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Wittgenstein's Logic of Language

Motto: Every explanation I can give myself, I can give you too. And when I do this, I do not tell you less than I know myself.  (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations §§ 210, 208)

by Robert Wesley Angelo

"To seek to know and understand by the natural light of reason alone" (Thales of Miletus). "Socrates held that if a man knew anything, he could explain what he knew to others" (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1). "And that which we know we must surely be able to tell?" (Plato, Laches 190c, tr. Jowett) "That I was a little better off, because I did not think I knew what I do not know" (Apology 21d).

The Elements of Wittgenstein's Logic of Language

Abstract: a description of the definitions, comparisons and methods Wittgenstein's later logic uses to make the distinction between language with meaning and language without meaning verifiable by (1) selecting a rule-based meaning of the word 'meaning', (2) revising the concept 'grammar' to include the rules of sense and nonsense, (3) identifying logic with those rules rather than with syntax, and (4) using the standard of what is in plain sight (rather than a preconceived theory of language meaning).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Wittgenstein thought that "the logic of our language is misunderstood" and that philosophy's task is to correct that misunderstanding.

The Elements or Synopsis itself is in thirteen chapters with an Appendix, divided across three Web pages.

Page One:

  1. Wittgenstein's use of the words 'logic' and 'grammar' (Concept revision, and why logic = (grammar DEF.= explanation of meaning or use in the language))
  2. The False grammatical account ("All nouns are names and the meaning of a name is the thing the name stands for, regardless of whether that thing is tangible or abstract")
  3. The Distinction between a sign and the meaning of a sign (Why logic, following Russell, uses quotation marks)
  4. Wittgenstein's selected meaning of 'meaning' (The meaning of a word is not the nature of the thing it names, but a rule (convention) for using the word. Comparison of words to tools we use to do some work in our life)
  5. Kinds of definition (Verbal, ostensive, and play-acted. Verbal versus real definitions)
  6. Grammatical reminders ("Signposts that say how to go on")

Page Two:

  1. The Rules of the game (Defining common names when there is no defining common nature. The word 'game' and "family resemblances" or similarities between games)
  2. Kinds of rules of grammar (Reported, Invented, Assigned)
  3. Concepts with clearly-defined borders versus concepts with indefinite borders. ("Generally, we do not use language according to strict rules")
  4. Meaning as a usage, custom or institution (Recurrent behavior (patterns) defines emotion-words, e.g. 'sorrow' and 'joy'). Forms of life.

Page Three:

  1. Wittgenstein's later meaning of 'nonsense' (Are contradictions either false or nonsense (DEF.= undefined combinations of words), but never true? Contradictions in meaning versus contradictions in form)
  2. 'Language games' (Seeing the use of language as a game played by following rules. The three meanings of Wittgenstein's jargon defined by a general definition and examples)
  3. Meaning is not determined by form (syntax), but by use (in the language) regardless of form

[Table of contents for the further writings in philosophy and logic of language on this Website]

First Question: How is sense distinguished from nonsense? Is it just a matter of common sense? of discernment?

Words are only spoken sounds or written marks, and as such are without meaning. What gives words meaning? In other words, How is language with meaning distinguished from language without meaning? I've used the expression "logic of language" for this distinction. It is philosophy's first question.

"What is the meaning of a word?" (BB p. 1) That may seem a strange place to begin a work of philosophy, but George Berkeley would recommend this, as his criticism of Locke's philosophy shows: if Locke had begun his work with a critique (examination) of language, he might not have fallen into the error of hypostatization (mistaking all words for names of things).

Introduction

In Wittgenstein's context, logic DEF.= the study of rules. And grammar DEF.= any description of the use of words in the language, including the conventions or rules that distinguish sense from nonsense.

That is Wittgenstein's revision of the concept 'grammar', his redefinition of the word 'grammar' (i.e. jargon).

Wittgenstein's Logic of Language describes the elements of "grammar" Wittgenstein used to show that language meaning is objective if 'meaning' is defined as a public event.

Logic and Philosophy

Wittgenstein's logic of language is thoroughgoingly rational (discourse of reason), but it may be used in different ways, e.g. it may be used only as a tool for making language meaning clear (in philosophical discussion). But Wittgenstein used it to prove -- although this appears to have been his foregone conclusion (since his earlier work with an entirely different logic of language had claimed to prove the same) -- that philosophy or metaphysical speculation is really only conceptual confusion (as earlier he had said that the riddle of life (TLP 6.5) is a language illusion, not the nature of our existence).

Absolute Value and Philosophical Ethics

Further, the limits of Wittgenstein's philosophy are not the same as the original limits of philosophy, because Wittgenstein's philosophy excludes not only metaphysics (because according to Wittgenstein it is nonsense) but also ethics because according to Wittgenstein the subject of ethics (namely "absolute value") is not rational.

But Wittgenstein's view of ethics (Plato's "no small matter, but how to live") is not the only possible one -- e.g. opposed to Wittgenstein's thesis is the ethics of Socrates which, unlike the non-philosophical ethics of "absolute value" and "categorical conscience", is thoroughly rational.

Note that there is a proposition type, namely ethical proposition, that is very different from factual and logical proposition types, but nonetheless rational.

Outline of the Introduction

The Two Parts of Wittgenstein's Work

My work consists of two parts: the one presented here plus all that I have not written. And it is precisely this second part that is the important one. (Wittgenstein, Letter to Ludwig Ficker of circa September-October 1919)

When he nevertheless takes immense pains to [mark the limits of] the unimportant [the first part, the "what can be put into words"], it is not the coastline of that island [the first part] which he is bent on surveying with such meticulous accuracy, but [instead] the boundary of the ocean [the second part, the important part, the "what cannot be put into words"]. (Engelmann, Memoir, tr. Furtmüller, McGuinness, p. 97; cf. Drury's The Danger of Words p. xiv)

That may never have changed: the Philosophical Investigations may also consist of two parts, one written, one silent ("It is impossible for me to say one word in my book about all that music has meant in my life").

For "the second part", the silent part, I turn to Wittgenstein's friend Paul Engelmann, and student, later friend, M. O'C. Drury, who have given an overview (description) of the second part, i.e. the question of life's meaning (which, contrary to TLP 6.5, Wittgenstein later recognized is problematical), ethics ("value") and God.

The second part is found in the statement "What men mean when they say, The world is there, lies close to my heart" (LE/Notes p. 16) and may be alluded to by the remark "It is there -- like our life" (OC § 559).

And it is shown by the way Wittgenstein lived, by the very singular manner of man (as Bertrand Russell called him) he was. Ludwig Wittgenstein (b. Austria 1889, d. Britain 1951)

The Elements I have written is only about the first part of Wittgenstein's work, the logic of language. It says nothing about Wittgenstein's second part, the part he called "the inexpressible" and "the mystical" in TLP 6.522 (tr. Ogden), the important part according to Wittgenstein -- although philosophy's eternal questions, which Wittgenstein said are not questions (ibid. 6.5), would belong to that part, and about those I have written.

Wittgenstein versus Socrates

It is not, in my view, necessary that anyone share Wittgenstein's view of philosophy in order to use his logic of language in the service of the Socratic standard for clarity and knowing in philosophy, nor that anyone must agree that the limits of what can be said either in ethics or about "the sense of the world" (TLP 6.41) are where Wittgenstein said they are. Because I don't, but on the contrary, I share Socrates' view that one must be cured by philosophy, not Wittgenstein's view that one must be cured of it. And after 50 years I would now say this, that you must first use Wittgenstein's logic of language as an antidote to philosophy (that is, to being mystified by language), and then philosophy as an antidote to Wittgenstein's view of philosophy, because ethics and the eternal questions of existence do, after all, exist.

'Logic of language' (Definition)

By a logic of language -- or maybe more clearly, by 'a logic of language-meaning' -- I mean DEF.= a way of distinguishing between sense and nonsense, that is, between language with meaning and language without meaning, when discussing philosophical problems.

Wittgenstein's way makes the distinction objective (public and thereby verifiable) by broadening our concept 'grammar' to include "any description of the use of language", and by narrowing the meaning of 'logic' (generally, 'the art of reasoning') to 'the study of rules'.

A logic of language is a particular way of looking at language meaning, i.e. on a selected definition of 'meaning', which is what Wittgenstein's logic of language is.

Note.--The expression 'logic of language' as defined here may be my jargon, but the expression itself comes from the TLP's Preface: "the logic of our language is misunderstood" (see also 4.003a, PI § 93b (cf. § 345), and OC § 599b). How to put this misunderstanding right was, in my view, always Wittgenstein's master question and aim in philosophy.

The words 'objective' and 'verifiable' are not necessary in this context because a subjective (unverifiable) distinction is the same as no distinction (cf. PI § 258). But those words may be added for emphasis (like saying "for ever and ever", even though that is no longer than forever).

The Order of Questioning

Plato identifies the correct order for Socratic cross-questioning: first clarify the meaning of the thesis, and only after that ask about its truth (Republic 339a). That is, logic of language comes first.

Philosophy, the absence of rules, and meaning

Wittgenstein compared using words to moving chess men on a chessboard -- both acts are done by following rules. If the rules for moving chess men are followed, then we know how to go on with the game, and if the rules for using words are followed then the "moves" in the "language game" make sense (because we know how to go on with the "game"). Thus grammatical rules distinguish sense from nonsense.

Note.--Wittgenstein called three distinct things 'language games': (1) primitive language games: comparisons to moves in a game played by following strict rules (e.g. asking a grocer for apples at a corner store); (2) Parts of Speech (e.g. color words, number words, name of object words, non-name words, etc.); and (3) Proposition Types (factual, grammatical, ethical, religious, and so on).

But then must anyone who is not talking nonsense be playing a game according to strict rules? Because if 'meaning' is rule-defined, then in the absence of rules how is sense to be distinguished from nonsense?

In philosophy vagueness and concepts with indefinite borders are both the subject and the tools that are worked with -- i.e. the words used in philosophy are usually not defined by strict rules for their use. And so philosophical discussions often consist of trying to figure out "what is meant" by those words -- i.e. in trying to invent rules for their use -- or accepting that we have no use for them. This may appear childish -- but it sometimes leads to insights into our understanding and ways of seeing things.

In philosophy language is often nonsense (i.e. undefined or vaguely defined words or combinations of words) -- unless we make it otherwise. That is the only way the simple formula "meaning = conventions for use" is true.

Wittgenstein's view of philosophical problems

Wittgenstein's logic of language is a study of the rules of language, but of which rules? Wittgenstein found that the meaning of language is not determined by the form of language (if it were, the rules of syntax couldn't produce nonsense, but they can and do) but of the ways the words and sentences of our language are used to do some work, regardless of their form (syntax).

Language meaning and the role of concept indefiniteness

In the Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein seems to set a more or less arbitrary standard for language with meaning, because he seems to say that the meaning of a word is "its use in the language game that is its original home" (PI § 116), and that away from that game it is like someone on holiday (ibid. § 38), i.e. idle rather than doing its accustomed work in the language, and therefore nonsense.

But that would only be true if language were an unchanging (static) collection of primitive language games (the "original homes" of words) played according to strict rules. Instead, concept indefiniteness (i.e. the absence of rules, the absence of strict guides to how to go on with the game) makes possible the creation of new ideas both about our concepts and about things.

These ideas are often unclear (ill-defined) because they emerge from the chaos of the absence of rules. How are they made clear? By Socratic cross-questioning of theses (e.g. examples) about what you mean. That is how vague ideas are given definition, or discarded as mere "wind eggs" (Theaetetus 151e).

If when we learned language we learned only language games with strict rules, there would be no philosophy, because our thought would be bound in by rules, like a train unable to leave the tracks.

Note that this is only a description, not an explanation of the emergence of new ideas. (Cf. how does sleep enable us to solve problems which we did not see the solution to before we slept?)

Nevertheless, in Wittgenstein's view, philosophy's problems are no more than idle combinations of words (the mirages created e.g. by misleading syntactic analogies). Logic-philosophy's task is to show this in the particular case. Thus philosophical investigations dissolve rather than solve philosophical problems, because there are no philosophical problems, only "houses of cards" to destroy (ibid. § 118).

The Fundamental Mistake

The fundamental mistake philosophers make is to suppose that philosophy's first question is "Is it true?" rather than "What is its meaning?"

Because any proposition must have at least three possible values: it may be true or false (a statement of fact), or it may be a rule of grammar (i.e. an explanation of the use of language) -- or it may be nonsense (i.e. an undefined combination of words). Now, which is the proposition 'There are physical objects'? Is it obviously true, a rule of grammar, or nonsense?

Note.--Wittgenstein's logic of language is a collection of ideas for thinking in philosophy. It is not philosophy of language, i.e. language is not looked at for its own sake, but only for the sake of language's role in philosophical problems (PI § 109) and as philosophy's only tool. Nor is the Philosophical Investigations a theory about "what the meaning of language really is". Instead, there are many meanings of 'meaning' in our language, but Wittgenstein chose the one he thought most useful for the work he wanted to get done in philosophy. Philosophy of language does not limit itself in that way.

Conceptual versus Factual Investigations

The essential thing about metaphysics: it makes no distinction between definitions of words (grammar) and definitions of things (facts). (Z § 458, PI § 383)

When we philosophize, Wittgenstein thought, the distinction between factual and conceptual investigations is not clear to us, but that philosophical problems are always conceptual problems (i.e. problems about the meaning of language) rather than factual problems (problems about the nature of things) (RPP i § 949), problems that result from being mystified e.g. by the pictures that language suggests (PI § 109) to our imagination, pictures which mislead us about the meaning (the use in the language) of particular words.

Philosophical investigations = conceptual investigations. The essential thing about metaphysics: it obliterates the distinction between factual and conceptual investigations. (Z § 458) A metaphysical question is always in appearance a factual one, although the problem is a conceptual one. (RPP i § 949)

Since our misunderstood concepts create philosophical problems rather than our ignorance of seemingly vague or cloudy phenomena that appear to be independent of our concepts, the only possible task for philosophy, in Wittgenstein's view, is to clarify our concepts (But he held the same view about the task for philosophy in TLP 4.111, 4.112 -- based on an entirely different account of the logic of our language).

That is philosophy according to Wittgenstein. But is Wittgenstein's thesis true? Is every metaphysical investigation of things really a disguised question about grammar (rules for using words) (ibid. § 464) -- are philosophical investigations never about the nature of things rather than about concepts?

"All fact is already conceived fact"

On the other hand, if 'concept' is defined as 'rules for the use of a word', then concepts rather than phenomena are the subject of philosophy, because concepts set the limits of phenomena, not vice versa. If we replace 'theory' with 'concept' in Goethe's statement that "All fact is already theory", that is the idea: that there are no facts independent of concepts: all fact is already conceived-fact. Even the simple statement 'The grass is green' requires the concepts 'green', 'grass', and 'proposition'. The question "Why investigate the use of words rather than the phenomena they name?" reverses the order of the relationship between concepts and phenomena.

In this context the meaning of Kant's statement "percepts without concepts are blind" is that concept-formation cannot be explained by "the unconceived phenomenon" because no such thing exists. (The expression 'unconceived phenomenon' or 'bare phenomenon' is not the name of an independently existing thing: the "thing" that remains after every concept is stripped away isn't a thing; it is an abstraction, and it is a mistake to hypostatize it.)

Note.--It is important to understand that these are statements about language (grammar), not an hypothesis about the true nature of things.

Public facts are the standard

Wittgenstein's grammar describes public facts about the use of language (PI § 125), the conceived facts in plain view, the facts as we learned to conceive them when we learned our language. It is by these facts that grammar distinguishes sense from nonsense and says e.g. what is or isn't a name (ibid. § 373). Concept formation is learning to use words, because that is what we do when we learn a concept.

A charge of materialism against Wittgenstein would be unfounded. (Materialism (Sophist 247c) is the claim that whatever cannot be perceived is not real.) Wittgenstein's logic of language is not based on a world-picture but on its requirement that the distinction between sense and nonsense be verifiable.

"Philosophy defines words, not things"

The mistake of philosophers is to presume that abstractions, or abstract terms, are the names of "abstract objects", and that philosophy aims to define (the natures of) those objects.

But contrary to Wittgenstein, it is not in philosophy but only in logic of language (or logic-philosophy) that we define only words not things. Because, after all, the metaphysician does want to define things. And sometimes this has meaning.

Although sometimes it is nonsense. Metaphysics assumes that (1) words are names of things and that (2) the true meaning of a word is the true nature of the thing it names. Thus Plato asks, "What is justice?" "What is knowledge?" "What is beauty?" as if the answers to those questions were like clouds drifting about above waiting for the philosopher to grasp them.

The answer is to instead ask, "How do we use the word 'beauty', the word 'justice', the word 'knowledge'?" because the meaning of a non-name word is explained by its use in the language, not by grasping the thing the word names, since in this case there is no such "thing". That is Wittgenstein's later logic of language.

To say that in philosophy we define only words not things is either (1) to describe an intention in philosophy, or (2) to put forth a philosophical thesis about what philosophy really is. Wittgenstein seems to have done both.

The essence of metaphysics in Wittgenstein's view. Are there counter-examples?

Wittgenstein claims that metaphysics is nothing but conceptual confusion (PI §§ 111, 309), but are there counter-examples to that thesis? E.g. someone who asks whether the essence of man is soul and body, or soul alone as Plato and Aristotle ask, does not seem to be confused about the concept 'man', as if he were "bewitched by language" (ibid. § 109), but instead he seems puzzled about the phenomenon of man. (Does "essence belong to grammar" (ibid. § 371) here?) And likewise Socrates who asks how man should live his life, about the good for man, doesn't seem confused about the grammar of the word 'man'. (It may after all be no small matter whether man lives his life directed towards this world or towards an afterlife, or both.)

According to Wittgenstein (at least at one time), the words 'soul' and 'spirit' belong to the vocabulary of superstition. But superstition is not the same as nonsense or conceptual confusion about e.g. the word 'soul'. Or is Plato misled by a syntactic model into hypostatizing an abstraction? Is belief that there is the possibility of an afterlife superstition? (Is it necessary to suppose that the word 'soul' is the name of a thing to believe that an afterlife is possible?)

Were it a thing obvious and easy to know thyself the precept might not have passed for an oracle. (Plutarch)

Did it pass for an oracle because "the logic of our language is misunderstood"? Is that why Socrates asks what the specific excellence proper and unique to man is (e.g. "discourse of reason", or "rational moral virtue", "moral nobility")?

Is that why philosophers ask why there is something rather than nothing, or if man is able even in principle to perceive all that exists? The answers to some questions may be or seem unknowable -- but that does not make them questions without meaning.

They are not investigations of language, although they are not factual investigations either, if facts, by definition, must be, not only not self-contradictory, but also verifiable by experience. They are questions about the nature of things, although they do not belong to natural science. They are instead philosophical questions, as they were "for all philosophers before Wittgenstein".

Plato's theory of learning (recollection), regardless of whether it is true or false, is not nonsense language, nor is his myth of the cave (Republic 515c). Metaphysical speculation about "the reality behind reality" is not knowledge, but it is not necessarily nonsense; it may instead be "incomparable pictures": pictures that cannot be compared to what they are suggested to be pictures of (namely, imperceptible reality). (Logic of language is concerned only with language meaning.)

Indeed, Wittgenstein's own statement -- at first an insight but then a philosophical thesis -- about the essence of metaphysics is itself a counter-example. Because Wittgenstein's remark does not belong to grammar -- it does not state rules for using the word 'metaphysics' -- but is instead a remark about the phenomenon (fact) of metaphysical thinking. And yet Wittgenstein's remark does not seem to be nonsense, a mere undefined combination of words.

The possibility of metaphysics

What is the meaning of a word? If the meaning of a word is the thing the word names, then we can speculate about what the true nature of that thing is, and thus metaphysics is possible. If however the meaning of a word is a mere description of the conventions for the word's use in the language, then is metaphysics still possible?

It is possible to be interested in something from more than one point of view (PI § 108), e.g. both in the concept 'man' and in man as an ethical being. Are not both philosophy (one logic, the other ethics)? If metaphysics is a conceptual muddle in some cases, need it be in all cases? Is that not determined by the particular case rather than by a general presumption, pre-judgment (BB p. 18)?

The Fallacy of SOME, therefore ALL

... and [Wittgenstein's later] negative doctrines unfounded. (Bertrand Russell)

Two notes.--First, the quality Wittgenstein identifies, namely mistaking conceptual investigations for factual investigations, is not the essence of metaphysics because, if metaphysics is mistaken, it is not mistaken in just anything, but only in philosophical things (metaphysics, logic, ethics). Second, since "in all instances" does not follow from "in some instances", Wittgenstein has to be saying what the defining common nature -- the sine qua non -- of metaphysics is, if his claim is to have an "all" level of generality, because otherwise Wittgenstein would commit the fallacy of if some, then all.

One should ... always ask when exaggerated dogmatic claims are made: What is actually true in this? Or again: In what case is that actually true? (CV p. 14, remark from 1931)

The SOME therefore ALL fallacy is the danger to philosophy of "thinking with only one kind of example" (PI § 593), which is what I think Wittgenstein does, selecting only those examples which confirm his thesis. Adduction, like induction, may clarify but it does not prove that a general proposition is true.

But there are remedies for Wittgenstein's over-reaching claim about metaphysical-philosophy (namely counter-examples and counter points of view) -- just as there are the remedies Wittgenstein prescribed for some kinds of conceptual blunders in metaphysics, e.g. to be wary of analogies suggested by syntax between different "parts of speech" ('time' and 'river' are different parts of speech in Wittgenstein's philosophical grammar, despite both being nouns), and to watch for false language-conjured pictures of how particular words are used (ibid. §§ 90, 115). In sum, not to be misled by an unexamined and superstitious definition of the word 'noun', and by the ubiquitousness of the word 'thing'.

Is there a serviceable alternative logic of language to Wittgenstein's?

A philosopher says: Look at things this way! (CV p. 61, remark from 1947)

Wittgenstein's logic of language is a logic of language, i.e. one selected meaning of 'meaning' and one selected meaning of 'nonsense', not the logic of language. "Look at language-meaning this way" says that there are other ways, and that each way is "like a pair of glasses on our nose through which we see whatever we look at" (PI § 103). (Language-meaning is always looked at some way or another, whether explicitly or not.)

How much I'm doing is changing the way of thinking and how much I'm doing is persuading people to change their way of thinking. (LC iii, 40, p. 28)

A question is whether there are (other) meanings of 'meaning' that are both objective and serviceable to the greatest extent.

Logic is verifiable (objective)

Note well that the question is: Is there another verifiable way to distinguish sense from nonsense? For example, W.E. Johnson's definition of 'meaning', namely "If I say that a sentence has meaning for me, no one has the right to say it is meaningless", is not a logic of language, because by Johnson's definition language can only seem (or seem not) to have meaning to some individual (cf. PI §§ 293, 258). It is not a definition of 'meaning' that is an objective standard, unlike Wittgenstein's public rules-based definition of 'meaning' is. The Platonic definition of 'meaning' (as 'the essence of the thing named') uses Socrates' objective standard -- "if we cannot tell others, then we do not know" -- but it makes most words undefinable; its barrenness was criticized by Wittgenstein.

The public rules of natural language belong to the map one follows in navigating the society one lives in. They are not contractual conventions (as are the definitions in legislative and legal documents), but the rules of the language games we learn or are taught to play beginning in childhood. Wittgenstein called following these rules "agreement in way of life" (ibid. § 241), which is agreement in the language we use. They are "what anyone knows and must admit" (Z § 211).

Frames of reference or laws of nature

Note.--It is a mistake to speak of Wittgenstein's logic of language in the context of the Tractatus, because the TLP claims to be the logic of language, not a logic of language -- not a selected meaning of 'meaning', but the meaning of 'meaning'. It is thoroughly a metaphysical theory.

If the TLP were indeed the logic of language, then logic would indeed be "the study of everything subject to law" [6.3] in the sense of laws of nature. In Wittgenstein's later work, by 'logic' is meant the study of rules, not of natural laws.

Wittgenstein's comparisons, similes

Wittgenstein purposely wrote in the down to earth language of everyday life and with lots of examples. His logic is not difficult to understand (or at least the difficulty is not in the obscurity of its language) -- once the nature of its principles is understood.

When Wittgenstein said: Compare using language to playing a game by following rules, he was not saying that language really is a game. His principle of investigation was to compare, not to speculative about the absolute nature of anything -- i.e. what Wittgenstein invented was a comparison, not an identification, between language-meaning and the rules of a game.

What I invent are new similes. (CV p. 19, remark from 1931)

A 'simile' is a comparison using 'like' or 'as'. It says that A is like B in a particular way or ways, not in all ways.

Games with Strict Rules as a Model

In philosophy we often compare the use of words with games ... that have fixed rules, but cannot say that someone who is using language must be playing such a game. (PI § 81)

In general we don't use language according to strict rules -- it hasn't been taught to us by means of strict rules either. (BB p. 25)

But the question is: must someone be playing a game according to strict rules and as someone playing a "primitive language game" does -- if he is not talking nonsense? Wittgenstein compared an indefinite concept to a wobbly table (PI § 79).

Should it be said that I am using a word whose meaning I don't know, and so am talking nonsense? (ibid.)

Why? can't such a table be used? Not only can it be used; it is used. When we acquire language we acquire a tolerance for vagueness, a vagueness that may become intolerable at the age of reason (This is another thing that turns someone towards philosophy (Z § 455)).

Philosophy begins in vagueness and confusion and in vague metaphors that are an insurmountable barrier to understanding. For philosophical clarity, metaphors must always be restated in prose (LE/Notes, p. 14). An intolerance for indefiniteness in philosophical thinking is reverence for truth and reason.

The Model as a Yardstick

Although its rules are what define a game for logic, it may instead be the absence of a rule that defines -- and makes ill-defined -- a particular language game. So a game with strict rules is "an object of comparison -- an object to measure against like a yardstick" (CV p. 26) in order to note dissimilarities as much as similarities to such a game -- not to presume that language conforms or must conform to it (PI §§ 130-1). (In this logic is most unlike Plato's metaphysics of common names.)

Wittgenstein's yardstick -- his logic of language -- is not procrustean. It describes the grammar of our language in plain sight, and what it finds is that most concepts, especially those that interest philosophy, have indefinite borders -- i.e. they are words that are not defined by strict rules; they do not have essential meanings (definitions).

There are many meanings of 'meaning'

Is Wittgenstein's statement "The meaning of a word is its use in the language" (PG i § 23, p. 60) a theory about what language meaning really is? Or is it a report about how we normally use the word 'meaning' (a statement of fact about our language)? Or is Wittgenstein defining the word 'meaning', 'defining' in the sense of limiting that word's meaning? There are many meanings of the word 'meaning' in our language: Wittgenstein chose one, one which can be restated as the slogan: Ask for the use (in the language) rather than the meaning.

On the other hand, Wittgenstein did not only select one meaning of 'meaning', but he also showed that other meanings are not the meaning of language -- if language meaning is objective, verifiable, knowable.

A way of thinking based on a non-objective meaning of 'meaning', as e.g. W.E. Johnson's subjective meaning, would no more be philosophy than one based on "subjective knowledge" (OC § 555).

The standard Wittgenstein set for meaning is somewhat the same as the standard Socrates set for knowing in philosophy: to know is to be able to put into words and defend one's claim to know when questioned by others. For Johnson might have said, "If I say I know something, no one has the right to say I don't know it."

If language meaning and claims to know were not verifiable, there could be no philosophy -- because philosophy (the limit setter which brings order to chaos) cannot have as its foundation "whatever seems to have meaning or seems not to have meaning", "whatever seems true or seems not to be true" (PI § 258).

The metaphor of use in the language in contrast to the picture suggested by the word 'meaning'

One reason for the slogan "Ask for the use rather than the meaning' is that the expression 'meaning of a word' may suggest an object of some kind -- whether concrete or ghostly (PI § 36). The picture of meaning: Words are names, and the meaning of a name is the thing the name stands for, where 'thing' may mean anything (object, phenomenon, abstraction).

In contrast, the expression 'use of a word in the language' suggests a tool that we use to do some work in our life (and, I would add, in our thinking).

Look at the sentence as an instrument, its meaning as its employment. (ibid. § 421)

The word 'use' makes a word (or sentence) active, whereas 'meaning' makes it passive. If a word is a tool, it is used by us to do various kinds of work, and it has no meaning apart from that work. In contrast (ibid. § 117), if the meaning of a word is the independently existing it names, then language is in control of us, not we in control of language.

Most words do not have essential definitions

The more fundamental difficulty with the presumption that the meaning of a common name is the essence of the class of things it names is that most common names do not have an essential meaning, i.e. some one defining thing in common, but can only have their meanings explained by examples. Unlike Plato, neither Ockham nor Wittgenstein suggested a theoretical explanation of concept-formation for common names; they did no more than note the absence of essences.

Note.--When later Wittgenstein wrote that --

For a large class of cases, but not all, where we employ [PI § 421] the word 'meaning' it can be defined as the meaning of a word is its use in the language. (ibid. § 43)

-- that was more than the statement of an intention to look at language a particular way; it was a statement of fact and therefore a philosophical thesis to be put to the test to see whether it is a true.

An hypothesis is often tested by looking for anomalies, but Wittgenstein's thesis is proved (tested) by contrasting it with alternative theses, i.e. with other accounts of language meaning, the principal of which is that all nouns are names of things.

If it is nonsense to say that a word has meaning but is undefinable (since without meaning = undefined), then the claim that the meaning of some nouns, namely the things they name, is hidden from view is the same as saying those nouns are undefinable, and therefore nonsense. In contrast, by using an open to the public standard, the definition "use in the language" defines those "undefinable" nouns with rules (conventions) for their use.

That is an example of how Wittgenstein's thesis about the meaning of 'meaning' is tested, if it is an axiom that the meaning of language is objective, verifiable -- determinable, and philosophy therefore possible.

Comparative versus Factual First Principles

There are principles that, like the Archimedean principle that water cannot be compressed, aim to state facts about the essence of the natural world. But Wittgenstein's principles do not. They are instead methods ("Ask for the use of a word as if you were asking for the use of a tool" and "Compare language meaning to playing a game by following rules"); and comparisons ("The rules for using language are like the rules for playing a game: when the rules are followed the language makes sense"). And although a method may be useful or not and a comparison may be true or false, discretion (choice) decides whether a particular method or comparison is used or made, whereas an Archimedean fact cannot be avoided.

According to Wittgenstein, in his later work he did not invent doctrines or theories (theses). After he returned to Cambridge in 1929, the aim of his philosophy was clarity for its own sake (CV p. 7) (although with the requirement, not the result, that metaphysical philosophy be impossible). He said of this way of philosophizing --

This method consists essentially in leaving aside the question of truth and asking about sense instead. (CV (1998 rev. ed.) [MS 105 46 c: 1929])

"Philosophy before Wittgenstein" (Russell)

Philosophy's aim, Wittgenstein said, is to clarify language meaning in philosophical discussions, because philosophical problems are in reality disguised nonsense (PI §§ 109, 118, 464). Contrast that with Bertrand Russell's statement that "as with all philosophers before [Wittgenstein in his later work], my fundamental aim has been to understand the world as well as may be" (My Philosophical Development (1959), p. 217), which according to the Stoics would seek to answer three questions: What is real (in contrast to appearance). How to reason (logic). How to live our life (ethics). After the TLP Wittgenstein limited philosophy to logic (which for him is the distinction between sense and nonsense), and his exclusion of ethics and metaphysics, makes philosophy far less than what earlier philosophers had made it to be, which was indeed "an understanding as well as may be" of what reality is and of how to think and how to live our life.

Russell wrote about Wittgenstein's later philosophy that "its positive doctrines seem to me trivial and its negative doctrines unfounded" (My Philosophical Development p. 216). Although I also think that its "negative doctrines", if universalized, are unfounded (its project to dissolve metaphysics not fully justified), I disagree that its "positive doctrines" are trivial. The Elements is an account of those "doctrines", and they are not trivial if they can indeed be used to make a verifiable distinction between language with meaning and language without meaning. And while I do think that one should be cured by philosophy of Wittgenstein's "negative doctrines", I also think that his "positive doctrines" are serviceable for partly curing the vagueness and confusion that surrounds us in philosophy, and in life.

The Elements of Wittgenstein's later Logic

All the elements of Wittgenstein's concept 'grammar' described in the Elements (or Synopsis) appear in Wittgenstein's writings, lectures or conversations. But they are nowhere gathered together in one place and presented solely as a logic of language. They are the tools that Wittgenstein assumed the readers of his works to be familiar with, as if his readers had been along on his journey with him -- notwithstanding that Wittgenstein, if he did not invent them all, so revised them that they could only be learned from him.

About my work, and about philosophy itself

Wittgenstein was gifted with a new way of looking at things and with extraordinary focus. But I am not. To anything I write must be added if I have understood and seen deep enough (CV p. 48, 62). There is a saying that a man can't jump higher than his own forehead. But he can apply himself.

Philosophy is cross-questioning

Work in philosophy is Socratic dialog: the examining of philosophical theses by the natural light of reason and experience, whether by holding discourse with oneself alone or with one's companions. And that is to say that philosophy's results are the results of the day: new objections (cross-questions) and new theses to test may occur to us in the following days. Philosophy is constant revising.

About one of his earlier views, Wittgenstein told Drury, "That is just the sort of stupid remark I would have made in those days" (Recollections p. 98). I have over the years made a lot of stupid remarks on this site, and I have often been wrong in my understanding of how to apply Wittgenstein's logic of language to particular philosophical problems.

Clarity in philosophy

Nothing in philosophy stays clear for very long, only for as long as we see no problem with it.

But in that case we never get to the end of our work! -- Of course not, for it has no end. (cf. Z § 447)

Wisdom is ever-elusive Proteus, philosophy the illusion of catching him, or the field where Pinocchio was told to bury his money. (Plato, Euthydemus 291b-c)

In his last notes written in the last months of his life, Wittgenstein wrote:

Is my understanding only blindness to my lack of understanding? It often seems so to me. (OC § 418)

No matter how deep you see in philosophy, it seems there is always someplace deeper that you don't see.

Logic-philosophy

Towards the end Wittgenstein tended to use the word 'logic' rather than the word 'grammar' and at times to refer to his own work as 'logic' rather than 'philosophy' (OC §§ 56, 82, 628, 68; Z § 590). However, he always saw his work as being "the philosophy of logic" (PG i § 77, p. 121) -- i.e. as looking at philosophical questions from the point of view of the logic of language ("It is possible to be interested in a phenomenon in a variety of ways" (PI § 108); this was Wittgenstein's interest).

To Drury: "My fundamental ideas came to me very early in life" (DW p. ix) (e.g. TLP 4.112; 5.4732 ["Signs which serve one purpose are logically equivalent; signs which serve no purpose are logically meaningless" (tr. Ogden)]; 6.211 ["In philosophy the question, 'What do we actually use this word or this proposition for?' repeatedly leads to valuable insights" (tr. Pears, McGuinness]).

Wittgenstein titled his book "Logical-philosophical Treatise" because logic was the foundation of his way of thinking. Other philosophers have not founded their philosophy on logical form (as the TLP had) or on a convention-defined distinction between sense and nonsense (as Wittgenstein later did).

When Wittgenstein uses the word 'logic' to mean "grammar", i.e. 'grammar' in his jargon or 'the conventions for using words', is he using the word 'logic' the way Socrates did? But the "logos" Socrates sought was factual, not conventional. Nonetheless, Wittgenstein did not choose either the word 'grammar' or the word 'logic' arbitrarily. He may have revised those concepts, but he did not invent them.

Logic of language is, as I see philosophy, one of the five foundations of philosophy, not as Wittgenstein saw logic, philosophy's only foundation and substance.

Neither scholarship nor historiography

Through the years Wittgenstein developed his ideas about the logic of language. The Elements is only about his last revisions. It is not a work of historiography or scholarship; there is no "review of the literature" (Aristotle, Metaphysics 980a21-993a). For the history of philosophy before Wittgenstein, I am enormously indebted to W.K.C. Guthrie and Frederick Copleston.

Writing about philosophy in order to give an account of what you think you know

Wittgenstein, like the historical Socrates, asks for an account of what you know -- "If a man knows anything, he can give an account (explanation) of what he knows to others", an account to be tested for unclarity and contradiction in cross-questioning (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1; see the site's motto). An "explanation of meaning" or "grammatical account" (in Wittgenstein's jargon (PP ii, p. 276)) -- is an account of what you think you know (PI §§ 69, 75).

A grammatical account is a description of "what anyone knows and must admit" (Z § 211; PI § 599) because it has been put into words, "open to the public" and thereby verifiable.

The Socratic standard may not be beyond criticism (e.g. knowledge of how an orange smells or how the color blue looks (PI § 78) is tested in a different way from being put into words), but it is an essential part of how I see philosophy and of how M. O'C. Drury looked at Wittgenstein's work in philosophy, namely "to say no more than you know" (BB p. 45). What cannot be put into words cannot be the subject of philosophy, because philosophy is discourse of reason, although if someone claims that something cannot put into words, that thesis has to be questioned by the light of logic of language.

In the Phaedrus Plato says that the only reason to write anything down is to provide yourself with refreshment both for your memory and for your old age (276c-d). Refreshment or mortification. But there is also this:

It is only the attempt to write down your ideas that enables them to develop. (Recollections p. 109) Philosophy is really a working on oneself, on one's own interpretation, way of seeing things. (CV p. 16, remark from 1931)

You have to find your own way to what you want from philosophy. No one can do this for you. But maybe what others have written can be useful to you in this way:

In my attempt to understand the thought of others my own thought became clearer. (A. Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought, tr. Lemke, xiv)

Philosophically stupid

"Every way of thinking is all right as long as it isn't stupid," Wittgenstein wrote to Sraffa in 1935. In philosophy the word 'stupid' (Dummheiten) would mean unexamined and presumptuous -- i.e. thinking oneself wise when one is not, thinking you knows what you do not know (Plato, Apology 29a; cf. OC § 549) -- thoughtless, unquestioning (Apology 37e-38a), based on weak reasons (LC i, p. 59) or not thought all the way through.

Thinking that one knows a thing when one does not know it. Through this, I believe, all the mistakes of the mind are caused in all of us. And furthermore to this kind of ignorance alone the name of stupidity is given. (Plato, Sophist 229c, tr. Fowler)

A way of thinking is not stupid simply because from the point of view of some other way of thinking it is mistaken, e.g. that "a word is a name and its meaning is the thing it names" (Augustine), or that "the meaning of a common name is the common nature it names" (Plato), or that "the meaning of our psychological words (such as 'hope', 'sorrow' or 'fear') is to be discovered by introspection" -- none of these is a stupid way of thinking, although they are all mistaken from Wittgenstein's point of view.

"A bag of rusty nails"

It sometimes happens that a philosophical question is not asked, or no longer asked, because it disappears when looked at from a new point of view. That is what a philosopher creates: a new way of looking at things. That is what Wittgenstein did when he (1) revised the concept 'grammar', (2) chose a verifiable meaning of 'meaning', and (3) identified logic with grammar. From Wittgenstein's point of view many metaphysical questions (e.g. about the substance of "time" and "force" and "mind" and "God") are not questions but only misconceptions (misunderstandings of concepts, i.e. of the use of words in the language).

An example of a change in way of thinking or looking at things, is the replacement of the rational ethics of the Greek philosophers with Wittgenstein's "absolute value" (Kant's "end in itself"). Or for me: vice versa, a rediscovery of Socratic ethics.

A change in point of view (frame of reference) may have the result that --

These thoughts which seem so important to you now, will one day seem ... no use for anything at all. (Recollections p. 118)

The theology of the Middle Ages may be that way, e.g. when the grammar of the verb 'to be' is taken to be the same as the grammar of the verbs 'to walk' and 'to read', as if "being" were an act just as walking and reading are. Thus: "The act of being (verb) is within every being (noun) the act of acts", "The essence of God is to be" ("I am" (Exodus 3.14)), "God is being (verb) but not a being (noun)", "God is pure act". That kind of "faith seeking understanding" is the way of word magic: it creates combinations of words that it imagines to be statements about things -- because "thought follows things, and language follows thought", and just as things are independent of thought, so thought is independent of language, and so thought can use language to express insights into things which despite breaking the rules of grammar (by following a false analogy between different parts of speech) are not nonsense. It claims for its propositions the status of inscrutable mysteries of faith expressed in language that is unclear to man because the mysteries it expresses are beyond man's understanding. It dodges responsibility with profound-sounding nonsense that allows men to imagine they know what they don't know. The statement "Those who do not understand are the only ones to laugh" (Gilson) is neither an argument nor an explanation of meaning (Pascal was one of those who "laughed"). In sum, it is language without a logic of language.

THE ELEMENTS

1. Wittgenstein's Use of the Words 'Logic' and 'Grammar', being the first chapter of The Elements of Wittgenstein's Logic of Language [See Table of Contents above]

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The Introduction above and the The Elements (which I originally titled A Synopsis of Wittgenstein's Logic of Language) are the present state of my own understanding of Wittgenstein's work in philosophy. (Summer-Fall 2026)

As to the rest of my writing, parts are worse than others, and over the years random additions and selective revising have made many of them a patchwork of contrary ideas. Revising for me is replacing old stupid remarks with remarks that at present don't seem stupid. But I think there are some good ideas here too.

Appendixes

These pages are written from the point of view of Wittgenstein's logic of language, and they may not be understood without first understanding that logic.

Regardless of the specific topics, the background here is Wittgenstein's logic of language or revision of the concepts 'grammar' and 'logic'. That revision and the standard set by the historical Socrates are and have been my points of reference.

A.  Remarks about Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Introduction and comments, with explanations of the meaning of the book's title "Logical-philosophical Treatise", and the TLP's eccentric definition of the word 'nonsense', or "when nonsense is not nonsense" (because language that conveys meaning is, after all, not nonsense).

B.  The Place of Examples in logic of language. Examples are the only way, not an inferior way, to explain the meaning of words that do not have essential meaning, which is most words of natural language. Not theories of meaning but instead examples are the true masters to follow in logic of language.

C.  Statements-of-Fact: the grammar (logic) of sentences of the form statement-of-fact (proposition), many of which are not statements of fact. The history of the word 'logic' (the Greek "maid-of-all-work" word logos).

D.  The Philosophy of Psychology: The language of moods, dispositions and sensations ("feelings"), and The language of mind (Parallel vocabularies: psychological and physiological).

E.  The Fable of The Born-Blind Tribe: Look at the word 'know' as a tool with a specific use in their way of life. With postscripts about H.G. Wells' The Country of the Blind, and George Orwell's 1984 (using language to control what can and cannot be thought).

F.  Questions without Answers. About "the riddle" that Wittgenstein said does not exist. "Why is there anything rather than nothing? Is the limit of reality the same as the limit of sense perception? Do good and evil exist? Is there an afterlife? Is there Providence?" This is the most important philosophical page on this site, although logic of language is the background needed to understand it.

For Wittgenstein what is most important about our life cannot be put into words, and therefore it cannot be the subject of philosophy. The contrary view is that not only can it be put into words, but that it is the most important part of philosophy. (That anything at all exists may not be rational, but philosophical thought about it can be.)

G.  The Philosophy of Mathematics: What are numbers? The philosophy of geometry: What are geometric points? The view of the philosopher of mathematics is the view from outside: it does not affect the calculi of mathematics.

H.  First Principles. Etienne Gilson and Thomas Aquinas: are there "naturally known, necessary truths" without which thought is impossible, e.g. "The whole is more than its part"?

i.  Questions about M. O'C. Drury's essay "Concerning Mind and Body" (the word 'consciousness'). Pictures of the mind: pictures that mislead rather than show the use of the word 'mind' in the language.

J.  The Philosophy of Time. Not all nouns are names of things, and 'time' -- like 'point' in geometry and 'mind' in psychology -- is an example of that. The use in the language of the word 'time' as opposed to speculation about the thing the word 'time' is imagined to name. Grammar versus fanciful pictures.

K.  The Philosophy of Science: (1) M. O'C. Drury, (2) Arthur Eddington, and (3) James Jeans.

L.  Comparison of the Projects in Philosophy of Isaac Newton and Ludwig Wittgenstein. (Wittgenstein's theories about the origins of philosophy.)

M.  Historical asides:

N.  Socrates, Plato, Xenophon

O.  Notes about John Maynard Keynes' Biographical Essays:

P.  The Philosophy of Religion:

Q.  Quotations from Memory: Philosophical remarks and sayings, mostly paraphrased, and with overlong comments.

For this Web site, copyright © September 1998. Send Internet or form-mail to Robert (Critical comments and corrections are always welcome).

Written 1979-2026.

This page was last revised 2 November 2026 : 2026-11-02

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"They only err who think they know what they do not know" (Saint Augustine). 'Twas modesty invented the word 'philosopher' (Pythagoras). Because Socrates did not think he knew what he did not know, Apollo's oracle said that no man is wiser than Socrates (Plato, Apology 29a, 23a-b). "The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than you know" (BB p. 45).

Wittgenstein's Logic Of Language

The elements of Wittgenstein's later logic of language: an account of the definitions, comparisons and methods Wittgenstein used to make the distinction between language with meaning and language without meaning public and verifiable in philosophy.