[Wittrs] [quickphilosophy] Hacker on ?The Rise and Fall of the Picture Theory?
- From: wittrsl@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- To: quickphilosophy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:01:34 -0000
What follows is (i) my summary of some of the salient points in
Hacker's 1981 paper; (ii) some excerpts from that paper on W's move
away from the picture theory; and (iii) a couple of comments of my own.
I continue to use the courier font for my own stuff and the georgia font
when I'm either quoting or nearly quoting (i.e., paraphrasing). I also
continue to use "W" for "Wittgenstein".
The basic premises utilized by W to end up with a picture theory of
representation are:
1. "Ordinary language is in order as it is" though this might
not always be readily apparent and might take analysis to show it.
I.e., it is consistent with the laws of logic that require bivalency
and excluded middle. Since so many ordinary language statements are
vague, this must be a function of vacuous proper names. These must be
handled by the Russellian Theory of Description and the Fregean
requirement of determinacy of sense. [Why such changes do not amount
to altering ordinary language rather than leaving it as it is, seems
odd to me.]
2. The sense of a prop does not generally determine its truth-value,
so knowing what something means will not generally require us to know
whether it is true or false. That a prop is false does not make it
meaningless. So, what makes a prop true can't be its sense alone.
3. Languages have generative powers, which means that props must be
composite. Only if props consist of elements can there be
rule-governed ways to generate an infinite number of new props out of
existing elements.
4. We do in fact understand things?representation is not only
possible, but actual.
It is isomorphism that is necessary to make 1-4 true. If we make a
model of a state of affairs, the model will represent in virtue of being
isomorphic with what it models. Elements of the model must stand for
the elements of what is represented. This, for W, is "the
pictorial relation."
Models represent states of affairs, with the structure of the latter
consisting in the way its constitutive elements are connected with each
other. For a model to represent some state of affairs, the elements of
the model must be arranged isomorphically with the elements of the
represented state of affairs, given the appropriate method of
projection.
A model is true if things are as the model represents them as being;
otherwise it's false, and to know whether some model is true or not,
it must be compared with reality.
There must be an internal relation between a model and what it
represents whether it represents truly or falsely. That is, the
"logical form" (or the multiplicity and combinatorial
possibilities) of the model and what it represents must be identical.
No model can represent its own (internal) relation to what it is a
model of?it can only display it. Propositions are a particular type
of model and so, too, must have a logical form matching what they
represent, whether they are true or false. Their logical form is what
is possible for them to say given the rules of logical syntax.
Hacker then says this regarding W's development after 1929:
In recent years there has been a justifiable reaction to the initial
conception of the relationship between W's two masterpieces. To be
sure there is profound change in his philosophy, but there is also
profound continuity. But exactly what changes and what continues is no
easy matter to discern. This is not surprising, for if what W has done
is rotate the axis of reference of his investigation 180 degrees [see
PI, sec. 108] then the difference of the sameness, as it were, will be
difficult to perceive?.
W continued to think that psychological features of thought processes
are logically irrelevant. In the PI, he insists repeatedly that mental
representations and accompanying experiences are irrelevant to sense
and understanding. The doctrine of avowals underlines the principle
that it must always be possible to distinguish being true from being
believed to be true, and the private language argument emphasizes the
necessity of the distinction between being right and believing oneself
to be right. So here we find an anti-psychologism, and affinity with
Realism, which, because of the criteria link neither involves the
Realist disregard for the conditions of possible knowledge as
determining the bounds of sense, nor slips into the typical
reductionism of Anti-realism.
Despite this affinity, however, een the anti-psychologism is
transformed. In the first place, it is no longer wedded to Realist
dogmas?in particular the transcendence (as opposed to the
independence) of truth. In the second, the boundary between philosophy
and psychology has shifted dramatically. The Tractatus was tacitly or
explicitly committed to a host of psychological hypotheses about arcane
mental processes whose relation to reality was mediated by language.
Thought, understanding and belief, although they had a logical structure
similar to the proposition, and contained unknown psychic constituents,
were of no philosophical consequence (except in so far as sentences
like "A believes p" threaten the thesis of extensionality).
The assignment of meaning to indefinables, the forging of links between
language and reality, applying the method of projection are all mental
processes. How they are done is a matter for psychology; all that
concerns logic is that they are done. In the later work this is
repudiated. The subjects of meaning, understanding and thinking are
essential to a proper grasp of the nature of language. For the
relations between meaning that p, understanding `p' and the
ense of `p' are internal. Therefore no psychological
explanation or hypothesis can replace a philosophical account of these
relations?.
This?leads to the total repudiation of?the Realist dogma?of
the irrelevance to logic of the grounds of judgment. The grounds of
judgment, being what justify assertion, constitute at least in certain
cases, the sense of a proposition.. The grounds are grammatically
related to the proposition and tell us what proposition it is (Zettel,
sec. 437). ?
In short, the later philosophy replaces the Realist methodological
principles by diametrically opposed principles. The bounds of sense
and the limits of possible knowledge must coincide. We can squeeze no
more sense out of a proposition than we can put into one. We can
assign sense to a prop only in so far as we can stipulate the
conditions which would justify its employment. Consequently the crucial
strategic principle that sense is given by truth-conditions
independently of means of recognition of truth, which dominates the
Tractatus semantics, is not rejected?.[By the time of PI] the
grounds for an assertion are part of its grammar and tell us what
proposition it is. To specify the grounds for an assertion is to
explain its sense?.The contrast with the picture theory of meaning
here runs deep?.
Hacker's interesting paper concludes as follows:
To be sure, [PI's] answer to the great problem of the harmony
between language and reality seems, by comparison with the picture
theory of meaning and its exciting logico-metaphysical atomism,
trivial, even uninteresting. Madness is more interesting than sanity.
But it is much better to be sane than to be mad.
I just want to add my own sense that the continuing fascination of the
Tractatus among analytic philosophers likely stems from an unwillingness
(which I share) to drop Tractarian doctrines regarding the independence
of logic from epistemology and psychology (as described by Hacker
above) just because one wants to drop the atomism and the picture
theory of representation. I think the "ordinary language
philosopher's" use of "paradigm case" arguments and the
regular rejection of the distinction between ratio essendi and ratio
cognoscendi by W and his Oxford followers has been enough to cause many
analytic philosophers to look back longingly on the Tractatus with its
clear distinctions between what is being said and why one is saying it.
Hacker is right that is important not to yield to madness, but one must
also be careful that the treatment not be as harmful as the disease.
Walto
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