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III

Thus understood, Wittgenstein’s theory of the meaningfulness of language suggests an ambitious program of meaning-analysis or clarification that would terminate in the elimination of all philosophical confusions by way of the elimination of all confusions about the use of signs. It may be clear enough how this kind of grammatical clarification can prevent philosophical errors in the straightforward examples of ambiguity that Wittgenstein gives (“Green is green” and the various uses of the words “is,” “exist,” and “identical”), but we might legitimately wonder how general Wittgenstein actually intended the program to be. How widely applicable is the method of clarifying the meaning of propositions by identifying and elucidating the uses of their simple signs? Clearly, the answer to this question depends on specifying just how we should understand the “use” of a sign, how we should identify which features of ouractual employment of signs we should consider relevant to the philosophical practice of clarifying meaning.

My suggestion is that the program iscompletely general; for its foundation is not any specific theoretical conception of meaning, but rather the general theory of the meaningfulness of signs that we have already examined. The general theory of the meaningfulness of signs expresses what appeared to Wittgenstein at this time to be the relevance to the determination of meaning of the systematic structure of a language as a whole. Commentators have, in fact, often underestimated the comprehensiveness and generality of the program of analysis that Wittgenstein suggests in theTractatus . For insofar as they have discussed the concept of logical syntax at all, they have generally supposed that the rules of logical syntax, to be shown through the practice of meaning-analysis, are intended to be in some way limited or restricted with respect to the totality of rules of use that determine meanings in ordinary language. Anscombe, for instance, interprets the phrase “logico-syntactic employment” as meaning “the kind of difference between the syntactical roles of words which concerns a logician” rather than gesturing toward “‘role in life,’ ‘use’, [or] ‘practice of the use’ in the sense ofPhilosophical Investigations .”[121] But actually there is no reason to think that Wittgenstein intended the scope of the rules of logical syntax shown by logical reflection on the use of symbolism in ordinary language to be any smaller than the total range of possible meanings in ordinary language. Wherever, in ordinary language, there are distinctions of meaning, there is presumably the possibility of a notation that shows those distinctions; if this is right, then logical clarification, in Wittgenstein’s sense, can proceed according to the clarificatory question “what does that mean?”regardless of the subject matter of the proposition or claim in question.

With the nature and scope of Wittgenstein’s Tractarian program of analysis thus clarified in its connection with his use-doctrine of meaning, we can begin to see that program not only as a much more direct antecedent of thePhilosophical Investigations conception of grammar, but also of a variety of significant subsequent innovations in the history of analytic philosophy. First, theTractatus ’ use-doctrine of meaningfulness means that its project of analysis is alreadyholistic . There is no way to clarify the meaning of a sign without clarifying its use; but the use of a sign is identified withall of its possibilities of significant appearance in propositions of the language. It follows that there is no complete analysis of the meaning of a sign that does not determine all of these possibilities. The clarification of the meaning of a sign must take into account all of the contexts in which it can appear significantly, and the combinatorial rules of logical syntax thereby revealed will govern, for each sign, the possibilities of its appearance in conjunction witheach of the other potentially significant signs of the language. It follows that there is, in an important sense, no such thing as the analysis of asingle term in isolation. The only way to give acomplete analysis of any term is to give an analysis of the whole language. In this sense, the project of theTractatus already expresses the claim, usually associated with the later Wittgenstein, that “understanding a sentence means understanding a language.”[122] The holistic semantic dependence of one term upon all of the other terms in the language is bound to be implicit in ordinary discourse, but analysis makes it explicit in its progress toward a logically perspicuous notation.

Additionally, there is a second, deeper way in which theTractatus program of analysis anticipates the commitments of much later, and even contemporary, projects. Because it begins with ordinary judgments of the meaning of propositions, and proceeds from identifying the semantic relations of propositions to identifying their logically distinct terms by their uses, the program of the Tractatus embodies what might today be called an inferentialist program of analysis. [123] Wittgenstein emphasizes, just before stating the use-doctrine of meaningfulness, that only propositions have sense; a name has meaning only in the nexus of a particular proposition. [124] Judgments of meaning must begin as judgments of the meaning of propositions; it is only on the basis of the judgment that a proposition is meaningful - and has the meaning that it does - that we can begin to understand the meanings (uses) of its constituent symbols. To identify the logically simple parts of a proposition (parts that, of course, may not be shown perspicuously by the symbolism of ordinary language), we begin by considering a class of propositions, all of which have something in common that is essential to their sense. [125] The class of propositions that have some component of their sense in common, then, share a “propositional variable;” by stipulating values for the variable, we can recover the original class of propositions. [126] If a sentence’s significant terms are all replaced by propositional variables, its logical form is shown. [127] In this way, beginning with logical relations of semantic similarity among propositions , the analysis works toward the segmentation of those propositions into their logically simple parts. There is no way to access these parts, however, other than by first comprehending the logical and inferential relationships among propositions as a whole. The logical or inferential relationships of sense among propositions themselves define their logically simple parts; so there is no alternative, in the analytic process of articulating a proposition into its logically simple parts, to beginning with its semantic relations to a large variety of other propositions. [128]

IV

Wittgenstein’s Tractarian conception of analysis therefore already involved, as we have seen, the determinative claim that the analyst’s work consists in determining and symbolizing the specific rules that govern linguistic usage in a language as a whole. These rules are conceived as implicit, in any case, in ordinary patterns of usage, but the imperfections of our ordinary explicit understanding of them are to blame for a wide variety of errors and confusions. The possibility of linguistic or philosophical criticism depends on the gap between what we infact do, on particular occasions of utterance, and what the actual rules of usage require of us; in particular, these rules establish identities of usage where we are tempted to use one and the same sign in more than one particular way. The assumption that language as a wholecould be portrayed as a total corpus of rules determining distinct uses therefore governed, at this time, both Wittgenstein’s conception of language and his sense of the work of philosophical criticism of it. But the underlying instabilities of this conception, which became apparent to Wittgenstein only after his return to philosophy in 1929, would also demand a deep transformation in his conception of this work. For as Wittgenstein would come in stages to appreciate after 1929, the conception of a language as a systematic calculus involves an untenable conception of what is involved in its learning or understanding.

Wittgenstein’s transitional works show clearly how the Tractarian picture of logical syntax began to cede to a more pluralistic and nuanced conception of the grammatical foundations of meaning. In thePhilosophical Remarks composed in 1929 and 1930, Wittgenstein considered in detail the possibility of clarifying the grammatical structure of ordinary language in virtue of which it allows for various perceptual and experiential possibilities; he called this project “phenomenological.”[129] TheRemarks explicitly retained theTractatus conception of philosophical criticism as the critique of failures to give signs a univocal sense; but Wittgenstein was now less certain that the truth-functional notation that he had suggested in theTractatus would be adequate to the clarificatory task.[130] Propositions concerning colors and quantities, for instance, proved recalcitrant to the symbolization in terms of simple propositions that theTractatus had suggested. Nevertheless, Wittgenstein continued to think that “phenomenological” relationships such as the incompatibility between red and green must be expressible in a logically perspicuous symbolism that captures the grammatical form of our language, even though our ordinary language does not show this form explicitly:

77. How is it possible for f(a) and f(b) to contradict one another, as certainly seems to be the case? For instance, if I say ‘There is red here now’ and ‘There is green here now’?…

78. If f(r) and f(g) contradict one another, it is because r and g completely occupy the f and cannot both be in it. But that doesn’t show itself in our signs. But it must show itself if we look, not at the sign, but at the symbol. For since this includes the form of the objects, then the impossibility of ‘f(r).f(g)’ must show itself there, in this form.

It must be possible for the contradiction to show itself entirely in the symbolism, for if I say of a patch that it is red and green, it is certainly at most only one of these two, and the contradiction must be contained in the sense of the two propositions.

That two colours won’t fit at the same time in the same place must be contained in their form and the form of space.

As in theTractatus , Wittgenstein distinguishes between sign and symbol; ordinary language fails to show the structure of exclusion that characterizes the sense of propositions about colors and that a perspicuous symbolism could reveal. But the fact that this structure is non-truth-functional - two of its simple propositions can be mutually contradictory without being negations of one another - led Wittgenstein to conclude that the connection between the possibilities expressed in its symbolism and the possibilities for the combination of objects in the world must be more complicated than theTractatus had held.

On the new conception, the correspondence that makes a proposition true is not simply a correspondence between that proposition and the world, but a correspondence betweenthe entire system of propositions in which it figures and the world.[131] The propositions “the surface is red” and “the surface are green” are only contradictory because they designate different positions in the wholesystem of propositions expressing colors, and a perspicuous notation would have to express this whole system, capturing the exclusivity of different positions within it. The exclusive relationship between red and green is a feature of an entire articulated system; and it is the relationship between this whole system and the states of affairs in the world that makes any single proposition about color true. Translating into the language of theTractatus , we can put this recognition as the discovery that recognizing the symbol in a sign, by means of a clarification of the use of terms in a proposition, requires the elucidation of the whole logical system in which that proposition figures. Accordingly, it becomes harder to imagine that such recognition could culminate in anything like a single, unique analysis of any sentence.

At about the same time, and partially as a result of the discovery of the non-truth-functional nature of certain kinds of logical form, Wittgenstein began also to reconsider the central question of the relationship of theuse of a sign to its meaning. In thinking about what is involved in using a sign meaningfully, we can easily be tempted, Wittgenstein now thought, by a kind of “mythology,” a notion that themeaning of the sign is itself a kind of shadowy, mysterious accompaniment to it, for instance a mental process or state that endows the otherwise inert and meaningless sign with a sense.[132] In his exposition of this line of critique in thePhilosophical Remarks , Wittgenstein’s direct target is primarily Russell’s theory of judgment, according to which the correctness of a judgment consists not only in the relationship between the judgment and a fact, but also in a subjective experience of correctness.[133] The theory was objectionable in that, in addition to describing the “internal” logical relationship between a judgment and the fact it adduces, it introduces also a third event which, even if it existed, could only be “externally” related to this logical relationship and so must be completely irrelevant to its description.[134]

The temptation to introduce such intermediaries, Wittgenstein says here, has its root in a “danger of giving a mythology of the symbolism, or of psychology: instead of simply saying what everyone knows and must admit.”[135] The mythology threatens, for instance, when we explain “how a picture is meant” in terms of the psychological reaction it tends to elicit, or the state of mind that is supposed to accompany my meaning or intending it a certain way. We avoid the mythology only be recognizing that, as Wittgenstein puts it, “the intention is already expressed in the way Inow compare the picture with reality” and not in any other item, inner or outer, mental or physical, thought to accompany this present application.[136]

Even if we recognize that clarification of the meaning of a sign means clarification of its significant uses, we can be tempted, under the influence of this mythology, to think that the “use” is something somehow present, all at once, alongside or behindeach significant employment of the sign. Wittgenstein’s increasingly explicit criticism of the confusion implicit in such accounts, in line with the critique of psychologism that Frege had first developed, culminates in the diagnosis of their central assumption that he offers in the Blue Book:

The mistake we are liable to make could be expressed thus: We are looking for the use of a sign, but we look for it as though it were an object co-existing with the sign. (One of the reasons for this mistake is again that we are looking for a ‘thing corresponding to a substantive.’) (p. 5)

Wittgenstein thus recognized the Russellian theory as an objectionable instance of psychologism and opposed it, as he had opposed psychologism more generally in theTractatus , by way of an immanent reflection on theuse orapplication of pictures, in this case to judgments of truth or falsity. But as the subsequent development of his thought would make even clearer, Wittgenstein had already begun to see at least the rudiments of the mythology of meaning as having existed, also, in theTractatus’ conception of use itself. For although theTractatus had steadfastly avoided psychologism by refusing to describe the psychological or mental accompaniments of the regular use of a sign, its conception of themeaningfulness of signs, as we have seen, nevertheless pictures their application in practice as a matter of adherence to systematicrules of use, intelligible in their totality to philosophical elucidation and description.

Were one to give a psychological description of the actual practice of using a language, in accordance with this conception, one could only portray it as a matter of our grasping or understanding rules of use on some conscious or unconscious level. The rules, or their symbolic expressions, would then, again, amount to additional items thought to be present “behind” one’s current use and adduced to explain it; and this is just the mythology of symbolism that Wittgenstein now opposed. It is true, of course, that theTractatus , in order to avoid psychologism, avoided giving any such description of thepsychology of grasping or understanding rules; but its conception of correct language use asdetermined by rules presupposes that the correctness or incorrectness of a linguistic performance, on a particular occasion, depends on its adherence or failure to adhere to such rules nonetheless. As such, this conception repeats the mythology of meaning that Wittgenstein now criticized in Russell. It accounts for the meaningfulness of signs in the practice of a language only by introducing a conception of this practice that repeats, rather than answering, the underlying question that it purports to address.

The critique of psychologism that Wittgenstein inherited from Frege began by attacking theories that explain the possibility of meaning or understanding a term by reference to the presence of a mentalobject oritem accompanying it. But in this more extended application, Wittgenstein brought the critique to bear as well against theories that, like his own earlier one, explain this possibility as a matter of the presence of a systematic corpus ofrules intelligible to philosophical analysis. Against such theories, Wittgenstein continues to recommend that we look for theuse of terms, but warns us against seeing this use as consisting in anything like an item, object, or structure potentially present to mind. In theInvestigations , in the course of a complicated reflection on what is involved in our determination, in actual cases, that a student or an interlocutor has “gone on” to use a word in the right way, that she has “grasped” its sense, Wittgenstein considers specifically the picture that holds that such grasping consists in bringing to mind theentirety of the use of a word:

‘It is as if we could grasp the whole use of the word in a flash.’ Likewhat e.g.? - Can’t the use - in a certain sense - be grasped in a flash? And in what sense can it not? - The point is, that it is as if we could ‘grasp it in a flash’ in yet another and much more direct sense than that. - But have you a model for this? No. It is just that this expression suggests itself to us. As the result of the crossing of different pictures. (PI 191) [137]

The objection that Wittgenstein formulates here plays a central role in the detailed considerations of rule-following and private language that form the two main critical movements of theInvestigations . For the roots of the various mythologies that he criticizes, in both cases, can be found in the attempt to explain the meaningfulness of a language’s terms by reference to rules thought to be grasped or present to mind in the regular practice of a language. This attempt itself has its root in the mistake that he criticizes in theBlue Book , namely the tendency to look for the use of a sign as an “object co-existing” with it thatexplains its being used the way that it is.[138]

As we have seen, theTractatus ’ conception of the practice of logical analysis envisioned the logical identification and adumbration of the distinctuses of signs as leading to a clarified notation that would prevent philosophical confusion. With this conception of a clarified notation that coordinates each sign to exactly one use, the project depended crucially on the possibility of an overall determination and segmentation of the varied application of signs in an ordinary language into distinct and describable uses; each of these was pictured, in particular, as governed by the determinate rules of the “logical syntax” that the practice of analysis sought to display. But as Wittgenstein had come to appreciate already in the transitional texts, the diversity and heterogeneity of ordinary contexts of use makes it implausible that any such (simple and unified) rules actually exist and can be described.[139]

Going even further, indeed, the “rule-following” considerations of the Philosophical Investigations, especially through their articulation of the ‘paradox’ of PI 201, raised the decisive critical question of what application such rules could have, even if theycould be described. The Tractatus conception of analysis, as we have seen, relied for its force in application to the criticism of ordinary language on the possibility of distinguishing between performances judged correct, with respect to the rules of “logical syntax,” and those that, in misusing terms or confusing distinct uses, violated them. The distinction was supposed to be underwritten by the theorist’s ability to discern, within the heterogeneity of ordinary usage, the right or correct rules of syntax for a language; but the Tractatus conception of meaningfulness already gave the theorist no resource for determining these rules beyond what is involved in this ordinary use itself. As Wittgenstein would come to see later, this rendered any description of the rules of logical syntax essentially arbitrary with respect to the ordinary use it was supposed to explain. Some rough schematization of regularities or normal patterns “implicit” in ordinary usage might still be possible; but the force of the rule-following paradox of PI 201 was to show that any such schematization would itself remain open to the question of its own normative or critical application to individual linguistic performances, and so would fail to capture the (unique) rules underlying meaningfulness in the language as a whole.

Although he would continue to insist that the clarification of meaning depends on reflection on usage, the paradoxical gap Wittgenstein now saw as existing between the signs of a language and their application therefore meant that this reflection could no longer be supported by what he now recognized as a mythology of silent, determinate rules underlying ordinary linguistic performance. In connection with other, parallel results of the analytic tradition, as we shall see over the next several chapters, Wittgenstein’s identification and diagnosis of this mythology indeed marks one of the most significant lasting critical results of the tradition’s inquiry into the form and structure of the language that we speak and the problems of our ordinary access to it. It opens the space of a critical reflection on the varied and complicated implications of this access for the form of a linguistic life and the possibilities of meaning it permits.