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SUBJECTIVITY IN THE EVOLUTION OFWITTGENSTEIN’S PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

This essay is concerned to present a reading of Wittgenstein in which the shift from apicture theory of language to an approach in which meaning pertains in the use ofwords and signs, effects a change in the nature of the subject. I will be concerned todemonstrate that the individual in the world according to the Tractatus is restricted insome way by the structure of language in that world, and that the language-user inWittgenstein’s more highly evolved theory is better able to demarcate his own world,and to generate his own understanding within shared patterns of meaning. At thesame time, I do not wish to dismiss altogether the link between ‘my language’ and ‘myworld’. With some recontextualisation, this is a concept worth salvaging from thedebris of Wittgenstein's shift in Weltanschauung.

Whereas the restrictions of a language based entirely on

ostensive definition suffocate the subject entirely, the

opposite may be conceived. It is my contention that the

Tractatus describes one extreme of a continuum - a ‘total’

language with no place for subjectivity. If individuals are no

longer restricted in their thought and speech to the

reflection of merely the logically possible, a balance of

language and subject is achieved. What would the language of

‘total’ subjectivity sound like?

The volitional, thinking, self-constructing subject is not to

be found in Tractatus Logico Philosophicus. This is a theory of

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knowledge which does not require such things as thinking

selves. Thinking is nothing more than the depiction of simple

objects whose meaning resides in the names by which they are

expressed. Thought is not the activity of a conscious mind,

but simply a passive element in Wittgenstein’s model of

reality as the totality of logical propositions. The world and

language coincide. The world is the totality of states of

affairs, which in turn are composed of simple objects.

Language is the totality of propositions which are similarly

composed of simple signs, or names. Names mean objects, and

the combination of names in propositions correspond to facts,

to pictures of reality. Thoughts are logical pictures, and the

world is comprised of the totality of all such pictures. All

thoughts, therefore, correspond to possible states of affairs

in the world, and thoughts cannot exist which picture the

impossible. The world is all that can be thought about; it is

all that can be expressed through the combination of

propositional signs. Thought and language coincide where there

is an identity between objects/states of affairs and

names/propositions. Such an argument presents a fairly

straightforward model of the way the world is, without actually

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concentrating on the nature of the objects which are its atomic

units; a model of what can be thought, rather than what is

thought. This is Weltanschauung as distinguished from ontology

and from epistemology; it pervades the following remark,

defining the extent to which the Tractatus admits of the self:

‘The limits of my language mean the limits of my world’ [Tractatus 56

(emphasis in original)]. Taken in context, this is a fairly

self-explanatory remark, reinforcing what I have just

discussed. In these terms, I can have no names for objects which

do not exist, for there are no objects which do not exist; I can

have no names for impossible states of affairs, for the world is

the totality of possible states of affairs. There is nothing, in

a language where sense pertains only in the object-name

relationship, to allow for the existence of unnamed objects or

of free-floating names. I do not wish to suggest, however,

that the individual cannot exist in these ‘conditions’-

Wittgenstein is positing a passive self of sorts which is

important to this idea of an empirical ‘limit’ to the world.

I think the conclusions of the Tractatus are fairly

straightforward, but they will be repeated as my argument

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progresses. I now want to examine Wittgenstein’s turn towards

contextual use as the locus of meaning in linguistic behaviour.

The concern with language-use was not totally foreign to the

early Wittgenstein- ‘a sign does not determine its logical

form unless it is taken together with its logico-syntactical

employment’ [Tractatus 16]. This remark is taken from a

discussion of homonyms and paradoxes, but the genesis is here

of two important tenets of the later work- not only language-

use, but also the rule-following which accompanies it (or

doesn’t!). However, there is nothing here on volition or

activity- concepts central to the following discussion. This

will introduce the self (ego) back into the argument, and a

‘degree’ of subjectivity somewhere between the two ‘extremes’

I have mentioned. My sociological concern will be to preserve

something of that link between language and the world in the

Tractatus, which cheated the self of its subjectivity.

It will be clear by now that my concern here is to examine

Wittgenstein’s treatment of the self and the trappings of

subjectivity as his philosophy of language evolves. In my

reading of the later work, I am making certain assumptions

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about the standpoint from which Wittgenstein re-renters

philosophy after dismissing it altogether. The first

assumption is a recognition of those continuities which do exist-

concern with the meaning of propositions and continued

rejection of traditional psychology in favour of logic,

language and metaphysics as determinants of the self. The

second is the observation of differences- a new concern with

activity and behaviour, rather than Weltanschauung; and with

rules and procedures, as well as facts and states of affairs.

A third important assumption, linked to the last, is with

regard to the conceptualisation of language itself. The simple

object-name relationship is basically rejected in favour of

analysis of actual language-use, but, as my conclusions will

show, Wittgenstein does well to retain a concern with the

mechanism of ostensive definition. This precedes a

reconceptualisation of the nature of objects and names

themselves. Finally and most importantly I believe that it is

in lowering the ‘status’ of language from ‘names for all the objects

that exist and everything that may be thought’ to a position somewhere

between reality and the language-user- in giving it an

intermediary function- that Wittgenstein is able to raise the

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‘status’ of the subject from ‘the limit of the world’ to a

self whose behaviour manifests something resembling the activity

of a conscious mind (NB! I do say “resembling”!). These four

assumptions culminate in a final presumption, a vain hypothesis

that may be followed through the discussion of ‘private’

language to my own conclusion: that whereas in the Tractatus the

individual exists passively below language and the world, in

the later philosophy, language exists at the level of the

individual-in-the-world. Before applying these assumptions to

Wittgenstein's treatment of the subject itself, I shall

introduce his later work in terms of the novel philosophy of

language characterised by language games, the ‘active’

consequences which follow, and the implications for my themes

of his ‘new’ philosophical grammar.

Wittgenstein marks his return to philosophy, then, with a new

outlook based upon different ideas about language. My

presumptuous thesis receives an encouraging start on page one

of the Blue Book, where language is brought ‘down to earth’ by

the problematisation of ostensive definition and the object-

name relationship. This sounds like a rather contradictory

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‘simplification’, but it later enables Wittgenstein to employ

concepts such as mind and consciousness (which previously had

no logical place in his work) without reifying them, by

relating them to the use and abuse of language. The Blue Book is

a discussion of the logical grammar of ‘mental activity’ and

the observation and articulation of non-observable sensations.

It highlights interesting points relating to ostensive

definition, which are picked up in Philosophical Investigations [the

Investigations] and the Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology [the

Remarks]. These points underlie the particular variety of

‘private’ language which I will come to describe. Problems

emerge when ostensive definition of objects is not dismissed

entirely; objects themselves are reconceptualised as

Wittgenstein’s concern with ‘traditional’ psychological

concepts expands.

I must back up to discuss how contextual use comes to be so

important to the discussion of meaning. One of the first

observations made by the ‘later’ Wittgenstein is that there is

no guarantee, applicable to all words, that the name is the

meaning; there are any number of words which have no ostensive

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definition. Moreover, the process of ostensive definition is

problematic- there is nothing in the act of pointing and saying

‘this is…’ or ‘this is called…’ which suggests that I am

naming the whole object, rather than some characteristic of

colour or size, my finger, or the act of pointing, etc. This

dissociation of substantive objects from stable meanings leaves meaning

without any ‘location’. The Investigations and its preliminary

studies are arguably an attempt to tackle just that problem.

It seems as if the picture theory of the Tractatus might not be

forgotten where thought as a process is implied in the

discussion of proceeding with language via reference to signs or

visual images of objects. There is absolutely no similarity

here however: we are not talking about inherently meaningful

propositional signs, but signs or images of objects which are

meaningless until they are put to use in various circumstances

To demonstrate the use of a word is to explain its meaning, and

a language game is simply any one of these ‘circumstances of

language-use’, a ‘way of going on’. It is in language games

that language is learnt; it is here, and not in some

characteristic of the object or image, that word-meaning

association comes about.

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Demonstration of understanding of a concept is in the

explanation of its use, and involves the articulation of a

rule. To articulate a rule, however, is not to follow a rule.

Later (in the Brown Book and Investigations) this is elaborated,

such that while any behaviour (e.g. the continuation of a

series of numbers) can be made to accord with a rule, no rule

contains the rule for its own application. Vitally, in

somewhat the same way as language is given independence from

the world of objects, meaning- now understood as the use of a

word or image- is given independence from that word; the crude

‘correspondence’ theory of meaning is put to rest. As

Wittgenstein recognises, this only makes the ‘location’ of

thought even more blurred, but this is not a problem, so long

as meaning exists within language use; “thinking is essentially

the activity of operating with signs” [Blue Book 6]. The picture

theory is finally dismissed when Wittgenstein questions the

existence of some ‘queer’ organ by the use of which we think in

images, in the same way that we think in writing using the

hand, or in speech using the vocal organs. The thesis of the

Blue Book is essentially a discussion of the problematic

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relationship of brain and thought, or the ‘problem of mind’

(as understood by Gilbert Ryle) which arises out of errors in

our use of language. Wittgenstein’s treatment of mental

activity verbs as a problem of philosophical grammar revolve

around a puzzle which later extends to the discussion of

subjective understanding. He asks us to imagine an unlikely

individual, thinking whilst observing the workings of his own

brain. For the sake of arguing that thought is located in the brain,

the individual is held to be attending to two different

things- the visual images, sensations etc. bombarding his

eyes, and the workings of the brain. The point of this

exercise is not actually to pinpoint the locus of thought, but

to demonstrate that a circumstance may be described, such that

the hypothesis that ‘the locus of thought is in the brain’ may

be justified. If we wish, we may base perfectly valid

language-use on a hypothesis; thus, it can make sense to say that

the locus of thought is in the brain, even if it is not. This

highlights a grammatical uncertainty with the phrase “x is

in…”, which has repercussions for language and thought: ‘we

easily overlook the distinction between stating a conscious

mental event, and making a hypothesis about what one might

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call the mechanism of the mind’ [Blue Book 40]. I wonder whether

the notion of a ‘mental event’ rather than a hypothetical

interpretation relates to the discussion of seeing as a state

[Investigations 212; Remarks 3]. Here, Wittgenstein asks us to look

to the use of a concept where we are unable to conjecture a

hypothesis. Thus, the concept is not the content of an

experience. ‘Being able is a state’ [Philosophical Grammar 6 (my

emphasis)]; ‘the possibility of the movement stands in a

unique relation to the movement itself; closer than that of a

picture to its subject’ [Blue Book 79]. We are dealing here with

interpretations and states of affairs. Given that thought and meaning do

not reside in any observable location, we cannot verify or

falsify a person’s claim’s to ‘think’ or ‘believe’ this, that

or the other. More importantly, we have no independent criteria

for verifying our own subjective understandings. In a most

obvious contradiction of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein recognises

that we may ‘believe’ facts which are not the case [Blue Book

30]. Here, then, is the reconceptualisation of objects which,

I suggested, has to follow from the admission of the language-

user as an agent in the construction of meaning. It can be

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seen as an exercise in philosophical grammar, and it is the

first of a number of similar puzzles.

I have been attempting here to give only a basic outline of

the ideas on language-use contained in the later philosophy

before I concentrate on its impact upon the individual active

subject. However, it can be seen so far that I have been

unable properly to separate the two. This is good news for the

elucidation of any relationship between language-user and the

world. As I am working my way down from ethereal meaning to

the ego itself, at this stage it would be appropriate to

outline some of the factors which necessarily intercede. I am

referring of course to the notion of rules introduced above.

‘Following a rule’ is a familiar Wittgensteinian theme, and

the argument that rule-following is not something we

consciously do is easy to grasp if, as above, we recognise

that identical behaviours can, retrospectively, be ascribed

different rules. However, it can also be explained the hard

way! This links the Investigations with the Remarks, and involves

the ‘basic’ grammatical puzzle outlined in the Blue Book, to do

with mental activity. I am talking about the grammar and use

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of ‘mental conduct verbs’. The problematisation of ostensive

definition to which I shall be returning emerges here. The

teaching of meaning by ostensive definition is implied as the

cause of a thought, the terminus of a chain of reasons for

action; reasons which explain nothing, because they simply

state indefinite terms, rather than a verifiable hypothesis.

‘Giving a reason for something one did or said means showing a

way which leads to this action.’ [Blue Book 14 (my emphasis)]

This is not to explain the way, which is the cause of the

action. The point is that I while I can ‘know’ the reason, the

motive for my action, I cannot know, but can only conjecture

the cause of that action.

Here is the next ‘grammatical’ problem: asking ‘why’ of a

person’s action is asking for cause and motive; it is to

conflate the two so that in the explanation the motive is the

‘“cause seen from the inside”, or a cause experienced.’ [Ibid.

15] In simple terms, we have tied the location of thinking

down to some specific place, instead of examining the

explanation of meaning, as was recommended, in the way

language is used. This postulation of a ‘real’ seat of

thinking is the outcome of attributing illogical grammatical

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characteristics to words. This point, and its relation to

rule-following, are made clearer in the Remarks (which is

roughly contemporary with part II of the Investigations). Here,

Wittgenstein is concerned further to elucidate the peculiar

character of verbs pertaining to so-called ‘mental’ or ‘inner’

activities, such as ‘think’, ‘understand’, ‘believe’, and

presumably, though not explicitly, ‘follow’. These

‘psychological verbs’ or concepts of experience [Remarks 148]

manifest quite different meanings when applied in the first

and the third person, such that the present participle is

logically inapplicable to the self; verbs whose ‘third person,

but not their first person is stated on grounds of

observation…of behaviour.’ [Op. Cit.]. As well as being

vitally important to my conclusion, this ties in precisely

with the notion of retrospective application of rules, and the

introspective observation of the workings of thought,

mentioned earlier. These psychological themes are evident in

the Blue Book, in relation to the ego, but I am still trying to

hold off discussing the subject per se. Suffice at this stage to

say that in relation to the uses of language, and the

explanation of meaning with reference to rules, following or

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obeying is not something that can be said to have occurred

until after it has occurred. I want to make clear that according

to the preceding discussion, this first-person/third-person,

mental/physical dilemma can be resolved in terms of language

use, without the need for reference to psychological concepts.

Meaning is in the use of language. The explanation of meaning,

it was said, may therefore take the form of the justification

of a hypothesis. However, verification or falsification of

that hypothesis cannot reasonably occur until after the act

has taken place, which, vitally, precludes explanation of meaning

before and during the act. This is why- from the point of view I

am trying to establish- we cannot, at any given time, be

following a rule, or, for that matter, be thinking a thought. It

makes no sense to talk of inner or mental experience. The

attraction of the later Wittgensteinian philosophy I am discussing is, I hope to have

shown, that thought and language are reduced from the picture of reality to an

expression of expanded human ability; a kind of mutual constitution.

So, to get back on track with my argument at last- how does

the subject fair in this ‘new’ world of language, relative to

the restricted self of the Tractatus scenario, and to the

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‘free-floating’ subject I envisaged above? What is the nature

of its development? Remember that in this regard I am

concerned to retain the expression ‘the limits of my language

mean the limits of my world’ from the Tractatus. Though I have

traced the rejection of any notion that the meaning of my

world is in the totality of objects for which I have names, I

would like to be able to point the expression in a more active

direction- the formation of worlds through language. In this

section I will be attempting to situate the subject somewhere

between solipsism and society. Not, on the face of it, a

particularly daring venture, but my concern will be to keep

one eye, as it were, on the unresolved ‘problem’ of ostensive

definition which characterises the Blue Book subject (and begets

problems with private language); and the other eye on actors’

interactive roles in language games, conceptual networks and forms

of life.

I should outline where the preceding ideas lead Wittgenstein

with reference to the ego. The distinction which was described

between experiential and psychological, or transitive and

intransitive verbs leads to an ‘I’ of ostensive objects and an

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‘I’ of non-ostensive feelings and sensations. Wittgenstein

writes widely on the ‘queer’ nature of pain and the sensation

of visual images, colours, etc., and on the impossibility of

their communication; such feelings pertain to the use of ‘I’

as subject. Only directly observable phenomena pertain to the

use of ‘I’ as object. Thus ‘I’ as object have a broken arm;

‘I’ as subject feel pain.

I have already demonstrated, I hope, just how ‘extraordinary’

objects (that is, thought-objects) are a consequence of the

implosion, so to speak, of the object-name relationship.

Moreover, the special temporal nature of so-called

psychological activity in context endows the individual with

the capacity to recognise characteristics in his own past

behaviour. At the very least, this is more than the Tractatus

subject is able to do, but the model fulfils only one half of

my concern with ‘mutual constitution’. That is to say, there

appears to be no ‘expansion’ of the role of the subject, which

would correspond with the demystification of language that is

in evidence. Instability pertains in identity thus determined,

as we shall see. In spite of these disappointing consequences,

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the beauty of the Blue Book is that it demonstrates how the

concept of the subjective ‘I’ can have perfectly valid

meaning, whilst at the same time not existing at all! Logical

philosophical grammar dictates that no sort of mental content

or experience can pertain within the duration of the activity

of the language-user. However, this in no way prevents us from

using such concepts in retrospective explanation of our

behaviour.

The terms of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy prevent meaning

from inhering in any specific object or agent of the language-

act. That is to say, meaning exists not in the word, the

object, the mouth or the brain, but rather meaning is in the

specific context in which all these factors gel. It seems that

meaning is in a system or continuum, and it appears further

that no allowance is made for an active agent of meaning. It

is my understanding that a further problematisation of

ostensive definition arises as result of these paradoxes, and

that this characterises both the Blue Book’s eventual treatment

of the ego and the issues implicit in both the Investigations and

the Remarks which deal with conventional treatments of so-

called ‘private’ language.

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Notwithstanding, the Investigations does allow us to figure the

subject in a way which fits more adequately with the concerns

of this essay. At this stage I am trying to elucidate a model

of language in which an element of subjectivity pertains; a

model which provides a balance between the extremes of zero

subjectivity and total subjectivity. The balance will be

struck in the idea that ‘the limits of my language games mean the limits

of my world’. I don’t think it would be unreasonable in light of

the preceding discussion to interpret that remark as ‘the uses to

which I put language are the limits of my world’. Right away, this implies

a volitional attitude, and the parity of subject and language

which underlies the mutual constitution of language-user and meaning.

Moreover, it is an attitude that does not necessitate the

paradox of the ostensive definition of non-ostensive objects,

because language-use is not limited to the naming of objects.

In addition, the distinction between my world and the world is an

immediate indicator of a subjective attitude. In the Tractatus,

Wittgenstein had not been concerned to pick up on this, but in

the Investigations it finds expression in the notion of ‘forms of

life’. I am now talking about the subject-in-the-world, not

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the subject subsumed by the world, nor the subject outside the

world (whom I will discuss presently). I described above how

ostensive definition was the ‘necessary’ terminus or cause of

a chain of activities where a motive cannot be its own

explanation. In the Investigations, however, forms of life provide

a ‘social’ alternative to this Blue Book suggestion, and

reinforce the revised tautology. A final reinterpretation- ‘the

uses to which I put language are the limits of my form (or forms) of life’- allows

me to pre-empt the problem of ostensive definition which is

the downfall of the ‘total’ subject. The balance of subject

and language which I have described here will be seen all the

more clearly in contrast with the following discussion.

‘What actually is the world of ‘consciousness’?….

The answer to that cannot be: “Well, all that” accompanied

by a sweeping gesture’

[Remarks on Colour 58]

I must now tie together the vague remarks I have been making

in reference to the link between ostensive definition and what

I have reluctantly been calling ‘private’ language. I have

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been working through a continuum of ‘degrees of subjectivity’;

now, as I set out to do, I have reached the opposite extreme

from the ‘zero’ subjectivity implicit in the Tractatus. My

concern, in sketching a mode of expression in opposition to a

‘total’ language has not been with ‘traditional’ private

language questions- that is to say, the question of whether or

not private sensations may be articulated when they cannot be

ostensively defined, or the question of whether Robinson

Crusoe may be able to devise a language which uses concepts that

may not be translated into any existing language (though the

answer to the latter is ‘no’, as we shall see). These issues

of privacy have been touched on, but the private language

problem is not that we are unable to experience and understand

the private sensations of others, for this assumes that there

are such things as private concepts. In fact, the logic of my

argument dictates that there can be no private concepts

because concepts do not have a content. They are tools,

instruments, which derive their existence from use in a

particular context, a particular language game; they are not

the content of ‘inner’ processes- ‘words are not a translation

of something else that was there before’ [Remarks 133]. The

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notion of inner processes stems from misunderstanding the

grammar of certain words- turning descriptions such as ‘obeyed’,

‘thought’, ‘believed’ and so on, into past participles of verbs

of mental conduct which accompany physical activity. These new

‘psychological verbs’ constitute ‘a language which describes

only my impressions of the present moment. Akin is the primal

utterance that is only an inarticulate sound…the ideal name

which the word “this” is.’ [Remarks 132]. This is the nature of

ostensive definition as it has concerned me, and the

particular problem is that it is not simply inapplicable by me

to ‘your’ sensations; rather, if as I am trying to suggest,

‘I’ am the ostensive ‘definer’, it cannot occur at all.

At last I have elaborated the position of the individual at

the opposite extreme from that of the Tractatus. The notion of

the fugitive present moment is vital here for it underlines

Wittgenstein’s other grammatical ‘warning’. The test of (the

hypothesis) of meaning is in its use, but it cannot be in the

experience of using the word, any more than it can be in the act of

ostensively defining the word. The opposite of ‘total’

language is not private language. The language of ‘total’

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subjectivity is no language. I hope that the banality of this

conclusion may be forgiven in light of the analysis.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1958): The Blue & Brown Books [Oxford:

Blackwell]

(1967): Philosophical Investigations [Oxford:

Blackwell]

(1974): On Certainty [Oxford: Blackwell]

(1974): Philosophical Grammar [Oxford: Blackwell]

(1974): Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [London:

Routledge]

(1977): Remarks on Colour [Oxford: Blackwell]

(1980): Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology (Vol. I)

[Oxford: Blackwell]

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