Home: Introduction and Table of Contents | Site Map | Site Search | Bibliography: Wittgenstein-related titles and abbreviations on this site

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: Wittgenstein's later logic: a description of the definitions, similes and methods Wittgenstein used 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 instead of with syntax, and (4) using the standard of what is in plain sight (in contrast to what is not visible but may seem necessary to account for what is).

Table of Contents

Introduction: what Wittgenstein was about in philosophy, an explanation of the nature of his first principles. The Elements 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.= meaning or use in the language)
  2. The False grammatical account ("Words are names and the meaning of a name is the thing the name stands for", regardless of whether that thing is concrete or abstract)
  3. The Distinction between a sign and the meaning of a sign (Why logic of language uses quotation marks)
  4. Wittgenstein's selected meaning of 'meaning' (Comparison of words to tools. Comparison of using language to playing a game by following rules)
  5. Kinds of definition (Verbal, ostensive, and play-acted. Verbal versus real)
  6. Grammatical remarks and reminders ("Signposts that say how to go on")

Page Two:

  1. The Rules of the game (Defining common names. The concept 'game' and "family" resemblances)
  2. Kinds of rules of grammar (Reported, Invented, Assigned)
  3. Concepts with clearly-defined borders versus concepts with indefinite borders. ("Generally, we do not learn or 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 undefined combinations of words?)
  2. 'Language games' (Wittgenstein's jargon defined by a general definition and examples. Comparison of using language to playing games)
  3. Meaning is not determined by form (syntax), but by use in the language

[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?

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 that distinction. It is philosophy's first question.

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

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 any conventions (rules) of sense and nonsense.

That is Wittgenstein's revision of the concept 'grammar', his redefinition of the word (or jargon). Wittgenstein's Logic of Language describes the elements of "grammar", of how Wittgenstein used this concept to make language meaning objective by saying that language meaning is 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 show (if this wasn't his foregone conclusion) 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, because there is a proposition type, namely ethical proposition, that is very different from the proposition types of metaphysics and logic but nonetheless rational (unlike the non-philosophical ethics of "value" and "conscience").

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, "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, "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, one must 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, 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 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 said) 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 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.522 (tr. Ogden), the important part according to Wittgenstein -- although philosophy's eternal questions, which Wittgenstein said are not questions at all (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 I would now say this, that you must first use Wittgenstein's logic of language as an antidote to philosophy, and then philosophy as an antidote to Wittgenstein.

'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'.

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 Wittgenstein's master question, in my view..

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 for ever).

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, the logic of language is first.

Philosophy, the absence of rules, and meaning

Wittgenstein compared using words to moving chess pieces on a game board -- both acts are done by following rules. If the rules for moving chess men are followed, then the moves in the game make sense, and if the rules for using words are followed then the "moves" in the "language game" make sense. Thus grammatical rules distinguish sense from nonsense.

Note.--Wittgenstein called three distinct things 'language games': (1) primitive language games (the simple comparison to games as above, e.g. asking a greengrocer for apples), (2) Parts of Speech (names of objects, non-name words, color words, number 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 words or combinations of words) -- unless we make it otherwise by making rules. (That is the only way the simple formula above 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 a function of the form of language (if it were, the rules of syntax couldn't produce nonsense, but they can and do) but of the ways spoken sounds or written marks are used to do some work in our language, regardless of their form (syntax).

But in the Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein also 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 assigned work in the language, and therefore "without meaning".

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 fosters the creation of new thoughts, often in response to new questions or problems. Language by its nature is the tool that makes this possible. Were this not true, Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations could not have been written. (Our use of language may begin, but it need not end in "primitive language games". Thought is and isn't limited by language.)

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 clarify whether language has meaning rather than solve philosophical problems, because there are no philosophical problems to solve, 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?" Any proposition must have at least three possible values: It may be true or false -- or it may be nonsense (i.e. an undefined combination of words). And if it is not nonsense, a proposition may be a statement of fact or a rule of grammar (i.e. an explanation of the use of language). Which is the proposition 'There are physical objects'? Is it obviously true, or grammar, or nonsense?

Note.--Wittgenstein's logic of language is a collection of tools (concepts) and methods for working in philosophy itself. It is not Philosophy of Language, i.e. language is not looked at for its own sake, but only for the sake of the philosophical problems in which language is involved (PI § 109). 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: Wittgenstein chose the one he thought most useful for the work he wanted to get done in philosophy, because it is one that makes language meaning objective.

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 (i.e. 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 had made the same claim 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? Wittgenstein's interest in philosophy (1) is not the only possible philosophical interest (PI § 108). And (2) is every metaphysical investigation of things really a disguised question about grammar (rules for using words) (ibid. § 464) -- are philosophical investigations never about things (the nature of things) rather than about concepts?

Note.--Wittgenstein's distinction between grammatical (conceptual) and non-grammatical (factual) investigations is dependant on 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.

"All fact is already conceived fact"

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 phenomena the limits of concepts. 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.

The meaning of Kant's statement "percepts without concepts are blind" is that concept-formation cannot be explained by "the unconceived phenomenon itself" because no such thing exists. (The expression 'phenomenon in itself' 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.)

It is important to understand that these are statements about language (grammar or rules for language use), 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 facts as we learned to conceive them as we learned our language. It is by these facts that grammar distinguishes sense from nonsense and says 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.

[Further: Reality and concept-formation | The world-picture of rational man versus primitive man | The remit (scope) of logic versus the aim of metaphysics.]

"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. Sometimes that has meaning.

But 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 clouds drifting about above, waiting for the philosopher to capture them in his net.

But ask instead, "How do we use the word 'beauty', the word 'justice', the word 'knowledge'?" because the meaning of a non-name word is its use in the language, not the thing the word names, since there is no such thing here. 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 the nature of philosophy really is. Wittgenstein seems to have done both.

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

Are there counter-examples to Wittgenstein's claim that metaphysics is nothing more than conceptual confusion (PI §§ 111, 309)? E.g. someone who asks whether the essence of man is soul and body, or soul alone as Plato and Aristotle ask (It may be no small matter whether man lives his life directed towards this world or towards an afterlife), or someone who asks how man should live his life (Socrates and the good for man), does not seem to be confused about the grammar of the word '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?)

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? And is it necessary to suppose that the word 'soul' is the name of a thing to believe that an an afterlife is possible? (Materialism (Sophist 247c) is the claim that whatever cannot be perceived is not real. The accusation of materialism against Wittgenstein.)

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")? 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 be answerable 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 is not knowledge, but it is not necessarily nonsense; it may instead rather be "incomparable pictures": pictures that cannot be compared to what they are suggested to be pictures of (namely, imperceptible reality).

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.

Logic of language is concerned only with language meaning.

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 impossible?

"It is possible to be interested in a phenomenon from a variety of points of view (PI § 108), e.g. both in 'man' as a word 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 its 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 (the essence), 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 thus 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.

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 across different "parts of speech" ('time' and 'river' are different parts of speech, despite both being nouns, in Wittgenstein's philosophical grammar), and to be wary of language-conjured pictures of how particular words are used, which are often idle (ibid. §§ 90, 115). In sum, not to be misled by a far too simple and misleading definition of the word 'noun', and by the ubiquitousness of the word 'thing'.

Is there another way, an alternative logic of language?

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 (Language-meaning is always looked at some way or another, whether consciously or not), and that each way is "like a pair of glasses on our nose through which we see whatever we look at" (PI § 103).

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.

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 metaphysical, a theory about "the reality behind reality".

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 contrast to conventions. (The word 'convention' is synonymous with the word 'rule', and thus in Wittgenstein's later work, by 'logic' is meant the study of rules, not of natural laws.)

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.

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 according to 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 the thing -- i.e. what Wittgenstein invented was a comparison, not an identification, between language-meaning and the rules of games.

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: A is not identical to B.

Simile is a subclass of metaphor, and vague metaphors are an insurmountable barrier to understanding. For philosophical clarity metaphors must always be restated in prose (LE/Notes, p. 14). Or not be used at all.

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)

The question is: must someone be playing according to strict rules -- if he is not talking nonsense? Wittgenstein compared an indefinite concept to a wobbly table (PI § 79). 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 (It is another thing that turns someone towards philosophy).

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

Wittgenstein's "primitive language games", which are games played according to strict rules, may in this way be misleading, because although what defines a game for logic is its rules, it may also be the absence of a rule that defines -- and makes ill-defined -- a particular language game.

Language is compared to a game with strict rules as to a model -- in order to note dissimilarities as much as similarities to the model, not to presume that language conforms or must conform to it. (PI §§ 130-1).

We must have a clear view of what the ideal is, namely an object of comparison -- an object to measure against like a yardstick (or measuring rod) -- instead of making it a prejudice which everything has to conform to. (CV p. 26, remark from 1937)

Wittgenstein's yardstick -- his logic of language -- is not procrustean. It describes the grammar of our language rather than prescribes what it must be (despite appearances to the contrary). And if it describes what is in plain sight, most concepts that interest philosophy have indefinite borders -- i.e. do not have essential definitions or meanings.

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 a report about how we normally use the word 'meaning', a statement of fact? Or was Wittgenstein defining the word 'meaning', 'defining' in the sense of limiting the word's meaning? There are many meanings of the word 'meaning' in the language: Wittgenstein chose one to use in his work in philosophy.

The nature of this principle is made clearer when it is stated in the form: Ask for the use (in the language) rather than the meaning.

On the other hand, Wittgenstein did not just 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 like the standard Socrates set for knowing in philosophy: to know is to be able to explain (put into words) and defend one's claim to know when questioned by others. For Johnson might as well 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 reason cannot bring order to "whatever seems true, or doesn't seem true", "whatever seems to have meaning, or seems not to have meaning" (PI § 258), in other words to what is essentially dosorder (chaos).

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

One reason for the precept "Ask for the use rather than the meaning' is that the expression 'meaning of a word' may suggest an object of some kind, whether tangible or ghostly. 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, idea). 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'd say, in our thinking).

Look at the sentence as an instrument, its meaning as its employment. (PI § 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 life apart from that work. In contrast, if the meaning of a word is the independently existing thing 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 trouble with the presumption (preconception) that the meaning of a common name is the essence of the class of things it names is that most common names do not -- as we find if we look (as Plato and Wittgenstein did look) -- have essential meanings, i.e. some one defining thing in common, but can only have their meanings explained by examples. In a word, the preconception is false.

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 the thesis that all nouns are names of things.

Now if it is shown by an open to the public standard that not all nouns are names -- and our aim in logic is to define words -- then we must look for a way to define those non-name nouns. Because the claim that all nouns are names, but that the meaning of some nouns, namely the things they name, are hidden from public view -- is the same as saying that some nouns are undefinable. In contrast, the definition "use in the language" defines those nouns with rules (conventions) for their use. That is how Wittgenstein's thesis about the meaning of 'meaning' is tested.

Comparative versus Factual First Principles

Some principles, e.g. the Archimedean principle that water cannot be compressed, aim to state essential facts about the world. But Wittgenstein's principles do not: they are methods ("Ask for the use of a word as if you were asking for the use of a tool" and "Compare using language 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 has sense"). And although a method may be useful or not and a comparison may be true or false, discretion decides whether a particular method or comparison is used or made; neither is an Archimedean fact that cannot be ignored.

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 (but with the implicit aim of banishing metaphysical-philosophy). 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 ephemeral or illusion). 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 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 silence 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 although 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 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 -- although Wittgenstein, if he did not invent them all, so revised (redefined) them that they could only be learned from him.

About my work, and about philosophy itself

Wittgenstein was a philosopher, which means that he was gifted with a new way of looking at things and with extraordinary focus. But I am not. To what I think 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".

Philosophy is cross-questioning

Work in philosophy is Socratic dialog: the cross-questioning of theses, whether by holding discourse with oneself alone or with one's companions. And that is to say that its 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 revision.

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 yet 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); that was Wittgenstein's interest). To Drury: "My fundamental ideas came to me very early in life" (DW p. ix) (e.g. TLP 4.111-4.112, 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 fundamental ideas. 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, I am enormously indebted to W.K.C. Guthrie and Frederick Copleston (but the interpretations or misinterpretations of their work is mine alone).

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

Wittgenstein, somewhat 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 or 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 therefore verifiable.

The Socratic standard may not be beyond criticism (PI § 78), but it is an essential part of how I see philosophy and also of how I (as well as M. O'C. Drury) look 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 in 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 thoughtless or presumptuous -- i.e. thinking oneself wise when one is not, thinking you knows what you don't know (Plato, Apology 29a; cf. OC § 549) -- , shallow, 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 some other point of view it may be a mistaken way, e.g. that "a word is a name and its meaning is the thing it names" (Augustine's picture; "nominalism"), or that "the meaning of a common name is the common nature it names" (Plato's way of thinking), or that "the meaning of our psychological words (such as 'hope', 'fear') is to be discovered by introspection" -- these are not stupid ways of thinking, although they are mistaken from Wittgenstein's point of view where the word 'meaning' is defined differently.

"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 revised the concept 'grammar', chose a verifiable meaning of 'meaning', and identified logic with grammar. From Wittgenstein's point of view many metaphysical questions (e.g. about the substance of "time" and "force" and "mind") 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 Socrates with Wittgenstein's "absolute value" (Kant's "end in itself"). Or for me: vice versa.

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

These thoughts which seem so important to you now, will one day seem like a bag of old, rusty nails, no use for anything at all. (Recollections p. 118)

The natural theology of the Middle Ages may be like that, or to adapt Bonhoeffer's words: "These controversies can be revived, but they no longer carry conviction." Whatever the way of "faith seeking understanding" is, "letting the words speak to you" is not it, although there will always be those for whom thought about the existence of God and the divine attributes is of vital interest.

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]

How to Search This Site

You can try to search this site using an Internet search engine by entering the following in the search box:

roangelo.net/logwitt  [words to search for]

Or:

site:roangelo.net/logwitt  [words to search for]

Or use this site's own search engine. It's quite basic and slow, returning only page titles, but its results are complete for this site, which an Internet search engine's results will not be.

The Introduction above and the The Elements (which I originally titled A Synopsis) are the present stage 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 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 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? Are good and evil real? Is there an afterlife? Is there Providence?" This is the most important philosophical page on this site, although the logic of language elements 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 subject of philosophy. (Existence itself may be irrational, but philosophical thought about it can be rational.)

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 15 October 2026 : 2026-10-15

The URL of this Web page: https://www.roangelo.net/logwitt/

Back to top of page

[ Bibliography: Wittgenstein-related titles and abbreviations on this site | Site Map | Site Search | About this site ]

"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, metaphors and methods Wittgenstein used to make the distinction between language with meaning and language without meaning public and verifiable in philosophy.