of the explication of the meaning of terms or of a ‘concept’) that in truth cannot be said because it goes beyond what can be shown about the sense of such terms as they feature in our language. In PI, Wittgenstein clearly recognises that we must take ‘what is said’ in its sense of ‘un-decoded code’ when he makes clear, for example, that we can know and communicate what is encoded without knowing how to decode what is encoded – we may learn a formula, for example, as code but without further understanding its sense as code i.e. what the formula means. And what is true of a formula here is true of anything else in language, for all language is code – I might tell my friend that in a foreign country I heard a man exclaim ‘Scraba lacka’, knowing this encoded a message of some sort, though I do not know how it is to be decoded. As to ‘what is said’ here, there is a sense in which I understand ‘what is said’ in that I correctly understand that ‘what is said’ is ‘Scraba lacka’ [as opposed, say, to ‘Wacka dacka’ etc.], but also a sense in which I do not understand ‘what is said’ because I do not understand what ‘Scraba lacka’ means. This difference in my understanding of ‘what is said’ corresponds, as per the ambiguity noted, to the difference between ‘what is said’ as something merely encoded or in code and ‘what is said’ when decoded. Given that no code contains or states its own decoding, we can see that (as all language is code of some sort) so no language contains or states its own sense – where the sense of language always lies in language decoded. Language, when considered simply as mere un-decoded code, cannot be considered to have any sense – its sense depends on it being considered as decoded code. But what about the possibility that, even if no code intrinsically contains or states its own decoding, the decoding of any code is something that may be said or expressed or contained in some other code? Perhaps in some ‘meta-code’? Wittgenstein takes the view that this possibility is just a version of same mirage noted above: for imagine we consider that, in this way, we might say how a code is to be decoded:- what we say in the ‘meta-code’ must either be treated as decoded code, which means we have assumed it has a sense that it does not itself say; or, if taken as un-decoded code, it simply lacks sense. In other words, there is no Archimedean point within language where we may take some ‘code’ as saying the sense of some other ‘code’ – either the ‘meta-code’ is taken as un-decoded code, in which case it lacks sense and cannot perform this function; or the ‘meta-code’ has sense, but then this is only because we have treated it as decoded code, in which case its own decoding or sense is never something said by it.** **Here is the gist as to why Wittgenstein was not taken with Godelian or Tarskian developments as validating a meta-linguistic alternative to the search for an Archimedean point within language from which to resolve issues of sense. For the meta-language approach would merely shift the issue of sense to another layer within language, when this issue cannot be resolved within language given the “limits of language”. Wittgenstein would not seek to prove such a meta-linguistic approach was mistaken – rather he thinks that his own (correct) view can only be shown in a way that can only be grasped by someone alert to what W seeks to show given the “limits of language”. This post might have taken a different tack and tried to work to Wittgenstein’s POV through examples of what a child might say and how its sense should be understood. Here are two examples to consider:- (a). Grandparent (on phone): “Hello Tom” Child (aged two): “Hello Do-no”. Grandparent: “I’m sitting here with Tinka the cat.” Child: “Hello Tinka.” Grandparent: “We’re both sitting by the fire.” Child: “Hello fire.” How do we explain the sense of “Hello fire” here (from the POV of the later Wittgenstein)? Is it merely nonsense? (Of course not – even if it contains a ‘mistake’, from a more adult perspective, as to how “Hello” is to be used.) (b) Child: “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.” Might this same ‘encodement’ have a different sense if the child were (i) reciting the sequence in response to a request from a teacher to give the sequence in order; (ii) hurriedly reciting the sequence at the start of a game of ‘hide-and-seek’, where the sequence is followed by “Ready or not here I come”? (Of course. We might see the difference in sense because in the second case the order of the sequence may not matter to the use. But, for Wittgenstein, this difference in sense is not said by ‘what is said’ but is something that can only be shown here.) Donal Examining near prostate London