DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0378.2009.00359.x
Wittgenstein and Internal Relations
Marie McGinn
Abstract: Interpretations of the Tractatus divide into what might be called a
metaphysical and an anti-metaphysical approach to the work. The central issue
between the two interpretative approaches has generally been characterised in
terms of the question whether the Tractatus is committed to the idea of ‘things’
that cannot be said in language, and thus to the idea of a distinctive kind of
nonsense: nonsense that is an attempt to say what can only be shown. In this
paper, I look at this dispute from a different perspective, by focusing on the
treatment of the concept of internal relations. By reference to the work of Peter
Hacker, Hidé Ishiguro and Cora Diamond, I show how this concept is understood
quite differently in each of the two interpretative traditions. I focus particularly
on how Wittgenstein’s idea of the ‘internal relation of depicting that holds
between language and the world’ (Tractatus 4.014) might be understood within
the two interpretative approaches. I offer some reasons in support of the antimetaphysical treatment of the concept.
1.
At least two, and possibly three, different approaches to interpreting Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (TLP) are currently on offer. First, there is a metaphysical
approach which claims that Wittgenstein puts forward, or intends to convey, an
account of the relation between language and the world in which, as Pears puts
it, ‘the world is the dominant partner’ (Pears 2006: 1). The logical structure of our
language is, as Hacker says, ‘ineffably answerable to the logical form of the
world’ (Hacker 2001: 170), understood as the ‘language independent-de re
possibilities’ (Hacker 2001: 171) for objects to combine in states of affairs. Second,
there is what I will call an anti-metaphysical approach, which denies that
Wittgenstein intended to offer any form of explanation of how language connects
with the world, but is, rather, engaged in a logical investigation whose aim is to
lay bare how the expressions of our language function. There is no attempt, on
this understanding, either to ground the logic of our language in features of the
world, or to infer features of the world from the nature of our symbolism. This
anti-metaphysical approach represents a well-established interpretative tradition,
which includes the work of Ishiguro, McGuinness, Rhees and Winch, and to
which my own recent book on the Tractatus was intended to be a contribution.
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Marie McGinn
The opposition to the metaphysical reading of the Tractatus was re-invigorated in
the 1990s, by the work of Cora Diamond, James Conant, Tom Ricketts, Warren
Goldfarb, Michael Kramer, and others. It is a moot question whether this reinvigoration—the so-called ‘resolute’ reading—constitutes a third approach,
distinct from that of Ishiguro et al., or whether it is better seen as putting forward
a distinctive way of defending an anti-metaphysical approach to an understanding of Wittgenstein’s early work.
Certainly, one effect of this re-invigoration of the opposition to the metaphysical
reading has been to focus the dispute concerning the correct interpretative strategy
on the question whether the Tractatus is committed to the idea of ‘things’ that
cannot be said in language—things such that, in trying to say them, we are forced to
speak nonsense—and thus to the idea of a distinctive category of nonsense:
nonsense that is an attempt to say what can only be shown. Against this, resolute
readers have argued that Wittgenstein does not recognize ‘kinds of nonsense’. A
string of signs is nonsense if we have failed to give a meaning to at least one of the
signs occurring in it; the idea of a sentence’s being nonsense because what it is
trying to say lies beyond the limits of what can be said is a mirage, and, the resolute
readers claim, is actually the principal target of the Tractatus. In this paper I want to
approach the dispute between the various interpretative strategies from a slightly
different, though closely related, direction, by focusing on the concept of internal
relations. This is a concept that appears to be handled quite differently by these
interpretative traditions; my hope is that by focusing on it, the nature of the dispute
between them may be further illuminated.
2.
Let me begin by presenting the understanding of the concept of internal relations
that has emerged within the metaphysical approach. I will take the work of Peter
Hacker as my basis, simply because he has worked the view out in more detail,
and defended it more vigorously, than anyone else in this interpretative tradition.
Wittgenstein’s use of the concept of an internal relation that I’ll focus on in my
discussion is the following: ‘the . . . internal relation of depicting that holds
between language and the world’ (TLP 4.014). According to Hacker, this internal
relation is to be understood as a substantial relation of isomorphism which must
hold between language and the world, if the former is to represent the latter. On
this understanding, the logical syntax of our language is held to be ‘ineffably
answerable’ to the logical form of the world. The logical form of the world is
constituted by the combinatorial possibilities of the simple objects that make up
the substance of the world.
Thus, if a sign occurring in a proposition is a name, then it must admit of the
very same range of combinatorial possibilities within the symbolism as the object
which is its meaning has in reality. Similarly, a proposition must have the same
logical form as the state of affairs the existence of which makes it true, and which
it affirms to exist. The logical forms of both objects and states of affairs are
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language independent: they are constituted by possibilities that are independent
of our system for representing states of affairs in language. This isomorphism
between language and the world is a condition of the possibility of representation; it is in this sense that the logical form of language is answerable to the
logical form of the world. However, the features of the world that are
isomorphically mirrored in a language which represents it cannot be described
in language. These features are not contingent and a description of them would
fail to accord with the bi-polarity requirement, which Wittgenstein places on
propositions with sense. The features of the world that are essentially mirrored in
language are necessary and therefore ineffable: they cannot be described in
senseful propositions. The logical form of reality does, however, show itself in the
logical features of well-formed propositions. In the same way, the internal
relation of mirroring that is a condition of representation is itself something that
cannot be expressed in senseful propositions, but shows itself in our expressing
propositions with sense.
Thus, according to the metaphysical approach, the internal relation of
depicting is a genuine or substantial relation: expressions that have this relation
to the world express a sense; those that lack this relation, do not. The holding
of this internal relation between signs and the objects they stand for is a
substantial condition on representation, which gives content to the idea that the
logical syntax of language is ‘answerable’ to the world. There is a requirement
that language ‘fit’ the world, and the internal relation of depicting is the holding
of this relation of fit. The ‘fit’ that is required is between the possibilities for signs
to occur in propositions and the ‘de re possibilities’ for objects to combine in facts.
What makes the relation ‘internal’ rather than ‘external’ is that it cannot be
expressed in language: it is necessary and ineffable. On this understanding,
the internal relation between language and the world is, like an external
relation, properly or genuinely relational in nature, but, unlike an external
relation, it cannot be represented in, but is rather presupposed by, propositions
with sense.
The connection between this interpretation of Wittgenstein’s use of the concept
of an internal relation and the conception of nonsense which is criticized
by Diamond and Conant is clear. The logical form of language is taken to
show features of reality that cannot be described in language; the internal relation
which constitutes the relation of depiction is one that exists between language
and the world, but cannot be described in senseful propositions. The attempt to
describe either the logical form of the world, or the relation of depiction,
results in nonsense sentences that fail to express a sense: the things that we are
attempting to say cannot be expressed in senseful propositions. Thus, this
interpretation of the concept of an internal relation commits Wittgenstein
to the idea that there is a kind of nonsense which is the result of our attempting
to say what can only be shown. However, what I want to focus on is what
I will call this interpretation’s relational understanding of Wittgenstein’s
concept of ‘the internal relation of depicting that holds between language and
the world’.
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3.
A quite different understanding of the concept of internal relations can be
discerned in the anti-metaphysical approach to the Tractatus. Although Hidé
Ishiguro does not use the term ‘internal relation’ in her paper, ‘Wittgenstein and
the Theory of Types’ (Ishiguro 1981), in it she clearly repudiates the idea that
Wittgenstein held that the logical syntax of our language is answerable to
anything outside language. ‘For Wittgenstein’, she writes, ‘being a propositional
function or being an object are correlates of certain logical categories of our
language’ (Ishiguro 1981: 45). She argues that a theory of logical types is, for
Wittgenstein, equivalent to providing a philosophical grammar or logical syntax
that makes the logical form of the constituents of propositions perspicuous. It is
essentially concerned with how symbols of our language symbolize, and not with
what they mean. Wittgenstein, unlike Russell and Frege, resists ‘the temptation to
think of the theory of types—[or logical syntax]—as a general classification of
things’ (Ishiguro 1981: 48), or to make ‘the obscure claim that the reference of
names and references of predicates are different kinds of entities, the later being
unsaturated (Frege) or indefinite (Russell)’ (Ishiguro 1981: 51). Thus, we might
read Ishiguro as rejecting the idea that Wittgenstein held that the logical form of a
proposition stands in a substantial relation of fitting to the logical form of the
state of affairs that makes it true. Rather, the logical form of a proposition is seen
as the ‘structure which makes us understand propositions as pieces of language’;
‘[t]he logical form of a proposition is something we must grasp in order to
understand that the words in the proposition say anything at all’ (Ishiguro 1981:
47).
Thus, Ishiguro sees Wittgenstein as ‘distinguish[ing] between what we say or
express by means of our language, and the categorical understanding we have’;
the latter, she argues, ‘reflect[s] our grasp of logical syntax’ or ‘our grasp of the
logical form of our language’ (Ishiguro 1981: 54). On this understanding, the
distinction between saying and showing is not to be understood as a distinction
between the contingent/expressible and the necessary/ineffable features of
reality. Being an object, or being a property, is not to be understood as an attribute
that is possessed (ineffably) by the entities that signs stand for; it is rather to be
understood as the correlate of a formal concept that characterizes a way of
symbolizing, something that is made fully manifest in the employment of signs in
propositions with sense. There is no sense here that there are ‘things’ that are
necessarily true of objects, but which cannot be said, only shown, by the signs
that represent them. On this interpretation, the logical syntax of a symbol, in
virtue of which it is the symbol it is, is not an attribute of what the symbol stands
for, but is a feature of the symbol that is manifest in its role in the symbolism. The
‘fit’ between a sign and what it signifies is no longer understood as a substantial
relation of isomorphism, but as a reflection of the fact that what kind of symbol a
symbol is—how a symbol signifies—is fixed by the nature of the symbolism, and
is not answerable to anything outside language. The ‘internal relation’ between
the logical form of a sign and the logical form of what it signifies does not, on this
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view, have anything genuinely relational about it; rather, the logical form of a
symbol and of what it signifies is settled in a single stroke, by how the sign is
used with a sense.
The point of Wittgenstein’s critique of Russell’s theory of types, according to
Ishiguro, is that logical distinctions are distinctions between the logico-syntactic
properties of symbols, which are made manifest in the employment of signs in
propositions with sense. A symbol’s way of symbolizing is something internal to
the symbolism and is made evident in its logico-syntactic employment. The
logico-syntactic properties of a symbol are presented by means of a variable,
which is equivalent to a rule for the construction of a class of propositions.
The rule that a variable expresses does not need to concern itself with what
signs mean, but only with how signs signify: with their logico-syntactic
properties. Variables present what a class of symbols have in common, and no
variable can show what is common to two symbols that symbolize in different
ways: and ‘that is the whole of the ‘theory of types’ (TLP 3.332). Russell’s vicious
circle principle is not only incoherent, but also unnecessary. The meaning of a
sign does not have to be mentioned in order to rule out a function’s occurring as
its own argument; the difference in the mode of signification between a
propositional function and its argument already rules out a function’s being
applied to itself; no function can be the value of the variable that presents the
prototype of its argument.
Thus, the ‘fit’ between signs that combine to form propositions that represent
possible states of affairs is understood as something that concerns, or is grounded
in, the nature of symbols, and not in the nature of things. On this interpretation,
one might see it as the great achievement of Wittgenstein’s early work that it
makes clear that logic does not belong to the level of facts, that the logic of our
language does not represent and is not answerable to anything outside language:
the logical syntax of our language concerns how symbols symbolize, something
that is shown in the use of expressions in propositions. If this is our model for the
understanding of internal relations, then it suggests that the internal relation of
depiction is itself one that needs to be understood in a way that does not involve
anything genuinely relational, or imply any substantial relation of ‘fit’. I will
return to this topic in section 5.
4.
In a different context, and in a rather different fashion, Cora Diamond has also
argued against the possibility of interpreting the notion of an internal relation as
involving anything genuinely relational. In ‘Truth Before Tarski’ (Diamond 2002),
she argues against Hans Sluga’s claim that Wittgenstein is committed to a version
of the correspondence theory of truth, which Sluga describes as follows:
The world . . . consists of facts, and a fact is the existence of a state of
affairs which in turn are combinations of objects. The combination of
names that makes up a sentence is also a fact, and a sentence is true if it
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stands in a strict mapping or picturing relation to a fact in the world.
(Sluga 2002: 90)
Diamond argues that Wittgenstein’s putting forward what looks like a
correspondence theory of truth is properly understood as an attempt to get us
to see that ‘what we usually think of as correspondence theories of truth are
attempts to treat as theory what is actually a reflection of certain ways we operate
with sentences, dependent on their logical character’ (Diamond 2002: 256). The
understanding at which Wittgenstein ultimately aims ‘does not in the end rely on
the structure of relations’ (Diamond 2002: 259).
We’re concerned here with the idea that there is a relation of correspondence,
or ‘fitting’, between a proposition and the fact that makes it true. Diamond
concedes that Wittgenstein does indeed talk of a proposition’s agreeing or
disagreeing with reality, but she argues that we need to be attentive to the way in
which he tries to get us to recognize what such talk actually amounts to. Rather
than focusing, as Sluga does, on the idea of a relation between language and the
world, Diamond holds that Wittgenstein’s intention is to ‘redirect our attention
toward logical features of the use of ordinary sentences’ (Diamond 2002: 259).
Talk of the relation of agreeing or disagreeing with reality is, she argues,
prompted by the following kinds of inference pattern, which characterize our
ordinary use of propositions:
Group 1
p
So ‘p’ is true and ‘not-p’ is false
not-p
So ‘p’ is false and ‘not-p’ is true
Group 2
A believes p
p
So A’s belief is correct
A believes p
not-p
So A’s belief is incorrect
A believes p
A’s belief is correct
So p
These patterns record logical features of our use of sentences. In the case of the
Group 1 pattern, we might try to express the significance of this inference pattern
by saying that a proposition and its negation correspond to a single fact: a single
reality determines the truth or falsity of both propositions. However, Diamond
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argues that Wittgenstein’s ultimate aim is to show us that the relational talk,
which this inference pattern prompts us to engage in, is incoherent. In getting us
to see that the way propositions symbolize essentially involves directionality—‘a
rule-governed kind of comparison with reality, which is [essentially] reversible’—Wittgenstein thereby clarifies the distinction between propositions and
names, and brings us to recognize that propositions cannot be relata: ‘nothing
with directionality is a relatum’ (Diamond 2002: 269). Relational talk of
correspondence between a proposition and a fact is now seen to collapse into
incoherence: to talk of a relation between a proposition and a fact would
essentially involve treating a proposition as equivalent to a name. Thus, all that is
left of our relational talk is the inference pattern that prompted it in the first
place, and from which all suggestion of anything genuinely relational is
completely absent.
Thus, whatever content the idea that a single reality determines the truth of
both a proposition and its negation has, lies entirely in its alluding to inferences
of the Group 1 pattern. In the same way, relational talk of a thought’s or a
judgement’s agreeing or disagreeing with reality is to be seen as prompted by the
Group 2 pattern of inference. Diamond argues that this relational talk of
agreement also collapses into incoherence, and for the same reason: ‘nothing with
directionality is a relatum’. What we are left with is our ordinary use of
propositions both to say what is the case and to give the contents of judgements,
and our moving from a statement about what A believes and a statement about
what is the case to a statement as to whether A’s belief is correct or incorrect.
Again, whatever content the idea that thought is answerable to reality has lies
entirely in its alluding to these inference patterns, from which, once again, all
sense of anything genuinely relational is absent.
Diamond, in accordance with the precepts of the resolute reading, is inclined
to see all this as a matter of showing that the concept of an internal relation
explodes from within, and reveals itself to be incoherent. However, it seems
equally possible to construe Wittgenstein’s talk of an internal relation between a
proposition and the fact that makes it true as a rejection of the idea of a
substantial, but ineffable, relation of correspondence or ‘fitting’, and to see
Diamond’s explication of talk of a proposition’s agreeing or disagreeing with
reality as a working out of the kind of interpretation of the notion of an internal
relation that Wittgenstein intends us to give. On this understanding, talk of an
internal relation is to be understood as alluding to features of the symbolism that
are internal to it and evident in our ordinary employment of expressions: we
employ propositions to say how things are. Recognizing these features does not
issue in an explanation of what the relation of truth consists in, but altogether
dispenses with the idea of truth as a relation between a proposition and
something that fits it. In the same way, talk of the internal relation of depicting
that holds between language and the world is intended to draw our attention to
features of our ordinary use of expression, so that what we initially picture as
genuinely relational comes to be seen as no more than a reflection of how we
actually employ expressions.
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c
c
c
c
For example, the fact that we use the proposition ‘p’ to describe the fact that
obtains if ‘p’ is true; that we use the proposition ‘ p’ to say what is not the case if
‘p’ is false; that we use the proposition ‘p’ to say what is the case in reality if A’s
belief that p is correct; and so on. Establishing the truth of a proposition, or the
correctness of a belief, is not a matter of establishing that a relation holds between
a bit of language and a bit of the world, but of using the rule that constitutes the
sense of a proposition to determine whether p or
p is the case. The idea of a
proposition’s answerability to the world is simply equivalent to its having a sense
that determines the conditions under which we call ‘p’ true and ‘ p’ false and,
by the same stroke, the conditions under which we call ‘p’ false and ‘ p’ true.
Although it explains nothing, recognizing the features of the symbolism, which
the idea of an internal relation between a proposition and the state of affairs that
exists if it is true alludes to, may bring about the satisfaction that it was wrongly
supposed could only be achieved by means of a substantial account of what the
relation of truth or correspondence consists in. What we come to see is that the
idea of thought’s answerability to the world does not invoke a substantial
relation of isomorphic mapping between propositions and facts, conceived as
ontological items, but rather invokes the rules internal to our normatively
governed practice of saying what is the case. A fact—something that is the case—
is essentially something that can be said to be the case by a true proposition of
our language
Diamond herself seems willing to acknowledge this when, in the final
paragraph of her paper, she concedes that Juliet Floyd may be right in holding
that Wittgenstein’s aim is to ‘lead us to acknowledge something as what we had
wanted to say, as what we had in some sense wanted all along, or as what we
really had in mind, even though we had never thought of it that way at all’
(Diamond 2002: 273). In this case, we might, she agrees, be willing to say: ‘‘‘Yes,
Wittgenstein, the Tractatus gives me what I was really after with my talk of
correspondence’’, although what [we] would thereby have accepted would
certainly not have been the kind of thing [we] had earlier described as what we
wanted, when [we] had laid down the conditions for an adequate account of
truth’ (Diamond 2002: 273–4). However, this does not incline her to give the
notion of an internal relation a clean bill of health. She argues that ‘[c]onfidence
that we can distinguish logical [i.e. internal] relations from relations is part of
what stops us from throwing away the ladder’ (Diamond 2002: 269–70). She
suggests that ‘[w]hen we talk about logical relations, we tell ourselves that we
mean a special sort of relation-that-is-not-really-a-relation, a relation not
expressible by ordinary propositions’, and the implication is that what this
shows is that we haven’t got to the top of the ladder and completely thrown away
the inherently incoherent idea of a relation that holds between language and the
world.
However, there is nothing in the idea of an anti-metaphysical approach to
interpreting the Tractatus that imposes this view of the fate of the notion of an
internal relation on us. One could see it as a term that Wittgenstein employs in
transitional remarks designed to bring the reader to a clarified view of the logic of
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our language. In this case, what, in any particular case, talk of an internal relation
amounts to is something that is shown by the features of the symbolism, or of our
ordinary use of expressions, which Wittgenstein’s remarks draw our attention to
and serve to clarify. The fact that an internal relation is not intended to be
understood as a substantial or genuine relation between a proposition and the
situation it depicts, and which exists if it is true, or between a sign and what it
signifies—the fact that it does not, in the end, amount to anything genuinely
relational—is precisely what permits it to play this purely transitional role.
Insofar as the notion is always an implicit allusion to the structure of the
symbolism, or to our actual employment of expressions, a perspicuous view of
that structure, or that employment, is all that the notion is, ultimately, intended to
leave us with. The notion is implicitly a rejection of any explanatory intent, and
implicitly a recognition that perspicuous representation of what our employment
of the symbolism itself makes clear, rather than explanation, is what an
expression of philosophical puzzlement, concerning, say, the nature of truth or
the nature of representation, calls for. This, I want to argue, does not involve, as
Diamond claims that failure to recognize the incoherence of talk of internal
relations inevitably must, ‘thinking of propositions as items going into a relation
as its terms, that is, not as genuinely directional, not as genuinely capable of
propositional sense’ (Diamond 2002: 270).
5.
We have already seen what sort of account of the relation of depicting that holds
between language and the world the metaphysical interpretation finds in the
Tractatus, and the sort of understanding of the concept of an internal relation that
is implicit in it. I’ve now suggested that a fully resolute reading is one that rejects
both the idea of a substantial relation of depicting, and the notion of an internal
relation between language and the world, as incoherent. However, I have
so far said very little about how an anti-metaphysical, but non-resolute, reading
might interpret the phrase ‘the . . . internal relation of depicting that holds
between language and the world’ (TLP 4.014). What understanding does a nonrelational interpretation of the concept of an internal relation, one that sees it as
concerned with the nature of the symbolism itself, provide of Wittgenstein’s
remark?
To say that the relation between a proposition and the situation it represents is
internal is, on this interpretation, to say that it is not genuinely relational and thus
does not depend upon, or upon a proposition’s having any relation to, anything
outside the symbolism. One way to understand this is to see it as saying that the
relation between a proposition and the situation it represents does not depend
upon anything other than the rules of projection whereby we derive from the
proposition—i.e. from these words as they are used in this combination on a
particular occasion—an understanding of how things stand in reality if the
proposition is true. A proposition represents a possible state of affairs insofar as it
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expresses a sense that is equivalent to a rule that lays down the conditions under
which we call it true, and by the same stroke, the conditions under which we call
it false.
Wittgenstein sees it as one of the fundamental insights of the Tractatus that a
proposition expresses a sense only insofar as it is a logical picture of a state of
affairs. A proposition is a logical picture of a state of affairs insofar as it combines
elements that are representatives of objects in a way that portrays how those
objects are combined if the proposition is true. Thus, the rules of projection, in
virtue of which a proposition has the internal relation of depicting to a possible
state of affairs, includes the correlation of the propositional constituents with
objects that are the constituents of the state of affairs it represents. One of the
fundamental ideas of the anti-metaphysical reading is that Wittgenstein does not
intend to prioritize the relation of correlation between propositional constituents
and objects, or in any way use it to explain how a proposition represents what it
does. Rather, the correlation between propositional constituents and objects,
which constitutes the ‘pictorial relationship’ (TLP 2.1514), is understood to
be dependent upon the occurrence of the constituents in propositions that can
be compared with reality for truth or falsity. A propositional constituent is
essentially anything that a class of propositions have in common, and to
understand a propositional constituent is to understand the contribution it makes
to determining the sense of propositions in which it occurs. In this way, the
meaning of the propositional constituents is itself something that is determined
within the system of representation insofar as it stands in a projective relation to
the world, that is, insofar as it is used to express thoughts that are assessed for
truth or falsity.
On this reading, talk of ‘the . . . internal relation of depicting’ is to be
understood as part of an overall attempt to get us to see that what we’re
concerned with is not a substantial relation between language and the world,
which could be characterized only from a position external to language, but the
rules of projection in virtue of which we understand a propositional sign in its
projective relation to the world. The notion of an internal relation does not
explain how language connects with the world; all idea of a genuine relation has
completely disappeared; the notion of an internal relation simply alludes to our
employment of propositions within a practice of saying how things are in reality.
The ‘fit’ between language and the world lies in the rules for the use of the
expressions of our language, in virtue of which we can use them, on particular
occasions, to say how things are in reality.
Thus, the internal relation of depicting amounts to this: ‘p’ says p. This is
something that is grasped and understood only within the perspective of our
ordinary use of language, that is, only from within the perspective of a mastery of
the rules whereby language is projected onto the world, and in virtue of which a
speaker is able to say what is the case, or understand a proposition. The central
project of the Tractatus is to clarify what is essential to a propositional sign’s
expressing a sense in the way that it does, but this is something that can
essentially be discerned in the way that propositions symbolize within the system
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of representation to which they essentially belong. No doubt Wittgenstein is led
by a number of presuppositions, including the tautological nature of all logical
inference and the determinacy of sense, into making dogmatic claims about the
essence of a proposition. However, none of this, the claim is, involves him
committing himself to the idea that the logical form of our language—i.e.
everything that is essential to our symbols’ symbolizing in the way that they do—
is answerable to something that exists independently of language. Language is
essentially applied—that is to say, used to express judgements that are true or
false—but there is nothing outside the rules by which language is projected onto
the world, and which determine the method for comparing language with reality,
that conditions whether the propositions we take ourselves to understand make
sense, or which explains why they have the sense they do. Thus, the idea that the
possibilities for signs to combine in propositions ‘fits’ the possibilities for objects
to combine in states of affairs is revealed as amounting to no more than this: our
conception of what is possible, of what can be the case, is mirrored in our
understanding of the propositions of our language.
6.
Are there reasons for preferring one of these interpretations of the concept
of an internal relation and its role in Wittgenstein’s early thought over another?
I will end by making a few gestures in favour an anti-metaphysical approach.
First of all, the metaphysical interpretation of the relation of depicting is
internally incoherent. For example, the notion of ‘answerability’ is being
employed in a context in which the idea of a method of comparison makes
no sense. It makes sense to talk of a proposition’s being answerable to the
world just insofar as our understanding of a proposition is essentially constituted
by grasp of a rule that determines whether we can correctly assert it
or its negation. Clearly, no such rule is available in the case of the logical form
in virtue of which we recognize a proposition as the proposition that it is. What
sense is to be made, then, of the idea that the logical form of a proposition is
‘answerable’ to the world? The concepts of answerability and the concept of fit,
as they are employed within the metaphysical account, appear to be completely
empty.
Furthermore, the idea that the logical form of our language is answerable to
something outside language suggests that it is not the logical syntax of our
language that determines what constitutes a proposition with sense. The
conditions of sense lie outside language: it is only if the logical form of our
language mirrors the independently constituted logical form of the world that
what we take to be propositions are expressions with sense. This makes it look as
if an experience is needed, prior to our determining whether a particular
proposition is true or false, that fixes whether the propositions of our language
make sense. And this, of course, is something that Wittgenstein rejects outright as
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early as September 1914. Although Hacker is clearly right that attacks on the
coherence of the views he attributes to Wittgenstein do not in themselves show
that Wittgenstein did not hold them, it is also surely a prima facie reason against
an interpretation that it finds an incoherent view in a text, especially if a coherent
interpretation is available.
James Conant describes the dialectic that the resolute reading finds in the
Tractatus as follows:
[F]irst I grasp that there is something that must be; then I see that it
cannot be said; then I grasp that if it cannot be said it cannot be thought
(that the limits of language are the limits of thought); and then, finally,
when I have reached the top of the ladder, I grasp that there has been no
‘it’ in my grasp all along (that that which I cannot think I cannot ‘grasp’
either). (Conant 2002: 421–2)
According to Conant, the philosophical point of the work is that by the end of it
the reader should have understood that Wittgenstein’s remarks fall apart when
we try to give meaning to the signs that occur in them. The value of the lesson lies
in the reader’s coming to see, by means of this recognition, that there is nothing
that constitutes even so much as an attempt to get outside language and explain
how it connects with the world; the very idea of such a perspective on language
is an illusion. The outcome of the lesson is that we are no longer tempted to
engage in this kind of nonsense: ‘we say nothing except what can be said’ (TLP
6.53).
One of the difficulties that critics have raised in response to this proposed way
of reading the Tractatus is to ask how a series of remarks that give a mere illusion
of sense can afford a reader the necessary insights to recognize them as
nonsensical. How can nonsensical remarks do work in removing a philosophical
illusion if they are themselves nothing more than an expression of that illusion?
The problem is manifest in the way that would-be resolute readers frequently
appear to fall away from the precepts of resoluteness and to articulate important
insights concerning how language functions that they find in Wittgenstein’s early
work. For example:
The expressive capacity of a proposition . . . essentially involves
directionality, and that directionality itself belongs to the proposition
through a kind of use, a rule-governed kind of comparison with reality,
which is reversible. (Diamond 2002: 269)
The whole of logic is internal to the logical character of every referring
expression. (Diamond 1995: 201)
The truth-functional calculus, within which sentences have their identity
as signs, is what goes with any referring expression. (Diamond 1995: 201)
[O]ur understanding of possibility is not ontologically based in some
realm of the possible, but arises simply from our understanding of and
operating with the sensical sentences of our language. (Goldfarb 1997: 66)
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There is no conception of a possible fact save as a situation in logical
space representable by a sentence, [and] there is no conception of a
constituent of a possible atomic fact, of an object, save as what is meant
by the names that can occur in fully analyzed sentences. (Ricketts 1996:
92–3)
It is hard not to hear these as insights concerning the nature of our symbolism
and its representational capacities, which Wittgenstein believes attention to the
symbolism itself makes clear, and which he believes will make the philosophical
problems concerning the nature of a proposition, or the nature and status of logic,
which he discerned in Frege’s and Russell’s philosophical logic, completely
disappear. The contention is that the notion of an internal relation, insofar as it is
intended to invoke aspects of our employment of signs that are internal to our
practice of using propositions to say how things are, plays a central role in this
inescapable, core task of clarification and elimination of philosophical problems,
and is not properly seen as expressive of philosophical illusion.
An anti-metaphysical reading of the Tractatus separates out the illegitimate
idea of explaining how language connects with the world from the legitimate
idea of allowing language to reveal how it functions. The idea of clarification, as
it were from inside language, does not involve a necessarily doomed attempt to
take up a perspective on language from a point outside it. The distinction
between what can be said in language and what shows itself does not, on this
interpretation, concern thoughts that are expressible and thoughts that lie beyond
our capacity to express them in language. Rather, it emerges, in the context of a
logical investigation of how language functions, as a distinction between what a
symbol signifies and the logico-syntactic properties in virtue of which it signifies
what it does. What gets clarified is the logical order of a language in which
thoughts are expressed, something that is shown in how signs are used with a
sense, and which we grasp in virtue of being masters of the language.
Insofar as the clarity we achieve, through the kind of investigation
Wittgenstein is held to be engaged in, concerns what is essential to a sign’s
expressing its sense, then it might be argued that the proper expression of what
we thus see clearly is our simply using signs correctly, that is, in our saying
nothing except what can be said. This allows us to acknowledge that, once
Wittgenstein’s remarks have achieved what they are intended to achieve, they
can be completely left behind. His remarks are, in this sense, entirely transitional;
they do not express propositions with sense, and nor do they convey truths that
cannot be expressed in propositions. They provide the ‘liberating word’ which
serves to bring about a clarified vision of the logical order which—Wittgenstein
believes—is there in language insofar as it represents states of affairs. This
clarified vision does not amount to a theory of depicting, but it provides a form of
philosophical insight in which questions about how a proposition expresses its
sense, how we can infer one proposition from another, why all the propositions of
logic are given as soon as we have a language in which states of affairs are
represented, and so on, completely disappear.
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Marie McGinn
One further advantage of the anti-metaphysical reading is that it construes
Wittgenstein’s early talk of internal relations, a concept he employs throughout
his philosophical career, from ‘Notes Dictated to Moore’ to Remarks on Colour, in a
way that is at least harmonious with his employment of the concept in the later
work. His early commitment to the idea of a logically perspicuous symbolism, to
the idea that all logical inference is tautological, to the idea that the internal
relations between propositions can be read off the symbols themselves, to the
idea that if a proposition, q, is logically entailed by a proposition, p, then it
must be shown, by means of an analysis of p, that q is part of the sense of p, and
so on, means that the context in which talk of internal relations has its place
changes.
However, the anti-metaphysical understanding of such talk permits us to see
this change as merely an evolution in Wittgenstein’s approach to allowing
language to make clear how it functions. The essential idea remains the same:
talk of internal relations is always a rejection of substantial philosophical theory,
and an implicit expression of the conviction that the sort of understanding that
philosophical questions call for—the kind of understanding we need to resolve
philosophical paradoxes or problems—is one that concerns the role of
expressions in our language. Thus, when he says, at TLP 4.15 ‘The existence of
an internal relation expresses itself in language by means of an internal relation
between the propositions representing them’ (my italics), I want to hear this as
saying that it is in language that internal relations or connections are made, and
thus as an echo of PI 445, ‘It is in language that an expectation and its fulfilment
make contact’.
This contrasts sharply with the metaphysical interpretation of such talk, which
is not only forced to claim that Wittgenstein uses a single expression to express
fundamentally contrasting ideas, but that these ideas are, in both the early and
the later philosophy, philosophically substantial. Thus, in the early philosophy,
the idea is that the logic of our language is grounded in the indescribable nature
of things; in the later philosophy, it is the idea that logic or grammar is arbitrary:
grammar determines essence. Both of these ideas attempt to take a sideways-on
view of the relation between language and the world, and as such neither equates
with the anti-metaphysical understanding of Wittgenstein’s employment of the
expression.
The point of the anti-metaphysical reading is not to be expressed in terms of
either a positive or a negative thesis about the relation between language and the
world; its point is better understood as claiming that Wittgenstein’s central
commitment is to a methodological principle concerning where to look if we
want to understand the workings of our language. There is, on the other hand, no
suggestion, as there is on the resolute reading, that there are questions we cannot
ask, but rather a realization that the questions we raise call for a kind of
investigation quite different from the one we had supposed: they don’t call for an
account of anything, but for a seeing, or recognizing, of connections that are
internal to our practice of using language. Thus, the focus on the notion of
internal relations, and thereby on our normative practice of employing
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expressions that this notion is to be understood as alluding to, is not to embrace
one of the options provided by realist/anti-realist readings of Wittgenstein’s
work, but to recognize its essentially therapeutic purpose: description (i.e.
clarification) of the employment of expressions takes the place of explanation.
Marie McGinn
Department of Philosophy
University of East Anglia
UK
m.mcginn@uea.ac.uk
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