Degree: Master, 15 hp
Wittgenstein´s Language Theory of 1930
Part 2
Consequences of an Overview
by Solveig Delfin
Supervisor: Professor Matti Eklund
Examiner: Professor Erik Carlson
Ventilation: 26 March 2020
Uppsala
Abstract of Wittgenstein´s Language theory of 1930 Part 2
Wittgenstein´s Place in Twentieth-century Analytic Philosophy (1996), a prescribed book in theoretical philosophy at universities, asserts that the consequences of Wittgenstein´s philosophy are: (i) “there are no connections between language and reality” and (ii) ”the very demand for justification is senseless.” My investigation of Wittgenstein´s philosophy shows that this is wrong. Wittgenstein´s language theory of 1930 leads to realism and nothing else. Thus the consequences of his theory are:
(1) Since our language follows the world, then reality is our only true ground, and ´then the ground is not true nor yet false´. The world is.
(2) A true description expressed in a proposition is reality, if the proposition agrees with reality. Reality thus determines our use of a language, that is, the proposition is a calculus of thought, which is expressed in words/signs. The meaning/sense of propositions, words/signs, is given to us by those abstract symbols, which belong to both our extra-mental reality and our external, material reality, provided we have learnt to understand and use the words/signs.
(3)The solid basis of knowledge is our personal experiences of observations and experiments, expressed in propositions. They are affirmed by reality in all our different systems, for example mathematics, physics, physiology, biology, chemistry, among several. All systems in reality are and exist independent if humans exist or not.
(4) Our link with reality and between humans is our extra-mental reality, where our calculi of thoughts are linked up by pictures in the material world and transferred by our calculi of thoughts into propositions as a consequence of our solid basis of personal experiences in the material reality.
(5) Since language follows reality there is no metaphysical truth and noabsolute truth a priori, because language is as logical as the world is logical and the world is general to all people. Metaphysics is confusions caused by our absence of knowledge.
(6) Mathematical/arithmetical propositions are a frame of descriptions of experiences.
That is empiricism. We discover the point of multiplication in reality. That is realism.
Logic against our natural laws is impossible.
(7) Gödel´s theorem says that arithmetical propositions are neither true nor false in a deductive, formalized language in system F. But a by-pass affirms propositions in multiplication as true, since they have a descriptive frame.
(8) Since the world consists of always changing circumstances and language follows the world, Heisenberg´s uncertainty principle and the EPR-paradox may have some influence on philosophy in epistemology.
Solveig Delfin, March 2020, Uppsala
Summing-up Part 1 and Part 2
A summing-up of this overview of Wittgenstein´s philosophy from the 1921 to the end in 1951, though inversely, has made clear that already in1921 there are important features in his future philosophy.
An overview is a travel of discoveries since we see connections. It begins with Wittgenstein´s text in 1951 On Certainty in its whole, which is the essay
“Wittgenstein´s language theory of 1930. Part 1. The travel ends with Wittgenstein´s philosophical starting point in 1921, Tractatus. This work, the essay “Wittgenstein´s language theory of 1930, Part 2. Consequences of an Overview “, is ending with Wittgenstein´s starting point Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921). We follow an account of philosophical discoveries. For instance there are two new concepts; “calculus of thought”, which connects us with an “extra-mental reality”. And there is a mathematical thread in reality to follow. But in the last section about Tractatus we are surprised to meet a philosophy we already are acquainted with. This time as a more developed, clear and detailed account of the importance of our seeing and thinking, and the world ´is everything that is the case´. Statements like ´propositions is a picture of reality´, the ´picture agrees with reality or not; it is right or wrong, true or false´, are well-known to us. Even so that ´the proposition can represent every reality whose form it has.´ Later on he introduces the concept “language games” adapted even to our different intentions in different circumstances or systems. Also in 1921 thoughts are transformed into significant propositions which ´shows that it is so.´ Our ordinary languages are thus ´completely logically in order´, and there is no need of formalized propositions. Then we meet a philosophy we never have heard of. Wittgenstein states that an a priori logical truth is shown by a ´reflexion´ in our world from something Higher outside. He refers to a Higher, transcendental world and a God outside the world. In the world there is thus a ´reflexion´ making all thoughts, pictures, significant propositions a priori logical true. They now have one and the same a priori logical form.
But now language itself shows our linguistic mistakes as wrong or nonsense. The world follows language, since God causes that we cannot say anything wrong in language without language showing it. Mathematicians and physicists are working in other
´realities´ and there are other philosophers as Moore and Russell working in philosophy.
But Wittgenstein believes that he is, a metaphysical subject, philosophically seen, on the limit to a divine world as all humans are. About the world outside, we cannot say anything. Wittgenstein gives in a way a linguistic reason to why he retires from philosophy. That is to say: He never abandons a claim, which saved him from a philosophy based on just a feeling of certainty. The claim reads as follows:
2.16. In order to be a picture a fact must have something in common with what it pictures. 2.161 In the picture and the pictured there must be something identical in order that the one can be a picture of the other at all. (TLP , 41, my italics)
Our colloquial language is ´logically completely in order´, but ´the truth or falsehood can not be recognized from the significant proposition alone´, as he establishes.
(TLP,6.113, 157) There must then be a picture from the world outside, an impossible demand. The picture is thus as absolutely necessary for his language theory of 1921 as a picture is for his language theory of 1930. In 1921, however, language shows and determines what is true or false, since reality adapts to language, which is the opposite to his theory of 1930, where language adapts to and follows the world, a reality- A convincing feeling coming from a God has once made him certain that ´so it is´. His experience from 1921 makes him prepared in 1951 to make clear when the concept
“certain” is rightly used regarding knowledge. In On Certainty he doesn´t describe a theory. He argues and uses the language theory of 1930 in practice to give overwhelming, incontrovertible evidences for certain knowledge. The right conclusion must then be that the Philosophical Department at the University of Uppsala, where I am studying, has to change the mistaken consensus regarding Wittgenstein´s philosophy. These roughly two hundred pages constitute a true proof for his realism, and therefore this essay is passed by the Department of Philosophy without any hesitation and doubts as a true account of Wittgenstein´s language philosophy of 1930. I am proud of the will and courage to reveal a false paradigm where philosophers and students are ignorant of Wittgenstein´s realism. What is more, this overview clearly gives justice to the following statement by Wittgenstein as a true and rightful proclamation: ´Not empiricism and yet realism in philosophy, that is the hardest thing.
(Against Ramsey.)´
Solveig Delfin March 2020
The Department of Theoretical Philosophy University of Uppsala
Sweden
Table of contents
Table of contents ... 5
Preface ... 8
On Incontrovertibility and Mathematical Propositions and the Connection between Sign and World and where the Sign links up with the World ... 9
Introduction ... 9
1. How do we know from descriptions how things are in reality? ... 16
1. 2. Grammar and the connections to reality ... 28
2. Grammar makes the language pictorial ... 33
3. Human nature, natural laws and general, certain knowledge fulfills expectation ... 40
4. Natural laws are bases a posteriori for our calculation ... 46
5. How we calculate with the word “red”, and the calculus of thought connects us with our extra-mental reality ... 48
6. Calculi of thoughts and personal experiences connect mathematical propositions with our extra-mental reality ... 52
6.1. ´So is the calculus something we adopt arbitrarily?´ ... 58
6.2. Moore´s sentences are incontrovertible propositions ... 61
7. The ´body of proof´ in a mathematical proposition and a comparison between propositions in different systems ... 63
8. We must say p is provable according to a particular system ... 68
9. A situation between two poles, experiment - calculation ... 71
10. A grammatical trick in arithmetic ... 81
11. Incontrovertibility ... 87
12. Tractatus (1921) and where the sign links up with reality ... 92
Summing-up ... 119
Bibliography ... 122
Appendix ... 124
Indisputable Propositions in On Certainty ... 125
Abstract ... 127
1. Moore and a defence of common sense. ... 132
1.1. What Moore says he could not prove ... 134
1.2. Philosophical doubt according to Wittgenstein ... 137
1.3. Wittgenstein asks for proof ... 141
1.4. The terms of the traditional philosophy of knowledge ... 143
1.4.1. That language follows the world gives logic to the language ... 145
1.4.2. The independent truth ... 148
1.4.3. Judgement ... 151
1.5. Mathematical propositions ... 153
1.6. Several ways of proving the truth of an immediate utterance ... 154
2. Empirical propositions don´t form a homogenous mass (§213)... 156
2.1. Hinge-propositions ... 156
2.1.1. The logical role in the system of our empirical propositions ... 157
2.1. 2. A moving role of the hinge-proposition ... 163
2.1.3. Hinge-propositions are not rules ... 164
2. 2. Incontrovertible propositions ... 166
3. The subject´s justification of objective facts ... 171
3.1. A form of life and reality are neither ungrounded nor grounded ... 171
3.1.1. Logic and truth according to our form of life ... 174
3.1.2. The justification of our form of life ... 176
3.1.3. Certainty is part of our form of life ... 178
3.1.4. Primitive beings without ratiocination ... 180
3.1.5. Truth only for us? ... 182
3.1.6. Justification has an end – then the assumption ... 183
3.1.7. The ungrounded belief... 184
3.1.8. Grounded belief ... 185
3.2. Against the picture of the world we separate between true and false 187
3.2.1. The difficulty is to realize the groundlessness of our believing ... 1893.3. Three variants of empirical propositions and objective facts ... 191
4. Certainty expresses the subject´s state of knowing ... 193
4.1. ”193. What does this mean: the truth of a proposition is certain?” ... 193
4.1.2. Different degrees of certainty depends on the state of knowing ... 199
4.1.3. Certainty at a maximum: The fire will burn me ... 202
4.1.4. Don´t say ”I know what the word means now for me.” ... 204
4.2. Certainty demands knowledge ... 206
4.2.1. It is a favour of Nature if I know something or not ... 207
4.2.2. Our system of knowledge... 210
4.2.3. Difference between ingrained knowledge and incontrovertible propositions ... 211
4.3. Without evidence we are deluded into certainty ... 211
4.3.1. Subjective certainty ... 213
4.4. The truth of a proposition is certain [gewiss] if the certainty has been objectively, logically, externally and internally proved ... 214
Bibliography ... 217
Preface
I think it is a good thing to in short say something about the books, which I have used and the text I have written. The Blue Book is dictated in 1933-34 to Wittgenstein´s students in Cambridge. Three years earlier, in 1929-30, he entrusts to Bertrand Russell his manuscript Philosophical Remarks (Remarks), where he describes his new theory of language to which he subscribed in 1930 and forward, that is, to his death in 1951.
Philosophical Grammar (Grammar) was written in 1931-1934 just before The Blue Book. During the period 1937-1944 he wrote Remarks on the Foundations in Mathematics (RFM). In parallel with RFM he was working with Philosophical Investigations (PI) (1945) in which he tried to present the result of his language theory of 1930 in a collected version of his philosophical writings. In 1951 in his last book On Certainty (OC) he proved that all living people know that they exist, and that all
´Moore´s sentences` are true as a consequence of his language theory of 1930. But his great interest is, as he writes:
[…] We are only concerned with the description of what happens and it is not the truth but the form of the description that interests us. (my italics) What happens considered as a game. I am only describing language, not explaining anything. (Grammar, 66)
The heading of this investigation is Wittgenstein´s Language theory of 1930 Part 2. But is there no Part 1.? My paper “Indisputable propositions in On Certainty” is introducing the theory, which constitutes
“Wittgenstein´s Language theory of 1930 Part 1.” It narrowly passed
2016 in the master program in theoretical philosophy. But, as I have now
understood, the language theory of 1930 is violating an existing
consensus regarding Wittgenstein´s philosophy at the department of
theoretical philosophy in Uppsala. The department itself is involved in
this work and has a responsibility for the communication of this text and
the restoration of Wittgenstein´s philosophy. Doctor Jonathan Shaheen
had 40 hours to his disposal from the department as my adviser, which I
am very grateful for.
Wittgenstein´s Language Theory of 1930 Part 2 Consequences of an Overview
On Incontrovertibility and Mathematical Propositions and the
Connection between Sign and World and where the Sign links up with the World1
Introduction
My paper “Indisputable propositions in On Certainty” (2016) introduces Wittgenstein´s language theory of 1930, but that paper is standing by itself. Only for those who want to know in detail how Wittgenstein is proving that we know that we are existing living humans, there is a need to read a copy of my translation to English in appendix. And the goal and method of my text 2016 and now is to show the consequences of his language theory, his arguments, and present them in an ordinary form of language as a sort of an overview of the arguments he is using. An overview may sound like an inadequate method for an investigation, but, on the contrary, it may make connections clear in his writings during the period 1930-1951. An overview is of a ´fundamental significance for us´, since our understanding consists in ´seeing connections´. Wittgenstein writes:
122. A main source of our failure to understand is that we don´t have an overview of the use of our words. – Our grammar is deficient in surveyability. A surveyable representation produces precisely that kind of understanding which consists in ´seeing connections´. Hence the importance of finding and inventing intermediate links. The concept of a surveyable representation is of fundamental significance for us. It characterizes the way we represent things, how we look at matters. (Is this a
´Weltanschauung´ ? ) (PI, 54-55)
1Wittgenstein asks: ´ […] what is the connection between sign and world? […] Where does the sign link up with the world?´ (Remarks, 70)
The words “finding”, “inventing”, “Weltanschauung”, may lead some readers to suspect that according to Wittgenstein, humans only produces their own stories and fabrications, but I want to argue that his intentions are entirely different. He wants to know how we use our different languages and how it is in reality. Wittgenstein rejects theories in epistemology as skepticism, idealism and solipsism, and puts together empiricism and realism following his new language theory of 1930. In order to fulfill his goal to know, he uses the method to investigate and look at how we actually do when we use a language, which for us is a matter of course. He mentions as in passing the realistic theory in OC as opposite to skepticism. In RFM he explicitly states: ´Not empiricism and yet realism in philosophy, that is the hardest thing. (Against Ramsey.)´
2(RFM, 325) This statement characterizes all his philosophical papers written 1930 and afterwards. Reports of human experiences in our world must be proved, since humans can make mistakes, tell lies, tell stories and so on. Reality must then verify our statements, and how may that be done? In this investigation Wittgenstein gives his answers.
I find no contradictions to the language theory of 1930, where Wittgenstein states that language adapts itself to reality. He has convincingly shown that he is right to claim that this is the case. I have investigated the core of his philosophical texts from 1930 to 1951, which I refer to in this text, and there is nothing that indicates that he can be said to be a sceptic or an idealist. Thus I want to claim that he is arguing for a realistic theory, which reads:
The realist argues that our propositions have (objective) true values dependent on facts existing independent of our possibilities to achieve knowledge about them. Propositions are true or false by force of a reality existing independent of us. (Lübcke, Filosofilexikonet, (The Dictionary of Philosophy, 1988, 312, my translation)
2 Frank Ramsey (1903-1930) was a philosopher and a logician at Cambridge, who contributed to Russell´s logical system and had a great influence on the foundations of mathematics. His philosophical work is published posthumously in Foundations of Mathematics and other Logical Essays. 1931 (Lübcke,456, my translation) ´His role in Wittgenstein´s rejection of the Tractatus is acknowledge in the foreword to Philosophical Investigations (1953),´ ( The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, ed. Audi, 770)
Lübcke´s dictionary places on the contrary Wittgenstein in an epistemological theory, which is a weaker variant of idealism, which says:
Human knowledge can only deal with things which are constituted by humans own capacity of knowledge or language. (eg. Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, and the later Wittgenstein.) (Lübcke, 1988, 312, my translation)
This weaker idealism has a background in a stronger variant of idealism as Berkeley´s idealism, (1685-1753). His philosophy says that a person only knows what his own mental experience is, since his retina has its own picture. (Lübcke, 312) This is a sort of subjective idealism in contrast to Kant´s idealism, where ´things must conform to our knowledge, if we shall be able to account for the fact that we have universal and necessary knowledge. [...]´ (Lübcke, 252) Kant is calling this form of idealism a “critical or transcendental idealism”. (Lübcke, 252) Wittgenstein, however, argues hard against idealism and solipsism.
(Blue Book,48, 57-59) What Wittgenstein accounts for in all his texts is a totally different philosophy, which we may read a description of in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (1999), whose author isn´t specified:
For all this [every belief is always parts of a system of beliefs that together constitute a worldview] he [Wittgenstein] was not advocating a relativism, but a naturalism thatassumes that the world ultimately determines which language games can be played. […] Such propositions cannot be taken to express metaphysical truths. (The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, (ed.
Audi, 1999, 979, 980, my italics)
I only agree with the statements in italics, that is, the statements that reality determines our choice of words in our different language communities, since only reality can verify and make our propositions about reality true. Any sort of philosophical, metaphysical realities and truths is impossible, since language only follows reality.
3Wittgenstein
3Metaphysics has by tradition been the theory about the absolute. In epistemological questions it is an open question how metaphysical statements shall be specified. ´Metaphysical statements express however no knowledge […] but they express an historical settled interpretation of the world as a whole (a world view), without which we couldn´t exist as human beings.´(Lübcke, 368, my translation.)
writes: ´This tendency [to ask and answer questions in the way science does] is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into complete darkness.´ (Blue Book, 18) What ´darkness´ is that and why is he talking about science? His answer is:
When something seems queer about the grammar or our words, it is because we are alternately tempted to use a word in several different ways. (Blue Book, 56)
That is to say, the same word is used in different situations, for instance in science, philosophy or in daily life. Examples show what Wittgenstein is talking about. True sentences agree with reality, but a metaphysical statement, for instance the proposition: “A man´s sense data are private to himself” is ´more like an experiential proposition´, and in that case
´the philosopher who says this may well think that he is expressing a kind of scientific truth´, instead of an utterance in daily life. (Blue Book, 55) But so it is not, ´because it looks still more like an experiential proposition.´ The ´misleading´ words constitutes then the metaphysical approach, since there is no clear connection with the sentence and reality.
He warns us against the danger regarding, for instance, the concept
“intention” and he writes: ´It may look as if, in introducing intention, we
were introducing an uncheckable, a so-to-speak metaphysical element
into our discussion.´ (Remarks, 63) Then the metaphysician is discontent
with our grammar ´because we are tempted to use a word in several
different ways´. (Blue Book, 56) That is, when the words of an assertion
also can ´be used to state a fact of experience´. (Blue Book, 57) Thus the
metaphysical statements are producing just confusions and don´t give us
any facts, which ordinary language and its grammar do. We surely will
return to this concept “metaphysics” sooner or later. And in spite of what
such dictionary as Audi´s asserts about Wittgenstein´s philosophy, there
is in this case no agreement among philosophers with the idea, that
reality directs language. On the contrary many philosophers sympathize
with the following declaration: ´there is in fact no connection between
language and reality´. (P.M.S. Hacker, Wittgenstein´s Place in Twentieth-
century Analytic Philosophy,1996, 80)
The ´late´ Wittgenstein gave up his logic a priori, in Tractatus logico- philosophicus (1921) in his manuscript to Philosophical Remarks (1930).
Doctor Peter Hacker claims that Wittgenstein also gives up ´with it the thesis of isomorphism between language and reality´.
4(Hacker, 1996, 79) But Hacker´s conclusion that there is no connection between language and reality has been a disaster for his account of the discussions and his conclusions about Wittgenstein´s philosophy in his four big volumes and of course even for the result in the book in 1996. And in addition it has been a disaster for the impression of Wittgenstein´s philosophy among students and teachers at universities. Hacker´s book (1996) has been, or perhaps still is, among the prescribed books in philosophy at universities.
Wittgenstein´s language theory of 1930 obviously contradicts what Peter Hacker asserts, as we soon will be aware of. Hacker states in his prescribed book, among other things, that:
(i) ´In the sense in which the Tractatus held that language must be connected to reality - by names as it were being pinned on to the objects that are their meanings – there is in fact no connection between language and reality´ and there are no ostensive definitions. (Hacker (80) ´He [Wittgenstein] assailed the notion of ostensive definitions as forging a connection between language and reality, and clarified the idea of the autonomy of grammar.´(Hacker, 85)
(ii) ´For grammar is autonomous – yet it informs our life, determines what we call thinking, inferring and reasoning.´(Hacker, 81) (iii) ´Meanings of words are neither physical nor psychological
entities; nor is anything gained by supposing them to be abstract entities (senses of expressions) which mediate between words and world.´ (Hacker, 125)
4 Isomorphism is an assumption in psychology, which Wittgenstein was supposed to show in Tractatus. The thesis claims that there are physiological processes in the brain corresponding to sense data in our consciousness. (Lübcke, Filosofilexikonet, (The Philosophical Dictionary), 271)
(iv) There is no relation between language and reality. `What had seemed like an internal relation between proposition and the fact that makes it true was no more than a shadow.´(Hacker, 79) (v) ´Similarly the idea that the role of sentences is uniformly to
describe is under constant assault.´ (Hacker,124)
(vi) ´the error was to think of this internal relation as holding between thought and reality […].´(Hacker, 79)
(vii) ´[…] Wittgenstein went through a brief verificationist phase.´
(Hacker, 81)
Wittgenstein himself is presenting his philosophy from 1930 to 1951 via quotations in my text, and everyone can read and see how he works hard and to his utmost to be understandable. And since these quotations are put together and are following a line of arguments they constitute an overview of his language theory from 1930 to the end in 1951.
The following sections in this investigation will show how Wittgenstein´s language theory of 1930 is directed against absolute truth a priori and a
´confusion of ideas´. He uses ordinary language in his philosophical texts. Everyday language is near the human way of living in concrete and everyday circumstances, and these contexts determine our use of words.
This change in his philosophy is illustrated in Philosophical Remarks, finished 1930, and from then on in all his other philosophical texts. He describes how this theory gives us an understanding of our philosophical problems and of why and how ordinary language is connected with reality. He writes:
108. […] The sense in which philosophy of logic speaks of sentences and words is no different from that in which we speak of them in ordinary life, […] 109. These [philosophical problems] are of course, not empirical problems, but they are solved through an insight into the workings of our language, […]. (PI, 52)
Our linguistic connection with reality is our ordinary language, which is
a central and essential fact regarding our capture of knowledge and the
logic in our actions. Language is a success for human beings
evolutionarily seen. Philosophical terms and concepts are rare in
Wittgenstein´s writings. He wants to concretize, illustrate and he exemplifies with different trivial situations the philosophical problems about our existence and our knowledge, which he gives an account of.
The outcome in this case is a text consisting of linguistic pictures, metaphors, sketches, dialogues, a way of writing which ´can move philosophical mountains.´
5One mountain was Moore´s sentences in the article “A Defence of Common Sense”. (Contemporary British Philosophy, 1925, 191-223). My paper Part 1. “Indisputable propositions in On Certainty”, shows how one philosophical mountain disappears. In Wittgenstein´s last work, On Certainty (1951), when Moore has come to an end in his article and says: ´I can know without evidence that I exist´.
Wittgenstein continues with Moore´s sentences in OC. In my opinion of starting point, he begins with the assumption that Moore´s truisms must be objectively proved. He claims that Moore´s sentences, truisms or propositions, demand an objective proof, that is to say, reality must confirm the truth of the propositions. Wittgenstein´s situation is in this case, that on one hand our propositions depend on a subject´s experiences and also on a subject´s ideas, opinions, feelings, whishes, and the depending of such proofs is out of the question. On the other hand, as he emphasizes, we cannot achieve any truth without a subject´s experiences, and this is the ´hardest thing in philosophy´. (RFM, 325) Moore´s truisms or sentences are the propositions, which Wittgenstein examines throughout his whole work in OC, since he states that they must be proved both on an outer, external way, that is, reality, and on our inner, internal way as thinking humans with feelings, that is, experiences.
Finally in remark 622 (OC) Wittgenstein expressly writes that Moore was right in his use of the following sentence: ´I know I exist, as also other humans know that they exist.´ All Moore´s truisms are true in certain ´particular circumstances´. Wittgenstein thus writes: ´622. But now it is also correct to use “I know” in the contexts which Moore
5”What Wittgenstein succeeds to show is that such simple virtues together in our language can move philosophical mountains.” (Sören Stenlund, Filosofiska uppsatser, (Philosopical Essays),
“Språk och livsform: några drag i Wittgensteins filosofi” (”Language and form of life: Some features in Wittgenstein´s philosophy “) 17, my translation)
mentioned, at least in particular circumstances. […]´ (OC, 82) Moore´s sentences are ´incontrovertible propositions´, according to Wittgenstein, since the evidence is overwhelming and ´consists precisely in the fact that we do not need to give way before any contrary evidence´. (OC §657, 87) This text about his philosophy is then part 2 in my investigation of Wittgenstein´s language theory of 1930. My most important intention is to find contradictions in his writings, that is to say, from the main sources in his philosophical texts from 1930 to OC in 1951. The other two intentions in this investigation are to discover why he brought mathematical propositions to the same category as Moore´s sentences and to show Wittgenstein´s investigation of our linguistic connection to reality. My purpose then is to prove that Wittgenstein argues for realism together with our experiences, that is, empiricism, as a consequence of his language theory of 1930, which in fact is a description of what we are actually doing.
1. How do we know from descriptions how things are in reality?
Section 1. will show, that as a result of Wittgenstein´s language theory of 1930, our propositions about reality must refer to our world. We can therefore know how reality is and how things are from such descriptions in language, since language relates to reality. I introduce his theory with four quotations. In quotation (i) he presents expressly his new theory about language in a clearly way. At the same time he is rejecting his theory about language and logic in Tractatus (1921), where he argued that ´every atomic sentences is a logical picture of a possible state of affairs´ And one can read further:
He postulated, in particular, that the world must itself have a precise logical structure.
[…] He also held that that the world consists primarily of facts, corresponding to the true atomic sentences, rather than of things, […]
(
The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, ed. Audi, 1999, 977)This theory is quite different to what he says in his new theory about
language and reality of 1930. He writes:
(i)
47 […] Time and again the attempt is made to use language to limit the world and set it in relief - but it can´t be done. The self-evidence of the world expresses itself in the very fact that language can and does only refer to it. For since language only derives the way in which it means from its meaning, from the world, no language is conceivable which does not represent this world. (Remarks, [1930] 1964, 80, my italics)(ii) All that´s required for our propositions (about reality) to have a sense, is that our experience in some sense or other either tends to agree with them or tends not to agree with them. (Remarks, 282,)
iii) I want to use an old simile, ´magic lantern´. It is not the sound-track that accompanies the film, but the music. The sound-track accompanies the film-strip. […]
Language accompanies the world. (22 December1929) (Waismann, Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, 1979, 50, my italics)
iv) 109 A description of language must achieve the same result as language itself. “For in that case I really can learn from the proposition, from the description of reality, how things are in reality.” – Of course it´s only this that is called description, or “learning how things are”. And that is all that is ever said when we say that we learn from the description how things are in reality. (my italics) […] What on earth can one infer from a proposition apart from itself? (Grammar, 159)
These quotations together give us a clear opinion of the relations between language and reality as Wittgenstein postulates. In (i) he rejects the idea that humans can limit the world with language. Behind the limit drawn in Tractatus by language in 1921 something was Higher, about which there were no words. According to his language theory of 1930 and quotation (i), language does only refer to the circumstances in which we are living, that is, reality, otherwise language is not conceivable. In (ii) our experiences are in focus. It is a stipulation that the propositions agree with our experiences in reality. If someone is looking at her/his hand as for example Moore did, then reality shows and confirms the experience of looking at one´s hand. Moore is in that case right to say that he knows, that this is his hand. The important sentence in (iii) is Wittgenstein´s statement that ´language accompanies the world´. The word
“accompanies” is synonymous with the word “follow”, and “follow” is
more suitable and more common in this context. An interpretation of this
metaphor is then that language follows the world, that is, the pictures on
the film-screen are analogous to what we see in the world. The film was narrated by pictures and texts following the pictures of what happened on the screen.
.6Quotation (iv) emphasizes the importance of descriptions of reality in propositions, since then we can learn how things are in reality.
Some readers think that (iv) is a dialogue, and may think that Wittgenstein disagrees with this claim and puts it in quotations marks that he is not the speaker. But I claim that Wittgenstein asserts and explains the opening sentence in (iv) with the sentence between quotations marks, since when the claim in the opening sentence is fulfilled, then we ´can learn how things are in reality´ and ´it´s only this that is called descriptions of reality.´ These two sentences in (iv) have the function to be a strong and clear definition of the uses and purposes with the concept “description”, which ´must achieve the same result as language itself´, that is, reality. (my italics). Wittgenstein thus emphasizes, affirms and elaborates the opening sentence: ´A description of language must achieve the same result as language itself´, that is, reality. Then the following sentence: ´And that is all that is ever said […]` points out that all his readers now ought to know what the purposes are and what important tasks descriptions have. And why call it a disagreeing dialogue when the speakers are of the same opinion? But what does the ending statement mean: ´What […] can one infer from a proposition apart from itself?´ This emphasized ´itself ´ is reality, since a
´conceivable´ proposition about the world must relate to the world, and is in the same way as also reality is. How is that possible? The answer is that words, signs, are symbols whether they are uttered or written.
Thoughts are not material objects, but as expressed in propositions written on paper or stones, they are. Nevertheless they are the opposite to material objects in reality, since our thinking, makes the words, signs, living if we understand them. Languages demands surroundings, a reality with things, objects, which we can see. The atomic sentences have been
6Music follows the soundtracks on the film-strip as a contrast to the pictures and the texts on the screen. Silent film comes to an end around 1930. The film was narrated by pictures and texts, usually accompanied by music in the room, not by soundtracks on the film, but obviously not in Wittgenstein´s metaphor, in spite of the fact, that what he is talking about is ´an old simile, ´magic lantern´.
replaced in 1930 by descriptions in ordinary words of what there is in reality. The proposition is ´itself´, namely a reality in symbols, but only together with realty, never ´apart´ from reality.
Perhaps as a result of his language theory of 1930 that language follows reality, he rejects the idea of something ´Higher´, the thought on a God and everything metaphysical. In 1929 Wittgenstein is giving a lecture in the society “Heretics” in Cambridge where he dissociates himself from a religion and a God. He writes in PI: ´55. The evolution of the higher animals and of man, and the awakening of consciousness at a particular stage.[…] But one day, man opens his seeing eye, and there is light.´ (PI, vii, page unnumbered) He emphasizes in his lecture that life is a miracle, as even language and to live is a miracle. The word “miracle” shall be looked upon in its ordinary significance as something unique and exceptional, and isn´t used in any religious context. (Backström, Joel, and Torrkulla, Göran (red.) Moralfilosofiska essäer, (Philsophical Essays on Ethics),21-29, my translation, “A Lecture on Ethics” (1929, 43) The consequences of Wittgenstein´s theory of 1930 about language expressed in (i) – (iv) imply thus, that if words and propositions are without a relation, that is, without a connection to reality, then we can´t infer anything what people expresses in language about the world.
Propositions are namely our thoughts regarding observations, that is,
descriptions of our experiences of things and events in reality of what we
see. These thoughts don´t only represent reality, they are in a way real in
a reality. They are transformed into symbols written on stones, wood,
papyrus, paper. We can all look at them. We can understand them, if the
symbols make sense for us. Pictures of experiences in reality expressed
in symbols are then reality, a true or false reality. We may compare this
with Frege´s description of a sentence:
And when we call a sentence true we really mean its sense is. […] The thought, in itself immaterial, clothes itself in the material garment of a sentence and thereby becomes comprehensible to us. (Frege,”Der Gedanke eine logische Untersuchung”, 1918-1919) 7
It is obvious that Frege doesn´t emphasize descriptions in language of what we observe and he doesn´t talk about pictures as Wittgenstein does.
But Frege emphasizes hard on his side that the sentence makes sense if it is ´comprehensible´, and that reality gives us the value of what is true or not. Wittgenstein claims that our thoughts/propositions agree with reality, if ´language is conceivable´ to us according to quotation (i). His conclusion is then, that the sentence itself represents reality and is reality, since ´thinking essentially consists in operating with signs´. (Blue Book, 15) He comments Frege´s view regarding what a thought, a sentence and its sense is. The word “sense” is synonymous to the word “meaning” in this context. Wittgenstein points at the use of the expression as a “mental process” in order to separate ´experience´ from ´physical processes´.
(Grammar, 106) He declares that this circumstance indicates on its part that the word “mental process” alludes to ´imperfectly understood processes in an inaccessible sphere´. (Grammar, 106) The ´mental process´ is thus the same as the meaning/sense of a thought as a living element in a proposition. Even Frege emphasizes the ´living element´ in a thought. Wittgenstein writes:
[…] By contrast [ to the discussion above], when Frege speaks of the thought a sentence expresses the word “thought” is more or less equivalent to the expression “sense of the sentence”. It might be said: in every case what is meant by “thought” is the living element in the sentence, without which it is dead, a mere succession of sounds or series of written shapes (Grammar,106)
Wittgenstein´s description of the view that a thought constitutes a ´living element in the sentence´ may then be applied to them both, since Wittgenstein writes: ´Without a sense, or without the thought, a proposition would be an utterly dead and a trivial thing,´ (Blue Book, 4)
7 “Der gedanke eine logiche Unterschung” 1918. First published in Beiträge des deutschen Idealismus vol. (1918-19) s. 58 - 77. And “I. – The Thought: A Logical Inquiry”, Mind, volume LXV. No. 259. July 1956, 289 – 311, 302) Published in Mind, vol. LXV. No.259. July 1956, 29)
But Wittgenstein is anxious to declare that there is no ´must be´ in this conclusion regarding the subject´s thinking and thoughts. He writes: ´a mental process of thinking, hoping, wishing, believing etc.´ is
´independent of the process of expressing a thought, a hope, a wish, etc.´
(Blue Book, 41, my italics) That is to say, we no longer say there ´must be´ two processes, one of thinking and one of expressing words. (Blue Book, 42) There is only one process. And Wittgenstein gives a ´rule of thumb´ and writes
:And I want to give you the following rule of thumb: If you are puzzled about the nature of thought, belief, knowledge, and the like, substitute for the thought the expression of the thought, etc. The difficulty which lies in this substitution, and at the same time the whole point of it, is this: the expression of belief, thought, etc., is just a sentence; - and the sentence has sense only as a member of a system of language; as one expression within a calculus. (Blue Book, 41 - 42, my italic)
The ´whole point´ of the substitution is to show that the two processes he is talking about coincide to one or is just one, ´just a sentence´, and independent of the subject´s ´thinking, hoping, wishing, believing etc.´
We just do it. And why then does the sentence itself represent the reality and is the reality? Wittgenstein´s answer is: ´the sentence has sense only as a member of a system of language; as one expression within a calculus.´ (In section 5 there is an account in detail of the concept
“calculus”) And now we must remember the words “system” and
“calculus”. The ´nature of thought´ is to calculate and he makes clear that the use of the words “thought”, “thinking” and “calculate” depends on the situation or the circumstances, as we will see later. An utterance, which is written down in a proposition isn´t just a material object on a paper in reality, but a thought expressed in symbols, in signs. How is then ´the problem of the two materials, mind and matter´, going to be dissolved? (Blue Book, 47 ) He writes:
E.g., that the mental phenomena, sense, experience, volition, etc., emerge when a type of animal body of a certain complexity has been evolved. There seems to be some obvious truth in this, for the amoeba certainly doesn´t speak or write or discuss, whereas we do. (Blue Book. 47, my italics)
Wittgenstein points at our human nature, that is, when an animal body of a ´certain complexity has been evolved´ alludes to our human ability to handle symbols expressing thoughts which makes a difference compared with the form of life of an amoeba. ( Blue Book, 47) It would then be
´misleading´ to say ´that the whole world, mental and physical, is made of one material only´, since we really and obviously know that there are human thoughts. (Blue Book, 48, my italics) Only together with our mental world in reality, our world, we can learn ´how things are´ as quotation (iv) says. He writes:
There are propositions of which we may say that they describe facts in the material world (external world). Roughly speaking, they treat of physical objects: bodies, fluids, etc. I am not thinking in particular of the laws of the natural sciences, but of any such proposition as “the tulips in our garden are in full bloom”, or “Smith will come in any moment”. There are on the other hand propositions describing personal experiences, as when the subject in a psychological experiment describes his sense-experiences: say his visual experience, independent of what bodies are actually before his eyes and, n.b., independent also of any processes which might be observed to take place in his retina, his nerves, his brain or other parts of his body. (That is, independent of both physical and physiological facts.) At first sight it may appear (but why it should can only become clear later) that here we have two kinds of worlds, worlds built of different materials; a mental world and a physical world. (Blue Book, 46-47, my italics)
To think of the ´tulips in our garden´ is a simple process for us, because we just do it, and often as an ´immediate utterance´, a term he uses in OC, which means that we in that case ´have no thought of verification´.
(OC, §510, 67) So it is often in our daily life, for instance as in the following context. Wittgenstein writes:
510. If I say “Of course I know that that´s a towel” I am making an utterance. I have no thought of a verification. For me it is an immediate utterance. I don´t think of past or future. (And of course it´s the same for Moore, too.) It is just like directly taking hold of something, as I take hold of my towel without having doubts. (OC, 67)
This sort of thoughts/utterances is also describing ´physical bodies´, objects, as in the quotation above from The Blue Book and On Certainty.
But Wittgenstein points out that we have thoughts ´independent of both
physical and physiological facts´ and independent of what bodies are actually before ´his eyes.´ There are then propositions describing personal experiences, independent of what bodies, objects, actually are before the eyes as visual experiences. This is an important point, since of course we can deny the visual experience, make fun of it, distort it, and what we want, since it is a private experience. Wittgenstein points out, that there are propositions independent of ´both physical and physiological facts´, and they may be expressions of our psychology. But he is talking about our thinking as within a ´calculus´, that is, a calculus of thought. When he discusses thinking and mental acts, he writes: ´[…]
the sentence has sense only as a member of system of language; as one expression within a calculus.´ (Blue Book, 42, my italics.) It is then clear that we are living in two worlds. He establishes that the ´building- material´ of our world is not ´one material only´. (Blue Book, 48) We are part of both a ´mental world´ and a material, physical world. I want to claim, that a reason to Wittgenstein´s talking about two worlds, two realities, is the fact, that he in the coming is arguing for a thinking he calls ´calculus of thought´. This sort of thinking belongs to and is part of our mental world together with our different senses, mental activities, private experiences and so on. Calculus of thought belongs then to a mental reality, but Wittgenstein want to make a distinction between a mental world and our calculi of thoughts. Only a thinking as a calculus, that is, our calculation, is namely in focus in his investigation of our connections to reality. He explicitly writes: ´It is as a calculus of thought that thinking has an interest for us; not as an activity of the human imagination.´ (Grammar, 160) And as a result of these facts he declares that ´thinking essentially consists in operating with signs´ (Blue Book, 15) But he also states:
65 We may say “Thinking is operating with symbols”. But ´thinking´ is a fluid concept, and what ´operating with symbols´ is must be looked at separately in each individual case. (Grammar, 106)
So what is Wittgenstein´s answer to the question: How do we know from descriptions how things are in reality? The first part of the answer is thus:
(i) There are propositions describing facts in the material world, that is, the external world.
(ii) A sentence/proposition describes facts as well as an ´immediate utterance´, but then we don´t think of any verifying, which is a difference, since we just do it, but the proposition can be proved later.
(iii) Our thinking, which ´essentially consists in operating with signs´, can be said to be a ´calculus of thought´. (Section 6 gives an account of the concept “calculus of thought” and its functions and use.)
(iv) Since descriptions involve personal experiences from visual sense- experiences of objects and of calculus of thought, then our psychology may make that we lure other people. Thoughts/propositions are independent both of physical and physiological processes, according to Wittgenstein, and therefore they don´t belong to our material world, but to our mental world. That is shown in psychological experiments, as he has pointed out.
(v)The picture of what is observed, is delivered from reality via the visual nerve. Also Frege is pointing at our ´visual nerve´ as a biological, physiological fact. (Frege 1918, 304)
Now we have come to the next part in Wittgenstein´s reasoning about our thinking, and we may have a feeling of his problems with the two worlds. The sense-impressions in reality excite our internal, mental world, which has led Wittgenstein to say, that we have two kinds of worlds, ´a mental world and a physical world.´ And he gives an account of the concept “mental” and the concept “thinking”. He states also that
´“thinking essentially consists in operating with signs”.´ (Blue Book,15) This concept is ´fluid´ and must be ´looked at in each individual case.´
He writes:
It is correct to say “Thinking” is a mental process” only if we also call seeing a written sentence or hearing a spoken one a mental process.In the sense, that is, in which pain is
called a mental state. In that case the expression “mental process” is intended to distinguish ´experience´ from ´physical processes´. - On the other hand, of course, the expression “mental process” suggests that we are concerned with imperfectly understood processes in an inaccessible sphere. Psychology too talks of ´unconscious thought´ and here ´thought´ means a process in mind-model. (´Model´ in the sense in which one speaks of a mechanical model of electrical processes). By contrast, when Frege speaks of the thought a sentence expresses the word “thought” is more or less equivalent to the expression “sense of the sentence”. (Grammar, 106, my italics)
In the first sentence in the quotation above, he claims that thinking is a mental process, as also our seeing or hearing sentences, written or spoken, are mental processes. Wittgenstein seems to try to ´distinguish´
mental experience from ´physical processes´. Physical processes could, however, also be said to be a ´mental state´, as he states about the pain.
All impressions of senses are thus physiological or physical processes as well as mental processes. In this case he establish the fact, that we don´t understand everything regarding mental processes, but remember in this context that thinking belongs to our private sphere. He states: ´Thinking, one wants to say, is part of our ´private experience´. It is not material, but an event in private consciousness.´ (Blue Book, 16) But Wittgenstein is afraid of misleading our use of the words “thought” and “thinking”. He writes: ´My point was that it is liable to mislead us if we say ¨thinking is a mental activity.´ (Blue Book, 15-16, my italics) Observe now that the expression ´thinking is a mental activity´ is rejected as also the identifying of certain localities of thinking, since they would perhaps create confusions in their grammar. An answer to the question where
´does thinking take place´ as also an activity may then be: ´of our writing hand, or of our larynx, of our head, and of our mind […]´. (Blue Book, 16) He writes:
We can answer: on paper, in our head, in the mind. None of these statements of locality gives the locality of thinking
.
(Blue Book, 16)The ´locality´, an exact place for our thinking, he cannot give. Therefore
I suggest that he creates a new concept, the expression “extra-mental
reality”. But for the moment he suggests then: ´thinking essentially
consists in operating with signs.´ (Blue Book, 16) This reasoning in The Blue Book leads him finally to an important statement later on in OC. He writes in 1933-34:
Thinking, one wants to say, is part of our ´private experience´. It is not material, but an event in private consciousness. This objection is expressed in the question: “Could a machine think?” [ …] “Did you mean to say that all our past experience has shown that a machine never had toothache?” The impossibility of which you speak is a logical one.
(Blue Book, 16)
In 1951 he writes:
501. Am I not getting closer and closer to saying that in the end logic cannot be described? You must look at the practice of language, then you will see it. (OC, 66)
Language is logical, since our thoughts, expressed in descriptions of observations in propositions of what happens in reality, are true, only if they agree with reality. Then the propositions are just as logical, objective, and true as what happens in the world is logical, objective, and true. (We will hear more about this in sections 5 and 6.) If a mental reality, the mental world (i) is the same as calculus of thought all our mental activities as sense impressions, physiological, physical and psychological processes would be included. But Wittgenstein prefers and uses the concept (ii), an “extra-mental reality”, as a collected name for just our thinking as calculus of thought. In (ii) the word “extra” may be translated with the word “outside.” If then someone would claim that the word “extra” is synonymous with the word “outside”, all our other mental activities, including our seeing, hearing and feeling and so on, would be separated from calculus of thought. In that case there is no access to our mental activities from the calculus of thought outside our mental reality. The word “extra” translated as “in addition to” [in Swedish= “utöver”] would represent a better function, since the word
“outside” was used in 1921 in a literal sense with something Higher
outside our ordinary world, which he rejects in 1929 and forward.
Besides that, he asserts that he now has no interest in our ´activity of the human imagination´, only of our thinking as a calculus. (Grammar, 160) Then it may be so that Wittgenstein has formed the concept “extra- mental reality” only for our thinking as a calculus of thought, since
´thinking essentially is operating with signs´, that is, languages. ( Blue Book, 15) He wants to point out and emphasize that calculi of thoughts is most important to us and therefore he liberated the extra-mental reality from other mental processes as, for instance, feelings. And if the extra- mental reality is inside our mental reality, not outside, but beyond our ordinary mental reality, that is, in addition to our ordinary mental reality, then we have access to all our mental abilities we need for our calculi of thoughts. He has thus liberated a part of a mental sphere to just our calculation. Of course we exist in reality, but we exist besides that in an extra-mental reality as part of a calculus of thought/language-world, where our private thinking takes place and connects us to reality and to each other. Some or perhaps many living beings of different species have their own extra-mental reality, where their connections are to reality and to each other. This is discussed in section 3. Wittgenstein has now clearly expressed that he argues for the following statement: ´that if we wanted a picture of reality the sentences itself is such a picture (though not a picture by similarity).´ ( Blue Book, 41) That is to say, one picture is expressed in symbols, the other picture is a picture of material objects in reality, which is given by our visual nerve. And what is contradicting our thought/utterance in reality is illogical or nonsense. Now we may say that Professor Svensson was right, and observe that the word
“hypothesis” is a synonym to the word “thought”, in his conclusion about the following significance of Wittgenstein´s remark in OC. (A discussion in remark 203 in OC is ´crossed out in MS. (
Editors)´.
8The crossed
8 The crossed part: ´203. [Everything that we regard as evidence indicates that the earth already existed long before my birth . The contrary hypothesis has nothing to confirm at all. If everything speaks for an hypothesis and nothing against it, is it objectively certain? One could call it that.
But does it necessarily agree with the world of facts? At the very best it shows us what
“agreement” means. We find it difficult to imagine it to be false, but also difficult to make use of it.] ´(OC, 28)
discussion is replaced by Wittgenstein and he writes instead: ´ §203 […]
What does this agreement consist in, if not the fact that what is evidence in these language games speaks for our proposition? (Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus)´ (OC, 28) And Gunnar Svensson writes: ´And that [agreement with reality] in its turn means simply that an utterance/hypothesis/ proposition agrees with reality if it is true.´ (Gunnar Svensson 1992, 176, author´s translation) He continues
:What Wittgenstein means here is that the expression ”agreement with reality” concerns what we in our language-game regard as evidence. That an utterance/hypothesis/
proposition agrees with reality means simply that what is considered as sufficient grounds for showing that the utterance /hypothesis/proposition is true are fulfilled. And that in its turn means simply that an utterance/hypothesis/proposition agrees with reality if it is true. (Wittgenstein om kunskap och visshet) (Wittgenstein on Knowledge and Certainty,176, author´s translation)
1. 2. Grammar and the connections to reality
How does Wittgenstein´s answer the question: ´“How does thought work, how does it use its expression?” – This question looks like “How does a Jacquard loom work, how, does it use the cards?´ (Grammar, 104, my italics) This answer may look like that Wittgenstein emphasizes something mechanical programmed in the structure of our brain, which is rather interesting. We also know the problems regarding humans, facts and objectivity.
In this section Wittgenstein gives an account of how and why our
thoughts and words are connected to reality and to other humans. The
word “grammar” is Wittgenstein´s term for how we use the signs and
words and is an important concept in his language philosophy. The
meaning of signs, words and sentences describing our experiences,
consists for us of a picture, if the words are ´conceivable´, as quotation
(i) says. The picture appears in our mind as if ´it comes before our mind´s
eye´ and he writes for instance: ´[…] when I hear the word “red” with
understanding, a red image should be before my mind´s eye.´ (Blue
Book, 41, 4) He states, that what our “mental activities” comprise, is our
´seeing, hearing, feeling etc.´ (Blue Book,70, PI, §56, 31) Then he can narrow down and investigate the problems, which always are associated with sense-data and philosophy. In ordinary life there are no problems with understanding, thinking and acting, we just do it but in philosophy philosophical problems arise. Wittgenstein mostly speaks ironically about philosophy, but he declares that the “mystery” of thoughts and thinking demands a philosophical solution. (Blue Book, 58-59) The bad reputation of the individual, the subject, is part of the problem when we are talking about facts and objectivity. The individual subject's unreliability, when it is a question of references to facts, is well-known and recognized by everyone. We always have the possibility to make mistakes, tell lies or describe fantasies and so on. There is thus a need of verification of our propositions about reality, and we may then state that language is built on evidence and truth, and is a tool with a function to tell us ´how things are´ in reality. If language is our link to a real world in the way as Wittgenstein describes it, then it provides us with answers to both ontological and epistemological questions, how ´things are´, that is to say, if facts about the world are proved. Facts must thus be objectively proved, that is, without influence from our feelings as wishes, will and belief. This is the background to Wittgenstein's utterance: ’Now when one uses the word ”sense-datum”, one should be clear about the peculiarity of its grammar.´ (Blue Book, 70) The peculiarity is referring to the circumstance that the object is ´before our eyes even when it isn´t.´(Blue Book, 70) And this is confusing in philosophy, because we are dealing with the proposition ´itself´ again, but now as a memory, that is, as an object ´before our eyes even when it isn´t´. When philosophers are talking about “two objects”, “identity”, “equality”, “entities” and so on, this is confusing. But now we know, according to Wittgenstein, that the proposition ´itself´ is reality, as the ´rule of thumb´ pointed out, and is both a picture before our mind and in our memory. Wittgenstein writes:
´For the [philosopher´s] idea in introducing this expression [sense-data]
was to model expressions referring to ´appearance´ after expressions
referring to ´reality´. (Blue Book, 70) The word “appearance” associates
with the word “fancy”, and is totally different to the picture of an
observation, which Wittgenstein is talking about. What Wittgenstein is talking about is our statements in the form of descriptions, when we observe something in reality. This is a consequence of our “mental activities”, seeing, hearing and so on. Our thought/proposition is then a description of a picture in words of an experience of an observation. We are using ´phrases´ referring to sense-data, phrases as “I see”, “observe”,
“discover”, “find” etc., both when we look at something just now or as a picture in our memory. (Blue Book,70) Wittgenstein describes from the early part of 1930
sin Philosophical Grammar what is of interest for him in his philosophical work. He writes:
30. We may say that the words “fine”, “oh”, and also “perhaps” are expressions of sensation, of feeling. But I don´t call the feeling the meaning of the word. We are not interested in the relation of the words to the sensation, whatever it may be, whether they are evoked by it, or are regularly accompanied by it, or give it an outlet. We are not interested in any empirical facts about language, considered as empirical facts. We are only concerned with the description of what happens and it is not the truth but the form of the description that interests us. What happens considered as a game. I am only describing language, not explaining anything. (Grammar, 66)
