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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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