Review: Philosophical Investigations, Third Edition

Title: Philosophical Investigations, Third Edition
Author: Ludwig Wittgenstein
Translator: G. E. M Anscombe
Publisher: Upper Saddle River: Printice Hall, 1958
ISBN: 0-02-428810-1

Ludwig Wittgenstein thought a lot about thinking and meaning. He wrote down a lot of these thoughts in Philosophical Investigations. He thinks about what it is to think, what it means to mean, and what it means to say we say what we mean. He attacks these subjects in little chunks, talking about scenario's we're all familiar with, leaving lots of loose ends that keep getting tied together in various places, making some sort of a network of meaning in itself. One of those scenarios is that of teaching a language to someone who has no knowledge of the language, or perhaps even no previous knowledge of language itself. Some of the points were particularly meaningful to me, as I read a large part of Investigations while in Budapest, Hungary, trying to communicate in a language new to me that is radically different from all other European languages with which I had come in contact.

Two particularly large knots in Wittgenstein's net became prominent to me, and each have their own problems. The first is Wittgenstein's exploration of "meaning" by trying to find out what it means to "understand" a sequence of numbers. That is, if someone knows that after "2, 4" comes the number "6," what is it that they "know?" Do they know some formula? Do they say the sequence to themselves? What if the number "8" comes instead, and the person says, "Oh, the sequence is different, but now I know it," do they really know it now, and what does it mean that they didn't know it before when they said they knew it but gave an incorrect number?

Wittgenstein blends two important concepts that should be unwound. The first is very interesting: what does it mean to represent knowledge? If one "understands" a sequence, where is that knowledge put, how is it stored, and what exactly is being stored wherever? Is it a formula, some feeling of correctness, or some rough outline of a process?

The other concept is no less interesting, but it is unfortunately sufficiently tangled in the discussion that is isn't analyzed separately: how can one ever know for sure that someone actually "knows" something? If someone correctly gives "6" as the next number in the sequence "2, 4", does that person actually know the seqence, or was that a lucky guess? Perhaps the person actually gave the number of a difference sequence that just happened to be the same number in this position in this sequence. (This concept of "proof" is explored by others, notably the "Chinese Room" idea of Searle.)

Granted, these two concepts, meaning and manifestation, are very related. The "proof" of whether meaning exists depends on what it means to "mean" something in the first place. These are nevertheless distinct ideas. Wittgenstein creates similar muddiness when discussing pain. He points out that it is impossible to know what another person is thinking. Experiences are personal. If I see "red" and you see "red," and we're both referring to the same color, how do we know that we both see the same thing? That is, does my vision of red look like your vision of red? Wittgenstein claims that the actual color we see is irrelevant, as long as we refer to the same thing (100). Similarly, Wittgenstein cannot quite understand what pain is outside the outer manifestations, and says that one could not teach a child the meaning of the word "tooth-ache" if there were not outside manifestationf of pain (92). In all this, Wittgenstein isn't clear whether he recognizes that there is an actual thing as pain separate from its manifestations—here also, he doesn't clearly distinguish the concept of determining what pain is and determining the proof of pain from an outer manifestation, although at points he hints that he may believe that there may be meanings separate from expression (102, 218).

The second large group of ideas concerns what has become famous as Wittgenstein's work on "reference". When I point to a table and say, "this," does "this" refer to "table?" Does "this" refer to "brown," the table's color, or to "round," the table's shape? Wittgenstein says that, no matter how much we were to try to clarify "this," there's ultimately no way to completely dereference "this" and know exactly what "this" refers to.

That may be true in the abstract, but in a social context such as language, there are two things that allow dereferencing, and Wittgenstein touches on these things but doesn't quite connect them. The first is the subject—the thing doing the referencing. Each subject (in this case, a human) has a brain that has certain limitations and prejudices. It is not an omnicient knowledge processor. In deciding what "this" is, a human brain through evolution has come to think that certain answers to what "this" references are more likely than others. If I say, "what is this," pointing to a telephone, the human brain thinks first of the object itself, not its color. Other attributes are secondary, unless other contexts are used. Put another way, when a human brain tries to dereference "this," different objects have different weights, just as any other knowledge-processing machine might have. Once certain things are dereferenced, those dereferences can help dereference other things. Only if an information processor is designed to have no prejudices will dereferencing become impossible.

The other concept to save dereferencing is that of a social setting. Out of five people, any of them might incorrectly dereference "this". But if most people's brains are constructed the same way, with the same prejudices, then the majority of people will, through a web of social interaction, allow as a majority correctly dereference "this". The majority's correct dereferences will, as objects are dereferenced on top of other objects, help to override the incorrect dereferences of the minority. At a certain meta-level in this network, true dereferencing becomes complete. Now, whether an actual object exists outside of this social situation (that is, whether there actually is a color red) is irrelevant here—virtually everyone (withing certain parameters of brain design) in the society will eventually come to the same knowledge of when "this" means "the color red"—whether or not red appears the same to each of them. They won't confuse "the color red" with "the round shape," for instance.

The related social concept of "language games", although touched upon in Philosophical Investigations, speaks to meaning as well, and points out that there is more to meaning that simply trying to match a particular symbol (word) with semantics. While in Budpest, after my classmates had left for Prague, I was using a computer lab using my laptop when the lab supervisor came to tell me that I was not allowed to connect my laptop to the network—something I half-expected, as my classmates had left a few days earlier and no one expected any of us to stay longer in Budapest. The lab supervisor asked me in Hungarian, "Are you one of the students from America," to which I answered, "Yes." "Didn't you go to Prague?" "No, I'm staying for another week." In reality, half of the conversation was in Hungarian, and the only words I caught were, "America?" and "Prague?" I still understood the sense of the conversation because of how I expected the conversation to go—the language game of verifying a student's use of a computer lab in a foreign country. The point of this story is that Wittgenstein and other philosophers of language debate subtle differences between the semantics of, for example, "I am from America" and "I live in America" and "I have visited America," but sometimes the meta-concept of social language games makes exact language construction irrelevant.

There is no such thing as "dereferencing this" outside an information processor, and if that information processor has certain prejudices, through a web of social interaction dereferencing thus becomes absolute. Wittgenstein touched on each of these points as well, but never quite tied them together. "We learn this when we come into a strange country with entirely strange traditions; and, what is more, even given a mastery of the country's language. We do not understand the people. (And not because of not knowing what they are saying to themselves.)" Once of his sentences says it all: "If a lion could talk, we could not understand him." (223). Could a human dereference a lion's "this?" Maybe not.

Notes

Like philosophy of law (e.g. Hart's Philosophy of Law), the philosophy of language seems to continuously to analogize to players relying on rules of games. (27).
Wittgenstein points out that, regardless of how far one recites a series of numbers, according to a formula for instance, the person might at any time in the future deviate from the series. The past correct recitation is no evidence that the person "understands" the series---whatever that means. But still we use the application of understanding to show that there is understanding. "The application is a criterion of understanding." (58).
Wittgenstein considers a reading machine that continuously makes sounds correctly based upon signs---at which point is the maching "reading?" (63). Is this really any different than Searle's Chinese Room concept?
"It is not possible that there should have been only one occasion on which someone obeyed a rule." (81). Perhaps, because "obeying a rule" says something more than just certain actions were done coincidentally with the existence of a rule. There must be a connection of why the action was taken---in response to the rule. Following one order does not make something a custom. "It is not possible that there should have been only one occasion to which a report was made, an order given or understood, and so on." (81). Perhaps Wittgenstein means this in the context of a rule---there is no rule with only one order, for instance. Surely he can't mean that there is no order with only one instance of it being obeyed---what about the order, "tell me what time it is now?" Granted, such an order itself depends on certain rules, and if the symbol "time" was never associated with a clock, any response based upon a clock would not indicate a rule---it might however indicate that the responder mistakenly believed there to be a rule that associated such a command with making calculations based upon the hands of a clock. The question, as Wittgenstein points out, is, "when does such correlations constitute a rule?"
In teaching a language, Wittgenstein shows, one can't show the meaning of a word simply by using other words, because they must themselves be explained. At some point, the words must be explained by a teacher showing colors, shapes, lengths, and giving "expressions of agreement, rejection, expectation, [and] encouragement" (83). But couldn't a machine, simply by looking a patterns of words; and creating sentences and looking for responses, derive some semantics of a language? Is the problem here simply a deficiency of a particular language? Might a really expressive language allow semantics to be derived in such a way? Surprisingly, probably not. A machine might be able to derive relationships between the words, but not derive any actual semantics as we think of them, because meaning is the relationship between the words and real life. Therefore, at some point some demonstration of real life has to come into the explanation of language. A language divorced from any environment---from any demonstration of physical world---has no semantics in relation to that world. In other words, a language has no relationship with a physical world without relationships being assigned. (Should one say that there can be no such relationship, or that no relationship can be demonstrated, or that no relationship can be assigned? This goes back to Wittgenstein's proposition that there can be no rule with only one occasion of it being obeyed, so surely he would say that there cannot be a rule if there is no occasion of it being obeyed.)
"257. What would it be like if human beings shewed no outward signs of pain (did not groan, grimace, etc.)? Then it would be impossible to teach a child the use of the word 'tooth-ache'." (92).
"272. The essential thing about private experience is really not that each person possesses his own exemplar, but that nobody knows whether other people also have this or something else. The assumption would thus be possible—though unverifiable—that one section of mankind had one sensation of red and another section another." (95).
Wittgenstein gives an example of everyone having a box with a "beetle" inside, but no one could look inside another's box to know what another's "beetle" is—it could be anything, or nothing. "…if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant." (100).
Similarly, Wittgenstein says there is indeed a distinction between someone behaving as if they are in pain while having pain, and behaving that way without pain. "[The pain] is not a something, but not a nothing either! The conclusion was only that a nothing would serve just as well as a something about which nothing could be said. We have only rejected the grammar which tries to force itself on us here." (102).
"379. First I am aware of it as this; and then I remember what it is called.—Consider: in what cases is it right to say this?" (117).
"464. My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense." (133).
"483. A good ground [for believing something] is one that looks like this." (136). Wittgenstein seems to be continuously bringing us back to the fact that one cannot unambiguosly reference something—a "this"—no matter how much one uses words and actions.
"498. When I say that the orders "Bring me sugar" and "Bring me milk" make sense, but not the combination "Mile me sugar", that does not mean that the utterance of this combination of words has no effect. And if its effect is that the other person stares at me and gapes, I don't on that account call it the order to stare and gape, even if that was precisely the effect that I wanted to produce." (138).
"527. Understanding a sentence is much more akin to understanding a theme in music than one may think." (143).
"543. Can I not say: a cry, a laugh, are full of meaning? And that means, roughly: much can be gathered from them." (146).
An interesting question: do two slightly different uses of a word mean that there are in fact two different words? "561. Now isn't it queer that I say that the word 'is' is used with two different meanings [to specify attributes and also to specify equality]? ... One would like to say that these two kinds of use do not yield a single meaning; the union under one head is an accident, a mere inessential." (150).
Wittgenstein wants to know how we know what time it is—not how we tell time, but how we can often tell how much time has passed quite accurately. How do we just feel what time it is? (157).
"We surely do not always say someone is complaining, because he says he is in pain. So the words 'I am in pain' may be a cry of complaint, and may be something else." (189).
Wittgenstein explores the concept of "belief", and whether we "at some time [did] become aware of a phenomenon (of belief)." (190). He points out that saying "It's going to rain" really means about the same as "I believe it's going to rain," and makes much of the fact that "the meaning of 'I believed then that it was going to rain', is not like that of 'It did rain then'." This is interesting in light of Austin's work in that an apparent assertion of "It's going to rain" is really a performative that, among other things, "I believe it is going to rain." This is true with all tenses, but more apparent with the future because it is common knowledge that our knowledge of future events can only be our belief. But Wittgenstein's contrast between future and past is not as special as he makes it out to be, because he makes a false analogy between the past and future sentence couplets. The correct analogy in the past would be "It did rain then" and "I believe now that it did rain then", and these two sentences do carry roughly the same meaning. Analogously, "It is raining" and "I believe now that it is raining" have roughly the same meaning.
Wittgenstein says that "meaning," whatever that is, is not just thinking of something: "The language-game 'I mean (or meant) this' (subsequent explanation of a word) is quite different from this one: 'I thought of....as I said it.' The latter is akin to 'It reminded me of....'" (217).
Meaning is not a process, says Wittgenstein. "There are important accompanying phenomena of talking which are often missing when one talks without thinking, and this is characteristic of talking without thinking. But they are not the thinking." (218).
"We also say of some people that they are transparent to us. It is, however, important as regards this observation that one human being can be a complete enigma to another. We learn this when we come into a strange country with entirely strange traditions; and, what is more, even given a mastery of the country's language. We do not understand the people. (And not because of not knowing what they are saying to themselves.) ... If a lion could talk, we could not understand him." (223).